Nuclear Fusion: A look at where we are now

[GloomCookie]

Hey folks.

Some engineering news to hopefully make you feel better is that we've achieved a new record in energy production thanks to the Joint European Torus (JET) facility in Oxfordshire, UK, which produced in a 5-second burst 59 megajoules (MJ) of power, nearly triple the previous record of 21.7 MJ at the same facility in 1997 (Article discussing those results: https://www.euro-fusion.org/news/2022/european-researchers-achieve-fusion-energy-record/).

Now they're building a new facility at Saint-Paul-lès-Durance in southern France known as ITER. The 35-nation collaboration is being built on a 180-hectare site and is one of the most complicated machines ever built on planet Earth, and is currently set to start producing plasma in 2025. In addition, they are building the world's first commercially viable energy-producing facility known as DEMO that is set to come online by 2050 and produce 500 megaWatts (MW) of power.

Link to the article: https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/dream-unlimited-clean-nuclear-fusion-energy-within-reach

[TheGlyphstone]

How much energy did it take for them to generate that, though? As far as I'm aware, the obstacle for fusion power remains the ability to produce output greater than the experiment's input.

[GloomCookie]

I've not been able to find hard numbers, which is actually starting to piss me off a bit. This is a scientific organization and they're not putting out hard numbers?

A little further digging, apparently the thing has a heat input requirement of 38 MW, which to get it into handy units is 38MJ/s. So for the 5 seconds it was running, at 59MJ/5s = 11.8MW. So right now the thing is producing 31% of its input energy, since they're aiming for sustained fusion according to the article.

[TheGlyphstone]

Still a long way to go, then. 30 years away, indeed.

[midnightblack]

Unfortunately, fusion energy is "just  a few decades away" since the 1960s. Though there have been some major breakthroughs quite recently in regard specifically to the stability of the plasma, building reactors that are commercially viable is still very much a practical impossibility. Fusion is understood quite well theoretically and largely all difficulties are practical in nature. People have yet to figure out a way to build a working fusion reactor at the scale needed in order for it to be economically viable. Its largely a problem of engineering and materials science. Realistically speaking, nuclear fission remains the feasible option for the foreseeable future.

I've made a few broad statements here with little details. My own work is not that far off from fields related to nuclear fusion, so if anyone wants more specifics I'll try to offer them to the best of my abilities.