> As Lawrence Livermore director Kim Budil said during the announcement, this result is a necessary first step.
Correct. Has anybody even been claiming it's anything other than that?
Don't forget that headline writers for media publications typically don't write nor (one imagines) read the articles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnsQ_9EIRTk
The following is a partial transcription of what he said:
Neil: Right at this moment I don't think people know for sure what the announcement will be, but if the secretary of energy is giving the press conference, everyone I think is thinking that we finally can get out more energy than we put in, and that is the key..
(Neil describes fission versus fusion, and (weirdly) magnetic confinement fusion, even though NIF is inertial confinement. It really feels like he doesn't know anything about NIF.)
Host: alright so lets say we've overcome some of those challenges and finally created more energy than we put in to the experiment.
Neil: That's it.. you got it. so now it's up to the engineers. Once we get the physics figured out, which it seems like we have, then the engineers say can I make that smaller, can I make that portable, would it fit in to a car? or is it only the size that might power a city? there are places that don't have access to energy... either oil or sunlight for example... so this would be transformative to civilization, and I see it akin to the transition from horses to automobiles, which happened in a matter of a couple of years, because we got the physics figured out for engines, internal combustion engines, when that happened you couldn't give away a horse, yet we were riding horses for thousands of years, building civilization literally and figuratively on its back. so my analogy to that is, we've been digging fossil fuels out of the ground for 150 years...
Host: How long will it take to heal the planet from any harm that we've done to ourselves?
Neil: Yeah here we are harming a planet that was itself trying to sustain us. by doing that you've sewn the seeds of your own extinction. and so the planet will heal, slowly. a lot of the carbon is taken up in to the oceans, so if you start dropping the carbon in the atmosphere, the oceans will equilibrate with that, so it will take time. but now is better than any time later than now, so oh yeah... I'm giddy.
Host: I can't wait for my fusion engine.
Neil: It's a pivot in civilization.
"Now it's up to the engineers."
It's been that since the 50s.
I see so much negativity regarding fusion power when so much is happening it’s important to show all the positive things happening
I just really feel like NdT is really misrepresenting the importance of this specific announcement. In particular he’s conflating Q plasma with Q power plant. The NIF draws about 100x more power than it delivers to the target so if they actually tried to harvest the energy they generated they’d be losing 99.4% of what they’re putting in, at least according to comments I’ve read on HN about it. NdT makes it sound like they have actually gained energy when they are two orders of magnitude away from doing that at NIF.
He was very clear that it's speculative, and at no point did make it seem as if we had solved fusion. In fact, he goes to great length to talk about the challenges that have kept us from solving fusion.
One of the things about Tyson is that he will just bluff his way through stuff when he doesn’t really know about it. He has like a really friendly personality and he projects a lot of confidence, but he says a lot of inaccurate things for a science communicator. The fact that he talks about magnetic confinement and never mentions lasers for example makes me question if he even knows how NIF works. It’s not his field and he may literally not know. But that didn’t stop him from going on national TV to discuss it, while making sure to mention his latest book.
They have certainly left the impression among many in the general public that we are close to commercializing this. Here's an example:
https://www.cbs58.com/news/wisconsin-reacts-to-breakthrough-... "In terms of the physics, we are basically there, and the rest of it, at some level, is just engineering," he said.
In reality though we are still far away from engineers being able to take over, even now. Because we need way more than 1.5x coming out of fusion in order to compensate for the inefficiencies in generating laser from electricity, and also the inefficiencies in converting heat output into electricity.
It is not an engineering problem, they haven't solved half the physics still. You can't just tell the fuel pellets to burn hotter please, would you mind transferring your energy to this battery on the way out, they have none of the required steps to do this yet.
Once it's actually possible to get net positive energy, then yes by all means engineer away the inefficiencies, before that it's still as much a pipe dream.
We don't need to just solve fusion. We need to produce fusion in a manner that undercuts the price of fossil fuels. Then stack "renewable" on top of that. Sociologically, people operate on self interest and will in-group into team Fossil Fuels, Team Wind/Solar and we might even end up with Team Fossil Fuels and Team Wind/Solar forming an alliance to oppose Team Fusion.
Of course, outwardly and individually we play make believe that we are all impartial 3rd party observers that just want the best for Team Human. It is those self interested jerks on the other team that are the problem. Never you and I.
> For that reason, and others, Chang says using this type of fusion as a clean energy source is likely decades away. But he says a fusion-powered future is coming.
So that would be a "no".
We need both engineering advances, and a better scientific understanding of plasma behaviors, new materials, etc.