So 1. This is newable. Green, almost waste free, and unlimited.

If we can refine fusion, we will stop global warming and energy insecurity, virtually overnight.

It's not a waste to invest in clean tech R&D. At one point, people said the same thing about solar, and look where we are now

Why do you have multiple post of breakthroughs in nuclear tech with negative criticism?

In fact multiple posts appearing to concern troll renewables with statements like “coal is here to stay”??

All renewable energy comes from the sun, which is a giant fusion reactor. Seems like it might be a good idea to study and understand the concept.

Money is neither finite nor a resource

Fusion is the first step to a post scarcity world. All the new technology, products, agriculture methods, ect. that would be made possible with abundant, clean energy would completely transform the world. I doubt solar and wind could ever provide enough to make those advances.

The comment by op kind of feels weird...

But. More options are always good, and this provides more options, with the added benefit of creating helium (which is a limited resource, and gets mainly harvested when mining fossil fuels at the moment).

So this actually helps solve more than 1 problem, if they can get it to work

Renewables are the only way.

You're right! We should power everything by burning charcoal.

Renewables are already well researched. It's up to governments to enforce their use if they want.

Fusion can be huge because it can theoretically be scaled up significantly.

Even though both this reactor and ITER have small energy production goals, if they can get a reaction to run for a usable period of time, then it becomes something worth investing into to improve.

Even the USA chucks money at it because it could have military use. Fission power started in a similar way.

You're not even citing the right reactor. LLNL did that experiment, this reactor in Japan is to try to scale it.

Waste of money, which is a finite resource.

You are calling a self sustaining energy technology a waste of money, which is inherently a made up resource. Go be a downer somewhere else.

There's a difference between what works best now to meet our energy needs (renewables) and the furthering of the science behind nuclear technology. We can do both.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The world’s biggest nuclear fusion reactor has begun operations in Japan, marking a major milestone towards achieving the “holy grail” of clean energy.

The experimental JT-60SA reactor in Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture offers the best opportunity yet to test nuclear fusion as a sustainable and near limitless power source.

The opening of the JT-60SA reactor comes just one year after scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved a net energy gain with nuclear fusion for the first time.

Physicist Arthur Turrell, who was not involved in the research, described the achievement of nuclear fusion ignition as “a moment of history” that could define a new era of energy.

“This experimental result will electrify efforts to eventually power the planet with nuclear fusion – at a time when we’ve never needed a plentiful source of carbon-free energy more.”

One of the main objectives for the newly opened reactor, which measures six stories in height, is to replicate the feat of producing a net surplus of energy.

The original article contains 419 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 60%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

The current energy consumption of the planet is 113,000Twh (according to Wikipedia). Since every single Joule of renewable energy is some derivative of solar energy (solar, wind, tide, hydro, but not geo I suppose) the maximum energy we can derive from renewables is 765,000Twh.

The problem with that, is if we start to consume 10's of percent of the total solar radiation through "renewables" that would otherwise go into generating weather and other natural events, well I'm sure you can see the potential problems.

So, we have to get away from carbon intensive electricity generation, but we can't physically rely solely on renewables. Therefore we need fission/fusion.

There's obviously the case of our current economic system causing us to overuse energy in the name of profit (oil is so important because it makes energy cheap and thus easier to make profits), and a change in production/consumption/distribution priorities would likely cause huge decreases in energy needs globally. But we can only really consider energy needs based on what we know.

Whoops, I forgot the "achtually".

renewables are the only way

Nuclear fusion is renewable energy though

Nuclear fission, all types of renewable energy and soon-to-be nuclear fusion are meant to complement each other, not for one to totally overtake the rest