Will any fusion reactor project demonstrate engineering breakeven before the end of 2022?

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Some people are really optimistic about new reactor design with super strong magnets. Initial probability is super low here anyways because fusion power has been "soon" many times in the past. Feb 9, 6:16pm: Engineering breakeven basically means that the reaction generates enough excess energy to power itself, and is explained in this wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor

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2023 edition of the question is up here:
https://manifold.markets/karlkeefer/will-any-fusion-reactor-project-dem-b0da77e5de75

@karlkeefer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr0Q_LGrQcg&t=45s linked elsewhere, talks about the status of the closest near win, but its still nowhere near "Engineering Break Even". This should probably pretty clearly resolve NO.

Has this not just happened with the LLNL announcement?

predictedYES

@Heliscone They generated 1MJ excess energy

@Heliscone Ah, nevermind

@Heliscone Did you just respond to your own question??

predictedYES

@bingeworthy Heh, I added context, then realized my mistake, hence the two replies. I was not, in fact, narrating an internal conversation in my head...

I presume the many recent yes-trades on this question is due to this article: https://www.ft.com/content/4b6f0fab-66ef-4e33-adec-cfc345589dc7

If I understand correctly what OP means by "engineering breakeven", then this would not qualify for positive resolution, and far from it. In the notation of this nice video by Sabine Hossenfelder,

the researchers claim to have achieved Q_plasma = 1.2, which might be a record (?), but it is certainly far from Q_total > 1 (that would probably require a Q_plasma of at least ~5).

Yeah. At this point the market should probably be at < 1%, but it would be pretty exciting if we're wrong 😅

Still fairly sure that fusion isn't happening anytime soon; otherwise, we'd be seeing much larger valuations of fusion startups, more optimistic reports from ITER and NIF, etc. Also, keep in mind that venture capital tends to overvalue companies, as there is no way to short-sell startup equity.

I’m buying even more NO here, because I realized that this market is quite prone to motivated reasoning, etc., because many prediction markets are populated by the sort of futurists which would overestimate the odds of fusion.

Engineering breakeven seems very far away, given that we haven’t even gotten to scientific breakeven on fusion reactors, and given that the multibillion-dollar ITER project isn’t even aiming for engineering breakeven, and given that startups like General Fusion don’t even have unicorn valuations (which would be expected if venture capitalists believed that engineering breakeven was close).