Nuclear fusion reaction releases almost twice the energy put in

Excluding all the ancillary services, including the lasers that maintained the plasma, which was the principle part of this latest test.

Factoring everything in, they're at about 15% return.

This is still very good for this stage, but the publications are grossly misleading.

Fusion reactor SLAMS surprised scientists with it's INCREDIBLE output

Firstly, the energy output falls far short of what would be needed for a commercial reactor, barely creating enough to heat a bath. Worse than that, the ratio is calculated using the lasers’ output, but to create that 2.1 megajoules of energy, the lasers draw 500 trillion watts, which is more power than the output of the entire US national grid. So these experiments break even in a very narrow sense of the term.

It's so refreshing to see an article at least mention the way these tests are measured are based on the energy just in the laser itself and not the total energy used.

At some point we'll be able to say: ...and thus, humanity created its first star.

We already got plenty of nuclear fusion output with no energy input on our part. But folks dont want solar panels

Maybe one day we will produce a civilization capable of using technology as it comes out instead of one that decided to call it quits decades ago. Oh sure we got cellphones but we are still burning coal. Because nuclear is scary.

Awesome put a solar farm next to a nuclear fusion plant

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Nope

We'll probably be able to harvest solar power from space then beam it to Earth in a practical way first, than nuclear fusion becomes practical.

nice to see more progress.

we need this now more than ever.

Why are so many people talking about nuclear fission waste here?

I hope it is not too late for the dawn of this new technology

https://archive.is/WA3U7

I thought because of the law of conservation of energy you couldn't get more energy out of something you put in.

Is it scalable?

I saw the headline and thought "In what reality is that newsworthy? That actual seems really low for Fusion Power" and then I saw the actual return was closer to 15% and I thought "Now That is News. That's incredible how little yield we're getting from the most destructive force on earth. Should have made that the headline."

Should quit wasting time with this tech that's always 30 years and many billions of dollars away and focus our efforts on building as many new fission plants as possible.

Let me ask as an informal poll, how many of you here were all into Elon Musk;s Hyperloop as a sure thing back when he first introduced it?

I will say as I always have. The sun is not going to be put into a bottle. Not in our lifetime, nor the lifetime of our children or grandchildren. And it is almost a certainty not to be ever in the lifetime of man.