
Small Lab Makes Big Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion Tech - tekacs
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Small-Lab-Makes-Big-Breakthrough-In-Nuclear-Fusion-Tech.html
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batsy71
Misleading headline. No recent breakthrough has been mentioned in this
article, except one made in 2016.

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sambroner
I guess it’s good that they reached higher temps? It does not seem like this
is quite the breakthrough that will make fusion possible.

Will fusion be achieved iteratively? Or will it need key new insights we have
not yet discovered?

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tastyfreeze
MIT Sparc/Commonwealth Fusion Systems seem to have a chance at breakeven in a
shorter time that the government and international labs. The problem is that
now that fusion is commercial research we won't get updates until somebody
wants to brag or a public lab make a breakthrough.

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Traubenfuchs
Misleading title: Not a breakthrough. Nuclear power plants are just as far
away as always. (indefinite)

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adrianN
We have a pretty solid roadmap to fusion power plants. ITER and DEMO don't
have tremendous risks attached to them. But funding has been insufficient for
fast progress. Funding is also insufficient for fast parallel exploration of
non-tokamak designs.

The real question is whether fusion will ever be economically competitive with
renewables+storage.

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chpill
> The real question is whether fusion will ever be economically competitive
> with renewables+storage.

Could you elaborate on what storage you have in mind? The only effective way
we have to store large amounts of electricity right now is [pumped-storage
hydroelectricity]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricity)), which is interesting but also very sensitive to
the geography.

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cygx
There are some technologies that might be improved to achieve the required
efficiency (eg power-to-gas[1] or cryogenic storage).

[1] [https://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2018_009_power-to-gas-
wit...](https://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2018_009_power-to-gas-with-high-
efficiency.php)

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ganzuul
I recently found out atomic nuclei can be bosons. Astonishing but apparently
true: [https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/158070/helium-
nu...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/158070/helium-nucleus-as-
boson)

I wonder if this could be used to lower the temperature needed for fusion?

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lambdatronics
Ugh. LPP is not credible, this 'journalist' did not do his homework.

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blackcat201
can you elaborate or attach some source why LPP is not credible?

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rnhmjoj
I did not know about this device so I did a quick research: it's essentially
an optimised version of early plasma devices that use instabilities to create
a very compact, dense structure that can reach really high ion temperatures.
The main problem I see is that this structure is very short-lived: on the
order of 10 nanoseconds.

These devices existed for a long time and have been used as X rays or neutron
sources but not for fusion power. LPP have explained the exact machanism at
the basis of the DPF fusion and have optimised the radiation losses and
electron heating to reach higher temperatures but from this to claiming viable
fusion power is quite a stretch.

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LatteLazy
Not just misleading, badly written. This is like what you get when you pit
something through Google translate twice just to see what happens...

