What we need to do is find some way to make a giant fusion reactor and put it in the sky and get energy from it that way.
But that’s just a pipe dream…
Yeah, and then that artificial sun can give us power at night
It’s too bad there isn’t some sort of way we could store electricity in some sort of containment.
Then we could do stuff like take electrically-powered devices with us wherever we went! Think of how handy that would be!
Yeah! We could use such technology to trap this “artificial sun” instead, and then have a steady stable output throughout the night for things that use a bunch of electricity but run constantly, like water filtration plants and material processing facilities.
Great idea! But I guess more research is needed to make this work for the things that use the MOST electricity, instead of small portable devices that use a fraction of the electricity
I don’t know, what you’re saying sounds like a complete impossibility and there definitely aren’t multiple options currently in use. So we better put all our hopes on a technology that has not proven viable in decades despite being always “right around the corner.”
Yeah, too bad humans can only focus on one thing at a time.
It’s always best to abandon projects that are difficult, even if minute progress is being done on them. Like, could you imagine if someone made a machine that can fly? That’s just silly, after all only birds have flown for thousands of years.
And while we’re cutting spending I suppose, why not shut down the LHC too? Barely any progress made there in decades too.
I love you, you’ve played squids game but better than he can. Bravo.
Can you please quote me making such suggestions? Because I looked through our entire conversation and haven’t seen me suggest those things.
Oh squiddy
I never said you made an explicit suggestion, but if you think you’ve made an implied one, go ahead and point out what they might be 🙃
Batteries will never be enough for full down time store. Anyone who’s saying otherwise is selling you batteries.
Just try to do some paper napkin math how much lithium batteries can store and how much we’d need to just satisfy current demand, not even talking about the near future.
The only battery technology that has promise is good ol’ hydro but it’s only accessible to a few places around the world and in no way sustainable.
Good thing there are options other than batteries. Which I have already linked to.
Also, I am amused that you are suggesting batteries will never have enough storage in a glowing article about non-practical fusion power.
this sounds like a weapon from Red Alert
Tesla’s death ray concept was both scary and crazy awesome-looking, I’ll give you that. I can understand why “shiny donut filled with PURE ENERGY” can be mistaken for a Tesla coil, and that it’s been revealed Tesla was a Eugenicist rather than the perfect old-fashioned science hero of the Industrial Revolution, but fortunately that and the reputation of the danger of nuclear power are severely overstated.
A fusion torus, essentially, is a wine glass. The plasma is the wine. Sure, it contains ethyl alcohol which is flammable (chefs use it in “au Flambe” dishes") and so people assume that because alcohol burns when you light it on fire to cook fancy food, but if you drop a wine glass, what happens?
It shatters. Except, even better, this wine glass is made with safety glass so that when it shatters, cleanup won’t mean sweeping up glass shards and treating cuts. What’s a little spilled wine compared to having a house named Wormwood (Chernobyl) burn down? This isn’t just a revolution in energy generation, it’s a revolution in the safety of energy generation. Hundreds of thousands die every year, mining coal. Tens of thousands have died for oil. Even renewables, while mostly non-fatal, have a higher ratio of deaths per unit of electricity than the “worst” case scenario of a fusion torus. Nobody has died from the worst case failure of a fusion torus, and that worst case failure has happened countless times before we got a stable fusion reaction.
I understand the pessimism on a political level, but if we survive this the way we survived WWII, fusion will mean a cold war of Mutually-Assured Destruction will be unlikely because now the only reason to have nuclear reactors is to produce compounds needed for medical purposes, which means no more meltdowns (such reactors aren’t for power generation and thus built to use its’ nuclear material in a not-meltdown-able way) thanks to replacing them with fusion.
Now, I know you’re thinking this could turn out to not be scalable or even too expensive to operate, like Concorde was to airplanes. Yes, that is a possibility. The good thing is, we’ve been holding back on redeveloping nuclear power plants because we wanted to at least hear “Oops, guess you were right, fusion is awesome but impractical” from the people trying to get it to work before we made any commitments.
