[HN Gopher] More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months th... ___________________________________________________________________ More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade Author : bilsbie Score : 222 points Date : 2022-07-23 20:11 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.growthbusiness.co.uk) (TXT) w3m dump (www.growthbusiness.co.uk) | mkl95 wrote: | Good news. But let's not forget that fission is the present and | near future of nuclear energy. And it just works. | toveja wrote: | To those interested in discussion outside of HN, there is a | discord community [0] with professional, academic, and hobby | fusion afficionados. | | [0] https://discord.gg/Rcum9zkBtg | LegitShady wrote: | Discord is a black hole in the internet. People have | discussions you can't search for and isn't indexed on Google | etc. | | It's convenient but it's worse than a forum for creating | knowledge people can search through later. It's a shame it's | used for such interesting discussion. | _dain_ wrote: | > People have discussions you can't search for and isn't | indexed on Google etc. | | this is a feature not a bug. the real problem is lack of user | ownership over data, not lack of searchability. | toveja wrote: | Thanks for pointing that out. What would be your | suggestion/alternatives? | krallja wrote: | > it's worse than a forum for creating knowledge people can | search through later | | A forum. | willis936 wrote: | I personally like reddit for public discussions. r/fusion | used to be a ghost town with crackpots a few years. These | days there are occasional good discussions and the | crackpots are chased off. | alexnewman wrote: | Finally. I wonder if what's going on in ukraine has helped | investment. | bloodyplonker22 wrote: | It means we are closer to success when we see a lot more VC | funding of nuclear fusion versus government (taxpayer) funding. | VCs don't have the timeline or ability to lose money without much | consequence or blame like the government does. | TT-392 wrote: | Maybe it is only 19 years in the future this time | thriftwy wrote: | I believe that there might be a way to have a compact and | efficient fusion reactor which we just don't know yet (and a time | traveller would be able to "hold my beer" us into it) | | For example, there's this plasma-producing microwave + cut grape | trick, what if you use something like this to supply really hot | deuterium plasma? | jleahy wrote: | Then you get super hot deuterium plasma, which is unconfined | and so won't fuse. | thriftwy wrote: | Maybe you can generate it in one place and confine it in the | other? Not dissimilar to how ICEs work. Produce plasma and | then burn (fuse) it in pulses. | dreamcompiler wrote: | There's a huge amount of hype in fusion these days. Companies are | getting big investments just by saying "we're over unity." None | of their investors will recoup any money. | | Getting above unity is important but it's still a very long way | from _systemic_ over unity of the entire lifecycle of the process | that turns fusion into electricity on the grid. And that simply | won 't happen in my lifetime or most of your lifetimes. | | What _will_ likely happen during our lifetimes is we develop | large-scale electricity storage mechanisms. Together with | decentralized microgrids, storage will enable most of the world | 's electricity to be generated by renewables. The sun is a giant | fusion engine, and it's the only fusion engine that will be | practical for us during at least the next 50 years. | acchow wrote: | Private Investments usually need returns within a 10-15 year | time scale. Once practical fusion gets to that point, we should | expect money to come pouring in which will help make it a | reality. | | We're seeing something similar happening in self driving cars | Terr_ wrote: | My pet theory is that it's no coincidence the self-driving- | car investment craze started the same time the baby-boom | generation started to enter "grandpa can't drive himself | anymore" territory. | | In other words, I suspect it's not fueled by a _technology_ | trend, but by trying to capture a potential customer trend. | borissk wrote: | When all these starups fail to deliver anything of value in a few | years, the investors will disappear. | | Commercial fusion power is such a huge challenge IMHO there are | only two ways we can get there currently: ITER/DEMO (if it | doesn't get overcome by bureaucracy and the members don't loose | interest in funding it) or Elon Musk (who is probably the only | person who can attract the top talent needed, motivate it to work | day and night and secure the funding). | anothernewdude wrote: | Musk doesn't attract talent - the wealth does that, Elon | himself is a negative. | dotnet00 wrote: | Yes, clearly that's why SpaceX was successful in an industry | where the adage was "How do you become a millionaire in | aviation? Start with a billion!". | fnordpiglet wrote: | It's happening! | Digital28 wrote: | This is great news. | | That said, what the literal fuck -- we've previously been | investing 1/850,000th of global GDP in one of 4-5 truly promising | energy technologies while the world burns before our eyes? | AtlasBarfed wrote: | It is doubtful that fusion will even be cheaper than old- | crappy-PWR-fission. | | It is very very very doubtful it will beat wind/solar as they | continue to drop in cost, at least not for probably... 