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Effete Snob

(8,387 posts)
2. No one knows how to do that
Tue Dec 13, 2022, 04:57 PM
Dec 2022

What they got is for one tiny pellet to sustain a fusion reaction for less than a nanosecond.

The energy released by that pellet exceeded the laser energy put into it, but did not exceed the energy required to run the lasers themselves.

What "worked" was the concept of shining a bunch of powerful lasers on something and getting it to briefly sustain a fusion reaction for a very short moment.

No one knows how to turn that into any practical system for a power plant.

The ancient Greeks knew how to make a steam engine that did this:



They did not then build a railroad.

That's about where we are between the LLNL ITER and a power plant.

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