I'll add that as well as reaching Qtotal > 500, we need continuous operating life to be of the order of 10 million seconds, "only" 13 orders of magnitude away. Not going to happen in 2 years, or 5 years, or 40 years.
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The mininum viable Qplasma would be in the neighborhood of 100.[1] Fusion may get competitive for electricity generation with a Qtotal > 500.[2]
I'll add that as well as reaching Qtotal > 500, we need continuous operating life to be of the order of 10 million seconds, "only" 13 orders of magnitude away. Not going to happen in 2 years, or 5 years, or 40 years.
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The mininum viable Qplasma would be in the neighborhood of 100.[1] Fusion may get competitive for electricity generation with a Qtotal > 500.[2]
1. Sabine Hossenfelder, How Close Is Nuclear Fusion?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY&t=8s
2. Nicholas Hawker, A simplified economic model for inertial fusion, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33040650/