The announcement that ICF had reached the break-even point in 2022 provided hope that fusion power was drawing closer, and this will be bolstered by news that further progress has been made. But there are caveats. Firstly, the energy output falls far short of what would be needed for a commercial reactor, barely creating enough to heat a bath. Worse than that, the ratio is calculated using the lasers’ output, but to create that 2.1 megajoules of energy, the lasers draw 500 trillion watts, which is more power than the output of the entire US national grid. So these experiments break even in a very narrow sense of the term.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
50 points (96.3% liked)
Futurology
1854 readers
6 users here now
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Yeah, I don't think inertial confinement is a practical path towards a commercial reactor, but it is interesting from a scientific standpoint.
Commercial reactors will probably stem from magnetic confinement projects like ITER and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, or possibly magneto-inertial confinement like Helion.