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Comment by mm321 | Hacker News Reader

so how comes they can't get this fusion thing to work?

Fusion is easy and you can set off a hydrogen bomb whenever you like, it is turning that energy into electricity that's the hard part.

> it is turning that energy into electricity that's the hard part

It’s creating a stable, recurring reaction that’s the hard part.

It's actually making it spend less energy than it creates that's the hard part.

> how comes they can't get this fusion thing to work?

Fusion energy involves conjuring physics which don’t exist in that form in the known universe. (Stellar fusion happens at lower rates than what we’re targeting. The only reason it works is because stars are so huge.)

I think a useful fact to contextualize how much more intense we're hoping to make fusion, is that the volumetric power density (watts per cubic meter) of sol's core (276 watts/m^3) is on the scale of a well run compost pile (50~200)[0]. Since we don't want to make an object as big as the sun's core, we need to make something far, far, far more intense than the sun's core, which is understandably quite hard.

[0]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266701002...

Wow, I never thought of that. It makes perfect sense.

Nobody wants to pay for it. We have other forms of energy that are cheaper and available right now.

Unfortunately this is the correct answer, almost word for word how I was going to phrase it. Do long as other forms of energy are inexpensive, we will continue to abuse them no matter the damage.

Nuclear and renewable energy are two options that are (probably) cheaper than fusion.

It's only superconducting magnets and 100M degree plasma, how hard could it be?

Fussion is easy, hyndrogen nukes were detonated decades ago. Ask them about LENR (Low Energy or Lattice Enabled Nuclear Reactor). Cold Fusion topic is reputation-damaging for scientists for decades. I banned multiple times here for "participation in discussion". Now, LENR is used to boost fusors performance by two order of magnitude (for medical purpose).

Can't get it work yet. LIGO took decades to get to work. Progress is being made though.

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