"University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.

. . . .

"Right now, the UW’s concept is about one-tenth the size and power output of a final product, which is still years away. The researchers have successfully tested the prototype’s ability to sustain a plasma efficiently, and as they further develop and expand the size of the device they can ramp up to higher-temperature plasma and get significant fusion power output."

Well, good luck to them. But this is a press release about a "concept," and it has not been tested out as a source of electrical power (as contrasted with being a test-bed for plasma containment) at all yet, at any scale. Solving the plasma containment problem for a fusion reactor is something I have been waiting for more than forty years. If it was easy, it would have already happened. Maybe the new concept will help solve that problem, but maybe not. At the very least, we still have NO IDEA what the economics of running a power plant will be at scale when using this concept.

Many, many submissions to HN are based at bottom on press releases, and press releases are well known for spinning preliminary research findings beyond all recognition. This has been commented on in the PhD comic "The Science News Cycle,"[1] which only exaggerates the process a very little. More serious commentary in the edited group blog post "Related by coincidence only? University and medical journal press releases versus journal articles"[2] points to the same danger of taking press releases (and news aggregator website articles based solely on press releases) too seriously. Press releases are usually misleading. Not all press releases spin their statements as badly as one very bad example a skeptical blogger commented on,[3] but all of them should be compared to independent sources for a second opinion. Whether in medical research or in reports about new breakthroughs in energy production, press releases often run ahead of the facts.

The most sure and certain finding of any preliminary study will be that more research is needed. All too often, preliminary findings don't lead to further useful discoveries in science, because the preliminary findings are flawed. The obligatory link for any discussion of a report on a research result like the one kindly submitted here is the article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"[4] by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, on how to interpret scientific research. Check each news story you read for how many of the important issues in interpreting research are NOT discussed in the story.