Nuclear fusion reaction releases almost twice the energy put in

Excluding all the ancillary services, including the lasers that maintained the plasma, which was the principle part of this latest test.

Factoring everything in, they're at about 15% return.

This is still very good for this stage, but the publications are grossly misleading.

I want to add that experimental reactors used for scientific research might never become net energy positive and that would be fine. Their purpose isn't to generate profit, it's to learn more about the physics, so it will be more valuable for them to be adaptable than efficient.

However, that doesn't mean that you can't take a configuration that has been shown to have potential and make a reactor that is more efficient than adaptable and use that to generate power for the electrical grid.

Basically, they have two different purposes.
- Absolutely. Also, the fact that the reactor was only running for a short time plays a part. Usually there is a significant energy cost in starting and stopping, which is offset by running for a long time. However, these reactors are not designed for continued running.
  
  It's all a process of development, and even though the article is perhaps a little sensationalist, they're making good progress.
but the publications are grossly misleading.

I think you're only referencing the headline, the article itself clearly states what you said
- Is the headline not part of an article?
The publications are not misleading, just these headlines.
That's what I came to the comments to find. Thank you. Would have been much bigger news if it was net energy positive.
- 15% return is still net energy positive isn't it? Or is that not 15% above the input?
If anything has been consistent about fusion its always them desperately trying to spin babysteps and monumental leaps forward and trying to make themselves seem super clean and safe especially compared to fission.
- If anything has been consistent about fusion its always them desperately trying to spin babysteps and monumental leaps forward
  
  That's usually the media outlets sensationalising the results to the point where the articles are grossly misleading.
  
  trying to make themselves seem super clean and safe especially compared to fission.
  
  That's just a fact, no need to try. The Fusion process is inherently safe the radioactive byproducts are generally short lived and easier to handle.

Fusion reactor SLAMS surprised scientists with it's INCREDIBLE output

You'll never believe what they do next!
- What happens in the reaction at the 69th microsecond will shock you!
- With this weird little device you can do that at home I'm 90 seconds!
- The end 😂😂😂
Scientists RIP stubborn atoms for bad faith energy negotiation policy.

Firstly, the energy output falls far short of what would be needed for a commercial reactor, barely creating enough to heat a bath. Worse than that, the ratio is calculated using the lasers’ output, but to create that 2.1 megajoules of energy, the lasers draw 500 trillion watts, which is more power than the output of the entire US national grid. So these experiments break even in a very narrow sense of the term.

It's so refreshing to see an article at least mention the way these tests are measured are based on the energy just in the laser itself and not the total energy used.

I agree it's good that the article is not hyping up the idea that the world will now definitely be saved by fusion and so we can all therefore go on consuming all the energy we want.

There are still some sloppy things about the article that disappoint me though...

They seem to be implying that 500 TW is obviously much larger than 2.1 MJ... but without knowing how long the 500 TW is required for, this comparison is meaningless.

They imply that using more power than available from the grid is infeasible, but it evidently isn't as they've done it multiple times - presumably by charging up local energy storage and releasing it quickly. Scaling this up is obviously a challenge though.

The weird mix of metric prefixes (mega) and standard numbers (trillions) in a single sentence is a bit triggering - that might just be me though.
- Electricity stuff is funny because it combines metric and imperial units sometimes to make bastard measurements
Still, from an acorn grows a massive tree.
- Exactly. These tests aren’t meant to create a practical solution, but to provide knowledge and insight that a) it is possible and b) exactly what is necessary to make it happen, at a physical level. Before this, it (more out than in) was all theory, but now we’re got some hard data to work with.
  
  That’s a big step we’ve been chasing for a long, long time.
- That, is not an illusion, Master Oogway.

At some point we'll be able to say: ...and thus, humanity created its first star.

...and accidentally incinerated its home world, as the supply dependant lunar colony could only look on in horror.

✨The End✨
- I know you're joking, but nuclear fusion is inherently safe because if it breaks there is no way to sustain a chain reaction. And is only creates mildly radioactive byproducts. So you could blow it up and it wouldn't seriously contaminate the area.
- Nah, the Earth doesn't have enough mass to become a star. If it did, it would already be one.
When they do they should come up with some original quote.

"The power of the sun in the palm of my hand", something like that.
- At least they won't be in danger of falling flat on the ground, halfway through their Big Words, due to muscle atrophy, the way every single other "first person on ______" is gonna have
  
  "That's one small trip and fall for a human, one giant faceplant for mankind."
- Melts Your Mouth, Not Your Hand
And directly started demanding money to use some of it.

We already got plenty of nuclear fusion output with no energy input on our part. But folks dont want solar panels

What is with peoples insistence that we only ever use one kind of power generation?

Wind, solar, fusion, fission, hydro, they all have their uses. Why limit yourself like some kind of console fanboy?
- That's fair. Im big solar fanboy but if more people were fusion researchers the world wouldnt be a worse place.
- Fusion is self sustained and highly scalable.
  
