Ask Lemmy

I don't have any useful speculation to contribute, but here's a classic chart showing various funding levels towards that goal:

Coming from a slashdot thread from 2012 where some fusion researchers did an AMA type thing:

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fusion-researchers-answer-your-questions

Here's also a recent HN thread about achieving more energy than we put in:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971377

The crucial bit is this

Their total power draw from the grid was 300 megajoules and they got back about 3 megajoules, so don't start celebrating yet

The critical ELI5 message that should have been presented is that they used a laser to create some tiny amount of fusion. But we have been able to do that for a while now. The important thing is that they were then able to use the heat and pressure of the laser generated fusion to create even more fusion. A tiny amount of fusion creates even more fusion, a positive feedback loop. The secondary fusion is still small, but it is more than the tiny amount of laser generated fusion. The gain is greater than one. That's the important message. And for the future, the important takeaway is that the next step is to take the tiny amount of laser fusion to create a small amount of fusion, and that small amount of fusion to create a medium amount of fusion. And eventually scale it up enough that you have a large amount of fusion, but controlled, and not a gigantic amount of fusion that you have in thermonuclear weapons, or the ginormous fusion of the sun.

So it's still really encouraging, but just a warning that headlines don't capture the full picture. Bonus fun fact from that thread:

Theoretical models of the Sun's interior indicate a maximum power density, or energy production, of approximately 276.5 watts per cubic metre at the center of the core, which is about the same power density inside a compost pile.