> Fusion ignition is the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining. This occurs when the energy being given off by the fusion reactions heats the fuel mass more rapidly than various loss mechanisms cool it.
Incredible progress over where they were just a couple years ago.
Not trying to knock the progress made or anything like that, I just needed the conversion to a more familiar unit in order to appreciate what sort of scale they're talking about.
It's like in fission when you read about reactions giving net energy of X MeV. If you convert that to even Wh, let alone kWh, it's an incredibly small number. But when you start multiplying by the number of atoms in a fuel source, it starts adding up VERY quickly.
Works kind of like the EUV light sources TSMC uses to make the highest end computer chips, except a fuel pellet instead of a drop of tin. Like so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy
> Breakeven describes the moment when plasmas in a fusion device release at least as much energy as is required to heat them
[0] https://www.iter.org/sci/BeyondITER
Is this just a case of multiple terms for the same phenomenon, and do plasma physicists have a preference?
> Ignition should not be confused with breakeven, a similar concept that compares the total energy being given off to the energy being used to heat the fuel. The key difference is that breakeven ignores losses to the surroundings, which do not contribute to heating the fuel, and thus are not able to make the reaction self-sustaining. Breakeven is an important goal in the fusion energy field, but ignition is required for a practical energy producing design.