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> Is it not as big of a deal as I thought? They do make it out to be a bigger deal than it actually is. If you read the press release as a layman you'd be conv
by armada651 4y ago
> Is it not as big of a deal as I thought?
They do make it out to be a bigger deal than it actually is. If you read the press release as a layman you'd be convinced that we were generating electricity from nuclear fusion now and we'll see commercial fusion plants pretty soon.
However when you then look at the actual data it becomes clear that we're not there yet by a long shot, so if you first set expectations that high in the press release every reporter worth their salt is going to put some big caveats in their article. Which just makes this look like yet another case of over-promise, under-deliver.
- dymk 4y agoI read the press release as a layman and they made it abundantly clear that this is not a power generation plant, and that they have a long ways to go. I think they did a fine job describing what the achievement was without overpromising.
- armada651 4y agoI wouldn't blame anyone for reading that press release and thinking that all that's needed to get power generation is to hook it up to a generator. The press release makes no mention of the fact that we do not have efficient enough generators to turn the heat energy into net-positive electricity generation. And not for lack of investment, because more efficient generators would save millions in fossil fuel costs as well. It also makes no mention of the fact that the laser system required somewhere between 100MJ and 300MJ for ignition on a reaction that only lasted a fraction of a second; with no clear path of scaling that reaction up so that it would actually produce more heat energy than was required for ignition. I think that would be important information for a layman to understand what was and what wasn't achieved here.