This is not a "breakthrough", it's an announcement that they turned their machine on for the first time and took the first measurements, and measured a signal (i.e. reaction rate) so small that they have to go through some lengths in the paper to convince the reader it actually represents the reaction in question.<p>This is certainly progress, a genuine accomplishment, and a necessary step along the way to their ultimate goal, but it's a bit of obnoxious puffery to call it a breakthrough, and I don't think it resolves any of the fundamental questions about whether this reaction (which is something like 100x harder than the typical DT fusion reaction) will lead to a viable system in our lifetimes.
"Major breakthrough in the World Cup final between Flabinisthan and Giberrishland.<p>The game has been going on for 88 minutes and Flabinisthan is leading 789e10 to 0.
It would be historical for Giberrishland to overcome such a lead, and win their first ever tournament.<p>Thankfully, in a pre-print of an article brief submitted to an open-access server, an anonymous team of Giberrishians strategists claim they are now able to spell the name 'Flabinisthan' correctly, in less than 6 tries (range 5-78.)<p>They are now considering getting a map of Flabinisthan, and are actively seeking funds to teach someone how to read a map."
Very skeptical. Ever since the ball lightning-is-fusion craze of the 90s, lots of people were claiming to have done small scale p-B11 fusion. Being able to produce a few helium nuclei isn't the same thing as achieving a Q>2 or Q>10. I mean, NIF "achieved" fusion, but we all know it's not able to extract net power.<p>I still believe Commonwealth Fusion Systems with their SPARC/ARC small tokamak design will be the first to achieve a viable commercial reactor.
What is cool about Fusing Hydrogen to Boron is there is relatively low amounts of radioactive particles, the only emission is Helium nucleuses and those have a charge that can make electricity directly without a heat cycle. Other fusion types make neutrons which then can make materials they hit become radioactive or at least weaken them. This is still proof of concept but they are estimating putting power into the grid in the next 10-15 years, which is a big jump from the constant 30-40 year timeframe fusion has been stuck in up to recently.
The actual journal article (Magee, et al. 2023) is Creative Commons licensed.<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36655-1" rel="nofollow">https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36655-1</a>
Todd Rider's 1995 PhD thesis poured cold water on all these exciting aneutronic fusion approaches. He maintains to this day a good presentation covering various approaches and what is feasible and what isn't. Current version at <a href="https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.129/f5o.aea.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/BetterRouteToFusion2023-01-19.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.129/f5o.aea.myftpuplo...</a><p>(You can find links to the thesis and papers and the latest presentation at <a href="https://riderinstitute.org/research/" rel="nofollow">https://riderinstitute.org/research/</a> )<p>tl;dr: Fusion of heavier nuclei (like pB11 discussed here) are not feasible due to the bremsstrahlung output being higher than the fusion output. Ways around that would be, in theory, non-thermal plasmas, but these are very hard to do because the thermalization time constant is much lower than the fusion time constant. Alternatively one could, at very high efficiency, recycle the bremsstrahlung energy via some apparatus to heat the plasma. It's very unclear if any of these approaches are even remotely feasible.<p>Now for this particular approach in TFA, described in the open access (as a former scientist who no longer has institutional access I'm very happy about the open access trend!) article <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36655-1" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36655-1</a> (thanks to user fghorow for providing the link in a sibling comment). Quoting:<p>> And the physics challenges can be overcome. As demonstrated in ref. 2, by using the recently updated values for the p11B fusion cross-section3 and properly accounting for kinetic effects, it can be shown that a thermal p11B plasma can produce a high Q (where Q = fusion power/input power), and even reach ignition (where the plasma is sustained by the fusion reactions alone).<p>So they claim the old values that e.g. Rider used for dismissing pB11 fusion as infeasible have recently changed sufficiently to make it feasible.<p>Further continuing:<p>> By employing a plasma with a low internal magnetic field and operating in a regime in which the electrons are kept at a lower temperature than the ions, the radiation losses can be further reduced1; and by maintaining a non-equilibrium population of energetic reacting ions, the fusion power further increased4.<p>This, again, is about non-thermal plasmas. Theoretically possible, but very hard to do in practice.
Insane article with its focus on “clean” fusion as if we already have dirty fusion.
> “Inventing fusion reactors that produce net energy is one thing, delivering it as a reliable, grid-ready source of electricity is another.”
If it’s such not a big deal - can you send me plans for a net energy producing reactor, while you work on commercialization?
There are a number of different approaches that are currently being worked on. I'm curious to know how they rank in terms of likelihood of getting power onto the grid. First Light Fusion of Britain is pursuing a novel approach, as is TAE. The MIT folks are pursuing a compact tokamak I believe. Any thoughts on what approaches have a fighting chance of eventual success?
The polywell also aimed to eventually use pB fusion for direct power generation. There is still a forum to discuss at [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php</a>
Fusion is usually measured by the detection of neutrons at the proper energy level for the fusion reaction you are looking for. H-Boron fusion does not release neutrons (or at least enough to measure) but alpha particles instead.<p>TAE tested an alpha particle detector in a Japanese stelarator with Hydrogen plasma with Boron injected in and they successfully detected a small amount of alpha particles, and confirmed they were coming from H-Boron fusion.<p>All this proves is that their alpha particle detector works, which TAE will need for their later devices. The H-Boron fusion was detectable, but nowhere near enough to get excited about. People make fusors in their garages that make small amounts of fusion everyday, but just with deuterium.<p>TLDR; their alpha particle detector works. That is all.