Technology

58096 readers

3181 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

615

Scientists successfully replicate historic nuclear fusion breakthrough three times (www.cnn.com)

submitted 9 months ago by Rapidcreek@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

86 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

The hydrogen is the most common element but 96% of it is currently produced from fossil fuels.

I'm not expert either, but I don't think most of that 96% of hydrogen is a candidate for the fusion we're doing today. NIF (like the OP article) uses Deuterium (Hydrogen with 1 neutron) and Tritium (Hydrogen with 2 neutrons) is what is squashed together to produce energy. The more neutrons make the fusion "easier" to produce energy.

Naturally occurring Deuterium isn't crazy hard to find. Its in sea water, but you have to go through A LOT of sea water to pull out the rare atoms of Deuterium. Naturally occurring Tritium is much more rare with having to find very small amounts in ground water.

Humanity is also able to make Deuterium and Tritium as byproducts of nuclear fission.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

For reference and because I was curious enough to look for it, Deuterium is 0.0156% of the hydrogen in ocean water.

[–] Promethiel@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

In a perfect world, NASA was always funded like Humanity depended on it since after WW2, and by 2010 a unified global space organization supplanted the need for any militaries because we're too busy building fission plants on the moon to bind with that sweet HE3 to power the Space Mobile Homes affordable for all because of course we researched fusion without profit motive until it worked.

Kinda my preferred alt-world, now someone please fire up all of the world's particle accelerators on high at once, that'll get us there right?