Fusion News, June 12, 2024

Alexander Behzadi, Environmental Scientist, presents today's fusion news update. Links to the stories mentioned are included below.

1. White House forges deals with fusion pioneers

2. UKAEA renews engineering framework agreement to boost fusion

3. ‘Star Wars’ lasers and waterfalls of molten salt: How Xcimer plans to make fusion power happen

4. AI-Powered Fusion: The Key to Limitless Clean Energy

5. DIII-D, San Diego’s Nuclear Fusion Lab, is Back Online After Nearly a Year

Bonus:
ITER Private Sector Fusion Workshop

[Kineticfriction]

Im considering taking a job at Xcimer, thanks for the extra info around the topic and the competitors!

[NiklasHolsti]

The information you present is very interesting, thanks. But I have some suggestions for improving the presentation and helping viewers: 1) use a microphone to eliminate the echoing; 2) try to avoid "reading aloud" because it makes for unnatural, monotonous speech that is hard for listeners to parse; 3) shorten your sentences - the long sentences probably arise from reading text aloud, and make you either run out of breath towards the end of the sentence, or to unnatural and confusing breaks in the flow when you take a new breath in the middle of a sentence. HTH!

[Muonium]

Do I really need to point out the MASSIVE glaring show-stopping fault in Xcimer's plan to "only fire at a single [fusion] pellet every few seconds"?? A power plant typically produces around half a gigawatt to a gigawatt of power to the grid, the Carnot efficiency of most plants is around 35%, meaning the plant's reactor is actually producing 1.5 to 3 gigawatts of thermal power to actually spin the turbines. There is a REASON every proposed hypothetical future laser ICF reactor assumes the laser will need to fire on at least 10 pellets per second (10 Hz), because 2 gigawatts of power (2 gigajoules per second) divided into 10 pellet implosions is actually doable; it means each implosion "only" needs to release 200 megajoules of energy. A reactor firing once every 10 seconds like Xcimer proposes will need to produce ONE HUNDRED TIMES AS MUCH energy as that per shot - 20 GIGAjoules per implosion. That's the equivalent of FIVE TONS of TNT going off with every target shot. Do you know how incredibly enormous a target chamber you will need to contain a five ton TNT blast is going to be, such that it isn't blown to smithereens and destroying the building it's contained in on the first shot?

[ChristopherStrevens]

Ours is a paper bin sized device that inputs deuterium and outputs helium and electric current. Originally made at the Rutherford lab in 1969 . It cost just over $1000. I suggest we use it. The tokomaks are expensive failures.
Christopher strevens

[phillipwilliams]

Many cynical opinions and quite justified but CFS has given a date and schedule to achieve this goal, it's not in government or corporations for this source of energy to eventuate . Just like a cure for cancer isn't in the interest of big influential corporations and their representatives in government