Technology

Just a few years ago US labs were the first to generate more power than they put into a fusion reactor, it was one of the most important breakthroughs to date in fusion.

Even under the shitheap Trump, the US is continuing to research into fusion and building stellarators such as Infinity 1 in Tennessee.

Europe likewise is leading breakthroughs such as with Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany lasting for 43 seconds. This is being improved with the new Proxima Alpha stellarator being built.

China’s EAST reactor had a breakthrough when they achieved 1,000 seconds last year. While Europes recent ITER tokamak should be achieving its first plasma in the coming years.

Fusion is a global effort, and scientists are benefiting from the works being put in elsewhere. Stellarators and Tokamak are both breaking new grounds each year, and each has their own pros and cons.

Don’t fall for any propaganda trying to claim anyone is “winning”.

articles such as this one usually are optimized for their audience, you just aren't the audience. that's ok. I'm rarely the audience either :) a quick search should give you what you're looking for https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz3040

article didn't say anything. How does denser plasma achieve higher temperatures or other benefits? What advances did their denser plasma produce?

I generally agree that science reporting treats everyone like children, but I really don't have a problem with this analogy. Stars are the only naturally occurring fusion we have to observe and compare it to. To me that makes sense.

Most Americans read at or below a 6th grade level

I'm no China expert but I lived In South China for a while between 2016 and 2024. The Chinese people I know are mostly hardworking, very motivated to succeed, and well capitalized. In their major cities you might be surprised to learn normal guys who earn half what you do are living a higher quality of life than you are, in terms of access to technology.

Their government is no doubt using uncouth methods to give their country unfair advantages. They don't play well with others.

But holy shit there is one thing this Chinese government is doing well: effectively driving growth with targeted investments in the economy. They have been focused on that one mission consistently for a long time.

While democracies fuck around trying to decide if they should tax themselves to build public transportation, China installs 10 new ultrafast subway lines in just a few years in every big city. Covers the country in a network of high-speed rail. Drives the price of shipping goods around the country to almost nothing.

A kind of monoparty like China has is very likely a net negative when we look at world history, but for moments of time, if it's the right one, amazing things can happen.

Yea they are probably quite ahead in about %80 of critical tech. Not only that but they also seem to be investing quite alot in sustainable tech, public transport tech, medicine etc. I wouldn't be surprised at all if center of attraction for science shifts from US to China in near future.

But when China is running a huge energy surplus with new solar, wind, and battery technology, we'll still have the most oil! facepalm.

Thats the thing that truly pisses me off about the US govt right now.

Ok, China is doing all these things and we’re losing our advantage? Do what we did during the space race and pump cash into innovation, science, and research.

But noooo we do the polar opposite and also drive scientists out of the country because they can get funding elsewhere.

The overwhelming majority of their so called breakthroughs are just media fluff pieces though. Their sources are more and more often AI generated studies and their supposed advancements aren‘t going anywhere a lot of the time. By the time people start asking questions and want to know more details they have already prepared another story for you to be impressed by. It‘s shock and awe.

Journalist reads "limit" and clickbaits it, typical

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2009-08-30

This isn't a physics breaking finding. It's breaking the Greenwald density limit in tokamaks. Some other types of fusions reactors can go above this limit by 2-5 times.

In this case they're getting past that limit in the Chinese reactor. We had/have a limited understanding of exactly why this limit exists so hopefully these guy's research can help us figure out a way to get past the limit and achieve higher energy production.

If China's economic ascendancy happened 50 years sooner we would probably already have it. Democracies are allergic to massive capital investments that take decades to pay off.

Obviously the graph is very out of date, US funding is around 600 million 2012 dollars annually and China's is double that.

Practical power production through nuclear fusion still requires significant developments for it to be realised at scale, though several startups are already planning to deliver it within the next few years.

US-based Helion Energy secured the world’s first purchase agreement for nuclear fusion energy in 2023, promising to provide 50MW of fusion power to Microsoft by 2028.

I mean, time will tell. But that seems a bit sooner than 2100.