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I thought ignition had been achieved a long time ago. Is the article saying this is the first time for this particular lab to achieve ignition, or have I confused my fusion hype-terminology? I genuinely can't tell, as the article is written in Hype rather than English...
Previously passim: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (Edit: along with other, I now realise different, news from MIT.) (Including my submission of this same link, not discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28219462 , but the others are the same news.) Discussed mostly in: ~~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28462151 and:~~(edit, per above) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?i…
SPARC ≠ NIF
Is this "plasma breakeven" or overall break-even?
"While the latest experiment still required more energy in than it got out, it is the first suspected to reach the crucial stage of ‘ignition’, which allowed considerably more energy to be produced than ever before, and paves the way for ‘break even’, where the energy in is matched by the energy out."
Here [1] is an excellent video by Sabine Hossenfelder about why you should not get too excited about this result.
I thought ignition had been achieved a long time ago. Is the article saying this is the first time for this particular lab to achieve ignition, or have I confused my fusion hype-terminology? I genuinely can't tell, as the article is written in Hype rather than English...
First time for an internal confinement system using lasers instead of a tokamak using magnetic confinement.
with a genuine Hans Gruber accent :)
Is this "plasma breakeven" or overall break-even?
It's worth noting that NIF was not intended to generate power and is not representative of a potential power plant. The lasers on NIF are old and were chosen to have a lower efficiency for cost reasons. In addition, while NIF could generate much more energy, NIF isn't necessarily going to pursue this because the higher output energy may render the machine inoperable for too long.
Dealing with a high rate of explosions is one thing this class of fusion will need to solve before being able to generate power.