Researchers were able to produce 2.5 megajoules of energy, 120 per cent of the 2.1 megajoules used to power the experiment.
Now we must wait to see if this is an aberration and can be done at scale. I'm ready for the world to change :party-parrot-science:
Government workers got the goods, fuck you capitalism, great 'innovation' you have :fidel-salute:
Fusion does produce radioactive "waste", not to the degree that fission does and the half life is only like 15 years (tritium). Now, it's not actual waste because tritium is also a fuel source for deutarium-tritium fusion lol. The actual waste product is just helium, there are radioactive isotopes if helium but they all decay very very rapidly. Fusion apparently creates lots of secondary radioactive waste, as in waste produced not by the actual process like fission but somehow by the generation of power - I don't know exactly how but it does get brought up by scientists.
Deuterium is super common, you can get it here just in the atmosphere. Interestingly, tritium could be relatively abundant on the moon - meaning there could be a commercial reason to do frequent moon visits or even colonize. So, if you like sci fi there you go. Right now they get the tritium from some process involving lithium, so I guess we'll see which capital decides is more profitable. Would be nice to have world socialism and we decide based on which causes the least harm...
It's my understanding that nuclei in the walls of the reaction chamber absorb many of the high energy neutrons produced by the reaction, transmuting atoms into radioactive isotopes within the previously inert material. This process is called neutron activation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation
Even fission doesnt really produce 'waste', its still useful we're just idiots and don't build anything to use it with because we have an addiction for building nuclear missiles. And yeah, the waste from fusion is actually even more useful than what you get from fission.
Chinese at least do useful things with fission 'waste'
the longest-lived being 6He with a half-life of 806.7 milliseconds.