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US scientists achieve net energy gain for second time in a fusion reaction
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Sounds like you are just repeating the article without understanding it. They still have to pre charge the capacitors used with the laser, while once charged, they only use so much energy in the process you still have to charge the capacitors and acting like that is not part of the process is extremely disingenuous when charging them takes like 16x the energy generated from fusion before the test can even begin. Ffs
If you only need to precharge them once, and they are able to reachs stable fusion, then the results will be infinite positive return. They haven't achieved stability yet, but this remains a major breakthrough.
That's not how capacitors work lol, they may see stability for a bit but they would need to scale this up large enough that those capacitors are being fueled from the reaction. This is hype for the sake of hype....
It depends on if the full charge is needed to sustain the reaction or if it is only needed to start the reaction. If it's only needed to start the reaction and it can be self-sustaining after the reaction is started, then they only need to charge them one time. This isn't just hype. As far as I know, this is the first time that claims of successful safe fusion have been reproduced. In the past when they've claimed to have achieved fusion and then couldn't repeat it, that was hype. This is progress. Rome wasn't built in a day.
From what's read, those capacitors are needed to run the high wattage lasers, i.e. they need the charge to be stable and attempt to sustain self-sustaining reactions, the time they get for the reaction is the time it takes the capacitors to discharge. Doesn't seem like any of the headlines are doing anything but baseless hype acting like we have a reaction that created more enegry than was used to create it. Sure repeating the same reaction is progress but that's not what is being sensationalized, the cherry picked energy consumption vs production stats is and its extremely misleading.
The entire internet is probably familiar with that complaint from the first experiment SmoothIsFast lol. Congrats! 🎉
Cool and that's all that matters here, unless they could scale this to the point they can use the excess to power to recharge the capacitors, for now its not actually net positive and is hype for hypes sake.