Regarding nuclear fusion – I’m aware this problem has not been solved yet but I’m wondering if anyone is familiar with the intended roadmap.
In a tokomak design, fuel can be injected, so I can see how they’d plan on getting a sustained fusion reaction – just keep feeding more fuel into the device.
In laser ignition, you just have a little target sitting on a pedestal of sorts that gets blasted and destroyed. Once they figure out how to generate ignition based fusion energy reliably, what’s the plan to “fuel” such a reactor? How do you get continuous energy out of an ignition fusion reaction? Is the intention for it to be intermittently generating power, like an ICE engine with some sort of ignition, refuel, ignition cycle?
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Short answer, this style of laser fusion can’t really be sustained. This is designed to be a science experiment and a test mule for future projects. Continuously running 192 lasers is a recipe for disaster. Just keeping the optics clean would be a dealbreaker.
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