France runs fusion reactor for record 22 minutes
France has upped the ante in the quest for fusion power by maintaining a plasma reaction for over 22 minutes – a new record. The milestone was reached on February 12 at the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) WEST Tokamak reactor.
Amazing news!
They should get out more.
How ks the drill baby drill crowd going to compete against mini stars in a can?
Lmao. Fucking oil losers
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.
Plastic Straws. Plastic cups. Wrapping indvidual food items in plastic and then putting them in a larger plastic bag which you carry home in an even larger plastic bag.
1,337 seconds? That... that number used to mean something, but now i can't recall what...
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?
All your base are belong to us
The translation has been lost to the ages
Found someone who can help.
1337, leet, elite
Shh, don't let the kids hear you say that
France's 22-minute plasma reaction is a bold stride toward sustainable fusion energy but remains experimental.
🐱🐱🐱🐱
Just one more giga joule guys ...
Pro fusion research btw just a chronic shitposter
I felt that
I hope it smoked a cigarette once it finished.
Well, I'm still skeptical, but I have far more trust in France's reporting than Chinese claims.
So just blatant Sinophobia.
They're part of the same global research effort.
Nice jingoism tho
huh, I learned a few new words today
for others who want to know
I didn't see any mention of the output in the article. 22MW injected, but does anyone know if the reaction was actually generating a positive output?
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.
The input energy doesnt matter that much. Nobody is going to use 1980s laser tech to power a real reactor. As with OP, inertial confinement is interested in very small nuanced science aspects, not making a power plant.
I've seen a few mentions of positive output in the last few years.
I wasn't aware of that distinction about the energy for the laser to generate the heat energy within the reaction not being factored into the Q value, very interesting, thank you! Would that energy for the laser still be required in a "stable reaction" continuously, or would it be something that would "trail off"?
Article said 2.6GJ input, 2.6 output so 1Q, but I'm not certain it's really the case.
Edit: I can't find my source back, so it's likely false
30 years guys.
It's always thirty years away because every time it gets close to 15 years away they cut the funding in half. Zeno's Dichotomy in action.
This is freaking awesome. Only a few years ago it was exciting to see a fusion reaction last a fraction of a second.
A headline without calling it an "Artificial Sun"?!
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".
Sure, but it makes up for that by having an idiot proof design.
Someone once told me a sun is just a fusion nuclear pile reactor and... Like... I guess.
The power of the sun in the palm of my hand.
Don't worry, it will stabilize
@Toribor @notsoshaihulud with great power comes great responsibility
They say "artificial sun" because that's what it is though, there's no fusion reactions here they're just microwaving hydrogen to millions of degrees to study the kind of thing that would happen IF somebody runs a fusion reactor for 22 minutes.
Or a “star in a bottle”
A bulb in a bong
Maybe if it runs longer, we all get to jump to a better timeline. 😅
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.
No tech will give you a better timeline, back on the floor please ^^ It's a political problem before anything else, and energy production is far from being the first problem.
Scientists: invents commercial scale fusion Capitalist: hordes the almost free energy because why not? Poor people are only useful as a resource anyway.
I'm sceptical. Even if somebody would present a working fusion reactor today, what would the timeline to replace everything based on fossil fuels even be? Build several thousand of expensive fusion reactors in every country of the world, even in geopolitical rivals like China, Russia or North Korea or war-torn third world countries? Replace every car with an electrical one? Replace home heating everywhere? Rebuild every ship and airplane worldwide?
I mean yea that's the plan. What are the other options? Force every countrie to stop producing instead to reduce carbon emissions that way? Wich one Sounds more realistic? And I feel like you assume that fusion reactors are dangerous because your comments about war torn countries. But it's not possible to turn them into weapons. They run on hydrogen. And if they ever oberheat or something the magnets stop working and the reaction stops.
I was just making an abstract sci-fi joke based on how cold fusion has been presented like a Holy Grail in the past. Obviously a better source of energy isn't going to solve all our problems, no matter how good it is.
Progress is progress, and it's good to be skeptical (I literally just posted a comment saying "I'm skeptical"!), but progress is good. 🙂 What other alternatives are there?
If it doesn't make dollars, it doesn't make sense. That's why the electric car movement is having a hard time really taking off rn; it is hard to justify & all the tech, all our builds, aren't exactly super economical yet. And they're not built for tough conditions, heavy towing, long commutes, and easily workable & recyclable components.
...but things are, indeed, getting better. If you look at it from a macro view. Lithium recycling can be done even a decade ago, but IIRC it was relatively small scale & the lithium could be refreshed "most of the way", not fully. The right things will catch on when their time is right & its viability is realized.
Man's greatest strength is our shared knowledge, technology, science, and innovation. I encourage you to make good decisions in your personal life and be positive. 🙂
Meanwhile in America we’re trying to make macdonalds cheaper by bundling an extra sandwich to go along with a value meal…
America would blow up a fusion reacto, call it dangerous, elon musk has a lot of things to say about it and then it would be illegal worldwide. Have you guys heard about coal? We already fixed it, just burn coal.
Why don't we use "shatters world record" like the pro-China articles where they did this for 16 minutes?
I know why.
