The first sentence of the abstract for the physics department colloquium this week should win some sort of award for understatement:
"Fusion energy promises to produce clean and safe electricity on a large scale, but it still faces some challenges"
Well, they're right about the scale: 1.412x10^18 km^3 is pretty large.
@sundogplanets rofffffffllll
@sundogplanets
We should harvest fusion energy that is coming to us, e.g. with solar panels.
@sundogplanets
The fusion constant: it's always 30 years until the first commercial fusion reactors.
@residuum @sundogplanets down to 10 years, now. CFS is on track to bring its ARC commercial fusion reactor online (generating power to the grid) in Virginia in the early 2030s
@michael_w_busch @residuum what hype? The first fusion reactor to produce net energy was 4 years ago at Lawrence Livermore Labs. The progress now is in how much net power a fusion reactor can generate. This new reactor is designed to produce 3x as much power as it uses. It's going into an industrial park in Virginia to generate power for a utility. Again, in the early 2030s, but still pretty soon.
NIF produced 3.15 MJ of fusion energy out for 2.05 MJ of laser light in - and for 300 MJ of energy from the grid to power the lasers.
Not counting the energy used to make the hohlraum and the D-T fuel in it.
You might go and educate yourself.
And, again: Don't believe the hype. I am done.
@michael_w_busch @clayfoot @residuum 100% this. Also the ARC reactor is still in the scaled down demonstration stage. Even if they achieve real break-even (not like the NIF "break even"), there are still many outstanding questions about fuel breeding and also activated material concerns that haven't been addressed
Oct 19, 2026, 11:00 PM@sundogplanets "Some challenges." Yes. Cue the sound effect of the Arch-Vile from the original Doom II by id Software dying.
@sundogplanets oooh. They should do one for FTL next.
@sundogplanets I remember my dad being involved with fusion reactor research — checks clock — 45 years ago.
Oct 19, 2026, 11:13 PM"... still faces ..." and written with a straight face, no doubt.
@sundogplanets I work with fusion scientists, and I can say with confidence that any problem seems solveable if you work on a small enough part of it.
@sundogplanets When I studied physics over 50 years ago, fusion reactors were about 10 years away. They still are.
@sundogplanets To be fair, "promises to" seems like an overstatement of "will if we're lucky, and we really will try, but please don't hold us to it" ;-)
@sundogplanets this is when people are like “there are at least 20 people on earth!”
True. But…off the mark.
Still, at least fusion would be undeniably solving a problem we really have! I’d rather tech energy be spent in that direction than…others.
@sundogplanets huh
Like building more solar panels to accept our free fusion energy?
@sundogplanets In the early 80s, when I was at NASA, I worked on a collaboration with the fusion researchers at Livermore Labs. They said they were 20 years from success.
45 years later the fusion researchers say that they are 30 years from success.
I’m about to install solar panels on my roof. I think success had passed them by and they don’t recognize it.
@sundogplanets My entire life i’ve been told we are 10 years away from Utopia. I’m sure my grandson will be experience these same lies his entire life too.
@sundogplanets solar is better than a literal hole in the ground which is (but shouldn't be) better than fission which is better than fusion.
I don't see that order changing soon.
The neutronic fusion reaction usually used makes the mechanism radioactive, oops...
@sundogplanets 40+ years ago I heard someone say that fusion is the energy source of the future and always will be.
Could have been written 20 years ago and probably will also be valid 20 years from now…
Well I think it works great, as long as you put the fusion reactor far enough out in space.
For example, 1 AU seems a pretty workable distance, and we're still ramping up the amount of electricity we get from that one.
@sundogplanets I'm sure it will happen eventually, but I don't trust anyone that says things like "yeah, we'll have it in only twenty years" or "it's only five years away!" to do it.
@sundogplanets "Fusion energy promises…"
I didn't realise it had agency. Even if it did, I've worked with and for quite a few people who made promises they had no intention of fulfilling, just to stop me trying something else.
@sundogplanets I keep thinking about this. I don't know if there are any nuclear physicists who will be there, especially neutronics or nuclear data folks, but it's always worth asking about Tungsten.
A lot of designs rely on Tungsten for in-core materials. No one has provided a sufficient answer to me for dealing with the activation of Tungsten. The two main stable isotopes after collecting a neutron have half-lives of 24 hours and 70ish days. The first is a beta decay releasing an over 1 MeV gamma, the second about a 0.5 MeV gamma.
I'm so curious how they're thinking about dealing with the constant production of hard gammas in their materials with a reasonably short half life that will lead to significant radiation hazards.
@rooster I am very much not a nuclear physicist, so I'm not sure if I'd even be able to effectively ask these questions... but yikes! I can share the talk Zoom link with you if you want to watch? (Or just the speaker info if you want to specifically look up their work)
@sundogplanets challenges like it continuing to be 1au away ?