In sum, these guys at EAST got the Greenwald limit elevated in their tokamak, which indirectly influences the Lawson criterion: nTTau, density * time at said density * plasma energy released. Lawson is the master finish line for measuring whether a fusion system can actually make more power than it consumes.
To date, when you cross the Greenwald limit, the man/woman in the operators seat should expect the plasma inside the device to become uncontrollable, hurting the reactor by touching the walls or instruments inside, a so-called “disruption”. Only a few topologies like the stellerator can exceed the limit, and so far, only by 5x.
But here we have a way to exceed the limit in the much more researched tokamak. This research has positive impact for all but the weirdest/niche fusion devices.
Artificial sun rising from the EAST? These guys know how to name things.
Meanwhile USA is stealing Venezuelan oil. Good job everbody. 👍
Just a few years ago US labs were the first to generate more power than they put into a fusion reactor, it was one of the most important breakthroughs to date in fusion.
Even under the shitheap Trump, the US is continuing to research into fusion and building stellarators such as Infinity 1 in Tennessee.
Europe likewise is leading breakthroughs such as with Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany lasting for 43 seconds. This is being improved with the new Proxima Alpha stellarator being built.
China’s EAST reactor had a breakthrough when they achieved 1,000 seconds last year. While Europes recent ITER tokamak should be achieving its first plasma in the coming years.
Fusion is a global effort, and scientists are benefiting from the works being put in elsewhere. Stellarators and Tokamak are both breaking new grounds each year, and each has their own pros and cons.
Don’t fall for any propaganda trying to claim anyone is “winning”.
These comment sections can be a place of puerility and defeatism. Thanks for being the difference.
it was one of the most important breakthroughs to date in fusion
What ? It was not really. Here’s a physicist discussing why.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/08/fusion-foolery/
In the end, the NIF fusion accomplishment might be called a stunt. Stunts explore what we can do (often after an insane amount of preparation, practice, and failure), rather than what’s practical. Stunts hide the pains and present an appearance of ease and grace, but it’s a show.
The “more energy out than laser energy in” equation masks several fundamental problems. NIF’s doped glass lasers have an efficiency of about 0.5 percent, meaning that they would have sucked in roughly 400 megajoules of energy from the grid in order to produce the 2.1 megajoules of light energy…
To be fair the hype machine was from the press not the scientists
Let’s pause to say: well done! Honestly. No sarcasm. What they did was ridiculously hard, and it finally worked after more than a decade of trying. They actually produced a significant number of fusion events! There’s no faking that, and I’d like to see you try. So let’s be clear that I’m not knocking the accomplishment in itself. My major beef is how we interpret the implications for society.
Stunts also draw attention to stuff. Its yet to be seen if its a net positive but it did help me get up to speed on the current state of fusion technology.
oil, coal and nuclear are clearly not winning.
we could solve the worlds energy problems today but they’d never be applied simply because oil exists. its literally why the US just attacked venezuela. They could have built another reactor or windmills or whatever the fuck else they feel they need if energy was the reason. but energy has nothing to do with energy and all to do with being a natural monopoly that’s making a small group of people quite wealthy.
We killed a lot of people to ensure that oil is bought and sold with dollars around the world. No way we’re going to let that currency crutch just go away.
Yes but those are not fusion. Fusion is the ‘holy-grail’ of energy technology. It is a long term goal that we must work towards. It’s a problem of science.
For now renewables are the cheapest, quickest, and best method we have. They should be receiving all the money wasted on those 3 methods you’ve mentioned above. That’s a problem of politics.
We easily have the means to achieve both, we are hamstrung by shortsighted corporate interests and yes this applies to China as well.
Nuclear is different from oil and coal.
