this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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Yo, chat, is this legit?
Well I have not read too much of that edition and I am also not a plasma physicist, but the way that blurb text extract is written it sounds more like "Lots of really smart people simulated our fusion reactor and found no weird physics causing it to explode or simply not turn on".
I think this because they talk about checking the "plasma reaction assumptions"! So in theory it can work, but afaik lots of other fusion reactors could in theory work as well. This says nothing about whether their engineering will be able to actually extract that energy...
Edit: I couldn't resist and at least started the abstracts and they even looked at the theoretical extraction efficiency, but as I am not an expert in anything close to this field I still cannot tell anything about wether or not it will hold water (well, plasma).
Lotsa ifs. If sparc works, then arc should work too. China's ahead in the plasma game and they don't have a reactor yet that can sustain stable plasma for long enough to generate more than is put in (Q > 1), but the BEST tokamak is targeted for 2027 so we'll see what happens. If they pull it off, shit is gonna get mad real
Far fewer "ifs" than any fusion project I'm aware of. I am a chemical engineer not a plasma physicist so... grain of salt.
That said, this is basically using the same physics and design of ITER -- spherical Tokamak -- but using high-temperature superconductors (YBCO) that weren't available decades ago when ITER was started.
Having to use much weaker magnets is why ITER is so physically huge and directly ipacts why it costs so many billions. Industrial-scale ductile superconductors at (relatively) tractable supercritical helium temperatures only became available in ~2007
They are nearly done constructing the pilot plant SPARC in 2027 ( next year! ) that, as noted, will actually produce more power than it uses end-to-end. Its run duration is expected to be limited by engineering problems like effective cooling systems, whose designs are to be finalized by ~2033. (obvs you need to have the actual working reactor to know for sure your cooling system and everything else actually work with it)
Then they plan to build new plants as fast as orders can come in. Probably take under 2 years per generator.
:pepega: :pepega: :blobDance: