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If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably heard about a recent breakthrough in nuclear fusion. But if you missed it because you were distracted by Elon Musk’s latest buffoonery, you’re forgiven.<\/p>\r\n
In a nutshell, scientists and engineers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California made a controlled fusion reaction that, when looked at in a certain way, gave off more energy than it took to make.<\/p>\r\n
The word “controlled” in the previous sentence was important.\u00a0 As was the bit about looking at it in a certain way.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
The fusion reaction released more energy than the laser beams used to initiate it, but significantly more energy was needed to charge and maintain the apparatus. They used 83 kWh of grid power to generate 0.875 kWh of fusion thermal energy. They generated about 1% of the energy they put in.<\/p>\r\n
But that was heat energy. If nuclear fusion reactors had converted that heat into electrical energy at the expected rate, they would have gotten 0.3% of the electrical energy they put in. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
Clearly, fusion is a long way from being a net energy source.\u00a0 But it wouldn’t have mattered if their experiment had released 10, 20, or 100 times more energy than it consumed.\u00a0 This is because Earth-based nuclear fusion will never be a practical source of energy.<\/p>\r\n
If you thought nuclear fusion had the potential to provide cheap energy on Earth, it could be the result of endless articles with headlines like these:<\/p>\r\n
Many stories are just the product of talking to someone enthused about fusion or regurgitating PR announcements; adding a question mark to the headline as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Getting out of jail free means not reporting if the claims are realistic. Unfortunately, media organisations can get away with this when the US Secretary of Energy says the USA will create commercial nuclear fusion within the next few decades without any hint of awareness that she’s talking out of her butt.<\/p>\r\n
You can see the US Energy Secretary introduce the official announcement of the fusion experiment results here:<\/p>\r\n