Nuclear fusion reactor in South Korea runs at 100 million degrees C for a record-breaking 48 seconds

[NNadir]

4. And the point is what? That phones and gene therapy are more difficult than fusion energy?

One thing about analogies is that they are very, very, very, very, very often specious.

The Princeton Plasma Physics lab, where I've been attending lectures, many of which are on fusion, for close to 15 years, was founded in the 1950's.

The solar cell, which was advertised as sufficient to meet all the world's energy needs in advertising at the time, was invented in 1954.



I'm personally still waiting for all the bullshitters about solar energy who write here to tell me when, as the 1954 advertisement says, that there'll be enough solar electricity "to light every lamp and turn every wheel that humanity needs."

I support fusion research, because it would be dishonest of me to object to it while having availed myself of being a guest at PPPL for lectures over the years and also because there are wonderful spin offs related to plasma science.

However, it is now 2024, about 63 years after "Project Matterhorn" morphed into PPPL after building the first stellarators under the direction of Lyman Spitzer, and about 70 years after he first proposed and built a crude device.

In 1959, a few years after the first stellarator was built, and 5 years after solar cells were predicted "to light every lamp and turn every wheel that humanity needs," the mean concentration of CO₂ in the planetary atmosphere was 315.98 ppm. In 2023 it was 421.08 ppm. So far this year, through the first 14 weeks, the mean average concentration of CO₂ in the planetary atmosphere is 424.66 ppm.

Fusion energy will not address this problem in any remotely timely manner.

I've been hearing about "breakthroughs" my whole adult life, and I'm an old man nearing the end of my life.

We know very well how to make clean energy. Because of the marketing of fear and ignorance, people hate it.

If someone ever builds a fusion reactor that can recover exergy, the same mindless assholes who whine around here about tritium will continue their whining in the unrelenting effort to ply fear and ignorance. Right now there isn't enough tritium on this whole damn planet to run a 1000 MWe fusion reactor for a year.

The issue of clean energy isn't technical; the issue is involved in the sociology of marketing ignorance.