/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15353403
The inertial confinement "burning plasma" result is interesting only in that it's really hard to do and being able to do it reliably lets us study some new elements of nuclear physics in greater detail.
The real big deal was SPARC's full-scale 20 Tesla magnet test. That result is good enough that the commonwealth fusion systems team knows their reactors will work and generate over 10 watts out per watt consumed, which is the threshold for useful power generation from a fusion reactor. SPARC is going online sometime in 2025 to validate and refine the reactor technology by doing burns of 5+ minutes in the 10s of megawatts, then they'll break ground on ARC which is supposed to operate at around 250MW electrical output. That one will go online in 2030/2031.