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Excluding all the ancillary services, including the lasers that maintained the plasma, which was the principle part of this latest test.
Factoring everything in, they're at about 15% return.
This is still very good for this stage, but the publications are grossly misleading.
I want to add that experimental reactors used for scientific research might never become net energy positive and that would be fine. Their purpose isn't to generate profit, it's to learn more about the physics, so it will be more valuable for them to be adaptable than efficient.
However, that doesn't mean that you can't take a configuration that has been shown to have potential and make a reactor that is more efficient than adaptable and use that to generate power for the electrical grid.
Basically, they have two different purposes.
Absolutely. Also, the fact that the reactor was only running for a short time plays a part. Usually there is a significant energy cost in starting and stopping, which is offset by running for a long time. However, these reactors are not designed for continued running.
It's all a process of development, and even though the article is perhaps a little sensationalist, they're making good progress.
but the publications are grossly misleading.
I think you're only referencing the headline, the article itself clearly states what you said
The publications are not misleading, just these headlines.
Fusion reactor SLAMS surprised scientists with it's INCREDIBLE output
Scientists RIP stubborn atoms for bad faith energy negotiation policy.
Firstly, the energy output falls far short of what would be needed for a commercial reactor, barely creating enough to heat a bath. Worse than that, the ratio is calculated using the lasers’ output, but to create that 2.1 megajoules of energy, the lasers draw 500 trillion watts, which is more power than the output of the entire US national grid. So these experiments break even in a very narrow sense of the term.
It's so refreshing to see an article at least mention the way these tests are measured are based on the energy just in the laser itself and not the total energy used.
I agree it's good that the article is not hyping up the idea that the world will now definitely be saved by fusion and so we can all therefore go on consuming all the energy we want.
There are still some sloppy things about the article that disappoint me though...
They seem to be implying that 500 TW is obviously much larger than 2.1 MJ... but without knowing how long the 500 TW is required for, this comparison is meaningless.
They imply that using more power than available from the grid is infeasible, but it evidently isn't as they've done it multiple times - presumably by charging up local energy storage and releasing it quickly. Scaling this up is obviously a challenge though.
The weird mix of metric prefixes (mega) and standard numbers (trillions) in a single sentence is a bit triggering - that might just be me though.
At some point we'll be able to say: ...and thus, humanity created its first star.
...and accidentally incinerated its home world, as the supply dependant lunar colony could only look on in horror.
✨The End✨
I know you're joking, but nuclear fusion is inherently safe because if it breaks there is no way to sustain a chain reaction. And is only creates mildly radioactive byproducts. So you could blow it up and it wouldn't seriously contaminate the area.
Not only are the radioactive byproducts not that dangerous (everything is relative of course). But also they have incredibly short half lives so they go away long before the firefighters turned up.
Nah, the Earth doesn't have enough mass to become a star. If it did, it would already be one.
When they do they should come up with some original quote.
"The power of the sun in the palm of my hand", something like that.
Maybe one day we will produce a civilization capable of using technology as it comes out instead of one that decided to call it quits decades ago. Oh sure we got cellphones but we are still burning coal. Because nuclear is scary.
I think nuclear energy is a great idea in theory, but I have absolutely zero trust in companies handling nuclear waste responsibly. It's not like they have a great track record.
That being said, pretty excited about this if it's as safe as they say.
Awesome put a solar farm next to a nuclear fusion plant
I believe the general principal is giving such a device “seed energy” to get it started, then just feeding the power it produces back into itself. The only time you’d ever need that solar farm is to get it started.
You could also pump that energy into other fusion reactors to get “unlimited energy” so to speak.
We'll probably be able to harvest solar power from space then beam it to Earth in a practical way first, than nuclear fusion becomes practical.
There is a very efficient way to beam solar power from space. It is called light.
It's not efficient, a huge amount of it gets diffused or absorbed
It doesn't need to be efficient. Capture all the light that hits earth for 5 minutes and that's the world energy demand for a year.
The nice thing about space is that there isn't any weather up there to make the solar panels dirty etc. There's also a lot of space, which solar panels need a lot of.