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Without looking deeper at any of these, most of the similar stuff from past years has ultimately been humbug, if technically correct. For example, first headlines I found from ’net-positive fusion energy achieved’ were from 2013 or so.

Researchers want to slightly oversell their discoveries, and the media wants to misunderstand to oversell them even more. Humbug 9 times out of 10.




That one is painful, since I wouldn't even call it technically correct, and even an undergrad should have been able to notice the error :

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/09/breaking-news-fusion-re...

So a order of magnitude larger output power promised... except when you count total input power and reasonable heat engine efficiencies (if installing one had been planned), it's unlikely they would even get more power out than in !

But then, the very same month I was also made aware of SP(ARC), which is revolutionary because it can (in theory) afford to be so much smaller than ITER (which is ridiculously large and therefore expensive in a super linear way) :

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/10/smaller-more-efficie...


> ’net-positive fusion energy achieved’ were from 2013 or so.

Yep, and they were clear that this was not ignition.




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