They’re not solving the world’s problems not because oil exists, but because big powerful private oil companies exist who lobby the government and publish propaganda to manipulate the public. And big oil companies exist because of capitalism. But at this point, you start spewing all the anti communism propaganda you’ve been fed since your birth.
nuclear is the current dream for capitalists. because fuel is controlled and power is a monopoly - nuclear is guaranteed to always be profitable whereas hydro, solar and wind tend to run at a surplus and collapse the market by going into the negative value. since power can’t be stored, they have no choice but to supply power at no cost. with nuclear, they control the flow of power production and can always keep supply at the breaking point of demand to keep prices high.
Why you attacking nuclear? It’s an amazing technology
it’s only amazing as long as the government owns it. in my country we could technically have free power because of renewables (and almost did, but EU stopped us from doing it because it would crash the commercial power market elsewhere - EU bs even made power more expensive just to make it competitive and not to crash oil and coal markets). but because of surplus power generated from renewables, our current neoliberal government has been getting rid of solar and shutting down windpower and attacked hydro in favor of constructing nuclear power plants; on top of making it law that the government isn’t allowed to own or buy the nuclear power plants and also offered to fund private interests the construction of nuclear power plants.
the reason? power is a natural monopoly, and nuclear is fuel based. which means the supplier of power decides the supply and demand by artificially controlling the fuel flow - the idea is to never let power run at a surplus supply generated by solar, wind, and hydro ever again so there is no risk that privately owned power monopolies would be unprofitable.
Only 75 more years to go!
If China’s economic ascendancy happened 50 years sooner we would probably already have it. Democracies are allergic to massive capital investments that take decades to pay off.
Obviously the graph is very out of date, US funding is around 600 million 2012 dollars annually and China’s is double that.
If China has managed to do something that scientists genuinely thought was impossible why are there several nuclear fusion research facilities all over the planet? If it’s impossible that seems like a bad use of resources.
I think maybe that scientists thought it was entirely possible, and that’s why they were trying to do it.
I really hate how so many of these articles feel like they need to dumb it down with this “artificial sun” imagery. It feels so condescending. I’d rather learn more about the latest progress with nuclear fusion
Most Americans read at or below a 6th grade level
So we hear. But the world is not America and this is a British newspaper.
To be fair I don’t think literacy rates in the UK blow the US out of the water or anything.
I check on this. So first thing I found, literacy rates and average reading age are different things. Literacy rate, able to read at all, is clearly tracked and both countries are like 99%. Reading age seams really mushy. If you can get some numbers, please share!
Oh I couldn’t get any hard data on reading age for the UK. Search engines are trash now.
Just figured out the apples to apples term to search is “functionally illiterate”
From a quick glance it seems to be about 18% (UK) vs 21% for the US. So as I expected, better but not anything to write home about.
https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/
I’m not a fan of China (government)… at all. But when I check all the technological breakthrough they are getting in these last years while the US was inflating his fucking ai-bubble. Objectively, they are getting so far ahead is not even funny. At least Europe is on a good track themself.
China is now the world leader in science by most metrics (largest proportion of the top 1% most cited papers, most publications to prestigious journals, etc). It makes sense, with their high population and their government willing to fund research. I’m guessing their culture is much less anti-intellectual than the West too, especially the US.
I’m no China expert but I lived In South China for a while between 2016 and 2024. The Chinese people I know are mostly hardworking, very motivated to succeed, and well capitalized. In their major cities you might be surprised to learn normal guys who earn half what you do are living a higher quality of life than you are, in terms of access to technology.
Their government is no doubt using uncouth methods to give their country unfair advantages. They don’t play well with others.
But holy shit there is one thing this Chinese government is doing well: effectively driving growth with targeted investments in the economy. They have been focused on that one mission consistently for a long time.
While democracies fuck around trying to decide if they should tax themselves to build public transportation, China installs 10 new ultrafast subway lines in just a few years in every big city. Covers the country in a network of high-speed rail. Drives the price of shipping goods around the country to almost nothing.
A kind of monoparty like China has is very likely a net negative when we look at world history, but for moments of time, if it’s the right one, amazing things can happen.
