Very misleading headline. They had to put 1.9 gigajules via the lasers into it (and that is just the laser output, not counting inefficiencies and cooling needs of the lasers themselves), to get 1.3 gigajules out.
There is apparently a way to calculate how much energy was absorbed by the tiny fuel pellet, which was apparently much lower then the 1.9 gigajules, but this is likely still orders of magnitude away from producing net energy output.
Your comment is itself misleading ironically since the whole point is to have a self sustaining fusion reaction. The lasers are only needed to start the reaction. Meanwhile, you’re making it sound as if sustained laser output is needed.
In this specific case of reactor type it probably is. As far as I understand the plan is to make a lot of these small fuel-pellets and shoot them with lasers, each being used up in the process.
Other fusion reactor types do indeed try to sustain a pulsed (tokamak) or continuous (wendelstein) plasma, but then you end up having huge additional energy costs in the form of magnetic confinement and currently also cooling these magnets to super-conducting temperatures. See the video that @Peter1986c@lemmy.ml posted below.
The energy cost for sustained plasma is reduced dramatically now that room temperature superconductors are now possible. This was basically the main limiting factor for positive energy output.
Hence my “currently” in the above comment. I am carefully optimistic that Wendelstein-X based fusion reactor designs might at some point generate net energy output, but we are still far from achieving this, and sensationalist missleading headlines are not part of getting there.
Very misleading headline. They had to put 1.9 gigajules via the lasers into it (and that is just the laser output, not counting inefficiencies and cooling needs of the lasers themselves), to get 1.3 gigajules out.
There is apparently a way to calculate how much energy was absorbed by the tiny fuel pellet, which was apparently much lower then the 1.9 gigajules, but this is likely still orders of magnitude away from producing net energy output.
Your comment is itself misleading ironically since the whole point is to have a self sustaining fusion reaction. The lasers are only needed to start the reaction. Meanwhile, you’re making it sound as if sustained laser output is needed.
In this specific case of reactor type it probably is. As far as I understand the plan is to make a lot of these small fuel-pellets and shoot them with lasers, each being used up in the process.
Other fusion reactor types do indeed try to sustain a pulsed (tokamak) or continuous (wendelstein) plasma, but then you end up having huge additional energy costs in the form of magnetic confinement and currently also cooling these magnets to super-conducting temperatures. See the video that @Peter1986c@lemmy.ml posted below.
The energy cost for sustained plasma is reduced dramatically now that room temperature superconductors are now possible. This was basically the main limiting factor for positive energy output.
Hence my “currently” in the above comment. I am carefully optimistic that Wendelstein-X based fusion reactor designs might at some point generate net energy output, but we are still far from achieving this, and sensationalist missleading headlines are not part of getting there.
This makes me think of this video from Sabine Hossenfelder.
It doesnt matter if you really believe in science!