40 | years. We're looking at 10-20 years to a viable commercial | design and construction. | | I place fusion like next-gen fission: worthy of continued | investment in research and maybe some subsidized consumer | plants (if/when fusion becomes viable). | | Even with viable fusion, there will likely be | degradation/radioactivity of the power generation cores from | fast neutrons and other problems. | barkingcat wrote: | the profits in 1 year from silicon valley can solve world | hunger by buying every single man woman child 3 meals a day, | every day. | _Algernon_ wrote: | source? | throwaway71271 wrote: | 700 million people live in poverty | | 3 meals per day, 5$ per meal for 365 days is | 3,832,500,000,000$ | koverda wrote: | beans, $700 / metric ton [1] rice, $500 / metric ton [2] | | a meal of 65g dry rice and 55g dry beans per person. | | 700m * 3 = 2.1b meals per day 115,500 tons beans = $80.9m | 136,500 tons rice = $68.3m | | Total $149.1m/day | | I'm sure at these quantities you can get much better prices | of rice and beans, even just browsing on alibaba. I'd guess | we can probably get that down under $100m from alibaba. | Probably even lower at the quantities we're talking about. | | 1 - https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/red-bean- | wholesales-s... | | 2 - https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Jasmine-Rice- | Long-Gra... | NavinF wrote: | You didn't include shipping. UPS isn't gonna deliver | canned food to each tent in places like this: https://en. | wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_War#Humanitarian_crisis | stuartd wrote: | If meals cost 5$ all over the planet then there would be | mass starvation | the-smug-one wrote: | Five bucks? 1kg of beans in Sweden is like 3 bucks. | stuartd wrote: | Still doesn't stop the world burning, though | no_wizard wrote: | I'd love to see a Manhattan project for nuclear fusion | research. Just pour money into it until we crack it. I think | out of all the energy alternatives it's the most game changing. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | On one hand, you had "traditional" companies (oil, coal, | gas,...) lobbying against it, and on the other hand, you had | the "green" organizations lobbying (and protesting) against it. | champtar wrote: | And if you combine both hands you get Greenpeace energy | TaylorAlexander wrote: | I hate to say it, but this is the result of fossil fuel | interests running the largest [1] economy in the world. We will | literally spend 1 trillion dollars a year on war in the middle | east and associated commitments but couldn't bother to spend a | few billion on fusion research. Absurd. | | [1] until recently | sacrosancty wrote: | Fusion isn't a silver bullet even if it works. If it costs more | than solar+battery then it's worthless. | otikik wrote: | I agree the cost is important. I disagree in the breaking | point at witch it's "not worth it". To me, assuming our | battery tech doesn't find a similar breakthrough before, if | fusion reaches _one order of magnitude_ above the cost of | solar, it is worth it, as a backup. Better to have it and use | it when there's clouds instead of coal or gas | jayd16 wrote: | They did say solar _and battery._. So taking it literally I | think they 're correct that if we had a battery technology | such that it provided consistent cheaper energy we wouldn't | need a hypothetical nuclear backup. | [deleted] | [deleted] | Schroedingersat wrote: | If you plug your solar panel into some water when you have | surplus sun you get hydrogen which burns fine in a combined | cycle plant. | | If that's too annoying to store you can get it hot and | squeeze it over some nickel to get methane. | | Electrolyzation becomes cheaper than mining methane for | hydrogen (and thus ammonia) production if solar hits the | $0.2-0.3/Watt threshold somewhere (which is predicted to | happen in 3-7 years). | | It's complicated and expensive, but I'm not sure I'd bet on | a sabatier reactor (or hydrogen storage if it gets cheap), | an electrolyzer and 4x the solar panels being more | expensive than a fusion reactor with the average output of | 1 unit of solar. | | Plus the sabatier thing means we don't have to upgrade all | the heating furnaces and expand the grid to have 8x the | capacity. | | Fusion