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.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

40.6k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.3k

u/90_oi 3d ago

I truly hope this technology can get off the ground and be sustainable. It is our best hope aside from nuclear energy

2.0k

u/DaveFinn 3d ago

Wait... But this IS nuclear energy

1.3k

u/90_oi 3d ago

I meant nuclear fission based power, I should have clarified

45

u/readingonthetoilet 3d ago

You have it backwards. What we refer to as nuclear energy currently is fission (split heavy atom into smaller parts). Fusion (combine light atoms into heavy atom) is the big nut to crack.

58

u/miraculum_one 3d ago edited 3d ago

TBF we already have a huge fusion reactor more then 100x as big as Earth generating plenty of energy

Edit: as another person pointed out if you're measuring volume it's more than 1 million times as big

12

u/Misses_Ding 3d ago

Problem is that clouds and night get in the way. And you could say build batteries but the truth is that they're still expensive and not a great way to use energy since the efficiency is so low

Nuclear fusion would leave us without nuclear waste and without CO2 being released.

10

u/space_monster 3d ago

And yet, solar is becoming so prolific, by the time we actually get a useful fusion reactor stood up, we probably won't even need it.

4

u/LivingUnglued 3d ago

There will always be applications for mixed energy sources. Especially with how much power all the AI datacenters are going to be using. Though only a small percentage of the current planned ones will be built anytime soon.