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243 points greesil | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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tgtweak ◴[] No.44637097[source]
This article has zero quantifiable information in it aside from the duration... which has no context. Who's recordkeeping this stuff? What are the other results so far? What is the tipping point where it is net positive? how long does it need to sustain a net positive fusion reaction to produce sufficient power for grid consumption? Are there other losses (thermal generation inefficiencies) that make the target even farther than energy-in<energy-out?
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tgtweak ◴[] No.44637515[source]
Here is an actual article with some context - and a reality check that other experimental reactors in the past have sustained similar triple product for longer durations... https://www.ipp.mpg.de/5532945/w7x
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i_am_proteus ◴[] No.44637993[source]
>The fact that W7-X results are on a par with JET is remarkable because JET had three times the plasma volume of Wendelstein 7-X.

What's important here is that W 7-X is a stellarator, a different type of fusion reactor from almost all prior reactors (they are tokamaks), with a smaller volume than the co-record holder.

That a stellarator gets these results with a much smaller fusion volume is promising for the performance of future larger stellarators, since fusion reactors typically become more efficient as they get larger.

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1. noobermin ◴[] No.44644727[source]
NIF did it with an EVEN smaller plasma volume.

Sorry this is nice for the Wendelstein itself but they are overselling it, albeit in a way that isn't too out of the norm with academic press releases.