Nuclear scientists hail US fusion breakthrough

Wake me up when they get more energy out than they put in. They have been working on fusion for many decades and despite the humongous amounts of money poured in to it is always sometime in the future, but keep giving us the money.

despite the humongous amounts of money poured in to it is always sometime in the future, but keep giving us the money.

@englisc aspyrgend

Your cost concerns are incredibly shortsighted. Once commercially viable fusion technology is finally achieved, the return on investment for all humanity will be incalculable.

Mastering fusion as an energy source may be necessary for long distance space travel. If humans wish to perpetuate themselves at some point it must become a multi-planet species, and that implies humans must make significant advances in space travel. It is not urgent yet but some day the Sun is going to scorch the inner plants, boil all the water off Earth and make it uninhabitable. That is inevitable though distant.

Japan is behind.

USA scientist. Same ones who split the atom, built the bomb, Nuclear power plants, using nuclear power to fuel aircraft carrier and submarines for decades at a time.

If humans wish to perpetuate themselves at some point it must become a multi-planet species,

Every planet humans manage to colonize, assuming it is ever done, will change humanity on those worlds. We are a product of our environments and living in different environments no matter how small or large the difference will force an evolution of humanity on that world to become something different to what Humans are on Earth. Our species will only ever be what we are, here on this planet and even here we continue to evolve as conditions change.

New technology is needed for this to work.

Now they have to worry about China trying to steal it. They should do a thorough background check again on all their current employees.

Fifty years and conceptually we are no closer than when we started. And drawing usable continuous power from a system such as this is very difficult to envision. Every few years a new "breakthrough" which, when examined is really just the same old thing. If we are to do fusion, it will require something more than trying to emulate what the Universe requires which is at least 27,000 times the mass of the Earth in Hydrogen (smallest red dwarf). There will have to be a 'twist' that we, at this time, have no idea of and trying to 'muscle' it into reality is NEVER going to work for us. That is not to say that it is impossible but that we seem to be on the wrong track. We CAN do fusion but it takes a fission bomb (genbaku) to do it and that is just not practical...and the energy yield compared to potential quite small even then.

Just a 100 trillionth of a second of intense bright spark in the dark, yet it offers a glimpse of hope for fusion energy to be commercialized one day.

After waiting for it to happen since 1963 in my undergraduate days, and repeated declarations of near-success, I can still wait for a few more years..

We, if we're lucky, MAY be in fusion where Franklin (famous in the Old World for 'science', not trivial politics) was with electricity, and it was another 50 years before a once in a millennium mind like Robert Maxwell (who?) molded it into a practical and useful area of knowledge and also laid the groundwork for much, if not most, that came after. We do not seem to have that phenomenal capacity of mind on stage at this time but maybe, sometime in the future, a Robert (or Roberta) Maxwell of fusion will be born and will show us the way. Until then, we will continue trying the same old ideas over and over, bigger and bigger, just as we always have.

I remember reading about fusion power plants coming soon back in the late 1950's.

I have a Newsweek magazine from 1948 with a middle eastern man on a camel on the cover. The article was about oil wells going dry soon in the US, but don't worry, oil has been found in the middle east! It will only last about 20 years, but don't worry, every neighborhood will have its own small underground nuclear power plant after that!

Hey, you too! Orville, Wilbur, stop playing around with that stupid contraption.

You are wasting your time!

It will NEVER fly!

@william Bjornson

James Maxwell, the Scottish scientist, not Robert Maxwell the English MP crook and spy.

There's an old science joke that goes: "we're always only 30 years away from fusion".

Fusion will arrive one day sooner than later.

Fifty years and conceptually we are no closer than when we started.

we're always only 30 years away from fusion

New technology is needed for this to work.

Looks like we need to focus on some time travel technology. :-)

In 1903, the Wright Bros. flew in the world's first heavier-than-air craft for a mere tens of seconds a mere tens of meters. A mere 64 years later, the 500-seat Boeing 747 was introduced. My grandfather was born in 1885 and died in 1981. I was still a kid the last time I met him, but I still remember that conversation. I was foolishly trying to urge him on, and he looked at me and said, "I've lived long enough." And I realized that he was born into a world with no indoor plumbing and left a world with the Space Shuttle. There was nothing left to surprise him - except death, the last great experience.

I have little doubt that my kids, who were born into a world of internal combustion engines, will leave a world powered by nuclear fusion. It is, simply, a matter of time.

William Bjornson is right in that if we are ever to achieve a commercially viable fusion plant we need to look at alternatives to the massive government funded scientific behemoths currently soaking up the vast majority of fusion funding. If ITER ever gets finished and runs as planned it will have taken virtually all the fusion funding of basically evert advanced country and it will still not be a commercial energy producing plant, merely the next step along the way. Fusion plants on that design will be simply too expensive for most countries to build and run and you will be putting all your eggs in to one basket because it’s too expensive to build large numbers so there goes the fantasy of cheap unlimited energy.

That isn’t to say that fusion may one day be a viable energy source, just not the brute force route we are currently funding.

n 1903, the Wright Bros. flew in the world's first heavier-than-air craft for a mere tens of seconds a mere tens of meters. A mere 64 years later, the 500-seat Boeing 747 was introduced.

The crew chief of a C-5 Galaxy aviation in perspective for me vividly back in the 1980s, telling me the length of the Wright Brothers first flight was shorter than the cargo deck of the C-5.

Jonathan Prin

@william Bjornson

James Maxwell, the Scottish scientist, not Robert Maxwell the English MP crook and spy.

Ah yes, Jonathan, the head gets a little bollixed late at night. Anyway, the point stands I think. Sorry for confusedly adding misinformation but that's what science does, backs itself up and corrects the errors that inadvertently occur. Thank you.

And the author of that statement probably doesn't even realize that could be a very accurate description of what the IJA did to many cities in China, down the length of Asia to Singapore. It also conveniently ignores the reason the US entered that war, a Japanese attack on Hawaii followed immediately with attacks on Philippines and Guam. What did the author of that statement expect the US to do?

Really, does this childish drek have to appear in EVERY conversation here? WE KNOW that unlike America or Britain, the dominant psychopaths of Japan at that time did horrendous deeds like trying to WIPE OUT an entire continent of Native Peoples...oh wait...um...like doing what they emerged from 'isolation' observing Europeans and Americans doing with great enthusiasm and emulating them but never even approaching the body count which the WORST of the Europeans achieved all over this planet and bragged that the Sun never set upon their sins. Can't we have just one day without hating Japan?