Claim your SPECIAL OFFER for MagellanTV here: https://try.magellantv.com/sabinehossenfelder. Start your free trial TODAY so you can watch The Story of Energy about how super-important energy is to human civilization, and the rest of MagellanTV’s science collection: https://www.magellantv.com/series/order-and-disorder-the-forces-that-drive-the-universe-4k/the-story-of-energy-4k How close is nuclear fusion to break-even? If you trust the headlines we're getting close and the international project ITER is going to be the first to produce energy from fusion power. But not so fast. Scientists have, accidentally or deliberately, come to use a very misleading quantity to measure their progress. Unfortunately we're much farther away from generating fusion power than the headlines suggest. Phillip Ball's article in the Guardian is here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/27/nuclear-fusion-research-power-generation-iter-jet-step-carbon-neutral-2050-boris-johnson The one in Science Magazine is here: https://www.science.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.350.6264.1011 The document from the European Parliament Assessment is here: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/10593062.pdf The interview with Holtkamp is here: https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/gli/gli_oct2006/gli_oct2006_h.pdf The numbers for JET quoted at around 9 mins can be found here: http://aei.pitt.edu/88591/1/1982.pdf Walkden's TED talk is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0KofSsjOak Footage at 11 mins 14 seconds from Steven B. Krivit's video "ITER, The Grand Illusion" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnikAFWDhNw which is worth watching in full length if you want to know more about the problem. You find more information on Krivit's website: http://news.newenergytimes.net/iter-fusion-reactor-technical-references/ Ivone Benfatto's numbers about the ITER power consumption are here: https://cds.cern.ch/record/987554/files/p231.pdf My review of Turrell's book is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/books/review/the-star-builders-arthur-turrell.html Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video http://jordibusque.com/ You can support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Sabine 0:00 Intro 0:35 Sponsor Message 1:33 Two different energy gains 4:44 The problem 7:28 How close are we to break even? 10:00 Scientists who spread the confusion 11:40 What are we to make of this? #science #physics #nohype