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It's an old joke that we'll have fusion power in 25 years.
I've been hearing people say that for 40 years.
It's always 25 years away. They've been as accurate as the globullwarmering people, actually.
But we keep chipping away at the engineering problem.
This test did not generate any power, but containment is a critical step if you're going to light a sun in your warehouse.
I think the first time I heard that was around 1971. The last year has brought a lot of advancement in how long they can contain it, but I still doubt it'll be running in 25 years. There's also a chance we'll be in the New Dark Ages by then.
ReplyDeleteThere's a list of things I'd really like to see before I check out for good and this is one.
Keeping the canned sunshine in the can for six minutes is definitely a step forward.
ReplyDeleteI worked on the Tokamak fusion reactor at Princeton back in the day when it made plasma. The whole project got canned when the price of oil dropped.
ReplyDeleteI read a book on fusion in 1959, while I was in high school, describing various containment schemes, I believe the book mentioned fusion in 20 years.
ReplyDelete