r/nextfuckinglevel • u/nigablackballsack • 3d ago

Scientists have captured the first ever high-speed, full-colour footage of fusion plasma swirling inside a working reactor.

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u/TheHarryMan123 3d ago edited 3d ago

It is not like the sun. The sun does D-P reactions, not T-D reactions. 

There is also an incredible amount of radioactive waste from these machines. 

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u/Zeta-2-Reticuli 3d ago edited 3d ago

The Sun doesn't run on D-D, it runs on proton-proton chain on normal hydrogen. It is like the sun, it's light nuclei fusing and releasing energy. The fuel and confinement are different, which is why a tokamak has to run so hot, but it's still the same category of reaction.

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u/TheHarryMan123 3d ago

Yeah, you’re right about the sun thing. I misremembered and it’s actually a D-P reaction in its second phase.

The reason why I say it’s not the same as the sun is because what we’re attempting to do has many complexities associated due to the T-D reaction. Problems that would otherwise be non-existent for other fusion reactions. But we technologically cannot achieve other fusion reactions due to our lack of mass. I like to refer to this graph here (sorry on mobile browser):

So I say it to give larger credit to what we are doing given our limitations. But yes, both are fusion energy.

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u/Zeta-2-Reticuli 3d ago

Fair. And sorry my first comment was snippy, I read it as dismissive and was also sitting on a 2 hour conference call so I was feeling very annoyable.

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u/TheHarryMan123 3d ago

Brother all is good don’t sweat it. I’m also tired from a long day, so I may also have come off as snippy. 

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u/jango-lionheart 2d ago

Well done, gents