Scientists successfully replicate historic nuclear fusion breakthrough three times::Scientists in California make a significant step in what could one day be an important solution to the global climate crisis, driven primarily by burning fossil fuels.
Nuclear fusion isn’t the solution to the climate crisis. It’s decades away, if it ever happens; the climate crisis is something we’re having to tackle now.
Researching this doesn’t prevent renewables being researched or rolled out? I think the nuclear scientists developing this might be better researching this as opposed to researching fission reactors or researching renewables as this is likely their area of expertise.
Fusion is a long shot but if it was achieved it would be world changing (hopefully for the better)
Agreed, as a whole we need to stop the argument line of reasoning that one alternative is at the expense of another, and then admonishing one because it’s not the “better” of the two options. Multiple things can happen at once, progress isn’t necessarily linear.
Fusion could become perfect and effective tomorrow and it still wouldn’t solve the climate crisis because of the power and influence of entrenched corporations
I just bought a house 30 meters above see level. If I calculated this right I will get to retire in a beach front property. That’s the best solution to climate change you can get today.
Green capitalism will not restore our collapsing ecosystem. Green capitalism is not collectively owned or controlled by the masses of people.
Green capitalism is a narrative that diverts attention from the hyper exploitative conditions we face under the rule of the state and capitalist elite.
Capitalism is a tumor that has the capacity to kill life itself. We need to become organized to sustain life and a future without capitalism.
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Outta curiosity, how is fusion viable for bomb research? (Ignoring the fact that the world’s current nuclear arsenal is already incredibly powerful, and that 100mega ton bombs have been designed and 50Mton bombs have been tested)
Most fusion attempts try to keep a continuous reaction ongoing.
Tokamak reactors, like JET or ITER do this through a changing magnetic field, which would allow a reaction to keep going for minutes, the goal is somewhere around 10-30min.
Stellerator reactors try to do the same through a closed loop, basically a Möbius band of plasma encircled by magnets. The stellerator topology of Wendelstein 7-X was used as VFX for the closed time loop in Endgame. This complex topology allows the reaction to continue forever. Wendelstein 7-X has managed to keep its reaction for half an hour already.
The NIF is different. It doesn’t try to create a long, ongoing, controlled reaction. It tries to create a nuclear chain reaction for a tiny fraction of a millisecond. Basically a fusion bomb the size of a grain of rice.
The “promise” is that if one were to just repeat this explosion again and again and again, you’d also have something that would almost continually produce energy.
But so far, the NIF has primarily focused on getting as much data as possible about how the first millisecond of a fusion reaction proceeds. The different ways to trigger it, and how it affects the reaction.
The US hasn’t done large scale nuclear testing in decades. Almost everything is now happening in simulations. But the first few milliseconds of the ignition are still impossible to accurately model in a computer. To build a more reliable and stronger bomb, one would need to test the initial part of a fusion reaction in the real world repeatedly.
And that’s where the NIF comes in.
You can always run few extra experiments to make your hydrogen bombs smaller or more reliable.
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Currently fielded devices haven’t been tested, all you can do is to do some non-explosive tests and simulate the rest. Data from NIF are used in the latter
