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bhau-saheb t1_j3tve0m wrote

Reply to comment by Independent-Ad-8531 in After 50 years, fusion power hits a major milestone by Possible-Judgment-39

Sir/madam, it’s the effort in the right direction that counts. Something will bear fruit eventually. Don’t be sad. Pessimist will never solve anything, optimist at least stands a chance!

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Independent-Ad-8531 t1_j3txsar wrote

It is obvious that this approach will never be usable to generate energy. There are better approaches even when talking about fusion. This consumed already that much energy in generating the "fuel" heating the lasers and everything. It only produced a tiny amount of the energy it consumed in total. Moreover it's pulse is one, maybe two shots per day. There is no way in enhancing this since the lasers need to cool (cooling with energy seems counterproductive for obvious reasons). Every shot generated not even enough energy to heat a cup of coffee. There is no path on how to improve that in a foreseeable future. There is literally no way to scale this up or make this produce net energy. Yet everyone keeps telling that this is a "breakthrough" of any kind. Telling that that this will help to solve the energy crisis in any possible future is not optimistic, it is simply wrong. Yet there are obvious things we definitely can do with greater impact. We simply do not approach the obvious things because we keep telling ourselves that this is will somehow help. Some realism is important here.

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bhau-saheb t1_j3wdwkc wrote

After reading the article, it looks like scientists tried to recreate how the sun creates energy. Conceptually they know how the sun creates energy but to recreate that process on earth, there were/are significant impediments. Most thought it was impossible. However, after repeated experiments over the span of 50 years, for the first time, they made a net energy gain which is a breakthrough. You are saying that the energy gain is insignificant; hence this endeavor is not worth celebrating. I am saying that humanity, as a whole, when stays with a problem for long enough; nearly miraculous things have happened. It's the effort in that (right) direction that ultimately matters. Progress is always incremental. Anyway, I am pouring a sip on the ground today for those scientists. A good day to you, sir!

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Independent-Ad-8531 t1_j3wz0mu wrote

Have a good one yourselves. You should celebrate rightfully on the scientists. It is a great accomplishment. Nevertheless no energy was being created. A tremendous amount of energy was wasted to make this experiment work. Keeping that in mind if we just look at the last step some energy was created compared to the energy used (a really small amount that can by no means be scaled up). This is a milestone but is by no means the breakthrough the article does make it look like. It is a great achievement for science but it has no further meaning to the use of nuclear fusion to generate power. Since all the other processes around do and will necessarily always waste so much more energy than can be gained by the last step. This approach to nuclear fusion is a dead end that can and will never produce any net energy. If we accept that, it will nevertheless produce valuable new knowledge. A lot know how of plasma physics can be gained from it.

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