While neat, this is not self-sustaining — it’s taking more energy to power it than you’re getting out of it. (You can build a fusion device on your garage if you’re so inclined, though obviously this is much neater than that!)
One viewpoint is that we’ll never get clean energy from these devices, not because they won’t work, but because you get a lot of neutrons out of these devices. And what do we do with neutrons? We either bash them into lead and heat stuff up (boring and not a lot of energy), or we use them to breed fissile material, which is a lot more energetically favorable. So basically, the economically sound thing to do is to use your fusion reactor to power your relatively conventional fission reactor. Which is still way better than fossil fuels IMHO, so that’s something.
It seems like it’s probably too late.
Even if we crack fusion power today, I can’t see it being deployed cheaply enough and quickly enough to compete with solar/wind+batteries. By the time we could get production fusion plants up and ready to feed power into the grid, it’d be 2050 and nobody would be interested in buying electricity from it.
What I would like fusion to do is power space ships
That is one technology that I don’t care if China steals secrets to make it happen faster.
No need!
The data gathered by EAST will support the development of other reactors, both in China and internationally. China is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program, which involves dozens of countries, including the U.S., U.K. Japan, South Korea and Russia.
If we were a smarter society, we’d end our stupid cold war with them and cooperate.
If they were a more humane society, we likely would.
More humane like Nazi-America, or more humane like Warcrimes-Russia? Description unclear, please clarify.
More humane like the best of us wish to be and the majority of us never will be
More humane as in respecting human rights I suppose
Yeah more humane like Israel… America has been installing dictators all around the world for decades what are you talking about? You think America cares about humanity? You cant even birth a child without a $10,000+ bill.
America cares about moneyyyyy and nothing more
im pretty sure almost unilaterally, every country would like the solution to near infinite energy regardless. its extremely vital if as a species, ever want to start a colony outside of earth.
the only people against it would be those in the pocket of other forms of energy monetary wise.
Post-scarcity society def scares capitalists.
Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave!
Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
With a box of scraps!
We’re not Tony Stark, sir.
Yeah, but Hawk could ride those pipes way better.
IIUC the end goal, for any fusion reactor, is to heat up water and drive a steam turbine.
Imagine you could drive a steam turbine at zero cost. What happens if just keeping that turbine running costs more in upkeep than e.g. solar panels do overall?
Is there really much of an economic case for infinite energy on demand (and that is if fusion can be made to work in not just the base load case) if we have infinite energy at home already?
Even if not a single residential property gets hooked up to a fusion generator, there will still be an economic case for fusion, especially as you move away from the equator. Industrial applications require an enormous amount of energy, and with solar power having a hard limit on the amount of energy you can get from a square meter, you’d have to have square miles of panels and batteries to keep one plant going.
