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China's 'artificial sun' shatters nuclear fusion record by generating steady loop of plasma for 1,000 seconds (www.livescience.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 day ago (5 children)

IIUC the end goal, for any fusion reactor, is to heat up water and drive a steam turbine.

Imagine you could drive a steam turbine at zero cost. What happens if just keeping that turbine running costs more in upkeep than e.g. solar panels do overall?

Is there really much of an economic case for infinite energy on demand (and that is if fusion can be made to work in not just the base load case) if we have infinite energy at home already?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

I really feel the urge to correct the "infinite power part" because it hurts my soul as a (wannabe) physicist.

There exist no thing like infinite energy generator because energy is always conserved (well, there are some weird corner cases this isn't true, but that is another lesson).

There are massive "transformators" of energy known as stars (like our Sun)which expel radiation in massive quantities thanks to its humongous size and will take billions of years until it grows into a giant red star and more billions of years until it explodes into a white dwarf (If I recall it correctly).

Billions or even "measly" millions of years is basically "infinite" for human lifespan, I agree.

But it still is finite.

Fusion won't be "infinite" (billions nor even millions of years) because it will be basically a "microscopic sun"

We'd need something a bit bigger than Jupiter to get something closer to a "infinite-red-dwarf-energy-generator".

And Jupiter's diameter is around 10 or 11 Earths diameter, so it is something that is already a big massive for humans to do.

I'd say that photovoltaic cells for solar energy would be easier to make "infinite energy" becuse we are copying what the best "infinite energy users" (also known as plants) have been doing for millions of years.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/SolarSystem_OrdersOfMagnitude_Sun-Jupiter-Earth-Moon.jpg

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