We knew they had quit* the "Renewables cheaper than coal" project, did not know they had gone full supernuke.
From Popular Mechanics:
The researchers netted a 50 percent reduction in energy loss, taking us one step closer to a future of unlimited clean energy.
* Why Google Gave Up On Their Renewables-For-Less-Than-Coal Program (RE < C )Nuclear fusion, the process the sun has used for billions of years to fuse atoms of hydrogen into atoms of helium, could be the pot of gold at the end of the clean energy rainbow. If we could engineer a reaction to snowball but remain contained, nuclear fusion reactors could supply virtually unlimited clean energy here on Earth. Yet, the technology seems perpetually just around the corner.Google and nuclear fusion company Tri Alpha Energy, which operates fusion reactor projects in California, just took us one step closer to rounding that corner. The two companies began working together in 2014, and they just released their first major research results. Google and Tri Alpha Energy developed a new process to sift through the enormous amounts of data that detail plasma's behavior in fusion reactors. The process involves humans who input preferences into an advanced Google machine learning algorithm, and so far the system has successfully achieved a 50 percent reduction in energy loss. The results were recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.Tri Alpha's plasma generators use magnetic confinement, meaning they trap the plasma that is to undergo fusion using a magnetic field, but it is unique from other magnetic confinement reactors such as tokamak reactors. The Tri Alpha reactors use what is known as a field-reversed configuration, which takes advantage of eddy currents in the plasma itself to reverse the magnetic field, rather than relying entirely on external magnetic coils on the machine. The result is a self-stabilized, rotating cylinder of particles held in place by magnetism, similar in structure to a smoke ring. The major advantage to this technique is that as the energy of the plasma grows higher, the magnetic confinement gets stronger and more stable as a response....MORE
Previously on Tri Alpha:
Tri Alpha Energy Raised $500 Million To Pursue Nuclear Fusion, Has Exited Stealth Mode
The financial backers are the usual suspects: Goldman Sachs, the Rockefellers (Venrock),
