Nuclear fusion in spotlight as world seeks clean energy future

Controllable fusion for the last 40 years has always 40 years away.

Deuterium can be extracted inexpensively from seawater, and tritium can be produced from lithium, which is naturally abundant. 

Great, I cannot wait for those massive price cuts in energy to come my way! /s

It's too late for Japan to catch up in fusion race now.

The first commercial fusion powerplant will be built in Korea, as Koreans are the only ones in the world that can hold fusion temperature past 1 second. Most haven't reached the fusion temperature and those who did can't last more than a few milliseconds due to plasma flame out.

So unless Japan is willing to build a Korean fusion powerplant model in Japan, fusion isn't coming to Japan.

https://www.nucnet.org/news/south-kora-s-kstar-sets-record-30-second-record-at-100-million-degrees-11-1-2021

Nuclear Fusion / South Korea’s KSTAR Sets 30-Second Record At 100 Million Degrees

By David Dalton

29 November 2021

https://gadgets.ndtv.com/science/news/kstar-artificial-sun-south-korea-100-million-degrees-300-seconds-2026-nuclear-fission-2681401

South Korea to Develop Technology for Artificial Sun to Maintain 100 Million Degrees for 300 Seconds by 2026

KSTAR’s 300-second capability is the minimum time required for the commercialisation of nuclear fusion technology.

By ANI | Updated: 31 December 2021 14:20 IST

Samit Basu

Not too late for South Korea. Never too late for South Korea.... but Japan??Unacceptable!! Too late!! Ok buddy.

Nuclear is the future. Both Fussion and Fission is important. Newer Nuclear Reactors are becoming safer, easier to operate and much smaller.

The same people trashing Japan for Nuclear are the same ones promoting it in their own country. Whatever can hurt Japan the better, then they can run around and say it's too late for Japan, don't even try! Korea did it first so other countries should give up! I don't think so buddy.

@ReasonandWisdomNippon

but Japan??Unacceptable!! Too late!!

It's just like semiconductor.

It's not too late for Korea to develop 1nm fab process, because they already have 4nm fabs in full production.

It IS too late for Japan to develop 1nm fab process, since Japan stopped developing new fab process a decade ago and is now offering to pay TSMC $5 billion to have them build obsolete 20nm fab process in Japan.

20nm maybe obsolete in Taiwan, Korea, and US, but it is bleeding edge technology in Japan worthy of a $5 billion subsidy to a foreign company.

Japan stopped its research on fusion reactors circa 2014 at 50 million kelvins. It is now too late for Japan to jump back into the race and build 100 million kelvin reactors similar to Korean one.

Not a credible plan to rely on an unproven technology, the more so as we have yet to demonstrate actually generating more energy output than is pumped in to create it. ITER may or may not finally prove this (if/when it is finally built) at huge cost and decades of construction and even that is not meant to be a commercial design, that has yet to be determined and built. Even if we finally crack the many and extremely difficult problems in getting the process to work on earth, that doesn’t mean it will be economic to build let alone affordable for the vast majority of countries.

Further we need to change our energy generation on a vast scale now not in a hypothetical future with a hypothetical technology. May be in 50 years it might or might not contribute to our energy supply, but that is simply too late, too little and too expensive.

No it is not a credible plan.