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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

Pretty meaningless without data on the input power, isn't it?

maybe if you're trying to make money from it. if you're just trying to see if it's possible in a pure research mindset, then seems like success

>maybe if you're trying to make money from it. if you're just trying to see if it's possible in a pure research mindset, then seems like success

My point is not about money. Plenty of research groups have achieved sustained fusion without net power generation. But if this is simply a linear scaling of input power based on existing techniques, there's nothing remarkable here.

They successfully held a temperature of 120 million degrees. That's not impressive? This seems like the experiment was more about the magnets and the temperature than it was about generating electricity. Small moves Ellie, small moves.

I imagine this was about exploring part of the fusion triple product. Which is very valuable as reaching the time/temp/density point for ignition is when generation even starts to become feasible. This article doesn’t say anything about density which is unfortunate. But showing proof of containing plasma at that temp for a longer amount of time than anyone else has (previous was KSTAR I think?) is an accomplishment.

There's tons of research trying to figure out how to achieve various feats. Not because the researchers are curious whether it is possible "in a pure research mindset" but because they accomplishing their goal is a stepping stone to industrially useful applications.

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