France runs fusion reactor for record 22 minutes

[rcjordan]

https://newatlas.com/energy/france-tokamak-cea-west-fusion-reactor-record-plasma-duration/

[ergophobe]

I did a brief search and looked at a few more articles and could not find any info on what the energy balance was on that run.

I'm guessing that since they did not talk about it, it was net negative. Still a huge difference to where we were just a handful of years ago.

[rcjordan]

>couldn't find

Yeah, and it was 3 months ago and I didn't see it in my feeds. That struck me as odd.  Still, 22 min of sustained plasma seems like a big deal to me.

**AND** they didn't set the atmosphere on fire, so that's pretty good.  hhh

[ergophobe]

> set the atmosphere on fire

Well, even if they did, there is always a bit of collateral damage in the name of progress.

[littleman]

Could a controlled fusion reaction provide thrust?  Can it happen on a vacuum?  I am wondering if this is the distant future of space travel.

With a single gram of hydrogen isotopes yielding the energy equivalent of 11 tonnes of coal

That's a lot of energy in a potentially very small package.  Hydrogen is about as abundant as an element can get in the universe.

[littleman]

Man, I love Wikipedia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_rocket

[ergophobe]

>> Fusion_rocket

Sadly, ion propulsion will not allow us to get to warp speed though. It's only useful for navigating within planetary systems and for docking starships :-)