[HN Gopher] Three papers highlight results of record yield nucle... ___________________________________________________________________ Three papers highlight results of record yield nuclear fusion shot Author : signa11 Score : 231 points Date : 2022-08-14 13:45 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.llnl.gov) (TXT) w3m dump (www.llnl.gov) | leephillips wrote: | The failure to replicate the alleged ignition of a fusion target | one year ago suggests that the event was an accident, in the | sense that we still don't understand how to create the conditions | leading to ignition in an indirect-drive laser experiment. Even | if we could predictably ignite such a target, that would be | almost completely irrelevant for commercial power generation. The | total system gain is still << 10%. Fusion is not an attractive or | desirable approach: https://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our- | losses-on-fusion-... | awinter-py wrote: | how many teakettles | mkl95 wrote: | > While the repeat attempts have not reached the same level of | fusion yield as the August 2021 experiment, all of them | demonstrated capsule gain greater than unity with yields in the | 430-700 kJ range, significantly higher than the previous highest | yield of 170 kJ from February 2021. | | That looks like some steady progress. How long should it take to | consistently yield one more order of magnitude? Are they | expecting to hit a plateau at some point? | teknopaul wrote: | While the repeat attempts have not reached the same level of | "fusion yield as the August 2021 experiment, all of them | demonstrated capsule gain greater than unity with yields in the | 430-700 kJ range, significantly higher than the previous highest | yield of 170 kJ from February 2021. " | | Does this mean they are producing energy? 10,000 kilo watt hours | is not to be sniffed at | iso1631 wrote: | 10,000 kWh is 36 million kilojoules | | 170kJ is 1/20th of a kilowatt hour - on the order of 1 cents | worth of electricity. 700kJ would be 1/5th of a kWh | MichaelCollins wrote: | > _430-700 kJ range_ | | That's approximately as much energy as you'd get from burning | one fast food hamburger. | nyokodo wrote: | This is an article regarding the scientific papers published | about the ignition reported on in 2021. | pinewurst wrote: | Which seemingly they can't reproduce. | | https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02022-1 | pinewurst wrote: | I'm reminded of the so-called Zeta fiasco. | | https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/2905 | Jaruzel wrote: | That's unfair, they may not have reproduced the 1.3Mj result, | but they are consistantly hitting the 100s of Kj range, which | the article addresses. | | This is still an important step forward, and shouldn't be | dismissed frivously. | dghughes wrote: | >That's unfair, they may not have reproduced the 1.3Mj | result | | Fair or not isn't that the very definition of science? To | reproduce a result. No matter who tries. | switchbak wrote: | Exactly. The fervor around reproducibility seems more to | do with managerial level politics. | | They've proven they can do something impressive, that's a | huge leap. Understanding the underpinnings better so you | can do it reliably: that's a matter of research effort | and engineering. But they've already done the hard part, | let them do their work. | pfdietz wrote: | It has to do with the crisis of quality, and indeed | outright fraud, that seems to be affecting science these | days. | | https://retractionwatch.com/ | MichaelCollins wrote: | > _They 've proven they can do something impressive_ | | If what they claim can't be reproduced, then what's the | basis for asserting anything was proven? | [deleted] | mannykannot wrote: | They have achieved ignition multiple times. | | If reproducibility demanded getting the exact same | numbers, a lot of good results would be thrown out for no | good reason. | tsimionescu wrote: | If they claim they achieved 1.3MJ and can only reproduce | some hundreds of KJ, that's not exactly close the exact | same numbers. | [deleted] | Nevermark wrote: | That is a remarkably pedantic take on the situation, no? | | Difficult tasks are difficult. Difficult tasks take time. | | A credible indicator that they have achieved something | significant is the widespread acclaim they have received | from the global physics and fusion communities. | | Repeatability isn't the only tool in science and nobody | is claiming reproducibility isn't a goal. | | If five years from now nobody can reproduce the results, | people will take notice. But the evidence is they did | what they think they did. | vlovich123 wrote: | They've analyzed the data from the experiment to prove | that they achieved it (i.e. ruling out all possible other | explanations). Assuming there's been no fraud, then it's | likely they did achieve it. They're trying to figure out | what the problems are that make reproducibility difficult | & I think there's a new reactor being built that | addresses the challenges with reproducing in the current | design. | | It's an early signal indicating that we may have line of | sight to someone demonstrating working fusion within the | next 5 years. Is that not impressive? | tsimionescu wrote: | That do you mean by "working fusion"? This is a weapons | research program wearing a very thin figleaf as a kinda | sorta maybe possible power generation option. And fusion | weapons have existed for decades - so nothing that nivel | here. | DennisP wrote: | It's a bit odd how people think nuclear weapons research | needs a fig leaf in the US, where overt nuclear weapons | funding is about a hundred times more than the | government's fusion energy funding. | | It seems more likely that scientists used the weapons | angle to dip into that massive flow of military money for | their energy program. | tsimionescu wrote: | That may be more likely a priori (after all, much | "military" funding is in fact a convenient way for the | government to fund R&D without huge budget fights in | Congress). | | But, ICF is simply not a viable way to produce fusion | power, it is far far far too expensive to operate such a | device. So, we can only conclude that they are either | deluding themselves, or they are in fact doing fusion | weapons research (or, at best, simply fundamental | theoretical research into how fusion works) - since the | same kinds of conditions or forces are what happens | inside a fusion bomb. | sudosysgen wrote: | Isn't this at the NIF? The goal was weapons all along. | DennisP wrote: | So, you have a source proving the motivations of the | people who founded it and run it now? Because I argued | above that it makes little sense to simply assume that | weapons are the only goal, or even necessarily the | primary goal. | IncRnd wrote: | > I argued above that it makes little sense to simply | assume that weapons are the only goal, or even | necessarily the primary goal. | | You can argue all you want. Lawrence Livermore National | Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated | facility managed through a contract between the LLNS | Board of Governors and the DOE's National Nuclear | Security Administration (NNSA). The NNSA in turn works to | ensure that the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons is | safe and secure. | DennisP wrote: | None of that contradicts what I said, or explains why | they bother doing energy research at all. | pxhb wrote: | https://wci.llnl.gov/ | | Note that in the US nuclear weapons are controlled by the | DOE, and not the DOD. | Retric wrote: | Without reproducing the result it can be extremely | difficult to prove something wasn't a measurement error | of some kind. | D-Coder wrote: | "They've analyzed the data from the experiment to prove | that they achieved it (i.e. ruling out all possible other | explanations)." | | All possible other explanations _that they have thought | of_. | kcartlidge wrote: | That's not the line taken with Fleischmann and Pons. | | To be clear I'm not supporting/rejecting either F&P or | this article's writers at all as I'm not knowledgable in | the field, merely pointing out that the need for | reproducibility was reinforced by their reported results | and the inability of others to duplicate it. It's a good | lesson - nothing is proven until it is repeated. | IncRnd wrote: | If results are not reproducible, how does one know that | the results are correct? | teamonkey wrote: | You can measure something accurately without needing to | reproduce the thing you're measuring. | Eji1700 wrote: | And your measurement devices can error or be configured | improperly. | | Seriously some large % of "breakthrough" results are just | errors in methodology/measurement. It's why no one | serious gives a damn about results until they're | replicated(or at least they shouldn't). And that's before | you get into outright fraud where they just claim they | measured something. | | Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If | you claim you've gotten that kind of fusion reaction, and | can't reproduce it, then it casts doubt on if you ever | really got that reaction at all. | [deleted] | ThrowawayTestr wrote: | It kills me that more people don't know about General Fusion. | They have a practical design for a fusion reactor and are | currently building a test reactor in the UK. | deepspace wrote: | I believe that General Fusion has been in business for over 10 | years and that they have yet to actually demonstrate fusion. | Definitely not fusion with net energy gain. It's all smoke and | mirrors. Their press releases read like they were written by | business majors, not scientists. What is the "test reactor" | going to test? | ThrowawayTestr wrote: | They're building a small scale reactor to test the design. | And are you really criticizing a private company for taking | just 10 years to get to working reactor? Their approach to | fusion can't work in small scale tests. | ncmncm wrote: | It has worked perfectly thus far, at separating investors' | money from the investors. Most private fusion projects | operate on similar principles. | | We are starting to see similar projects in the renewables | space, most notably Energy Vault (NRGV). Their stuff does | not work, and cannot work, but it does not matter because | the customer is the investors, not the utilities, and what | the investors buy is pipe dreams. | vlovich123 wrote: | Investors make a speculative bet that the people involved | will make things work. They also generally understand the | risks associated with it and are willing to do it despite | that because they think there's a meaningful non-0 chance | of success. | | I think with fusion investors would be thinking about | generational ROI (20-40 years) instead of 5-10 years. | | What I don't understand is why there isn't a similar push | to really shake things up with fission. Our current power | mix will take a century or so to replace. Fission should | be a MUCH faster path. | dotnet00 wrote: | Fission would be faster if the path to deployment was | realistic, but it isn't. A recently approved small | modular reactor design was the first one to be approved | in the US in several decades and it still has another 10 | years and several more regulatory bodies to go through to | build it, let alone start deploying it. | vlovich123 wrote: | I suggest that the regulatory bodies are acting (likely | intentionally) more of a hindrance than a help. It's | highly likely there's been regulatory capture by the | fossil fuels industry given their political clout and | significant lobbying experience. It's not an accident | that the recent "climate bill" just has a bunch of | concessions for the oil industry [1]: | | > it requires the U.S. Department of the Interior to | lease 2 million acres in federal lands onshore and 60 | million acres offshore each year for oil and gas | development (or whatever acreage the industry requests, | whichever is smaller). These quotas must be met to allow | federal leasing for onshore and offshore renewables | development, respectively. | | > In an online statement, a senior scientist at 350.org | called the bill a "sham" and said that it "contained so | many giveaways to the fossil fuel industry" that it | "turns all of the gains in addressing the climate crisis | into a moot point." | | Nuclear power plants with today's technology are already | safe. Small modular designs are nice but it's not an | either or. We should be building reactors with the best | technology available at the time, not waiting for a | hypothetical future. In fact, building with today's | technology helps because a) provides clarity that allows | for greater private investment b) Wright's law tells us | it'll have compound benefits where nuclear technology | gets cheaper and safer. | | Look at China. They've already build 47 power plants with | another 11 approved [2]. They know what kind of problem | oil is and they're making significant effort to fix it | while the rest of the world is sitting on their hands. It | plans to build another 150 reactors, 30 of which are | outside of China [3]. They're spending 440B (almost 0.5T) | in building out nuclear fission [4]. | | Fission has a realistic path to displacing all fossil | fuels. We should have been doing this for the past 60 | years - it would have been even cheaper in the past. Even | with all the accidents, nuclear technology has fewer | deaths per KWh produced than almost any other technology | [5] (on par with solar and wind). | | [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpolicy/2022/08/0 | 4/the-c... | | [2] https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/China/China.htm | | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China | | [4] | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china- | cli... | | [5] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy | tinco wrote: | There's a company in the UK that has already built multiple | test reactors: https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/ The more the | better of course, but I'm not sure why more people would need | to know of them, it's not like we could buy shares. I like TE | because they post regular updates on the construction of their | reactors, though it's been a while since they've posted | anything concrete. | dabber21 wrote: | Lots of things happening in this area, Wendelstein 7-X was | recently completed in Germany to research nuclear fusion | the8472 wrote: | W7X is a bit like the LHC. It already was operational in 2015 | and got incremental updates since then. | dabber21 wrote: | yes, but the recent changes have been significant, they will | now be able to run it for 30 minutes instead of just 100 | seconds. | | I guess within the next 3 years we will have more results | tarr11 wrote: | Can someone explain to a lay person what they accomplished and | what it means for nuclear fusion as an energy source? | acidburnNSA wrote: | Nuclear engineer here, I can try. | | Before you get cosmic energy out of nuclear fusion fuel | (usually isotopes of hydrogen), you have to put a bunch of | energy into the fuel to get it into fusion conditions. Namely, | you have to heat it up and compress it so the nuclei get close | enough to fuse (after which they'll release energy). | | There are a few milestones along the way to commercial fusion | energy: | | * Get more energy out of a fusion fuel than you put into it | | * Get more energy out of fusion fuel that it took you to make | the energy you put into it | | * Build a way to capture the net gain energy and convert it | into electricity | | * Demonstrate