Now we know it is possible. Now, there’s no excuse to not upgrade our electrical grids and use other safe nuclear plants like Thorium reactors or 4th Generation reactors (meltdown-proof thanks to a mechanism which relies on gravity to cool down the fuel, not mechanical “failsafes”) if fusion really is a pipe dream.
If you doubt that last one, imagine an electromagnet is holding a flange closed while the power plant is powered. The fuel is in a spherical shape, submerged in heavy water that boils from the radiation. Suddenly OH NO there’s an earthquake and tsunami and now the power plant is completely unpowered.
The spherical fuel pods not only can power the plant’s own systems, if that fails due to complete catastrophe, the flange that is on the bottom of the pipe at a 90-degree bend loses it’s electromagnetic fastener… and the spheres all plop into an underground chamber filled with more than enough water to keep them cool and thus prevent them from, you know, literally melting their way towards the center of the earth.
It’s not foolproof but unless the lead-lined cooling tank is breached, probability of meltdowns are outside the realm of reasonable doubt. Now think about what fusion offers. Not just “outside the realm of reasonable doubt”, it offers no chance of a meltdown, ever.
This isn’t a weapon. This is a tool that could have saved the Fallout universe (fusion-powered Corvega cars, but in that world America banned their export and also they exploded in mini-nuclear mushroom clouds when damaged, go figure) from weapons, and it can still help save ours from weapons. The worst this will do is make the use of renewables an undeniable way forward, the best could - if we’re lucky - push us permanently into a post-scarcity society.
Smartphones and computers, like the fediverse’s instances, still need electricity. Until now, most electricity has needed to be partly powered in blood. Let’s change that.
Hell March Intensifies
This just brought back so many memories, thanks.
Is it found that that is the line? Afaik it’s still unknown
Thanks for the link!
The original artist said that he thought it was gibberish, but people dug up the recording of the parade that he got the sample from, and it is very clear in the original recording. Also that is a common command issued during parade drills.
Thanks :)
We have one too, unless Trump defunded it
I’ve been super interested in it but Lockheed Martin has not been very vocal about their “compact fusion” project. I would not trust them to save the world at all. The race is on!
Removed by mod
This is why it’s always decades away. However, I doubt China is being as cavalier about it.
Removed by mod
This reminds me of an article in a mainstream newspaper I read about BYD, that claimed beating China might be more important than winning the war on climate change. Can’t we be happy about technological progress, no matter where it comes from? Nationalism is regressive.
Removed by mod
Don’t you think it’s much easier to leverage an ephemeral resource like coal or oil? What you frame as China acquiring leverage is better framed as a loss of leverage by the titans of oil. Time is going to cause that leverage to be lost eventually anyway, so maybe we should be planning for that? Or maybe we should let the people interested in short term gain draft the policy and complain that China is eating our cake.
Removed by mod
It’s not worth engaging with AI responses.
Oh, I’m under no delusions that any player in the energy market is altruistic. I just bet they are devoting more resources to it. They are already making big moves on lots of stages concurrently.
But just like China rips off tech all the time, I imagine if China cracks it, it won’t be long till it’s copied.
The irony is that the same system that lets China “rip off tech all the time” is also why they’re outpacing everyone. They don’t wait for bureaucratic permission slips or endless committee debates—they just do. Meanwhile, the West pats itself on the back for “innovation” while starving critical projects of funding and drowning them in red tape.
If China cracks fusion, it won’t just be copied—it’ll be leveraged to tighten their grip on global energy markets. That’s not a tech race; it’s a strategic chokehold. The real tragedy is that instead of collaboration, we’re stuck in this zero-sum paranoia where progress is secondary to power plays. Decentralization isn’t just idealistic—it’s the only way to stop this from becoming another cold war with a hotter ending.
