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Scientists successfully replicate historic nuclear fusion breakthrough three times (www.cnn.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Since everyone else gave a joke answer I'll take a stab in the dark and say the upper limits would be the availability of hydrogen and physical limitations in transforming heat output into electricity. The hydrogen is the most common element but 96% of it is currently produced from fossil fuels. After that, it would be how well you can scale up turbines to efficiently convert heat to electricity.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    The hydrogen is the most common element but 96% of it is currently produced from fossil fuels.

    I'm not expert either, but I don't think most of that 96% of hydrogen is a candidate for the fusion we're doing today. NIF (like the OP article) uses Deuterium (Hydrogen with 1 neutron) and Tritium (Hydrogen with 2 neutrons) is what is squashed together to produce energy. The more neutrons make the fusion "easier" to produce energy.

    Naturally occurring Deuterium isn't crazy hard to find. Its in sea water, but you have to go through A LOT of sea water to pull out the rare atoms of Deuterium. Naturally occurring Tritium is much more rare with having to find very small amounts in ground water.

    Humanity is also able to make Deuterium and Tritium as byproducts of nuclear fission.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    In a perfect world, NASA was always funded like Humanity depended on it since after WW2, and by 2010 a unified global space organization supplanted the need for any militaries because we're too busy building fission plants on the moon to bind with that sweet HE3 to power the Space Mobile Homes affordable for all because of course we researched fusion without profit motive until it worked.

    Kinda my preferred alt-world, now someone please fire up all of the world's particle accelerators on high at once, that'll get us there right?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    If you have fusion energy, creating H2 from water via electrolysis is a joke. You can do it at home. It only requires a lot of energy. But with energy from fusion it will become super easy, barely an inconvenient

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Well. Assuming the cost of splitting water is lower than the energy produced from the same amount of hydrogen.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago*

    It is muuuuuuuuuuch lower. The actual energy is incomparable, like an ant vs superman level of energy.

    The energy in practice it'll be extracted from H2 has to be much higher for the process to have a practical use

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