the integrated power plant as a prototype system | | * Build and operate the first commercial power plant | | * Assuming good economic and technical performance, start | building a fleet | | * Deal with fleet scaling issues | | * Profit! | | This is a celebration of the first bullet. | the8472 wrote: | Is commercial ICF realistic though? Each shot needs a | carefully prepared fuel pellet. To get commercial power | they'd have to fire a shot per second or so. That seems like | a really expensive manufacturing operation to keep it going. | acidburnNSA wrote: | There is an incredible dichotomy that I learned about from | David Deustch, which is that things are either: | | a) ruled out by the laws of physics, or | | b) possible. | | Commercial ICF is in the latter category as far as I can | tell. | | In other words, maybe? | ajnin wrote: | I think a condition needs to be inserted between a) and | b) : | | x) require preexisting conditions not present in the | Universe, or | sudosysgen wrote: | Flying cars are also into category b for what it's worth. | throwawaymaths wrote: | The real world presents a trichotomy: | | b) is two things | | b1) possible and worth the cost | | b2) merely possible | magila wrote: | While obviously true, I think it's also useful to | distinguish where items in category b fall on the | spectrum from "this will be commercially viable with | minor refinement" to "this is three orders of magnitude | away from commercial viability and we don't even have a | theoretical path to get there". | | AFAIK energy generation with ICF is much closer to the | latter than the former. | imglorp wrote: | Not to mention a tritium shortage [1?] -- assuming this is | D-T fusion -- which it seems is going to be hard to get in | the first place let alone throw it into a generator. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31451902 | vlovich123 wrote: | I don't know if it's all fusion reactors but General | Fusion breeds tritium by surrounding the plasma with | moving liquid lithium which breeds tritium and helium and | they send the tritium back in. Seems sustainable. | | I don't know why their plan is to just vent helium given | the shortage although I imagine that's a second order | problem they can solve later. | alok-g wrote: | Thanks a lot! | | I vaguely recall reading a long time back that managing the | emanating free neutrons was also a challenge. Has that been | solved? | ncmncm wrote: | Very far from: no one is working on it. They know it would | be a waste of time. | tomp wrote: | Has the first bullet ("ignition") been achieved before, or is | this the first time? | oofbey wrote: | This is not the first time. But it's the biggest net gain | so far by a good wide margin. | | Still a very long way to go before becoming similar to a | fossil burning power plant. They got equivalent of 1 | megawatt for a single second. A typical coal plant is | hundreds of megawatts continuously. | _ph_ wrote: | Yes it has. For example JET achived 16 MW of fusion power | output in 1997. | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus) | | Its successor, ITER is supposed to produce more energy than | used in creating the fusion process. It is still under | construction in France. | ganzolo wrote: | Excellent explanation. Thank you! | zikero wrote: | > * Get more energy out of fusion fuel that it took you to | make the energy you put into it | | What does that mean if the cost of energy is 0 ? (e.g | renewables) | vlovich123 wrote: | By renewables I'm assuming you mean wind & solar because | fusion is 100% renewable. Even fission is basically close | enough in that there's sufficient easily accessible | resources to power human society for eons. Additionally, | solar panels and batteries use rare earth metals, so | they're technically not as renewable as fusion / fission | (although to be fair I don't know what materials go into a | fusion / fission reactor so those metals may be needed | there). | | Anyway, the cost of energy with solar / wind is obviously | not 0. You have to produce the panels / windmills, perform | maintenance, for solar you need to clean, etc. | Additionally, the energy isn't available always so you need | energy reserves like batteries, pumped water, etc to store | it for use which increases the cost further. Finally, there | are energy demands that solar / windmills can't meet where | you need *really* hot temperatures. | | That's why fission repeatedly is shown as the only solution | to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Fusion is great but | we should be building insane amounts of nuclear reactors | right now to meaningfully decarbonize our energy | generation. | | * EDIT: Here's a talk [1] by Michel Laverne CSO of General | Fusion. He starts talking at the ~6 minute mark and | explains why renewables will never see more than 10-20% | market penetration. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zzwnt0cNXM | acidburnNSA wrote: | Even fission is renewable (i.e. can power 100% of primary | energy until the sun burns out) using breeder reactors, | which can run with huge EROI on just the uranium and | thorium traces in average crustal granite. Conveniently, | breeder reactors were first demonstrated in 1952 in Idaho | at the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1. | | The term "renewable" is such a poor word for 'long-term | sustainable'. I wish we had something that didn't make | everyone think we were violating the laws of energy | conservation. | pmyteh wrote: | > He starts talking at the ~6 minute mark and explains | why renewables will never see more than 10-20% market | penetration. | | ...and yet market penetration of wind and solar in the UK | was 26.4% in July[0] and still climbing as we build more | offshore wind. Plus 1.3% hydro (and 5.9% biomass if you | count that as renewable). | | [0]: https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity- | explained/electr... | aaronblohowiak wrote: | Then why build a fusion reactor? | giantrobot wrote: | There's a few reasons as I understand it, the power | output can be on the same order as a nuclear fission | plant. So a single plant taking relatively little real | estate can output gigawatts of power to the grid. The | fuel is abundant to the point of being practically | unlimited. The fuel also needs little in the way of | refinement and is not hazardous. A fusion core is | naturally fail safe since energy and fuel need to be | constantly applied, an accident might destroy a core or | plant but not irradiate the surrounding countryside. | prox wrote: | It could quite literally save the world in terms of clean | energy. I can understand why one would at least try. | ncmncm wrote: | 100% false. | | As with fission, most of the operating costs would have | nothing to do with buying fuel. Solar and wind power | suffer none of these costs, so fusion, like fission, | would be wholly unable to produce power at a price anyone | would pay without being forced to. | | The fission plants still operating will find themselves | increasingly unable to produce power at a price anyone | will pay, so will be mothballed long short of their | design life. | ncmncm wrote: | There will never be a commercial fusion reactor power | plant. | | And if there were, this would not contribute to its | development. | | Fuel for such a plant (tritium) is practically non- | existent. What of it that exists is synthesized at great | expense. | bell-cot wrote: | Prestige, social status, bragging rights, money (a | $billion is table stakes for fusion reactors, so a _lot_ | of folks are getting fat cuts), and cool & cushy high- | tech careers. Really expensive research has been going on | for 50+ years now, with no sign of development - let | alone deployment - of actual, practical power reactors. | ncmncm wrote: | There