What This Breakthrough Means For Nuclear Fusion

What do you think of the latest fusion announcement? Are we still 30 years away? Get the Span Panel and Span Drive EV Charger at bit.ly/3WCInGP. If you liked this video, check out 137 Year Old Battery Tech May Be The Future of Energy Storage https://youtu.be/2wsSRq-bEm0?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi4dFnLD9622FK77atWtQVv7

Fusion might eventually be achieved, but with incremental improvements in hydro, wind, solar and storage it might find there is no terrestrial market when it is ready.

We may be 30 years away from viable fusion, but on the bright side in 29 years we'll only be 30 years away from viable fusion.

Thanks for highlighting the “scientific breakthrough” difference from “utility scale’ breakthroughs. Nevertheless, the NIF announcement was still exciting in its entirety as a scientific breakthrough!!

It seems that right now we're pretty much at the same point in fusion technology as airplane inventors were in the late 1800s. Slow but compounding progress in relevant technologies will eventually find the "Wright" design that gets the job done. ⚛️⚡

„Bang! Instant fusion!“ made my day 😂

Something you didn't mention (probably for the sake of time) is that proton-boron fusion requires much more difficult conditions to achieve: approx an order of magnitude higher heat/pressure tan tritium/deuterium. It also produces considerably less energy per reaction. However, all the "ash" is the same charged particles with the same energy, making it easier to use.much more efficient electro-magnetic collectors.

The NIF facility is really impressive. They do put on tours for the public so if you can get in on one it is very worth doing. The Nd/Yag pump lasers have always been spectacularly inefficient, the crystal plates they are using are amazing. The frequency doubling (twice!) also required two input photons for each output photon. So this achievement is really wonderful and hard won. Kudo's to them. I think they are only about 3 orders of magnitude away from generating engineering breakeven. So there is hope, but it won't happen soon. Certainly not in this old laser engineer's lifetime.

Conceptually, I really like the railgun approach. It harkens back to fusion bombs, which just accelerated the fusion material until it ignited, only using electrical propulsion instead of a fission detonation. It's not screwing around with inefficient lasers or magnetic confinement. It just does the implosion ignition we know how to do, and it does it without fissile materials. I also didn't hear any mention of beryllium being used in the collector which is a big plus.

Great coverage as always Matt! I was (and still am!) very excited about the NIF breakthrough, but more as it relates to current science rather than fusion energy production. The focus on NIF (from what I understand) is more around nuclear security, not energy. This is why my eyes are still mainly on the other big players in fusion energy, with Helion, CFS, and ITER being high on the list!

Helion's fusion approach to creating Tritium via Deuterium x Deuterium while not really good for generating power, is actually good for neutron hungry nuclear fission reactions like thorium that need to be fed and infused with more unstable isotopes as breeders. A pure thorium reactor or transmutation breeder would be possible using neutron heavy fusion.

It makes it even more impressive of a breakthrough that they used some pretty old tech to achieve it.

Thanks for putting these fusion tech in some kind of perspective. I'd love semi regular updates as new info is available

Excellent vid! I appreciate how you broke down all the complexities fusion still faces today into a digestible format we the every-day people can understand. I have a question: do you happen to know how A.I. or machine learning algorithms compliment or could compliment the entire process? I heard a few years back that some fusion companies are making use of advanced computing to help them determine which processes work vs. which don't.

I think Helion is still the best concept; especially since they generate their own fuel as a side product. I do see the value of the research being done down different avenues though, so I hope they continue to succeed, even if just to continue to expand our knowledge base. ETA: I also like Helion as, when visualized, it's basically the Enterprise-D warp core placed horizontally.

This was exactly the recap I was looking for on the subject. I figured the stories I was seeing was missing important aspects but I couldn't find anything that was more complete and could put it in a way I could grasp.

Very cool that I toured the UofRochester LLE Omega 24 around 1980. Stunning that just over 40 years later the it’s the same mission and the same challenges, startup energy, target, lasers. Net positive energy from a reaction, so awesome! It’s a long road and we’ve always known that.

Matt thank you for compiling data to explain Fusion I learn so much from your videos THANK YOU!!

I'm writing a port folio on the future of fusion power and this video has saved me so many hours of research, so thank you so much.

I am a scientist and I feel yours is the best channel I can find on YT. My standards for scientific integrity and accuracy of presentation are exceedingly high. Praise well-earned.