How close is nuclear fusion power?

The claims on nuclear fission being just around the corner are wildly exaggerated. Sabine Hossenfelder has a great video [1] on this topic. I want fusion to be real too, but focussing on small scale fission and solar is probably a better idea. [1] - this video

Funny how this story gets posted after soon after Dr Sabine Hossenfelder's debunking and deflate the fusion power hype - this video with a genuine Hans Gruber accent :)

Can anyone tell me if this is a net + like the lay person would understand it or something like the net + qplasma thing often misleadingly used when talking about tokamaks? Sabine Hossenfelders explains here: this video

This video by Sabine Hossenfelder has tempered my expectations. How close is nuclear fusion power? this video

There is quite some misleading terminology being used in the field of nuclear fusion (see excellent overview here [1]). So I was genuinely curious what kind of Q is used in this paper, so here it is: > In this regime, self-heating from α-particle deposition exceeds the external heating input into the DT8; this ratio is denoted Qα, where the self-heating is taken relative to the heating power to the plasma—for inertial fusion this is the PdV compressional work on the fuel and not the total laser energy (P, pressure, dV, volume change). Qα > 1 is a burning plasma. So as far as I understand such Qα > 1 can be reached without sustaining neither pressure or volume, so one can think about it as an explosion rather that intuitive burning (somewhat continuous process). To summarize: Q_total = total_energy_out / total_energy_in is what matters, not any Q related to plasma energy. Since to build a power plant we just care what it consumes in comparison with what it produces. For this particular case even though Qα > 1 you likely can extract just a tiny fraction of that energy stored in plasma, while spending huge amounts of energy to heat it in the first place. 1. this video or as an article link Edit: I'm a big proponent of nuclear fission and fusion since both are the best (current and future) way of getting carbon neutral energy, which can cover the spikes in the grid and sun/wind-less days. It is just important to be careful with the terminology, which can be used to make research r

Skeptical. This video by Sabine clearly explains why a lot of these fusion research claims are dubious with a focus on ITER and JET: this video

This video details some of the ways that nuclear fusion energy reporting gets done (both media, but also the industry) : this video We are not near a viable fusion reactor yet. Not close.

I hope you win! I usually get my reality checks from Sabine Hossenfelder, who a while back explained that all these fusion claims are wildly optimistic. You can find her video here: this video I am no scientist, so it is hard for me to know if team optimistic or team pessimistic is right. But even if it is the latter, I think we should put more money and research on it!

The question is, in terms of energy input, are we talking about Q-total or Q-plasma? Based on the video by Sabine Hossenfelder, my guess would be, the announcement references Q-plasma. That would mean that the announcement is a motte-and-baily miscommunication, as it promises much more than people are lead to read into it. Motte: We got more energy out than we put in. Bailey: Oh, what we really meant is, more energy was produced, than was put into the plasma, though we didn't actually capture any energy and also, there was actually a great deal of energy also needed to run all the ancillary systems to keep the plasma confined. How close is nuclear fusion power? this video

this video explains the difference between Qplasma and Qtotal. I hope this presentation will be as forthright.