Why do you care so much what an article says about France's accomplishments of science and China's accomplishments of science? Why can't we enjoy the movement of technology without bickering about lines drawn in the sand by people none of us know or care about?
I know!
Because the articles were written by different people and published in different magazines ya goober.
Nah.
It's because of the Chinese propaganda machine.
They'll never tell.
Dumbass lol
Is it because of the Uyghurs?
Oh shit. Things are heating up in the fusion race.
Good. The only thing that was quite remotely good about the cold war was the competition.
That's not what this is, and even then, that competition wasn't even good. You had two countries hoarding technological advancements for themselves, with everything having to be discovered twice.
This is a worldwide collaboration, where each assists the others, and it's a much better way of making progress. See ITER.
In the past few minutes on Lemmy I have seen a graphic that France is the largest weapons exporter behind the US, and now this. Thanks for being awesome y'all.
Which lemmy client are you using? Your reply has
Check out more details here:
<a href=“https://markdown-viewer.com/%E2%80%9D>
markdown viewer</a>
.
And visiting the website is a mess as well
I read through it for the details.
It was net negative, requiring 2MW of power to maintain hydrogen plasma in a state analogous to fusion. The major achievement of this particular experiment was doing so without energies equivalent to a fusion reaction damaging the containing assembly.
It was purely a test/demonstration of the containment of fusion-like conditions.
Doesn't sound that impressive when Wendelstein 7-X achieved 17 minutes of plasma in 2021.
Yes but 22 minutes is longer than 17 minutes
Think of it like a pizza oven
How well done is your pizza?
at temperatures that exceed the surface of the sun, there's only one setting.
carbonized.
I can't find a reference to that but China did 17 minutes in January this year. I think you're confusing the announcement that they increased power by 17x while maintaining plasma.
This test was 20 minutes at a higher power setting without being incredibly destructive, that's their milestone.
Agreed. Plus, when talking about that reactor you get to say "stellarator", which is always fun.
This is cool but also remember the practicalities of Fusion make it not much better than nuclear:
Well nuclear is great, so even "not much better" would be great.
Yea one of the most interesting applications of fusion reactor research is the requirements in advancements for material science also benefits fission and even solar power generation, so the research bears fruit well and above the stated goals.
not to say its the greatest form of energy production ever, but, what are your gripes with nuclear these days anyway?
None! My comment may be misunderstood.
If you're of my generation you kind of grew up being told fusion energy was the holy grail of energy production as it's clean and doesn't produce a bunch of radioactive byproduct. (Stuff like SimCity etc. made fusion reactors seem like a miracle technology)
In reality fusion also produces a massive amount of radiation and radiative byproducts, so it's not the holy grail of energy that I think most people might assume it is.
Fusion and Fission are two sides of the same coin, so fusion experiments are important because they aid in making fission reactors safe as well!
I'm especially looking forward to seeing how material scientists attempt to solve the massive fast neutron radiation that fusion reactors produce, as Thorium reactors have the same issue.
if I remember correctly, the output of a nuclear fission reactor can be used in a nuclear fusion reactor for a near-net zero loss in materials.
there's like three different fusion reactors, so it's likely one of the three that can do this, but still better than fossil fuels.
no. that's thermodynamically impossible.
though it is true that fission and fusion are opposites, you cannot gain energy by fissing and fusing the same material. There's an inverted bell curve where medium sized elements are the lowest energy state. You can get energy by making atoms more medium, fusing the smallest atoms or fissing the biggest ones. Doing the opposite costs energy.
The primary issue is that deuterium-deuterium reactions (the only practical fusion process that seems to work is deuterium-tritium and deuterium-helium, as you need insane temperatures for proton-boron, so in any realistic reactor deuterium will end up reacting with itself) produce 3 times the radiation of equivalent power output from fission reactions, so you need MASSIVE amounts of shielding for a reactor to run for an extended period of time.
This also highly irradiates the materials inside the reactors themselves, to a degree that maintenance requires built-in robots because the inside of the reactor is too radioactive for humans (this also eventually destroys the robots). The most optimistic estimates for how long a reactor could possibly last is 100 years. At that point the entire reactor would need to be torn down and buried because most of the components would be too radioactive to use anymore. At which point you have the exact same issue as radioactive waste storage, but no recycling process for something crazy like a radioactive isotope of silicon.
However! That's why these experiments are important! As every advancement they make towards making fusion safe, also makes fission safer, as they're two sides of the same coin.
Guarantee you they weren't generating a whole lot of power though.... And if you can't do that part then what's the point?
The first planes only flew for a few seconds.
Well, the first ones didn't fly at all, they usually just killed the inventor.
That's basically where we are today with fusion, they don't work at all yet. Luckily it's not killing people.
Yeah, and we measured them to the purpose of flight... Not wingspan, or how soft the wheels were.
So maybe we should measure technology that's about generating power by.....
I'll let you fill in the blank.
P.S I have a "perpetual" motions machine that can run for 30 minutes (8 minutes longer than this fusion reactor), are you interested in investing?
EDIT: Four years ago the British Fusion reactor (J.E.T. originally built in 1984) produced "59 megajoules of heat energy" none of which was harvested and turned into electricity. The project was then shutdown for good after 40 years of not generating power.
