Lately on every news and content website:
Yeah, Noticed. But What is Nuclear Fusion? — Skip if you know
When it comes to the scope and context of this article, I can say generating energy like how the sun does it. Scientists are able to achieve this, but the amount of energy consumed during the experiment ends up being a lot higher than what the fusion reaction generated.
For many years, scientists have been trying different ways to generate more energy than consuming in a fusion reaction.
When two atoms combine under certain circumstances and become one atom, a huge amount of energy is generated. The sun and Hydrogen bombs work the same way. What humans are trying to do is setting up the circumstances.
What was Claimed In The Announcement?
They announced they achieved fusion using 192 lasers that consumed 2.05 megajoules of energy to start the fusion reaction and the energy generated was 3.15 megajoules.
If you do the math, 3.15–2.05 = +1.1 megajoules of free energy, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story.
That was supposedly the beginning of a new era, where energy was going to eventually become almost free. We wouldn’t be risking our survival on earth due to our footprint.
And Why Is It A Clickbait?
Because they are hiding that we consumed 100 times more energy than what we generated. This Laser system used in the experiment is the most powerful on earth. To imagine it’s scale, the system is as big as 3 football fields. Something that big requires a lot of energy to operate.
“Although the latest experiment produced a net energy gain compared to the energy of the 2.05 megajoules in the incoming laser beams, NIF needed to pull 300 megajoules of energy from the electrical grid in order to generate the brief laser pulse.”
Source: Scientists Achieve Nuclear Fusion Energy Breakthrough in the US — The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Conclusion
Even though I also fell for the clickbait for a little bit, I believe that’s good progress towards fusion energy era. We are a bit far from generating free energy.
