Nuclear Fusion is in Trouble

It's only 30 years away everyone knew that yesterday and 30 years ago 🙂

The problem isn't nuclear fusion energy, but rather that too many cooks spoil the broth.

I'm sure it's just the oil industry sabotaging again, nothing to see here folks

Hahahaha, reality suddenly closing in on the fantasists. Fusion is fraud.

or we could build a fusion reactor some distance from the earth and use the heat and light it emits.
I would give it a short snappy name, like.... the Sun ?

Sound to me like they are all money scams. Some want to develop a laser but who will invest in that... Say and demonstrate it's for fusion .... instant money.. others are just to get money, they never meant to succeed....

Somehow this channel almost always brings the bad news of science

There is no sustained, stable fusion reaction without gravity, period!

Liebe Sabine, ich bitte inständig darum Bilder mit Grimassenschneiden vollständig zu vermeiden. Ihre Beiträge sind extrem gut und sehr durchdacht, aber das Drumherum irritiert, höflich gesagt.

My fusion source starts every morning and stops every evening and costs my absolutely nothing to run and we all can use it without any restrictions 😊

I personally don't think that we'll ever reach commercially relevant nuclear fusion on Earth. We've known how it works about as long as fission and yet cannot acquire it even in 2026! I think Earth's gravity affects the process somehow, maybe through drag, and therefore we'll only be able to achieve it in space. 🤷‍♂

Until then, we should focus on optimizing all aspects of nuclear fission and other sustainable energy sources... perhaps with U.S. government research grants, in the billions, and international cooperation. 🤔

It's quite easy Sabina, and has always been easy: We will have fusion in about ~30 years. This has been true since 1980...

6:24 I see another promising pattern here: stellarator-based nuclear fusion companies are still on track for their timelines to be met.

I personally think that based on the current science and computing technology, stellarators have been the best choice to try to pursue fusion, and the fact that all the American and European stellarator companies (e.g. type one energy and Proxima fusion) are still on track is a good sign

Not coming ever.Money pit.

We must remember that even with the Sun, the power density is around 300W / cubic meter. That's the same as compost. So we're not trying to put "a star in a bottle"... we're trying to do something many orders of magnitude greater.

On could argue the new science is the brochure for a new stock or investment offering that promises the hypothesis is workable like an account starting with a total that looks great (the hypothesis?) and that they just need to make the numbers make that work, but they know what those should based on the total so most of the work is done.

Just use the massive funding to build bigger AGI. Then let it build actual working fusion for cheap...

Just try to register your car in some places in Germany... You need an appointment even when the license center has no customers!

Still about 60 years away. And always will be.

I have this odd fear, when we finally meet aliens they will ask us why we don't have fusion - they had it before fission power because it's actually very simple.
Humans are too busy playing games to get the job done.

Nuclear fusion is already powering our secret space program and just like scalar weapons we strongly control this technology.

Don't worry, AI will fix it.

I think even if I could live until I was 200,fusion will still be 20yrs away.

what a shame. the problem also is a lot of big tech have invested and therefore control the timeline of the development process by way of money and vote

Don't worry, ten years from now we would have forgotten about these failures.

Nuclear fusion is the endless energy source of the future and it stays in the future in the foreseeable decedes😅 I mean it will be future technology decades later as well 😅
The main problem is material science unable to find proper containing material and probably never will 😅

Fusion has an out of control neutron problem.

Who's funding me?
I believe we can do it in a year...
No joke ⚡

See you in 40 years

meanwhile elon says things like: lets make sun consious and gets tryllions:D now investors suddenly dont mind waiting decades

Junk fusion, junk super batteries, junk quantum computing, junk string theory… junkies on a a junket.

General Fusion is a General Joke.

Apart from that, Making fusion power a reality is a problem within a problem within a ...
So far hands-on work has been done only on the first layer of this problematic onion.

Suppose that we have succeeded to construct a fusion reactor that runs continuously fusing deuterium and tritium. The tritium it burns comes from our global stockpile of tritium that amounts to between 20 and 30 kilograms that can keep the reactor running for a year or so. During this time the reactor must breed more tritium than it has consumed. Without going into details it can be said that this is a challenge that probably will turn out to be insurmountable.

Moreover, since the global tritium inventory now is spent the first reactor must breed twice the tritium that itself needs in order to start the second fusion reactor and that is definitely impossible.

I hope that the fusion start-ups will read my comment an tell me why it is all wrong.

They are all wrong, fusion is actually 40 years away.

Fusion is only 20 years away and always will be.

And where should the plasma run in for longer time? Material since also is at the beginning of research for a metal that would stand the process without getting destroyed on long term.
It's like in the live of Brian scene "and where do you want to keep your baby? In a cigar box?"

Meanwhile in China...

Discarding good for perfect is one thing,
discarding good for undoable is ridiculous
bottling a nova is a tall order
material science has not caught up with fusion dreams
We have fission ready to deploy!
Right Now!
Let's build it out

6:37 Elon should start a fusion energy company. Simple. :D

Fusion exists and is readily available, it's the sun and there are solar panels that generate electricity. Centralised fusion power plants still needs a power grid, while distributed solar, with battery storage, can support a home off grid.

40 years?

Fusion is already at breakeven. For each dollar investors add, a dollar is taken out by the fraudsters. For one of these groups, fusion is a success. In the 1960s, as a young physics major, I wrote a paper of the pinch method. The other, more promising method of the time, was magnetic mirrors. In the 60 years since, we've certainly tried a low of new things.

This is the problem with theoretically possible, lab scale possible and what matters to everyday people - cheap working systems.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t work on fusion - we definitely should. But right now fusion is distracting from the day to day of dealing with global energy issues. Let’s keep working on it, but not assume it will be a useful product for many, many years to come.

It’s impressive we have got this far, but let’s also keep our time expectations real…..

Sabine, Great video. Note, the absence of intermediate results towards unity. It would be more reassuring if they were to publish actual lab results showing what fraction of Q they are currently at. Instead we get more promises of future success. Are any of these players at 0.5, 0.2, 0.1. No way to tell.