Valid point, but worth also mentioning an anecdote I read years ago (can’t remember from whom, perhaps Kurzweil?): when they were told the Human Genome Project had mapped 1% they were excited, saying it “had nearly finished”, and then had to keep justifying the statement by explaining the exponential nature of such work to the majority of people who couldn’t view it in any way other than as measured linearly per-result. Supposedly the project was completed only a few years later.
Removed by mod
(Craig Ventor tried to copyright the human genome, prompting the rest of the genomics scientific community to race to beat him, so I’d claim that the HGP definitely had politics involved.)
Venter’s antics were the epitome of commodifying discovery. Patenting genes wasn’t just about competition—it was a power grab over the building blocks of life itself. The public effort had to scramble not just to finish but to ensure humanity’s genome didn’t become a corporate asset.
This wasn’t innovation; it was exploitation dressed up as progress. The fact that the race even happened shows how broken the system is when profit motives dictate the pace of science. Imagine if all that energy had gone into collaboration instead of brinkmanship.
Fusion’s stuck in the same trap: egos, politics, and profiteering. Until we dismantle these barriers, we’ll keep running in circles, chasing breakthroughs that serve shareholders instead of society.
Genuinely. I do wonder about the safeguards against such profiteering that clearly were not in place. I can understand the perspective of a company or entity that bootstraps discovery and innovation all on its own without any reference to prior art. But it’s never the case.
Behind the thin veneer of professionalism of every tech company is a bunch of grown headless children cobbling together accessible open source tools or pouring through papers published in reputable scientific journals coming out of schools and universities. To re-invent the wheel would be madness, and yet every tech company implicitly makes the claim that they did it alone, instead of standing on the shoulders of the free and accessible tax-funded work that comes out of scientific institutions. It does make me sick to think about it.
The safeguards weren’t missing—they were deliberately bypassed, or worse, designed to fail. The system isn’t broken; it’s functioning exactly as intended, funneling public knowledge into private coffers while selling us the illusion of progress.
These tech vultures don’t innovate; they appropriate. They slap a logo on what’s been painstakingly built by the collective effort of underpaid researchers and public institutions, then act like they’ve cracked the code of the universe. It’s theft, dressed up in a hoodie and a TED Talk.
The real tragedy is how we’ve normalized this parasitism. The public funds the foundation, corporations patent the result, and society foots the bill twice—once in taxes, and again when we’re sold back what was ours to begin with.
These tech vultures don’t innovate; they appropriate. They slap a logo on what’s been painstakingly built by the collective effort of underpaid researchers and public institutions, then act like they’ve cracked the code of the universe. It’s theft, dressed up in a hoodie and a TED Talk.
Well said, starred this comment
watch it rot in nationalist silos
“ITER includes China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States. Members share costs and experimental results.”
That’s quite the wide “nationalist silos”, no?
Look, I agree that more open = more better, but I think you made it sound a bit as if it’s just France (implied) that’s gaining from this, where it’s really an international effort.
ITER isn’t “international” in any meaningful sense. It’s a bloated Frankenstein of geopolitical vanity projects, where nations bicker over scraps of influence while pretending to collaborate. Sharing costs? Sure, but they’re also sharing inefficiencies, delays, and mountains of red tape. France hosting isn’t just a coincidence—it’s a calculated power play.
Your defense of ITER as a global effort is laughable. Experimental results are locked behind bureaucratic walls, inaccessible to the very people who could accelerate progress. Fusion isn’t advancing; it’s stagnating under nationalist egos.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it were capitalist motivation that is holding back the actual research. Those that fund it want to have exclusive rights to research akin to the nuclear rat race all over again. It would likely be a benefit to humanity if it were open-sourced but I’m sure that those countries/orgs that own these projects think otherwise.
It would likely be a benefit to humanity if it were open-sourced but I’m sure that those countries/orgs that own these projects think otherwise.
Let’s be real here.
It would likely be a benefit to humanity if it were open-sourced but I’m sure that those countries/orgs that own these projects desire and work towards otherwise.
