Fusion News Ignites Optimism

I like being optimistic, but there is nothing to be optimistic about when it comes to producing electrical power from laser ICF. It&#x27;s a weapons program.<p>Also, I spent a few years as an engineer at a stellarator. This video[0] recently came out and I find it&#x27;s the best crash course on the nuances of reactor design that I&#x27;ve seen. It really nails the thoughts and feelings of fusion researchers. It was especially refreshing to hear in public that ECRH is the only viable heating method for a reactor.<p>If you watch this you might think I&#x27;m pessimistic about fusion, but I&#x27;m not. Fusion has been sold as this secret Ace up our sleeve that will come in and decarbonize our grid in a matter of decades. It isn&#x27;t that. That&#x27;s what&#x27;s been sold because it&#x27;s difficult to justify the field when the timelines don&#x27;t decarbonize the grid in 50 years. The important thing to know is that the world doesn&#x27;t end in 50 years. Energy demands are ever increasing and the supply is ever diminishing. Fusion science is expensive and time consuming. Humans will have to do the work if they want to stay on the current track beyond the next 100 years. It might seem like a subtle point and a doomed one to make considering how shortsighted we as a society have demonstrated to be.<p>0. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;JurplDfPi3U" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;JurplDfPi3U</a>

While I&#x27;m excited for this, I&#x27;m also cynical about the public reaction to fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability.<p>These past 2 years have highlighted to many how a combination of poor critical thinking and politicisation of so many aspects of our lives can lead to literal catastrophes.<p>Will the public see Fusion as the wonderful advancement for humanity that it will likely be, or will they see it as another dangerous nuclear thing? Will they see it as taking jobs from hard-working coal&#x2F;oil workers? Will it be spun as the green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar&#x2F;wind&#x2F;fusion&#x2F;etc? Will there be stories about how we could accidentally create a black hole and destroy the world?<p>Hopefully I&#x27;m just being cynical, but I am worried about how the general public will perceive it, and&#x2F;or how it will be sold by politicians and the less reputable parts of the media.

I don’t understand the appeal of this type of fusion (as opposed to the plasma reactor approach). We’ve known how to get positive energy out of fusion fuel since thermonuclear weapons in 1952. The really hard part would seem to be capturing that energy efficiently. This experiment is stuck at the ignition phase. When that’s positive energy they won’t be done, they’ll be able to start working on the practical problems of sustaining it. What am I missing.

Until now Nuclear Fusion has produced optimism, careers and portfolio valuations but no energy.<p>The theory is there, but the implementation is not and worse than that, there is no &quot;it will get cheaper with industrialization&quot; in sigh, because we are not even at that stage and there is no indication there is a realistic path to achieve the efficiency needed to be economically viable ( ever! ).<p>The best positioned to deliver something tangible seems to be ITER, many of the rest seems to be more of a pump &amp; dump scheme than anything else.

Can someone ELI5 to me how this design would be industrialised? How do you repeat this process day in day out?<p>Whenever there are articles written about inertial confinement, they always describe the current process (which I understand at a layperson level) but never how this design could be implemented in a repeatable manner?

Could someone enlighten me how laser fusion of prefabricated pellets (at least that&#x27;s how I understand the idea in the article) can generate electricity? In a Tokamak or Stellarator, we collect heat on the outside, AFAIK and generate electricity in the good, old, &quot;make something spin quickly&quot; manner. But in a laser-ignition device, we need to shoot a pellet into some kind of chamber, so that chamber better be relatively cool or our pellet melts or deforms before it can be hit by the lasers, right? So how does one tackle that problem?

I get the impression that the rate of progress is increasing in fusion energy research. Finally!<p>Or is it just various fusion startups making PR waves to get more investments?

Great! Does that mean fusion is going to be here in just 10 years in the future as opposed to the 20 years in the future it&#x27;s been for the last 50 years?