will be real handy where power density is king | though. And if there's some non thermal way of getting work | out of it, I can see it being cheaper. | tremon wrote: | No, this is way too shortsighted. Fusion allows us to use | other energy sources than our own sun, which means it's | essential for viable space missions, and we won't need to | compete with the rest of nature (including agriculture!) for | our energy needs. | | Hydroponics with fusion technology allows us to produce food | without relying on the sun at all. I'd say that alone is | worth the investment. | edem wrote: | False. At this point environmental impact trumps everything | else in my mind. | Teever wrote: | Not at all. | | There will always be places where solar+battery isn't viable. | Northern Canada and Alaska come to mind. | adventured wrote: | Along with small and or very high population density | nations. | | India is going to end up with perhaps two billion people | and will have extraordinary population density/spacing | problems. They're going to desperately need huge numbers of | nuclear fission power plants or fusion plants to provide | for that. They will not have the space for epic scale solar | farms. Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Bangladesh, | Pakistan, Philippines, Vietnam, Israel, Belgium, | Netherlands (among others) are in the same space vs | population situation. And given the population explosion | across parts of the Middle East and Africa, it's a | certainty nations in those regions will have the same | problem as well. | eftychis wrote: | Also we are talking about totally different load over time | characteristics. And we don't want time plus weather to | dictate our industrial and shipping power needs. | | Solar is great but not simply alone. (Latitude is less of | an issue as (proper) power systems are interconnected | markets that sell/buy excess load.) | Digital28 wrote: | Don't forget that we're perpetually one temper tantrum away | from nuclear winter now, which would cripple all solar | infrastructure for years. I'm actually a little surprised | the DoD hasn't deeply invested in fusion for this reason | alone. | LegitShady wrote: | its not worthless either way. plenty of places that dont get | large amounts of solar radiation during some seasons where | fusion could be useful | belorn wrote: | battery for solar installation is at the point where between | 2-6hrs of capacity can be economical viable. | | Maybe in a few more years/decade/s we will reach a point | where in some places in the world it will be economical | viable to have exclusive solar and battery, and that assuming | prices will continue to drop and that there won't be any | resource or physical limitations. Then we got colder climates | where solar + battery is unlikely to ever become viable. | Exports of solar generated green hydrogen could solve that | assuming that the technology for that becomes cheap enough. | | Multiple different directions where specific technologies | could be economical dominant in the future. | grej wrote: | Totally disagree. Solar + battery will never match the energy | density of fusion. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | Solar is basically indirect fusion. | Ekaros wrote: | So is all other energy production methods we use... Apart | from some fraction of geothermal. | scatters wrote: | And tidal. | delecti wrote: | And even that, the heavy elements of the earth (basically | anything heavier than Helium) only exist because of the | sun's predecessor, making the heat from the core also | just recycling from fusion. | [deleted] | kadonoishi wrote: | Tidal would rely on orbital energy. | ksaxena wrote: | Well, with that logic, coal is also indirect fusion | gruturo wrote: | Yeah. And Wind, Gas, Hydro, etc. | | Basically everything except fission, tidal and a portion | of geothermal. Admittedly it's not a terribly useful | classification. | bilsbie wrote: | Fission is just solar from different star. | epistasis wrote: | And fusion will never be able to stop emitting massive | amounts of waste heat that must be dealt with somehow. | | I'm not sure what benefit density provides, especially | since people obsessed with density seem to only focus on | the reaction chamber, which is the smallest part of the | massive building and heat rejection apparatus that will be | needed. | | Rejecting waste heat is a real difficulty, and part of the | reason that's France's fission fleet is at less than 50% | capacity right now. | | Thermal electricity production has a chance of becoming | obsolete compared to direct conversion of photons into | electricity. When solar plus storage costs less than steam | turbines plus heat rejection, then it doesn't matter how | cheap or dense the fusion part is in terms of economics. | paconbork wrote: | One advantage of other technologies over solar is space | efficiency. Obviously