Removed by mod
I can’t remember the company name, but they were using an inertial fusion reactor and were hyped for producing positive energy from their test. Someone posted that it wasn’t going anywhere because it was actually just a cover for military tests on possible fusion bombs. I didn’t look too hard, but they did have funding from the military.
I don’t know about weaponizing anything, but I do know the only energy positive fusion reaction was done by making a little pellet of hydrogen, carefully aligning a room full of lasers, and then zapping it into helium. Each time they did it, someone had to walk into the chamber to put in the pellet, and they’d have to spend a few hours aligning the lasers again.
You get more energy out than you put in, but it just doesn’t scale.
cover for military tests on possible fusion bombs
Fusion bombs have been around since the 1950s.
Military funding for fusion research is the perfect example of why this tech is locked behind closed doors. It’s not about solving energy crises; it’s about weaponizing the future. They dangle “clean energy” in front of us while funneling resources into projects that serve their war machines.
Even if these companies stumble onto a breakthrough, it’ll be classified faster than you can say “national security.” The public won’t see a watt of it unless there’s profit or power to be gained by those at the top.
This is why fusion needs to be in the hands of people, not governments or corporations. Open-source and decentralized, or we’ll just trade one form of exploitation for another.
Any announcements like this coming from China should be taken with a huge grain of salt the size of… China.
Yep. They‘re putting out what they call huge breakthroughs on a weekly basis for months and make headlines. By the time they have been put into perspective or straight out debunked and torn to shreds by the global scientific community, they already squeezed out another wild claim to overshadow criticism. Rinse and repeat. There is a reason the overwhelming majority of AI generated slob studies come from China. They want fast results and know the press won‘t really read them and instead just quote whatever they claim.
Removed by mod
Skepticism of positive press (aka propaganda) from a country notorious for cracking down on negative press (i.e. any mention of Tiananmen Square) is not a phobia. It’s completely justified.
Removed by mod
Here’s your logical fallacy.
Removed by mod
The discussion was about the unreliability of Chinese propaganda. You moved to funding scientific research. You didn’t just move the goalpost a bit. You relocated it to a different city.
Removed by mod
you
you
you
Yo if we’re throwing around logical fallacies you might wanna consider this one= https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_hominem
There’s been a whole chain of dialogue here without you substantiating your perspective on the topic at hand 👀
eh. they have been verifiably meeting their goals for a long time.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
So what are the limitations of running the reactor for longer? Is it containing the plasma becoming infeasible due to heat or other constraints or does the reaction inside the plasma fizzle out?
I believe that the issue is that the plasma loses stability and the self-sustaining state is lost.
Think of it like a top that runs on fuel but needs outside intervention to get moving. As long as the top’s rotation is stable and has fuel supplied, it can theoretically run forever, but if it loses stability and starts to wobble then it needs an immense outside intervention to retain stability or just tumble until it settles.
Madness sense, thanks!
Not a word about how much energy went into the process and how much was harvested…
I can create plasma using a candle and a microwave.
Not a word about how much energy went into the process and how much was harvested…
A 17 minute runtime in a Tokamak an incremental step on the path to success. You’re in the kitchen looking over the shoulder of the chef saying the steak he’s just put in the pan isn’t cooked enough yet. He knows, but you can’t have the steak on your plate cooked to perfection until he does this current step he’s on.
I can create plasma using a candle and a microwave.
In 1964 you could build an honest to goodness fusion reactor copying the Farnsworth Fusor, yet that would never be on a path to a sustained fusion reaction with a net energy gain. The work in the article is.
I love when online commenters who didn’t even read the article are smarter than the scientists it’s about
I’ll be fair and say I admit anything I’ve said is not somehow more knowledgeable than those actually involved. I call it how I see it, and I know I can be wrong about things.
Producing energy is not the goal of this facility which is why they don’t report on it. The useful output is in refining control and heating methods so that when power producing facilities are built, they can operate continuously. On that front, 17 minutes is very impressive. At the speeds at which the particles in a fusion plasma move, that time frame is essentially an eternity.
