48 seconds. I predict a glut of helium. balloons for everyone

  • Neato@ttrpg.network
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    5 months ago

    Unfortunately the amount of helium made in fusion is so small as to be useless for anything humans need. Fusion is just that efficient.

  • fidodo@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’d like to know more. How do you actually harness the energy produced by temperatures that high? Is the end goal to figure out how to sustain the reaction at lower temperatures or do we actually have ways to generate electricity from those temperatures without losing most of it to waste?

    • ummthatguy@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      From what absolutely little I know, yes. Sustaining the reaction at such high temps for long is, as of now, difficult.

      • gregorum@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Yeah, I decided to actually bother and read the article. That’s why I made my edit. This sounds like a very important technical milestone for the development of fusion reactors. Hooray!

  • Scrof@sopuli.xyz
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    5 months ago

    Can’t wait for fusion reactors to not be thing for another 50 years at the very least.

  • Gigan@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’d love to see an operating fusion reactor in my lifetime. Real sci-fi technology

    • virku@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Currently reading news and communicating with people around the world from the privacy of my toilet using my hand terminal. It can also understand what I am saying and excecute my spoken commands (to some extent at least). That’s some Sci fi shit right there. Pun intended

  • assembly@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    48 seconds at those temperatures is no joke, that is pretty amazing. I didn’t see the article elaborate on what the current limiting factors are for pushing beyond 48 seconds. Like I wonder if it’s a hard wall, a new engineering challenge, a tweak needed, etc. this is the reactor that set the last record so they are doing something really right.

    • ours@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Breakthroughs will bring in investment and then things can accelerate if it ends up viable.

    • hydroptic@sopuli.xyz
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      5 months ago

      Like it has been for the past 30 years (which, I assume, was the joke here.)

      If fusion research was funded adequately we’d probably have it by now, but I don’t know if it’s the energy lobby or what that means that it’s chronically underfunded. An actually working fusion reactor design would bring about such an upheaval in the energy markets that I wouldn’t be surprised if plutocrats had a hand in making sure the research receives orders of magnitude less money than it should.