Major Advancement in Fusion Energy ?

Joined
Jan 31, 2006
Messages
4,440
Location
Idaho

The UK-based JET laboratory has smashed its own world record for the amount of energy it can extract by squeezing together two forms of hydrogen.
If nuclear fusion can be successfully recreated on Earth it holds out the potential of virtually unlimited supplies of low-carbon, low-radiation energy.

The experiments produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power).
This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997.

It's not a massive energy output - only enough to boil about 60 kettles' worth of water. But the significance is that it validates design choices that have been made for an even bigger fusion reactor now being constructed in France.

"The JET experiments put us a step closer to fusion power," said Dr Joe Milnes, the head of operations at the reactor lab. "We've demonstrated that we can create a mini star inside of our machine and hold it there for five seconds and get high performance, which really takes us into a new realm."
 
The last year has seen some really incredible leaps forward in fusion, and I know it's just "20 years away" for the last 50 years, but we're actually getting really close to making it work. The only reason they had to stop was because the magnets were overheating.
 

While it is a nice achievement you'll note that it took 1GW of energy to produce 11MW. That's nowhere even remotely near net neutral net alone net positive energy return at this point, so things are still a VERY long ways off from it being any sort of viable energy source.
 
"The experiments produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power).
This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997."

If I read this correctly, double output of relatively low amounts of power in 25 years of research !!
And this is a major development....not.

Seems to me that someone's funding is running out and hoping splashy headlines free up more research $.

Disappointing results is what I see here.
 
As I said before the theoretical basis is there, but Fusion energy is a huge engineering undertaking with lots of problems.

Let's see some real practical results soon and if we don't, we continue to improve Fission reactors and have at least one distributed Fission reactor per state or province. Wind and Solar will not meet future energy demands.


 
Last edited:
it is a monumental task, but i am confident someone will figure this out. it will take a lot of time, but they will succeed. it will be a huge step towards becoming a full fledged type 1 civilization on the kardashiev scale. understanding the sun and how it works is the key to our future.
 
Let's see some real practical results soon and if we don't, we continue to improve Fission reactors and have at least one distributed Fission reactor per state or province. Wind and Solar will not meet future energy demands.

If only politics didn't get in the way of it in the USA.....Luckily I live in one of the states that did embrace Nuclear early on.
 
Back
Top