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Thread: Fusion Power News Update
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2021-01-02, 10:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2020
Fusion Power News Update
Every year I post this thread to ask an update on the latest progress of fusion power development and mastery. I try to keep myself informed by performing a summary research before posting the thread.
And I have to say, it seems there's been a *lot* of news about fusion power in the past 4 months. Are those just new commitments for more projects and research groups, or was there some genuine progress in the technology?
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2021-01-02, 01:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: Fusion Power News Update
There has been a few significant improvements to superconductors which are crucial to generate the containment electromagnetic fields. If those improvements pan out and are practical to implement, then practical fusion has inched a tiny bit forward.
Don't be holding your breath, though.
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2021-01-04, 03:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2011
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Re: Fusion Power News Update
Interestingly, I just happened upon this article from SyFy Wire: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/koreas...broke-a-record.
Apparently South Korea's tokamak maintained 212 million degrees for 20 seconds. Um. That's degrees Fahrenheit, not Celsius or Kelvin. That's 118 million Kelvin. Or Celsius. The 273.15 degree difference disappears completely into the uncertainty of +/- 500,000 degrees.
In five years they expect to be able to maintain that temperature for 300 seconds, or 5 minutes.Last edited by Lord Torath; 2021-01-04 at 03:27 PM.
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2021-01-04, 03:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
Re: Fusion Power News Update
I feel like there's some joke to be made about finally having an oven hot enough to make authentic pizza.
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2021-01-04, 03:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2007
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2021-01-04, 04:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2013
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- Where I am
Re: Fusion Power News Update
My understanding of fusion power is "we know how to do it but the technology isn't advanced enough to do it practically so the people working on it spend most of their time going over the equations and making improvements to the existing technology at a slow but steady pace while hoping for a breakthrough."
And something something "make tools to make tools to make tools until eventually, you have tools good enough to make what you want to make," which I think is an issue with science and technology in general rather than especially a fusion thing: Sometimes you don't have the tools needed to do what you want to do, and sometimes what you know doesn't cover making the tools you needI also answer to Bookmark and Shadow Claw.
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2021-01-04, 06:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
Re: Fusion Power News Update
Pretty much this with an always present addition of problems that can only be seen once you deal with previous problems, which makes the time estimates for building fusion power plants behave like a download timer on a bad internet connection.
In other technology areas it is not as painful as we most often still get usable designs on the way so that gradual progress brings results at a solid pace. With fusion power we did not reach the threshold of usability yet, but we are getting closer. I would even say that the roadmap to some working designs is already at hand. It is just that with such complicated and expensive projects you absolutely do not want to rush things - each step needs to be done exactly right.In a war it doesn't matter who's right, only who's left.
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2021-01-05, 11:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2020
Re: Fusion Power News Update
I would see it more as a debugging faulty output during a crunch production time. You know you aren't getting the results you want, but there's no way to know ahead of research what the problems are and how soon you will have the right output.
"we will have fixed the current issue in 1 hour."
"you said that 4 hours ago"
"new issues"
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2021-01-06, 03:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
Re: Fusion Power News Update
True that
This is far too accurate actually.In a war it doesn't matter who's right, only who's left.