Clean energy could be ‘closer than ever’ after a nuclear fusion machine smashed a record::JET’s final nuclear fusion experiment produced a record-breaking 69 megajoules of heat. Nice.

  • itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    9 months ago

    Sure, I’m on board with that. But unfortunately all to often hype around fusion is a red herring by the fossil fuel industry :c

    • 7heo@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      9 months ago

      It’s safer for their finances to have the public entertain a pipe dream, rather than a reality check.

    • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      9 months ago

      Sorry, that’s false. Is it potentially being co-opted as a distraction by those industries? Yes, in fact probably because of how scummy fossil fuel industries are.

      That doesn’t mean anyone is under the illusion that this is a replacement for renewables now. Grow up.

      This is still, long term, research ave development which needs to be done.

      • 7heo@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        9 months ago

        I think the point [email protected] was trying to make is that we see news of countries abandoning renewables everywhere, recently, and that the fossil fuel industry is probably partly at play there. And then, they use such red herrings to stop the public from worrying. I can totally see this happening, to be honest.

        • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          9 months ago

          Why not state it the way you did? Succinctly, I’d have said “we need the current renewables effort to continue, along with this great longer-term research”. Bam, done.

          Not “we need renewables now, not fusion in 30yrs” with the accompanying clown sounds.

          • itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            9 months ago

            may I ask why you’re so hostile?

            As for my point:

            Fusion is still a long way from being scalable and commercially viable, and every year we continue burning coal drives us closer to extinction. So we need to work with what we have now, and fast. When we get viable fusion in the future, great, we’ll have secured energy stability even more and maybe made it cheaper (that’s a maybe). But at the moment, we need to invest into renewables more. Orders of magnitude more.

            I’m just tired of click-baity articles like this. Fusion’s been 10-20 years away for more than half a century now, and while I don’t doubt that we’re making progress towards it, it won’t be ready in time to be the replacement for coal we are hoping for.

            • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              9 months ago

              First point is not relevant, fusion has been chronically underfunded for far too long. The money being spent on fusion r&d is far less than the money going to renewables deployment, and you advocate cannabilizing even that???

              I won’t go down the list of how many technical contributions are coming out of fusion, just know that there are a lot, that help make both renewables and non-renewable more efficient. How do you switch tremendous amounts of current at extreme voltages, very quickly? The answer directly impacts overall efficiency of everything from EVs to micro & macro-grids. Usually it’s a pick-two-of-the-three, but switch systems are being used to solve these exact issues, successfully.

              As for why I’m hostile? Read the previous two paragraphs again, maybe something will jump out at you.