are many reasons to build a fusion reactor: | | It keeps hot-neutron physicists, who you must recruit | from among for weapons work, busy. | | It provides continual practical challenges to plasma | fluid dynamics physicists, who otherwise have great | difficulty funding experiments. | | It provides cash flow to the (chiefly) military | contractors who build the test apparatus. | | In this particular case, it lets you conduct tests for | thermonuclear weapons concepts paid for out of a | different budget. | | Any expectation of _ever_ getting useful energy out would | be the worst reason, because there will never be one | solitary erg of that. | elteto wrote: | It's not the source of energy that has a cost, it's the | process of actively capturing it, conditioning it and | providing it that does. | | Therefore, providing energy, no matter the source, always | has a cost. | acidburnNSA wrote: | Wait, are you suggesting that renewables will make energy | too cheap to meter? I've been waiting for this moment. | | While renewables are making increasingly cheap generators, | the overall systems involved in delivering reliable energy | from them are increasingly expensive at increasing scale. | Check energy costs to customers e.g. in Germany. | | Mining, energy storage, transmission, demand control, | recycling, maintenance, land rights, etc. for any energy | source at world scale will continue to cost well >$0. For | nuclear fission, fuel cost is only 5% of the total cost. | For renewables, fuel cost is 0%, but that doesn't mean | there aren't costs. | pfdietz wrote: | Meters get cheaper with time too. :) | throw827474737 wrote: | Ah come on that wouldn't have been necessary... energy | costs could be a lot lower if the path towards renewables | hadn't been blocked and undermined for years, if | something in the current situation is keeping it not from | exploding more it is the renewables. | | Please better check France for the often touted right way | of going nucelar, with half of their overaged reactors | taken off the grid due to failing safety regulations | (which are not too hard but have been dangerously | softened over ye years..), cracks and corrosion problems, | and their unfolding catastrophe in regard to nonavailable | cooling fluid, which is a problem that will only become | much bigger in the future years. | | Also don't distract and mix energy with energy, if | something we have a heating and fuel problem, not | electeicity. Secondly our gas reservoirs are already 75% | filled again ahead of plan surprise surprise.. seems the | lasts months panic had a little bit too much agenda | involved. | | If you ask me energy prices here are still much too low | for what is upcoming and humanity should really focus | on... this will make current debates so absurd and | laughable, not getting it. | | Why not look at some other examples who fully went | renewables and doing it succesfully? Stop looking at a | wanted or at least easily prevented politic, lobbyism and | incompetence failure, that now leads to prices that are | still much too cheap for what our wastage of resources | should actually cost, lol. | acidburnNSA wrote: | I'm stating a simple concept, which is that if you put | some wind and solar into a heavily-fossil powered grid, | the first 30% wind and solar are easy, and the last 30% | are harder. | | But if you do 100% wind and solar, then you have to start | spending money on things other than generators. The | fraction of cost that is wind/solar generators vs. e.g. | energy storage systems, transmission, recycling, etc. | shifts from 1 to ~0 at scale. | pfdietz wrote: | If you look at the minimum cost of providing synthetic | baseload in a 100% renewable scenario, the renewable | inputs can be > 50% of the cost (the other parts being | various kinds of storage). This is geographically | variable, though. | Manuel_D wrote: | > the other parts being various kinds of storage | | This is handwaving away the most difficult part of of a | 100% renewable grid. | ncmncm wrote: | By which you mean, of course, the _least difficult_ part, | and the part that is needed only after all the hard | parts, the ones that actually produce energy in useful | form, have been built out. | Manuel_D wrote: | No, energy storage is a far more challenging task than | generating it. To put this in perspective, the world uses | 60TWh of energy per day. Most energy storage projects are | in the hundreds of megawatt hour range, a few in the | gigawatts. Estimated for a 100% renewable grid depends on | the solar to wind ratio and degrees of overproduction, | but they usually fall in the range of 12-24 hours for a 0 | carbon grid. And that figure of 60 TWh is only going to | grow as underdeveloped countries become more wealthy and | want A/C and other amenities. | | This is a colossal amount of storage, far outside the | bounds of existing storage methods. Hence why plans for a | renewable grid assume untested mechanisms like power to | gas or compressed air will just scale to near-infinity. | ncmncm wrote: | In fact energy storage is a trivial matter of high- | school-level physics. | | Most existing storage, taking advantage of existing | hydro-power dams, uses excess energy to force water up to | the reservoir, which energy is later extracted by letting | it flow out through a turbine. New pumped-hydro systems | built just for storage will be radically cheaper than | existing dams, and be practical in hundreds of times as | many places: you just need a hilltop no one is using, and | water to pump up to it. The reservoir may be _much_ | cheaper than a hydro power dam because it does not need | to contain high pressure; an earthen dike suffices. | | There are numerous other, equally simple methods, for | places without enough hills or water. Synthetic fuels | like hydrogen and ammonia are an attractive choice | because tankage is cheap, and they are transportable and | have myriad industrial uses, so after your tankage is | full you can sell all further production. | | Of course one only builds storage after there is excess | energy to put in it. We will need a lot of it, in time, | but it is all just construction and mechanics: ordinary | civil engineering. | | (If you have to lie about the practicality of storage in | order to promote nukes, what does that really tell us | about your nukes?) | Manuel_D wrote: | Fusion is trivial high school level physics, too. We all | learn about the physics that goes on in the sun's core. | | You're right that hydroelectric offers lots of storage | potential. But it's geographically limited. Great for | countries like Norway that have lots of it. But countries | that don't can't just summon dam-able mountain valleys. | | You need more than just a hilltop to build pumped hydro. | You need a hilltop, with access to a water source. It | also needs to be close to a transportation network | otherwise construction costs will be prohibitively | expensive. Pumped hydro plants do indeed cost a lot: the | biggest one in the US in Bath County cost $4 billion | dollars for a capacity of 24 GWh. | | Furthermore, it will get more expensive as it scales up: | as the most accessible sites are developed, subsequent | facilities have to be built in more and more suboptimal | sites. | | > The reservoir may be much cheaper than a hydro power | dam because it does not need to contain high pressure; an | earthen dike suffices | | This makes absolutely no sense. I needs high pressure to | generate electricity. Low pressure would mean there's | hardly any potential energy to tap. If you're suggesting | we have a tunnel leading out from under the reservoir, | then those have to be built in exactly the right | geography where there's an alpine lake with a height | difference. | | > There are numerous other, equally simple