  If it was practical we wouldn't need the other forms, except for places not serviced by electrical grids.
  
  Fission takes a long time to build and finance. It hasn't been invested enough in. We need more green energy to replace fossil fuels faster than governments can get fusion plants up. That's why wind, solar and hydro are and should be the preference.
  
  Hydro needs the right geography. Solar and wind need the right local weather. Solar great in a California desert, but terrible in Scotland where wind and hydro are very effective.
  
  There some cases where a specific technology is the best and clearest option. But when fission becomes reliable, it will cover the vast majority of use cases in the highly Industrialised nations. Everything else will be niche.
- Why limit yourself like some kind of console fanboy?
  
  Propaganda by solar bros.
  
  It's only the solar bros doing this because you can sell solar to the average idiot. Most people can't own other forms of clean energy generation directly.
*minus the energy needed to make, maintain, and replace solar panels.

I support more solar installations, just calling out it isn't free power.
- As more solar is installed, the less power input we need to provide. There will be a point where all solar power required to make a solar panel will be produced by solar panels
True, but that's not reliable source of energy though, specially during short and cloudy winter days when it's most needed. Look what happened in Germany and how they became on if the biggest European polluters. The key ingredient missing is energy storage. Once that's solved, solar panels would become much more useful.
- We could massively subsidize home battery storage and this wouldn't be an issue at all. Microgrids are the future anyway. The only reason why storage is an issue now is because it needs to be centralized. Once we get away from that tons of new possibilities open up.
- We have all the technology for energy storage we need, it just needs to be built. Theres gravity storage like pumped hydro, pressure storage, thermal storage, flywheels.
Or bombs. They have fusion versions of those with a great deal more output than input but they’re not really fond of those either.
Solartards don't realise that the problem with solar is storage and sun availability. It's a fantastic idea on paper but unless you're in an tropical country, good luck surviving winters.
- WHAT? This is completely new information that nobody has filled journals with papers working out solutions.
- There are plausible technical designs to make huge batteries out of dirt / dirt cheap materials (e.g. liquid metal battery but there are others). I wonder how that compares to building other power plants. The problem is that humanity is just too stupid to live.
- we've had grid scale storage for a long time now. storing energy for things like cars needed new technology for weight concerns, but for electrical utilities? You lift a weight upwards with an electric motor during peak times, and let the weight down to spin a generator when you need it. It's been in application with pumped hydro storage for a while.

Maybe one day we will produce a civilization capable of using technology as it comes out instead of one that decided to call it quits decades ago. Oh sure we got cellphones but we are still burning coal. Because nuclear is scary.

I think nuclear energy is a great idea in theory, but I have absolutely zero trust in companies handling nuclear waste responsibly. It's not like they have a great track record.

That being said, pretty excited about this if it's as safe as they say.
- So nationalize them. Problem solved.
- You have every right to not trust companies, I don't either. Good thing we have multiple government regulators and multiple non-profit engineering/standards boards also involved.
- Well, that's why you put well funded, independent organizations in charge of setting and enforcing the rules around this kind of stuff
  
  And you don't just give them the power to fine the companies exploiting the reactors, you give them the power to unilaterally decide to shut down the reactors if they deem it necessary
- here's a video about how most nuclear waste is handled
- We're currently trusting them to deal with all the filth that comes out of fossil fuel based power facilities. There's a lot of very long lived awful waste that is produced.
Because nuclear is scary.

Nuclear isn't scary. It's waste, on the other hand, is.

But you know, it's not like we've not had multiple examples of nuclear power plants failing catastrophically and destroying things around them for miles, and for decades/centuries.

Having said that, if they did come out with new technology version of a nuclear power plant that is safe and that with a catastrophic failure does not harm the environment around itself then I would be all for it. I just don't think the technology is there for that. I hear they're working on it though.
- In other words you want special pleading. All other energy techs are allowed to have problems and produce waste except for one.
- here's a video about how most nuclear waste is handled
- Nuclear fusion does make this prospect potentially real. The only thing they emit is neutron radiation, and a mean lifetime of free neutron is 14 minutes 47 seconds.
  
  As per current fission technology, while nuclear waste is real issue, nuclear power is historically one of the most ecological ways to produce power. Catastrophes are now less and less likely, with many lessons learned from Chernobyl and Fukushima - lessons that are now implemented in all reactors around the world.
  
