Technology

The translation has been lost to the ages

I still use 1337 sometimes, for joke names like 1337h4xX0r, or I use 1337 where others would use 42 or 69, but it's always that nobody gets it. How could past internet culture vanish like that?

Idk dude, we already have the sun and wind but they hate that stuff too, despite it being very close to free. Hell they'll probably bitch about fusion causing a surplus of power outside peak loads.

If it doesn't perpetuate the broken ways we currently do things it doesn't give their buddies money, so it's woke or something else bullshit.

Well, if I lived in the world of American liberals and conservatives I was taught about growing up, the game would be over the moment fusion power became cheap, and everybody would be happy.

In the real world though? We’ll wait way too long, then get excited when it finally starts to happen, and then right before The Big Day some smooth brained asshole will blow up part of the reactor or fly a plane into the facility or something.

Le et

The power of the sun in the palm of my hand.

The amusing thing is that the sun is actually quite a shit fusion reactor. It's power per unit volume is tiny. It just makes it up in sheer volume. A solar level fusion reactor would be almost completely useless to us. Instead we need to go far beyond the sun's output to just be viable.

It's like describing one of the mega mining dumper trucks as an "artificial mule".

The power of the sun in the palm of my hand

It is awesome. Whichever country develops it first will be remembered as the next ‘moon landing’ event forever.

That's called McFusion

Sounds like the goal of the test wasn’t to vet ignition power in relation to output. These people are testing the durability of system designs that can maintain a reaction after ignition.

If this was a car, they wouldn’t be testing the fuel efficiency, they’d be testing how long they could drive before the wheels fell off.

No magnetic confinement fusion reactor in existence has ever generated a positive output. The current record belongs to JET, with a Q factor of 0.67. This record was set in 1997.

The biggest reason we haven't had a record break for a long time is money. The most favourable reaction for fusion is generally a D-T (Deuterium-Tritium) reaction. However, Tritium is incredibly expensive. So, most reactors run the much cheaper D-D reaction, which generates lower output. This is okay because current research reactors are mostly doing research on specific components of an eventual commercial reactor, and are not aiming for highest possible power output.

The main purpose of WEST is to do research on diverter components for ITER. ITER itself is expected to reach Q ≥ 10, but won't have any energy harvesting components. The goal is to add that to its successor, DEMO.

Inertial confinement fusion (using lasers) has produced higher records, but they generally exclude the energy used to produce the laser from the calculation. NIF has generated 3.15MJ of fusion output by delivering 2.05MJ of energy to it with a laser, nominally a Q = 1.54. however, creating the laser that delivered the power took about 300MJ.

Or the world blows up and it’s all over. I guess what I’m saying is, no downside, fire it up and let’s see what happens.

They're part of the same global research effort.

Nice jingoism tho

I know!

Because the articles were written by different people and published in different magazines ya goober.

Because that one was over double the length of the record before it and this one is closer to a 35% increase.

IIRC it was expected because previous record from China was essentially a trial for this one. It all happens under ITER project so it’s not that much of a race.