France runs fusion reactor for record 22 minutes

https://sopuli.xyz/post/22855555

France runs fusion reactor for record 22 minutes - Sopuli

Lemmy

Garantee you they weren’t generating a whole lot of power though… And if you can’t do that part then what’s the point?
The first planes only flew for a few seconds.

Yeah, and we measured them to the purpose of flight… Not wingspan, or how soft the wheels were.

So maybe we should measure technology that’s about generating power by…

I’ll let you fill in the blank.

I’ll let you fill in the blank

Code switch for: “I don’t have a point so why don’t you make it for me”

Verified electrical output, the answer is verified electrical power generated.

…as in we should measure lower generation experiments by how much power they generated.

Isn’t that obvious?

They weren’t trying to generate electricity in this experiment. They were trying to sustain a reaction. As you said in another comment, they are different problems.

Converting heat to electricity is a problem we already understand pretty well since we’ve been doing it basically the same way since the first power plant fired up. Sustaining a fusion reaction is a problem we’ve barely started figuring out.

I don’t think we do have a means of converting this heat energy into electrical energy right now. With nuclear we put radioactive rods into heavy water to create steam and drive turbines…

What’s the plan for these fusion reactors? You can’t dump them into water, nor can you dump water into them… I don’t believe we have a means of converting the energy currently.

Most fission plants transfer the heat away from the reactor before boiling water. The same can be done with fusion.

The main difference with fusion is you have to convert some of the released energy to heat first. Various elements have been proposed for this.