  I live in a city powered by a reactor of the same model there was in Chernobyl, but modified following the incident. I fully trust it.
- Funnily enough, coal plants waste is infinitely more harmful than nuclear waste because the general public doesn't see it as scary, so it's barely regulated.
- There already is tech that's safer and tech for reprocessing the waste. The fact that we haven't used it speaks volumes. It's not profitable and never will be. So unless we move energy production back to government owned, it's not going to happen. So yeah if it's nuclear waste that lasts millions or billions of years vs spending some money on battery tech to compliment renewables until we get something like fusion tech, yeah, it makes no sense to invest in dirty energy.
If companies can't be trusted to dispose of coal waste properly, what's the likelihood they'll dispose of nuclear waste properly? And reactors that don't produce dangerous waste, don't produce enough energy to be worth the cost unless you add the cost of proper disposal of the waste. And since they don't have to do that, they just store it in temporary storage pools indefinitely, the cost is much cheaper to stick with current tech. So fission will never be safe.
- I don't think companies can do that actually. It is very regulated area. Also I think there is a lot of nuclear scare going on. Nuclear is not at all dangerous as it most people think, it just sounds scary.
  
  At present we have oil and coal companies that are responsible for a lot of deaths and burning the planet. Nuclear is in no way near ammount of damage coal and oil are making right now. So even with nuclear accidents(sounds scary yea) it's better than coal and oil.
- It is oddly enough easier to store nuclear waste since it is very easy to contain. Coal waste is nearly impossible to do that. No matter how hot you burn or how much you scrub or what tricks you play with syngas/distillate you are still going to end up with CO2 in air.

Awesome put a solar farm next to a nuclear fusion plant

I believe the general principal is giving such a device “seed energy” to get it started, then just feeding the power it produces back into itself. The only time you’d ever need that solar farm is to get it started.

You could also pump that energy into other fusion reactors to get “unlimited energy” so to speak.
- Well yes but the idea is getting rid of fusion reactors. It might be more efficient but it's a lot more expensive
That's not how nuclear power works

We'll probably be able to harvest solar power from space then beam it to Earth in a practical way first, than nuclear fusion becomes practical.

There is a very efficient way to beam solar power from space. It is called light.
- It's not efficient, a huge amount of it gets diffused or absorbed
- The nice thing about space is that there isn't any weather up there to make the solar panels dirty etc. There's also a lot of space, which solar panels need a lot of.
- We dont need to collect it in space, just direct more of it to certain ground based collectors?
- no stop
I’m not sure what comment to reply to, but I feel obligated to remind people that the sun is a fusion reaction.
- ~~solar power~~ gravity confinement fusion
Wait... Beam solar energy from space? That's what the sun does?
What?
- Basically, the idea is to build orbital solar farms (where is always sunny), then beam the energy produced back to the ground with microwave transmitters and ground recievers. It's technically feasible, unlike fusion we have all the technology needed to do it right now. However, it's cost and resource prohibitive. The US government studied building such a system in the 1970-80's after the energy crisis. We could do it, but building it would take a generation to get running and about double the US's current military annual budget. Launch costs are coming down since then, but the industrialization of space and the moon will take generations and would need to be an international effort to have any chance of success.
We'll probably be able to harvest solar power from space then beam it to Earth in a practical way first, than nuclear fusion becomes practical.

You mean solar panels?

nice to see more progress.

we need this now more than ever.

I hope it is not too late for the dawn of this new technology

If there was a working lab design with constant, net positive output announced tomorrow, then it would take ten years before we saw a commercialized version.

Still worth pursuing, but it's not going to be our savior.
- To need a savior we would need saving.
  
  If you look at the UN predictions on climate change it’s gonna alter like 2% of our world, slowing us down slightly. It’s not going to kill us.
What do you mean? Too late for you to get a job working on it?

Why are so many people talking about nuclear fission waste here?

https://archive.is/WA3U7

I thought because of the law of conservation of energy you couldn't get more energy out of something you put in.

I'm getting troll vibes, but I'll bite lol. Fusion reactions are the exception since you're turning some mass into energy according to:

E = mc^2

There's many quality videos on YouTube that can provide a better explanation than I ever could.
- They're not an exception to conservation of energy, it's just that matter is energy in another form. Fusion reactors just harness that energy.
You can think of the material being fused as fuel. More energy is produced by burning the fuel than in the spark it took to ignite it.
That doesn't include the change in mass tho

Is it scalable?

It's the NIF. It's a hydrogen bomb simulator, it's not intended to become a power production mechanism. Roughly 0% of their budget involves researching how to turn single fusion explosions at most every few hours into continuous power output.

Scales great for getting around nuclear test ban treaties though, much quicker to retest than blowing up Pacific islands.
- That sounds like we just gave a bunch of nerds a videogame where they get to throw nukes at random scenery and then claim they're doing science by writing down the results.

I saw the headline and thought "In what reality is that newsworthy? That actual seems really low for Fusion Power" and then I saw the actual return was closer to 15% and I thought "Now That is News. That's incredible how little yield we're getting from the most destructive force on earth. Should have made that the headline."

Should quit wasting time with this tech that's always 30 years and many billions of dollars away and focus our efforts on building as many new fission plants as possible.

Should quit wasting time with this tech that’s always 30 years and many billions of dollars away and focus our efforts on building as many new fission plants as possible.

Are you aware of how long people were working on flight before the Wright brothers finally got it working?