we're not physically lacking in space | to install solar, but when even solar farms installed in the | desert can be shut down by "climate activists" [1], then we | really need all the help we can get | | [1] https://apnews.com/article/technology-government-and- | politic... | boomskats wrote: | The article you linked to states this as the reason for the | project being scrapped: | | > But a group of residents organized as "Save Our Mesa" | argued such a large installation would be an eyesore and | could curtail the area's popular recreational activities -- | biking, ATVs and skydiving -- and deter tourists from | visiting sculptor Michael Heizer's land installation, | "Double Negative." | | I also searched the page and the word 'climate' doesn't | appear even once. Why do you consider this to be an example | of 'climate activists' shutting down a solar farm project, | and do you have any other (actual) examples of it | happening? | paconbork wrote: | The article mentions both "conservationists" and | "endangered species advocates", who I believe tend to | consider themselves (and are considered by others to be) | environmentalists. Here's an example of a wing of the | Nevada Democratic Party (who according to their bio, want | a #GreenNewDeal) also being against the development: | (edit, forgot the link: https://twitter.com/LeftCaucus/st | atus/1374527780034015244) | | For another actual example of this happening, see the | scaling back of the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility | Schroedingersat wrote: | That's the biggest reach I've ever heard. | | Those are NIMBYS who want their view. Maybe with a mix of | oil lobbyists. | jholman wrote: | You appear to think that "conservationist", "endangered | species advocate" and "environmentalist" are all synonyms | for "climate activist"? Your previous comment claimed | there was opposition from "climate activists", and these | are not examples of that. The BattleBorn situation seems | to be about about tourism and similar values (not climate | activism), the Ivanpah situation looks like it's about | species conservation (not climate activism). | | Don't get me wrong, I am very frustrated by people who | see themselves as environmentalists, for whom climate | change (and thus non-carbon energy sources) is not the | top priority. I think they have wrong priorities. But | that doesn't mean they're hypocrites, they're just (IMO) | wrong. | | All that said, I agree with your topline observation that | we need all the help we can get. | paul80808 wrote: | Exactly. The past of fusion has been grim, but the future looks | (probably) bright. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your- | book-review-the-f... | toveja wrote: | I wouldn't say the (recent) past was grim, but rather that | the technology to build an _affordable_ commercial device had | not yet been developed yet. We designed and built ITER at | such a large size and cost (EUR20 billion) since high | temperature superconducting magnets were not yet available. | | In the meantime, all of the experimental devices (JET, AUG, | EAST, DIII-D, etc.,) have been gathering evidence on how to | operate ITER when it is turned on, and not necessarily | focused on achieving breakeven. | stormbrew wrote: | > We designed and built ITER at such a large size and cost | (EUR20 billion) since high temperature superconducting | magnets were not yet available. | | This is one of those numbers that only seem big without | context. Medium-sized cities spend more than this on | interchanges and highway development over shorter timespans | than any of the various multi-decade price tags that get | thrown around for ITER. | toveja wrote: | I agree. | | The hefty price tag seems smaller when considering the | development and design of ITER began during the cold war. | | The literal size is definitely big even without context, | which is why it has the nickname: gigantomak :D. | dtagames wrote: | Doesn't IETR consume more power than it produces? Fusion | (like solutions for aging fission plants and their waste | products) always seems just around the corner -- yet never | arrives. | orzig wrote: | For me, it was eye opening to inside its progression in | terms of dollars, not years. It's barely had the chance | to get started. | samhain wrote: | Have you heard of MITs SPARC reactor? It's way more | interesting than ITER. It is 3x smaller, with Q greater | than 10 (compared to ITERs ~10). It's also slated to be | finished -before- ITER. | nilsbunger wrote: | This was an awesome overview of current state of fusion | attempts! | tsimionescu wrote: | If you look more into it, it's not clear at all that fusion is | actually a promising source of power. None of the currently | contemplated technologies have any realistic chance of | producing power anywhere near competitively in cost, even | ignoring the huge