It’s the goal of the technology, though, isn’t it?
Yes, it’s a hard problem to solve.
Removed by mod
I took that comment as criticizing dumbed-down science reporting and/or being suspicious of reported breakthroughs from China.
I don’t get why people still doubt China on tech progress. “Hur dur they’re commies so they had to have faked it! There’s just no incentive for them to be smart and driven because America, number one btw, has all the money.”
Like yeah, the country we’ve exported nearly all of our tech and manufacturing to for 40 years definitely has no idea how anything works, guys. Keep doubting.
this is just starting to be mean
Yeah well I guess I’m done being nice to people who think this way. We didn’t use to belittle science like this, we weren’t so afraid of it. We used to respect people for striving to learn more, not belittle them. I’m tired of listening to people belittle scientists because of their own issues.
You have to understand, people are individuals but they are also a holistic collective. If you genuinely ignore the national borders, if race, religion, politics, wealth, sexuality, technological skill and freedom of choice are all removed from the “collective average” of the world’s opinion?
You get people who are afraid. And without those normally-acknowledged “boundaries” to muddle the numbers, you realize that collective is backed into a corner, and it is going to either die or kill whatever is planning to kill it.
That collective doesn’t actually exist or have a will of it’s own, no. The result of it’s effects are not any different than if it did, though, and that means we have a serious problem.
Even in WWII, people were taken in by nationalism in some form. We don’t have that this time. There is no overall “full unit of community” we respect. People will not join armies, people will not join cults, people will not join rebellions, parties, gangs. They, we, need to stop this now. If we do not stop, there will not be a rebuilding in the aftermath. People are too disillusioned with everything to rebuild.
When people fear the whole world, when they fear authoritarianism and anarchy in the same breath, when they cannot trust democracy because they cannot see each other as deserving of a stable, safe world? When having happiness is seen as antithetical to reality itself?
Stop. This. We can discuss how to fix this once we’ve demanded every government on the planet step down at the same time, and begin elections with ALL previous public servants barred from running, or face the consequences. If we don’t demand it, if we consider money to be worth anything anymore, we are all dead. Money is dead and it will remain so until we arrest the people adding to this pile of bullshit for treason.
If we don’t stop it, there’s no reason to be here. Let’s all just commit mass suicide if everything that exists is only there to exploit us.
You took a great deal of liberty in interpreting my comment. There is no anti-intellectualism there. That’s all in your head. My statement “I can create plasma using a candle and a microwave” was aimed at the reporters.
When the research is aimed at eventually building a power plant, then running the process for several minutes without even guesstimating an efficiency factor (or not reporting on it) seems very odd. We can be sure that energy was set free, which the researches must have had to dispose of somehow. I can’t imagine that they just blindly dumped it somehow without even checking how close their dumping process was to failing.
If you’d like to know what a constructive answer would’ve looked like, this is one: https://feddit.nl/comment/15463960
I was disappointed to realize this, but you’re probably right. If there’s no efficiency factor, it likely was not yet (if ever) a plausible energy source.
Impressive. :)
I’m tempted, but won’t try to guess how operation endurances will progress - it would be an poorly informed guess by a rando. Better to wait what they write about it in journals.
take all announcements by china with a grain of salt
Wasn’t this the exact plan of Doc Ock from Spiderman 2?
Eh? Wasn’t that the one where his tentacles had that AI, and the fusion power broke it’s control chip so it f-ed with Doc Oc’s head? That wasn’t his plan, that was the plan derailing. The characters fixed (or tried to fix) it in one of the newer movies, the one that established the Sony Spider-Man stuff as canon to the MCU’s multiverse.
Creating the fusion sun was Ocks plan. The tentacles he invent to help create the sun…it was their only purpose. So when the inhibitor chip broke, that ai leeched I to doc and he became obsessed with recreating the experiment.
PURASUMA!
Great. Now put a magnifying glass in front of it and point it at the white house
