this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
259 points (95.4% liked)

Technology

62053 readers
4518 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s
enu
technopagan
L4s
259
US scientists achieve net energy gain for second time in a fusion reaction (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 years ago by L4s to c/technology
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

US scientists achieve net energy gain for second time in a fusion reaction::The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility achieved the feat using lasers to fuse two atoms

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago (3 children)

It might be net energy gain when considering just the energy needed to sustain the reaction, but I doubt it accounts for the energy needed to power and cool all of the infrastructure that makes that reaction possible. They never mention that part.

In December, Lawrence Livermore first achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using lasers. That experiment briefly achieved what’s known as fusion ignition by generating 3.15 megajoules of energy output after the laser delivered 2.05 megajoules to the target

The laser energy is not the only energy input (or even the largest part) required to run these experiments.

Here is a good (2 year old) video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY

[–] Telcontar 11 points 2 years ago

Here is another article that does actually mention the other energy requirements

Energy gain in this context only compares the energy generated to the energy in the lasers, not to the total amount of energy pulled off the grid to power the system, which is much higher. Scientists estimate that commercial fusion will require reactions that generate between 30 and 100 times the energy in the lasers.

[–] JoeClu 9 points 2 years ago

Last time I heard about it, it was exactly like you mention. I find the articles very misleading.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.