The energy released was orders of magnitudes greater than that which would have been released by only fusing two atoms, so I strongly suspect that this is just poor wording and/or misunderstanding by the news agency and that what was really meant was that the lasers fused pairs of atoms.
Maybe I’m just over-hopeful, but I think “generations” is far too much of an overunderstatement. With the way that technology moves, I don’t think we’ll be waiting that long.
Generations are generally ~20 years. It’s been 3-4 generations since the first nuclear power plant, and less since the first commercial one. It’ll certainly be at least one more before commercial fusion even being optimistic
The problem is that fusion research does not tend to receive a lot of funding, especially relative to the huge challenges it presents. Even the National Ignition Facility, where this milestone was reached, was only built because it was needed for nuclear weapons research, with advances into using fusion for energy generation being essentially a side benefit (at least, from the perspective of its government funders).
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The energy released was orders of magnitudes greater than that which would have been released by only fusing two atoms, so I strongly suspect that this is just poor wording and/or misunderstanding by the news agency and that what was really meant was that the lasers fused pairs of atoms.
Maybe I’m just over-hopeful, but I think “generations” is far too much of an over
understatement. With the way that technology moves, I don’t think we’ll be waiting that long.Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Generations are generally ~20 years. It’s been 3-4 generations since the first nuclear power plant, and less since the first commercial one. It’ll certainly be at least one more before commercial fusion even being optimistic
The problem is that fusion research does not tend to receive a lot of funding, especially relative to the huge challenges it presents. Even the National Ignition Facility, where this milestone was reached, was only built because it was needed for nuclear weapons research, with advances into using fusion for energy generation being essentially a side benefit (at least, from the perspective of its government funders).