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occipixel_lobe t1_j24dqdv wrote

No. Read about what actually happened. It still overall required many times the energy that was produced.

Or, since the people here probably can't read beyond headlines and street signs, here's a basic man giving a basic explanation.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SpuS7axls7k

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_abishek t1_j24enlh wrote

You expect us illiterate people to read? Or worse watch a video that is an explanation?

Hey, hey, this is 2022 and wsb, back off.

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occipixel_lobe t1_j24qd11 wrote

My mistake. Also, I can't read. My wife's boyfriend's mother is typing this all for me as I dictate between spoonfuls of applesauce.

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renok_archnmy t1_j24w10g wrote

Tl;tl;dr version:

Two science mans in a race.

One has big lasers and shoot helium filled diamond grenades and make go boom more than shooting big lasers at flimsy paper.

Scientist man need more money and 30 years before can put in Tesla model 3.

Meanwhile, other scientist man likes farting between magnets to see if go boom. He lost the race but would also like more money too.

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Fragrant_Aardvark t1_j2787by wrote

Yeah this is correct.

To the OP, it's still decades away. Worse, it's been decades away for decades. I wish it weren't so.

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renok_archnmy t1_j27qc0w wrote

Reading further…

Man who cut check also was intern at laser fart magnet lab in 1978. They said 20 years, now they say 20 more.

How many magnetic farts does it take to shoot a laser at diamond grenades and make Tesla model 3 go brrr?

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Rough-Lavishness-401 OP t1_j24gvti wrote

Very insightful video and I wasn't aware of a lot of the things he said. But I also got some unanswered questions watching it.

Okay we are in the infant stages of nuclear fusion and this was one of many breakthroughs to come, but how long will the breakthroughs take? From what I've seen from other knowledgeable people on the matter they said what happened earlier this month was assumed to be 20 to 30 years down the road.

Also can we try this in a bigger scale (with improved energy efficiency ofc) and compensate the amount of energy we need to put in it?

Last thing, when he brought up renewables he did make an interesting point that if clean energy continues to fall in price as it should, nuclear fusion might prove to be unnecessary do to being more expansive, but at the end of the day that depends on how fast the price of renewables drops and how fast the technology on nuclear fusion speeds up.

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throwawayainteasy t1_j24j4da wrote

Fusion has been "just 20 years away" for the last 60 years.

I'd bet the century ends and there will still not be large scale fusion plants.

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That-Whereas3367 t1_j24mmp3 wrote

It's basically a scam to keep Dr Strangelove and his bomb making friends in work.

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Sodis42 t1_j24wawj wrote

There are different fusion reactor designs, that are currently investigated. For the Tokamak, where the plasma is confined by magnets in a donut shaped vessel, they are currently building a prototype in France called ITER. With the results of this, they want to build the first fusion reactor DEMO, that actually produces energy.

The headline from the current experiment was from a facility, where the plasma is confined by lasers. This technique was not on the original roadmap of fusion plants, so it's quite surprising, that they already got that far. Unfortunately, it scales really badly, because they use special containers with hydrogen inside as fuel and you can't really make those bigger. As far as I know, they already use state of the art lasers already, so that's another bottleneck there.

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Rough-Lavishness-401 OP t1_j24z8iz wrote

So what we should look out for in the future isn't the breakthrough at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but reactors like the Tokamak as you mentioned?

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Sodis42 t1_j257uv5 wrote

At this point, the laser driven approach might be faster. It's not clear, if the tokamak design will be economically feasible, while for the laser-confined fusion plants, you "just" need more efficient lasers.

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platoface541 t1_j27ruxc wrote

A potentially limitless byproduct of fusion is hydrogen. Hydrogen could be very useful for future generations for water and space travel

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Knautical_J t1_j26nmf8 wrote

Did not watch the video. What if you took some oil with lithium ion batteries to use energy to create fusion energy. Then once you make enough fusion energy you can use that energy to make more fusion energy. Eventually it will grow to be like the sun in Spider-Man 2, and our problems will all be solved

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