Immense hurdles remain, however, in the quest for fusion power plants. While the pellet released more energy than the lasers put in, the calculation does not include the 300 or so megajoules needed to power up the lasers in the first place. The NIF lasers fire about once a day, but a power plant would need to heat targets 10 times per second. Then there is the cost of the targets. The ones used in the US experiment cost tens of thousands of dollars, but for a viable power plant, they would need to cost pence. Another issue is how to get the energy out as heat.
Still, these stepping stones are encouraging progress.
I genuinely don’t understand this parallel, but I would like to. It feels like I’m missing something. Email has to go to a specified recipient every time. A post is avail to everyone in the community + federated instances.
US scientists achieve net energy gain for second time in a fusion reaction (www.theguardian.com)
Actual photo of me trying to explain the fediverse to my friends. (lemmy.world)