research costs left to get there (no | currently planned fusion experiment has any hope of producing | more power than it consumes). | ac29 wrote: | > no currently planned fusion experiment has any hope of | producing more power than it consumes | | ITER [1] is expected to produce more thermal energy than it | consumes and is currently under construction. No electricity | though. | | The follow up plant, DEMO [2], should produce electricity | (750MW). | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Plant | tsimionescu wrote: | Yes, I should have said electrical power. ITER isn't even | attempting to produce any. DEMO is a concept, not a planned | facility; the plans will be drawn up based on the results | of ITER, hopefully by 2030. Note that DEMO won't even be a | particular plant, several countries participating in ITER | are hoping to go on to construct DEMO plants. | more_corn wrote: | What if I told you commercially viable fusion power has been 10 | years away for the last 40 years? What if I told you it always | will be? | | Investment in something that might not pay off is wise if it | does, and foolish if it doesn't. | orzig wrote: | I think the people who said "10 years away "we're assuming it | would get actual serious investment. I would argue that this | is year 1 | api wrote: | The world burning is the basis of the economy for dozens of | petrostates and some of the world's largest corporations. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | I can't remember who said it but I remember reading a quote one | time to the effect that the man who invented a new form of | energy for the world without also inventing a new heat sink | would be history's greatest monster. Not sure I agree, but does | give one pause if prone to pessimism as I am. | formerkrogemp wrote: | Perhaps this was referring to humanity's use of fossil fuels? | bryanrasmussen wrote: | no, fossil fuels aren't a new form of energy. The | implication would be that a new form of energy would just | be used with all the other forms of energy, it may also | have been a new cheap form of energy in the quote, implying | that we would take a cheap form of energy and overuse it so | that the world burned faster. | kadoban wrote: | I don't get it. Why would a new form of energy need a new | heat sink? | | Wouldn't any energy we can realistically generate be a drop | in the bucket compared to what the Sun throws at us every | second? And even if not, what would a heat sink do about it? | I think I'm missing something. | rainsford wrote: | I'd love to see viable nuclear fusion power, but the lack of | more investment at the moment doesn't really seem unreasonable. | As you said, there are a number of other green alternatives, | including traditional nuclear fission power, that have proven | they can be real alternatives to fossil fuels and that would | benefit from continued investment. | | Unless I've missed something, nuclear fusion meanwhile has yet | to demonstrate realistic commercial power generation, even as a | proof of concept or a complete path to get to that point. In | other words, more research is definitely worthwhile, but it | also seems possible it will be a dead end at least in the near | term. It's hard to argue prioritizing that over other things | that have been generating real commercial power for decades. | I'm all in favor of an all-of-the-above approach, but | prioritization almost always has to be the reality. | Digital28 wrote: | It's an equal level of insanity that technologies like | thorium breeder reactors haven't been getting whole number | percentages of first world budgets, especially considering | how extremely high of a priority climate change has become | and how costly the alternatives (e.g., disaster mitigation) | are getting. | twawaaay wrote: | Budgets are decided by elected officials and elected | officials are steered by their polling numbers. | | Out of all sources of energy only atomic energy is | something that we can practically scale at the moment to | cover all our needs. We just need to think a bit harder how | to ensure this is done responsibly and safely. Not saying | it is an easy problem, but I think the issue is too little | resources are devoted to solving it. I would say this | probably isn't harder than sending a man to the Moon. It is | just something that should be possible to fix practically | with existing technology and just good design. | | The cost of humanity that can't decide on what needs to be | done is that we are still reliant on fossil fuels and are | distracting ourselves with half measures that have a lot of | problems that in hindsight were pretty obvious. Like solar | energy -- only works when the sun is up, is difficult to | scale and we still haven't figured out how to store energy | for when it is needed. | | Our children will curse us. | LunaSea wrote: | But climate