"Ignition" was as much a marketing term as anything. It relied on a very specific accounting of energy-in vs energy-out, which no one doubted could be done.
The fact is that they used 50 kWh of energy and produced 0.7 kWh of energy. The fact that at some tiny part of the flow diagram we achieved > 1:1 energy doesn't change the fact that the actual fraction of energy out compared to energy in has barely changed in ten years.
The latest experiment produced a Q-total of 0.014, while before it was something like 0.012.
The fact is also that they used lasers from the 1990s, which are only 0.5% efficient. Equivalent modern lasers are over 20% efficient. They don't upgrade the lasers because it's an experimental facility and it's trivial to correct for the laser efficiency.
So how much energy would it consume to use the 20% efficient lasers? I'm guessing it's not as simple as dividing by 40, turning 50MW into 1.25MW, but even it is that simple, 1.25MW is still more than the .7MW produced.
Eh I think it would be that simple, since that's what efficiency means.
But sure, they haven't achieved engineering breakeven, but that's not what they claimed. But they're a lot closer than it seems when you don't take modern lasers into account. Even considering turbine losses, they're down to one order of magnitude.
And this is worth noting:
> The researchers also expect the energy gains to scale dramatically with energy input. We expect it to be strongly nonlinear, and it will only get better as we build designs that accommodate the increase in energy,” Spears said. “For some perspective, between the last event and this one, we put in 8% more energy in the laser and we got 230% more energy out in fusion.”
Has that net-positive finding been reproduced yet in any other Tokamoks?
How does this compare to Helion's (non-Tokamok, non-Stellerator fusion plasma confinement reactor) published stats for the Trenta and Polaris products?
Could SYLOS or other CPA Chirped Pulse Amplification lasers be useful for this problem with or without the high heat of a preexisting plasma reaction to laser pulse next to? https://www.google.com/search?q=nuclear+waste+cpa
The fact is that they used 50 kWh of energy and produced 0.7 kWh of energy. The fact that at some tiny part of the flow diagram we achieved > 1:1 energy doesn't change the fact that the actual fraction of energy out compared to energy in has barely changed in ten years.
The latest experiment produced a Q-total of 0.014, while before it was something like 0.012.
We can't just hand-wave away the energy in.