KSTAR, KFE’s fusion research device which it refers to as an “artificial sun,” managed to sustain plasma with temperatures of 100 million degrees for 48 seconds during tests between December 2023 and February 2024, beating the previous record of 30 seconds set in 2021.
Wait, but hold on…
I guess technically 120 million != 100 million…
Well, clearly, to be China is against the rules.
It feels like there’s a lot more positive stories coming out about fusion lately :)
Does this contribute to warming the planet? 😁
No, nuclear is a viable addition to other clean energy initiatives.
Particularly nuclear fusion, which doesn’t generate long-lived radioactive isotopes as byproducts of energy production. Nuclear fission still has a place to be sure, but once we crack the dilemmas with fusion all bets are off when it comes to generating huge amounts of clean energy.
Fission gets a bad rap. The amount of waste it produces is minuscule compared to the amount of waste generated by fossil fuels, and it’s generally easier to deal with too. Just needs actual proper maintenance and care.
People acting like coal isn’t radioactive or extremely toxic for everyone around
I don’t think there are too many people arguing against fission who are in favour of coal
You say that but that’s practically Australia in a nutshell, nuclear is explicitly banned for the purposes of energy production
The coal plants are decommissioning due to costs, renewable energy is booming, and (obviously due to the ban) there is no local nuclear industry or expertise. Even if you manage to lift the ban, which nobody is trying to do*, nuclear would not be replacing coal plants here, but might divert renewable funding. In other countries I have no doubt building more nuclear could offset coal, not here.
* The coalition claims to be in favour of nuclear power, but they’ve spruiked it before in opposition, and nothing gets tabled when they’re in power. It’s got as much chance of happening as high speed rail.
Biggest and just about onliest problem with nuclear fission is how expensive it is to set it up, both in terms of time and money.
Edit: typo
Fun fact, there are over 5 billion tons of naturally occurring uranium dissolved in the ocean.
It warms one small part of the planet by about 100 million degrees.
It really throws off the average though
Temperature is an average
No.
Testing and stuff probably does by a tiny fraction, because they need to use insane amounts of power to get it started which is probably produced by coal/oil.
But once it’s actually working and producing more power than it consumes it will be the best solution to stopping greenhouse gases for energy production. It would be the end of gas/oil/coal in the energy sector. Probably wouldn’t even need to use solar or wind anymore.
In fusion reactors there is a lot of talk about the temperatures they reach and the time it manages to work, but all this corresponds more to propaganda publications. The real problem is achieving net energy production and at this point they are not much further ahead than the fusion reactor built by a boy in a garage a few years ago. Achieving nuclear fusion is not that complicated, it is complicated to do it by extracting more energy than invested and this is still a minimum of 10 years away.
The main parameter that determines if a fusion reactor generates net power is called its triple product, equal to the product of the plasma density, temperature, and confinement time. So setting records of time spent at operating temperatures is making important progress towards net power production.