change hasn't been a priority in most western | countries (in most countries really). | devonkim wrote: | Cheap, sustainable power is in the interest of most | governments that haven't been essentially paid off to | stay on fossil fuels. But because the existing tech is | more invested in various political campaigns and parties | across most of the world they'll keep progress from | happening in areas of public funding. From our left | you'll get the anti-nuclear zealots and from the right | you'll get the anti-government spending zealots, so it's | pretty much a political loss until fairly recently with | the EU designation of nuclear as an option to support | nuclear of any sort. While climate change is serious and | matters it bothers me deeply when I see older nuclear | facilities shutdown while new coal power plants show up | the same year. It really seems like backwards progress in | much of the US in our energy sector anywhere that hasn't | had massive renewables investments. | pshc wrote: | Everyone in the real world seems to be fixated on gas | prices and bigger vehicles. It's pure myopia. | otikik wrote: | Compare that to what we have invested in crypto globally and | weep. | Noughmad wrote: | Compare it to what we have invested in killing each other, | and despair. | joe_name wrote: | eatonphil wrote: | The article doesn't seem to mention why exactly but I'm guessing | it's some combination of 1) visible climate change (extreme heat, | wildfires, drought, etc.) so people want better energy sources | and 2) the mayhem Russia started seeing as it is one of the | bigger energy providers. | | Or has there been anything else? | oconnor663 wrote: | Those things might explain some rising investment in | alternative energy in general, but I don't think either them | would be specific to fusion. | V__ wrote: | There seems to be a lot of innovative ideas and a lot of them | seem to be quite doable, which is interesting for investors. | One I really like is FirstLightFusion [1]. They are using a | ballistic system to shoot at a small fuel cube, which creates a | fusion reaction and then use the generated heat to power a | turbine. There is a nice behind the scene video with some | interview from FullyCharged [2]. | | [1] https://firstlightfusion.com/ [2] | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1RsHQCMRTw | bawolff wrote: | Better high temp super conductor lowering barrier to entry | maybe? (im pretty ignorant of this field) | ISL wrote: | The really big deal in the last decade has been better magnets | -- many of the "novel" approaches attracting recent funding are | probably doomed to fail, but the MIT-associated consortia that | simply aspire to building better tokamaks with modern magnets | look encouraging. | Filligree wrote: | Some breakthroughs in plasma modelling, too. | https://www.sciencealert.com/physics-breakthrough-as-ai-succ... | ianburrell wrote: | REBCO high-temperature superconductors have potentially changed | the game. They can support stronger fields which means smaller | devices for same confinement. Commercial production seems to | only started in the last decade. | | MIT's research, spun out as CFS, may be prompting other | startups. | epicureanideal wrote: | Is there any fundamental limit we're hitting on magnetic | fields or might we see another 10-100x increase in field | strength in the future? | willis936 wrote: | It would be shocking if HTS manufacturing research did | anything other than accelerate. If there are fundamental | physical limits to run in to then they are very far away. | This is deep in the engineering limited area. How much | abuse from strain and radiation can your HTS handle? The | better your answer at a cheaper cost, the smaller and more | powerful of a machine you enable. Humans know how to make | pretty strong steel, so the superstructure won't be a | limiting factor for a while if ever. Making HTS tapes and | divertors that can handle what we ask of them are the | material challenges. There is room to be clever with | physics to lessen the divertor problem. | jleahy wrote: | Nobody knows, is the short and boring answer. We don't have | a sufficiently detailed understanding of what drives | critical field strength in these materials (otherwise we'd | have room temperature superconductors or have ruled out | their existence already). | SkyMarshal wrote: | Actual advances in fusion and related energy generation tech. | For example, at least one startup, Helion, is developing a way | to generate electricity directly from the fusion reaction and | magnetic field, instead of indirectly by heating water into | steam that then turns a turbine generator. The increased | efficiency from that might enable it produce net electricity. | And quite frankly, it's way past time that we advanced beyond | converting energy -> heat -> motion -> electricity, and | shortened