Fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes

First-ever net energy gain from fusion raises hopes for zero-carbon alternative.

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[Ben G]

Is there any path where fusion is financially competitive with solar or wind? Even if all the details were magically worked out tomorrow, you’re still just boiling water to make steam to spin a turbine. The electrical production side of a power plant is going to be identical no mater if you’re burning coal, gas, splitting atoms or fusing them to boil your water. Even if you tax or outlaw coal and gas, I don’t see how fusion is going to be any cheaper than fission, and that’s the least economical method we have currently.

While I’m sure people will come up with places where solar and wind won’t work. However, I’d guess that most of those places also won’t make sense for multi-billion dollar, 10-years of construction fusion plants.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for continuing the research, but we haven’t managed to get Mr Fissions in the last 70 years, so I think our Mr Fusions are still quite a ways off.

 

[Ben G]

The pellet is the fusion fuel. The fuel inside the capsule briefly turns into a plasma when the lasers cause the fuel to undergo fusion. So it isn't forming plasma into a pellet it is forming a pellet into plasma. Yes the capsule very quickly vaporizes when that happens.

I’m taking the risk of being totally wrong and looking like a fool, but isn’t the capsule vaporizing a requirement for the fusion to happen? I thought that vaporizing the capsule created the plasma that smushed the fuel that was inside the capsule into fusing.

As someone else mentioned, I thought this is what allows the DOE to do nuclear weapons modeling without violating the test ban treaty. Using lasers to vaporize the capsule and create a plasma instead of using a nuclear fission primary (“a-bomb”) explosion to create a plasma to start your fusion reaction is lot less messy.