Technology

59207 readers

3474 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

203

Scientists successfully replicate historic nuclear fusion breakthrough three times (edition.cnn.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Scientists successfully replicate historic nuclear fusion breakthrough three times::Scientists in California make a significant step in what could one day be an important solution to the global climate crisis, driven primarily by burning fossil fuels.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

NIF can't really ever reach Q>1. All the statements of having reached that only include the energy that reaches the capsule. The energy the lasers actually use is orders of magnitude larger.

This theoretical Q>1, where the plasma emits more radiation than it receives, have been reached by other reactors before.

But while tokamak or stellerator designs need a 2-3× improvement to produce more energy than the entire system needs, the NIF would need a 100-1000× improvement to reach that point, which is wholly unrealistic with our current understanding of physics.