that cycle to energy -> electricity. | whatshisface wrote: | Magnetohydrodynamic generators were invented for coal plants | 70 years or so ago but turbines are more efficient. | sva_ wrote: | Something I wondered about fusion is, where does all that 'excess | energy' go? | | I mean don't understand me wrong, it is obvious that is a much | better form of energy release than all the other forms of energy | production we have; but let us consider we manage to gain energy | from fusion, the electricity released still releases heat, so how | does it dissipate, if we have near-infitite energy, and anyone | can spend as much as they want? | hobscoop wrote: | It'll ultimately be dissipated by infrared radiation into | space. Earth receives something like 173,000 terawatts of | radiation from the sun; this is equal to the amount radiated | out as infrared, except for the "radiative forcing" which is | the amount by which the world is heating. Radiative forcing is | currently something like 1000 TW. All of human civilization is | powered by something like 20 TW. If we want to stop global | heating we need to use a fraction of those 20 TW to "turn the | ship" of size 1000 TW. | [deleted] | orzig wrote: | It is a valid question, but to put it in perspective, the sun | bathes us in dramatically more kWh than we need to annually | power the world every few minutes. So fusion would be a drop in | the bucket at a global scale. | greenthrow wrote: | I don't believe the hype. From what I can see fusion still isn't | anywhere near being a viable source of energy, other than in the | form or solar power. | felixmeziere wrote: | Yes, it will be for the second half of this century, if we make | it there. | | Side comment: fusion can be seen as a solution to many of our | worst problems. But another way to see it is that without a | complete change in what societies value and how they act (i.e. | a cultural/philosophical/storytelling change), fusion is just | going to increase the rate at which we are transforming this | planet into a giant pile of garbage, whether its solid and | liquid garbage (leading to wiping out 60% of wildlife in 50 | years, spilling the phosphorus of our soils into the sea | -making them sterile and killing life in the sea- etc etc), or | gas garbage (typically greenhouse gases). | | We do that by extracting resources nature concentrated for us | for free for millions of years and dispersing them all around | in our buildings, phones, playstations, fertilizers, fuel etc. | | As long as Black Friday is the highlight of the year, there are | reasons to think fusion might be more dangerous than helpful. | | It's good to have an increasing ability to transform matter, as | long as you are using that ability in the right direction. | ambrozk wrote: | I don't know what makes you so so confident about your | prediction, and what you've written about fusion's | relationship to waste is, I'm pretty sure, inaccurate. | fzzzy wrote: | I think the point is the more useful energy we have at our | disposal, the more garbage we can make easily. | wetpaws wrote: | So was solar and nuclear. | [deleted] | twarge wrote: | Agree. There have been no breakthroughs. The projects getting | funding are just different enough to be not immediately | disprovable and continue to spectacularly overpromise without | solving any of the real problems. Chamber embrittlement? | Nuclear waste? (activation of the apparatus by the 12 MeV | fusion netrons is a lot worse than the 100 keV fission | neutron.) | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _have been no breakthroughs_ | | Magnet miniaturisation, together with CADs like the | stellarator [1], refutes this. | | With respect to waste and embrittlement, those are simpler | consumables and waste products than fossil fuels and | atmospheric emissions. | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator | magila wrote: | Where is this $1.9 billion over the last decade figure coming | from? ITER alone has surely burned through more than double that. | | Edit: Sounds like it might only be counting investment in private | companies. | rjmunro wrote: | > There was also a breakthrough in late 2021, when researchers at | the Joint European Torus (JET) facility in Oxford managed to | release a record-breaking 59 megajoules of fusion | | 59 megajoules in useful units is 16kWh, less than 2 days use of | my house. That's the biggest fusion reaction ever. | DeIonizedPlasma wrote: | 59MJ over the short period of 7s, equivalent to 8.5 MW | (https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3722). A research reactor (not | built to be a power plant) that is still capable of powering | over 20,000 households while running isn't really as | underwhelming as you seem to imply it is. | chris_va wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba ... was slightly | larger than that. | | Anyway, 