methods, for | places without enough hills or water. | | Yet, despite these methods purported simplicity you | didn't actually specify them (Edit: you added a couple in | an edit after I typed my reply). Because then you'd have | to defend their viability. | | Since you edited in hydrogen and ammonia: | | * Power to hydrogen: electrolysis of water remains | expensive, hence why most hydrogen is built with steam | reformation. It's not just the electricity costs, but | also maintaining the electrodes that perform the | hydrolysis. | | * Power to Ammonia: this needs a source of hydrogen, so | it shares all of the above's issues. Ammonia is really | just a storage mechanism for hydrogen, actually producing | usable energy from ammonia is done by releasing the | hydrogen from the ammonia and then running it through a | fuel cell. | | You're the one being overly optimistic about the | practicality of storage. We've had excess production | during peak renewable generation for close to a decade | now. The excuse that we won't build storage until there's | an excess of electricity isn't valid. Places like Hawaii | and California already are saturating the energy market, | but the storage is systems you propose aren't being built | because they aren't feasible. | | Intermittent sources are fine to chip away at fossil fuel | use, or in places with widespread hydroelectric power. | But we can't kid ourselves into thinking that storage | will make it feasible every. Grid scale energy storage | should be approached like fusion: _maybe_ it 'll be | invented and change the energy landscape. But it's | foolish to treat that possibility as a given. | ncmncm wrote: | Again, if you have to lie to make your case, what does | that say about your case? | | Pumped hydro storage does not, as I already pointed out, | require river valleys. It does not, in fact, need those | other things. You make clear that you know nothing about, | even, pumped storage. (Maybe look up the word | "penstock"?) Why would _anyone_ trust you about others? | | People often badly overspend on civil projects, but that | does not give you honest numbers -- if indeed what you | want is honest numbers. You make very clear that you do | not want honest numbers. | | Pretending that fuel synthesis depends on access to | scarce raw materials (hydrogen, nitrogen? Really?) will | not fool anyone. Neither will anyone be fooled by your | insistence that its energy must be extracted via fuel | cells. | jholman wrote: | I'm not the person you've been replying to, but I note | that your replies in this chain are getting more and more | acrimonious. If you're going to repeatedly accuse the | other commenter of bad faith, it's probably best to stop | replying. | | I'm not a civil engineer, nor any kind of expert in grid- | scale energy storage, so I can only note that in my | amateur readings I've seen many different people (alleged | experts) say the same things that Manuel_D is saying. | That doesn't mean it's true, that's not my point. My | point is that if you know something that all these other | commentators don't, I and others would greatly appreciate | it if you would explain that. But you'd need to actually | explain it, not just accuse others of bad faith. | pfdietz wrote: | The person he is responding to has a dismal history of | bad faith trolling on this subject. | rendang wrote: | If pumped hydro+renewables is so cheap, why have | developing countries like Vietnam chosen to build coal | plants instead? Which large country has been able to | replace fossil generation with wind/solar & storage and | keep prices down? | pfdietz wrote: | They may not be cheaper than coal plants. But coal plants | (indeed, any fossil fuel plants) are off the table if we | are to stop global warming. | | What pumped hydro(+other storage)+renewables is cheaper | than is nuclear. You will notice Vietnam isn't building | nukes either. | idlehand wrote: | The issue is rather that due to the unpredictable nature | of renewables, sometimes the stars align so that the | combined output of wind, solar, and hydro end up far | beyond what the grid needs. | | During those times, in some parts of Europe for example, | renewable energy really is practically free. This is a | problem for nuclear and fossil plants which lose money | during those times. The renewable operators don't make | much either but at least they don't have very high input | costs. | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | > During those times, in some parts of Europe for | example, renewable energy really is practically free. | | Isn't it more fair to say that during those times they | are resting their costs at a higher rate than with their | typical output? | ipsi wrote: | As far as I understand, it means something more along the | lines of "This laser hits the fuel with 1MJ of energy which | ignites it, but it took us 100MJ of energy to make that | happen, because the laser is inefficient/only 20% of the | laser hits atoms/etc, etc." Step 1, in this case, is | producing more than 1MJ, and Step 2 is producing more than | 100. | bawolff wrote: | Renewables don't have zero (energy) cost. Wind turbines | don't make themselves, solar panels involve an energy | intensive manufacturing process. | MichaelCollins wrote: | Imagine you 'spend' 10 GW to get 10.0001 GW out, and to do | it you need a massive industrial facility. | | That doesn't cost $0. It probably costs billions of | dollars. | prox wrote: | Maybe seen to many sci-fi, but can a fusion reactor go out of | control and fuse any atom it comes in contact with? I mean | with more energy going out than in. Sounds a bit like a | nuclear reactor. | gary_0 wrote: | Short answer: No, that can't happen. | | Fusion reactors and conventional nuclear (fission) reactors | are very different. Only poorly designed fission reactors | can meltdown and release large amounts of highly | radioactive material into the environment. And no nuclear | power reactor of any kind can explode into a giant fireball | like a nuclear bomb; that only happens on TV shows. | Ekaros wrote: | Nope, failure of containment simply means they fizzle out. | Some massively hot plasma might go to areas immediately | next to reactor, but it won't blow up. There isn't just | enough temperature or pressure for fusion to continue. | pfdietz wrote: | The main way they seem to go out of control is in the | schedule and budget. | ncmncm wrote: | The thousands of tons of molten lithium needed for useful | operation would, if ever exposed to air, prove extremely | difficult to put out. | | That would be what they might call an "expensive | setback". | prox wrote: | What happens if its exposed to air? | ncmncm wrote: | There are some great videos on YouTube about how alkali | metals behave in contact with air or, for extra | amusement, water. Those don't generally present | superheated, molten alkali metals. | Ekaros wrote: | It burns very hot. Also water won't help you. | | On other hand amounts used are relatively minor so it | isn't massively bad issue. | pfdietz wrote: | Molten lithium (or Pb-Li) probably won't be used in | magnetic fusion reactors, because the magnetic forces | from induced currents in the flowing metal would cause | unacceptable pressures to develop. There was hope that | insulating coatings for metal structures could be | developed to deal with this, but apparently even small | cracks are too much. | MichaelCollins wrote: | The neutrons released by the fusion reaction can be | captured by the atomic nuclei of other materials it | encounters, in a sense fusion. This induces radioactivity | in those materials, called neutron activation, but won't | create a run-away reaction. Nuclear fission reactors also | produce neutron radiation that behaves in the same way, | except in nuclear fission fuel it _does_ create a chain | reaction. | | > Sounds a bit like a nuclear reactor. | | They are nuclear reactors. Nuclear fusion reactors, rather | than nuclear fission reactors. | prox wrote: | Right so it never goes out of control basically once you | stop the input! | sigstoat wrote: | where does that even appear in sci-fi? you're the first | person i've ever seen even type out such a thing. | acidburnNSA wrote: | The Dark Knight has Bane trucking around an explosive | fusion reactor. | | In Spiderman 2 Doc Oct is blowing stuff up with fusion. | | Those are the two that pop into my head. | prox wrote: | There is lots of sci-fi where the reactors go in full | overload. Startrek, Starwars, Stargate. Don't quite | recall where I got the idea exactly from to be honest. | smsm42 wrote: | Start Trek uses matter-antimatter reaction as power | source. Provided we ever find out how to do that, if this | reactor stores any substantial amount of anti-matter - | which appears to be the case in Star Trek, with the | confinement being achieved by usage of dilithium crystals | - the failure mode would be loss of confinement, with the | result of antimatter coming into contact with regular | matter. This will lead to all anti-matter instantly | converted to energy (taking the equivalent mass of matter | with it) resulting in enormous explosion probably | converting any matter in the vicinity into a superheated | plasma cloud and enormous burst of high-energy radiation. | Star Trek reactors are not very safe, as it looks from | the descriptions. | roywiggins wrote: | Iron Man's "arc reactor" is explicitly supposed to be a | fusion reactor and it blows up, taking a building with | it, during the events of the first Iron Man movie. | smsm42 wrote: | Fusion reactor can, in theory, go out of control, but it | won't "fuse any atom it comes in contact with". Somewhat | simplified: | | The failure mode for a regular (fission) reactor can be | twofold. The better scenario is that by some kind of | mechanical failure the radioactive materials escape the | confinement, and instead of putting their energy into the | electricity generation mechanisms, just start shooting it | around, irradiating things, thus breaking them (including | living organism's cells and DNA) and causing them to become | secondary sources of radiation. The worse scenario is that | that before that, radioactive materials become too close | together, starting self-sustaining chain reaction, which | outputs immense amounts of energy (essentially, like a | nuclear bomb), inevitably leading to destruction of | whatever container it is in (no container can survive it | for long, too much energy) and spreading around, by which | time we're back to the scenario above (since once the | materials have spread around, the chain reaction would | stop) only with much more material which is much more | energetic and thus will spread around wider and do more | mess. | | The failure mode of fusion reactor, if it happens, would be | different, since it does not contain fissile material. | Instead, it contains some light elements (usually the mix | of deuterium and tritium, both of which are just hydrogen | with some extra neutrons) which are heated and compressed a | lot to start forming helium. If something breaks, the | elements would not have anything to contain them (since, | unlike what happens in the Sun, they don't have nearly | enough gravity in themselves to be able to counter the | thermal forces taking them apart) so what you'd get is a | lot of very hot gases (mostly hydrogen) flying around. It's | no fun, especially given hydrogen likes to explosively | combine with oxygen in the air under the right conditions, | but there would be no radiation involved, and it won't be | able to "fuse" with anything else because it won't have | enough energy to initiate the fusion process (that why we | needed to compress and heat it up in the first place). So | if everything goes very wrong - which is not very likely, | but we're assuming the absolutely worst case scenario - we | will have an explosion but noting like fission reactor. The | containment is absolutely necessary - at least in current | fission reactors - to achieve more energy out than in - and | if it fails, the energy output will stop. This is one of | the reasons fusion reactors are supposed to be safer. | | There still could be some radioactive contamination | involved due to fusion causing neutrons to fly around, hit | the surrounding materials and turn them radioactive, and | these could be spread around by the explosion, but less | than in the fission case. | | Now you may ask how hydrogen bombs are so destructive then? | The big difference they use a regular nuke to ignite the | reaction. Unless somebody builds a fusion reactor inside an | exploding nuke, that's not the scenario we'll be dealing | with in the fusion reactor case. | prox wrote: | Thanks for explaining it so well, that gives a lot more | perspective. Some have replied fusion is still to | expensive to run, is that true? | smsm42 wrote: | Right now nobody has a functioning fusion reactor, so | nobody knows how expensive it would be to run one. | Hopefully, there would be some way to make it cost | reasonable money - since it has many advantages over | existing solutions - but I have no idea if it's feasible | with current technology. | UIUC_06 wrote: | Very well said, thanks. After you do 90% of the work, you | have to do the other 90%. | ncmncm wrote: | Or, in this case, the other 90000%. | | This result does not bring us any nearer to civil energy | production via fusion. | ivoras wrote: | Thanks for the great explanation! | | Would you mind answering a layman's question on where the | energy comes from in fusion: my understanding is that the | problem here is that energy has to be put in to overcome | electromagnetic repulsion between atom nuclei so that the | strong force can take over and combine them into a new | nuclei, releasing energy at that time. | | Is this interpretation correct-ish? | danans wrote: | Here is a video by Sabine Hossenfelder explaining exactly that: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY | Tuna-Fish wrote: | It's easy to trigger some fusion in a D-T mix. As in, an | enterprising high school student can do it on his tabletop with | parts mostly scavenged from tube televisions. | | The problem is that the fuel mass that undergoes fusion has a | lot of mechanisms for energy loss, which mean that you need to | continously apply a lot of energy into the system to keep it | going. | | "Ignition" refers to achieving conditions where the energy | output of fusion matches the energy loss from the hot spot. In | this situation, it is no longer necessary to feed in energy to | keep the reaction going, so long as there is sufficient fuel. | photochemsyn wrote: | I like how they don't even try to pretend that this is a route to | practical power generation, it's all about research into the | fundamental physics of fusion - which is a worthy goal in itself. | | > The record shot was a major scientific advance in fusion | research, which establishes that fusion ignition in the lab is | possible at NIF," said Omar Hurricane, chief scientist for LLNL's | inertial confinement fusion program. "Achieving the conditions | needed for ignition has been a long-standing goal for all | inertial confinement fusion research and opens access to a new | experimental regime where alpha-particle self-heating outstrips | all the cooling mechanisms in the fusion plasma." | citizenpaul wrote: | I feel like the pendulum has swung too far the other direction | these days. It used to be we'll have cold fusion in 20 years | which was hopelessly over optimistic. Nowdays its. We are | spending 10 years on a myopic proof of concept that has no | practical uses and never