Fusion Energy Announcement Tomorrow.

[cook_dw]

Originally Posted by x44d80

So this could be in our future?

Maybe.. Its a better option (fusion) vs the EV's we have today (battery technology). I would be more forgiving to current EV's if we had fusion as their power supply. At the end of the day between this, Elon and his Boring company, Space X and his humanoid Optimus he's planning on developing Mars for a future generation of humans. Not sure how feel about the humanoids and Neuralink as far as how and who will control those chips.. I keep jumping back to a hybrid of Terminator, iRobot and WALL-E..



I'm sure we all have seen these types of graphs but its interesting to see how fast technology has grown since 1950.

[L78_Nova]

Isn't Bitcoin a leap backwards ?

Lots of people fleeced on Crypto

[BCreekDave]

Originally Posted by cook_dw

With government and private investment only spending $10 billion in its 30-40 years of attempts of making nuclear fusion....

I wish Elon Musk would have invested his 44B on fusion research rather than Twitter. Seems like the benefit to Tesla or SpaceX would have been more tangible than how many tweets of followers you have. You can't necessarily buy scientific progress, but it sure doesn't hurt.

[Jeff H]

Originally Posted by Lee Stewart

The problem as always been the same: How to generate a mangetic field "envelope" that will contain the fusion reaction. This is a hurdle not easy to overcome.

I thought one article I read said they used lasers to surround it vs magnetic field. The temperature of the reaction is pretty extreme so figuring out how to harness that to make power/electricity and still be safe won't be easy or cheap. So does it mean once you turn on your car, you won't be able to turn it off?

[L72copocamaro]

Give us more funding please. We should have something for you in 20-50 years.

[Lee Stewart]

Originally Posted by Jeff H

I thought one article I read said they used lasers to surround it vs magnetic field. The temperature of the reaction is pretty extreme so figuring out how to harness that to make power/electricity and still be safe won't be easy or cheap. So does it mean once you turn on your car, you won't be able to turn it off?

The lasers were used to create the fusion process:

The breakthrough was made at 1:03 a.m. on Dec. 5 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility, 50 miles east of San Francisco. The work uses giant lasers to create heat and pressure like those found inside a star, enough to drive atoms together, releasing tremendous energy.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/sc...5dc6f96904ca9f

It sounds like they didn't contain the fusion process - just created it for a brief micro-second.

Three parts to Nuclear Fusion as an energy source: create fusion, then contain it so it sustains itself. And you will need fuel for the fusion reaction to feed on.

[Lee Stewart]

Nuclear fusion: How long until this breakthrough discovery can power your house

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nu...354ac6b7b48725

[Jeff H]

What a bummer! So we'll still need battery powered cars as long as the batteries are safe.

"It's not going to be like Mr. Fusion in 'Back to the Future II,'" said Brizard, referencing the coffee-can-sized fusion reactor that fueled the DeLorean at the end of the film.

[BCreekDave]

Why at 1:03AM? I recall reading that the facility takes so much power from the local grid to charge supercapacitors that they can't run it during the day without causing brownouts.

[thehornworks]

Fusion energy requires tremendous heat and pressure to amalgamate atoms. Temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius and millions of bars of pressure. That's how the "H" bomb works. They have to first ignite a fission reaction to create the necessary temps and pressure. Elon Musk said he looked at Fusion but the price of Tritium isotope is very high and rare.