59MJ isn't terrible if you can run it at 60Hz. Of | course, I agree that the reality is a bit far away. | toveja wrote: | 59 megajoules of sustained energy ^over the course of a few | seconds^. | | Ideally this energy output would be sustained for days within | ITER. | | JET is not designed to do this, as it has a copper magnet | system, which means if you try to sustain such a plasma | (confined with around 5 T magnet and around 2 MA plasma | current) for longer than a few seconds, you would melt the | magnet. | | Edit: ITER would operate at 5-10 T, and around 15-20 MA plasma | current. | tsimionescu wrote: | Note that these are 59MJ of energy released by the fusion | reaction. No attempt was made to actually catch them. And | even if they had been captured, they would not have been able | to power the magnets + cooling systems used to confine the | plasma. We are very very far away from actually producing | even 1W of usable fusion power. | toveja wrote: | You are correct that at JET there is no tech installed to | absorb the neutrons, nor will there ever be in JET, since | (as pointed out above) it is a _research_ device. | | Current fusion devices are not nor were they ever designed | to generate electricity for a grid. | | This is why we build ITER, and DEMO thereafter. Generating | 'usable fusion power' is limited to building reactor scale | experiments, which to date, has not been done (ITER will be | the first). | tiborsaas wrote: | The first human flight lasted 12 seconds, don't judge | achievements by the numbers. | Apocryphon wrote: | Crazy to imagine what would've happened if in the past it had | been more than sub-fusion never. | | http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg | | https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fus... | [deleted] | rbanffy wrote: | I'm glad, but I hope we still invest in Plan-B's because we are | literally betting our civilisation on moving away from carbon. | timmg wrote: | I wonder how this compares to the amount of money invested in | crypto startups in the past few years. (I don't mean the value of | crypto or the amount of money that was traded into it -- just the | amount VCs invested into crypto startups.) | | I don't know if that means people that allocate capital think | crypto has a better chance of changing the world than nuclear | fusion -- or if it's something else. But it is strange to compare | the funding of each. | ushakov wrote: | i wonder how this compares to the amount of money invested in | autonomous driving startups | rjmunro wrote: | Not that it has a better chance of changing the world, just | that it has a better chance of making them some money back in a | reasonable time. | missedthecue wrote: | There are probably a lot more founders with crypto ideas than | founders with fusion ideas. | ricardobeat wrote: | That would be an argument for having _more_ investment into | fusion. | missedthecue wrote: | Why? If you get 25 crypto startups for every fusion | startups, you're necessarily going to see more funding in | the crypto sector. | kortilla wrote: | >or if it's something else | | It's something else. Many people want their money invested in | something with a good risk adjusted returns. Only a tiny subset | of investors invest significant portions of their capital into | significantly lower expected value outcomes because they like | the field. | meowkit wrote: | Apples to oranges. Investments are compared by their up front | costs and rates of returns. | | Crypto up front costs are dirt cheap as most of it is open | source software, and in a bull mania the rates of returns are | astronomical. | | Nuclear is a mature industry with R&D for fusion that has some | of the largest up front capital costs on the planet for cutting | edge materials, controls, land, and safety requirements. To top | that off, the rates of returns are abysmal and take forever | even compared to coal plants. | ricardobeat wrote: | The total of crypto VC investments for 2021 was reported at | $33B. | mbgerring wrote: | One novel approach to clean energy deployment would be to spend | some of this money to deploy enough solar, wind and batteries to | provide the enormous amounts of energy needed for all these sub- | breakeven fusion experiments. Then, whether we get a viable | fusion reactor or not, we all win. | ChadNauseam wrote: | It seems more reasonable to me to try to figure out what would | be a reasonable amount of money to spend on these projects | independently, instead of tying the amount of clean energy | deployment to the amount clean energy research for no apparent | benefit | kortilla wrote: | Maybe we should fraud these people trying to invest in a better | solution with worse ones! | hit8run wrote: | Stupid Germany however us Cuckolding itself watching from the | side. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-23 23:00 UTC)