[ggm]

Cumulative funding required for demonstration commercial fusion reactor

Was compelling. Belief we're prepared to invest seems lacking.

I think achieving multi second "stable" plasma conditions has been amazing. But, I think that's a cigarette lighter held next to petrified wood (to use an atomic bomb era analogy) away from ignition as a useful energy over time equation.

We're also somewhat behind "what's embrittlement" or "what's xenon poisoning" problems. Things which don't emerge until a few months in your life of run-time. Again, from early fission reactor design, these things can sink a project.

Or, unexpected fission or other nasty behaviours. Things which make it hard to get inside the structure to fix it. The unknown unknowns in this feel huge. But, linear energy in, energy out, and the approach to viable ignition temperature. That's science and engineering at its best.

Fusors tapped out. "Mr fusion" isn't happening.

[vasco]

> cigarette lighter held next to petrified wood (to use an atomic bomb era analogy)

Can you, or anyone, explain the lore here? I get it's impossible to light it on fire, but what's the context? I tried searching for the expression and couldn't find anything.

[ggm]

George Gamow found a way to dramatize how unpromising Teller’s Super had proven to be. John McPhee reports the story as Los Alamos physicist Theodore Taylor remembered it. “One day, at a meeting of people who were working on the problem of the fusion bomb . . . Gamow placed a ball of cotton next to a piece of wood. He soaked the cotton with lighter fuel. He struck a match and ignited the cotton. It flashed and burned, a little fireball. The flame failed completely to ignite the wood, which looked just as it had before—unscorched, unaffected. Gamow passed it around. It was petrified wood. He said, ‘That is where we are just now in the development of the hydrogen bomb.’

From "Dark Sun" by Richard Rhodes.

[vasco]

Perfect, thank you.