will. | seedless-sensat wrote: | The private fusion companies still have ambitious (and most | likely unrealistic) goals | AtlasBarfed wrote: | So did the Moller Air Car. | | Moller at least had a brief prototype that hovered. | | There are probably real scientists, engineers, and | approaches, but it's probably about fleecing dumb investors | at a fundamental level. | dcow wrote: | We're just biding our time until 2050, at which point we will | unlock the ability to build industrial scale fusion energy | plants. | planck01 wrote: | I would love that. But honestly, I would be surprised if | fusion energy will be economically feasible before 2100. If | ever. | dcow wrote: | According to SimCity, the year is 2050 on the dot. | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | Just watch out for any stray solar microwave beams in the | mean time. | jefftk wrote: | I'd bet on that. I'd give Commonwealth Fusion Systems | alone 40% in the next 20 years. | | More on recent fusion developments: | https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review- | the-f... | planck01 wrote: | I hope you win! I usually get my reality checks from | Sabine Hossenfelder, who a while back explained that all | these fusion claims are wildly optimistic. You can find | her video here: https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY | | I am no scientist, so it is hard for me to know if team | optimistic or team pessimistic is right. But even if it | is the latter, I think we should put more money and | research on it! | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | I maintain that we would be further along with fusion had we | not kneecapped fission into a regulatory abyss. | readthenotes1 wrote: | One of my elderly relatives commented last week that he has | been hearing that the new experimental results will promise | reliable fusion plants in less than a decade ... Since 1960 | | (He used to be one of those guys inside an ICBM silo during | the Cold war) | systemvoltage wrote: | > which is a worthy goal in itself. | | I'd like us to focus on practical power generation. It will be | the most defining aspect of future of US and largely the world. | Everything is tied to energy and if we can make energy cheap | enough so that its not worth metering; we'd secure the future | from literally any calamity (including CC). Even the shittiest | efficiency of carbon capture can be put to use when energy is | cheap. 4% efficiency? Cool. Entropy increase from residual heat | loss wouldn't make meaningful dent on the world's temperature. | It is the carbon that is the problem (greenhouse effect). | | We have an almost unlimited source of energy from nuclear + | solar. There are always going to be people and ideologies that | oppose technological progress and prevent humanity from | propelling forward. I belong to the camp where I'd want us to | become a Kardeshev Type 1 civilization. Fusion would be a | direct contributing factor for it. | dataflow wrote: | > we'd secure the future from literally any calamity | (including CC) | | What is CC here? Cosmic collapse? Credit cards? | | Edit: Ah, of course. Thanks. | daniel-cussen wrote: | You know as a matter of fact credit cards are not a wrong | answer, really. We only got to the point of 9 billion | humans on a tiny planet meant for a few million at best, | because the only way out of compound interest debt-- | synonymous with credit cards--is economic growth--usually | more humans. | | China saw it that way, in the time of Han Chin, the first | Chinese emperor. Wealth comes fundamentally from | _agriculture_ because then you can make more servants slash | slaves for the emperor, that 's literally what he called | them, then instead of emperor you have an Emperor, Emperor | of China. That's what the original historical sources say! | More food more people more servitude more wealth for the | man at the top of society. | | So credit cards are that. Uniformly crazy interest rates, | and shitty scams to jack up the rates just barely before | getting taken to court. Or a French Revolution, which they | know about and fear. Know the harm they do, the houses they | take, the homeless they make, the people they imprison | indirectly, the children they starve, they know. What's | it's name, FICO score, patio11 talked about them, they are | 100% certain you--anybody who reads this--is strictly | inferior to them. He says if you talk back to their claim | you are an inferior debtor who deserves a low credit score | they react like it's a shoe factory dealing with a talking | shoe. An object. A servant slash slave. | | Owes them money just because. Or because that debt was | inherited. They actually have all the machine learning | models and all the statistics you could possibly ask for | (generally they claim this is fraud detection, but it's | price discrimination too) to determine exactly how much--to | the thousandth of a percentage--they can fuck with people | with their usury--their theft--before people go bananas. | Usury means you gotta pay back the debt or be homeless. | Tolerate crimes in your gainst with no recourse. Any crime. | No recourse. In my case murder. No recourse. Cops won't | show up for you. | | Debt grows surprisingly fast. Just as surprisingly fast as | the equity in the home grows surprisingly slow. People | always feel cheated by their mortgage because _they did get | cheated by unforgivably incorrect math._ What does that | mean? Ignoring all the intermediate steps, more kids to | inherit the debt. | | And technically--and I can justify this mathematically and | in a court of law--even simultaneously--compound interest | is contradictory to the laws of physics. It would not work | out mathematically even if they did do the math correctly, | which they do not. It could work in an infinitely- | dimensional universe. If they did it correctly. But not in | a 3-dimensional universe. You can have, at absolute most, | cubic growth. Otherwise you end up with shitty debt. | Unforgivably incorrect math declaring you are a servant | slash slave. A letter demanding you make a choice: | servitude or tolerating crime against you. | | Shitty debt. | | Credit card debt. | | 9 billion humans. | | Climate change. | mrlonglong wrote: | Not really. A direct hit by a CME from the Sun would | probably seriously damage a fusion plant. Magnets would | need to be replaced along with a lot of electrical | equipment. | tommsy64 wrote: | Climate Catastrophe? | agar wrote: | Climate change | IntelMiner wrote: | Climate Change I assume | hyuijk wrote: | My understanding is that one big reason so much money was | invested in this lab is because the research has direct | applications to nuclear weapon design. It's a dual use lab so | to speak. The process they are studying is very similar to | what's happening in the core of a thermonuclear bomb. | | > 1978: This report reviews aspects of the military | applications of the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) program | at Sandia Laboratories | | https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6412035 | | > Today, research on inertial confinement fusion--the other | leading approach--remains largely under the control of US | national weapons labs. The military focus has had profound | impacts on the development of inertial fusion energy. | | https://thebulletin.org/2013/07/nuclear-weapons-the-death-of... | Pixelbrick wrote: | Better they keep a cadre of smart people who can do this | stuff than lose the institutional knowledge. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank | throwoutway wrote: | Maybe this is a dumb question: I thought all nuclear bombs | were fission, not fusion. How could fusion be at the center | of a fission bomb? | | I didn't even know fusion had a weapons research program | anonymousDan wrote: | Nope, the most powerful bombs use both - in effect they use | fission to perform fusion. Obviously the problem with this | for energy production is that it is not a very controlled | reaction. | smueller1234 wrote: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon | | The "hydrogen" in "hydrogen bomb" relates to fusion. In a | nutshell, these types of devices use a fission bomb to | create the environment (pressure/temperature) that causes | lighter atoms to undergo fusion, which significantly boosts | the explosive yield compared to a pure fission bomb. | donkarma wrote: | they have a fission primary stage to ignite the fusion | secondary stage | wiml wrote: | Usually if it's called an "atom bomb" or "A-bomb" it's pure | fission, and a nuclear bomb, thermonuclear bomb, or | hydrogen bomb is fission-fusion-fission. A fission bomb | compresses the hydrogen to cause it to fuse, and the extra | energy and neutrons from the hydrogen fusion cause a whole | lot of additional fission in the uranium tamper. For | details look up the "Teller-Ulam" design, wikipedia has | some good descriptions. | orlp wrote: | I'm curious what you think the hydrogen in a hydrogen bomb | would split into. | sweetheart wrote: | Sheesh, tough crowd. | cnasc wrote: | We actually got to fusion bombs pretty quickly, in the | 1950s. Presumably almost all practical nuclear weapons | since then are fission bombs | khuey wrote: | All nuclear bombs involve fission. Some (termed | "thermonuclear") involve fusion. A fission first stage is | detonated to ignite a (much higher yielding) fusion second | stage. Most bombs deployed today are thermonuclear simply | because it's the most sensible way to scale up the yield of | a weapon. | throwoutway wrote: | This makes sense, thank you | ncmncm wrote: | It is single use masquerading as dual use. | | The purpose is probably personnel related: employees on this | do not need a security clearance, so cost less. | pxhb wrote: | This is false, _almost_ all of those employees have a Q | clearance. You can search the job listings for keywords | like 'Wci' 'high energy density', etc to confirm. | | Part of the purpose is definitely personnel related though. | Part of the US nuclear deterrence is the projection of | having a large, highly skilled nuclear weapon related | workforce. | trhway wrote: | Those experiments and supercomputer modelling is what | allowed US to get sub-10kt nukes without actual testing. | Credible promise of responding with those small nukes | directly against Russian regime is what stopped Putin's | threat of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. | | Wrt. inertial confinement fusion productization I think | the delay is intentional (just look at Sandia z-machine | results from 20+ years ago and all the ways of tempering | and redirecting progress since then there) as such | schemes allow for fusion weapons without fission primary | which will completely break the non-proliferation regime. | throwoutway wrote: | > Credible promise of responding with those small nukes | directly against Russian regime is what stopped Putin's | threat of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. | | Link to credible reports where the US said they would | respond with nukes? AFAIK, this never happened and I paid | close attention | CyanBird wrote: | Correct, this has not happened and will *not* happen | Gene_Parmesan wrote: | I have no inside knowledge whatsoever but we can all rest | assured that each side is in a near constant back and | forth of implicit unstated "communication" about | capabilities and doctrine. | | Merely publishing a paper on a certain subtopic in the | fusion space can easily be interpreted as an implied | threat or threat response. | | Of course the US does have a stated doctrine of using | nukes only in response to nukes used against it or its | allies. It is enormously doubtful that the US would | trigger an end-of-days scenario in response to Russia | using tactical/low-yield nukes against a non-US-ally like | Ukraine, but the uncertainty is for sure purposefully | cultivated. | madaxe_again wrote: | The US had nukes substantially under 10kt long before | these experiments or the existence of supercomputers... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_devi | ce) | trhway wrote: | W-54 isn't here anymore. So instead US have tuned down | W-76 into 5-8kt. I.e. getting new capabilities without | testing (there are recent tuned down, though not that | low, versions of B61 too). And that is open information. | One can expect that classified would be at least a step | ahead, i.e. something like 1kt. Coupled with high | precision delivery and earth-penetration designs (that US | has been using across the range - from conventional to | B61) that makes for extremely effective deterrence as it | allows to take a out a dictator like Putin deep in his | underground bunker if he crosses the line, and other | strategic keypoints without initiating full scale war. | wedn3sday wrote: | Former LLNL employee here: | | You're partially correct on accident. It _is_ single use, | but not in the way you think. The NIF facility was built | for the express purpose of nuclear weapon design, and any | fusion science that comes out of it should be considered a | happy accident. I can assure you that very nearly 100% of | the people working at the NIF have Q level or higher | clearance. The costs are absolutely astronomical. | rcgorton wrote: | Kukumber wrote: | Another proof that innovation doesn't come from capitalism | | Capitalism will make sure the tech is locked down behind patents | ;) | imperial_march wrote: | Capitalism is why it was done in the first place, instead of | people waiting in lines outside stores. | wedn3sday wrote: | This whole comment chain is utter nonsense. Not only is the | research publicly available (so much for capitalism locking | knowledge behind patents) but the research was done at a | government funded lab (capitalism had nothing to do with | getting this done). Not a huge fan of capitalism myself, but | these comments literally make no sense. | voxl wrote: | Modern capitalism is effectively local optimization. Academic | research doesn't follow that same flow, so to claim | capitalism is responsible for academic progress is an | interesting claim. | Kukumber wrote: | Capitalism is why we still don't have it | | Capitalism is why we still burn coal and use gas | | Capitalism is why china is already ahead | | I can continue with many more examples :) | | They all waiting in line to get government funding | | Capitalism is why there is no chip fab in the US | | Intel is waiting in line for government funding | kortilla wrote: | > Capitalism is why china is already ahead | | Yes, adopting capitalism is why China got so far so fast. | | > Capitalism is why there is no chip fab in the US | | https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-breaks- | ground-20-bl... | anonuser123456 wrote: | In a free market, socialists could create a lot for profit | collective fusion power coop. Funny how that never happens. | arnaudsm wrote: | We should require every fusion breakthrough article to state Q in | the title | JohnHaugeland wrote: | q is more of the fan way to look at it than the engineer way to | look at it | | people throw it around like "you need q=1.35 to be economical" | but that's kind of nonsense | arnaudsm wrote: | What are the other relevant numbers to summarize the | progress? $/kWh? | tinco wrote: | No, that's just a different way of writing Q. There is not | a continuous gradient along which nuclear fusion research | progresses. It will have a negative $/kWh ratio until the | first commercial plant is built. Until then it's milestones | that show possibilities. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-14 23:00 UTC)