[HN Gopher] Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming
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Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming
Author : atlasunshrugged
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-11-13 18:27 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Helion_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29119180 - Nov
| 2021 (249 comments)
| Shadonototra wrote:
| Just for general information, YCombinator is an investor of
| that particular "new" company.
|
| Nuclear fusion isn't a new thing, many already established
| companies are working on it, making the headline and focus on
| this particular one is disingenuous, to say the least
|
| https://www.helionenergy.com/who-we-are/
| [deleted]
| gabrielblack wrote:
| I read then link to the other article explaining the new
| technologies developed by Helion that should permit commercially
| viable fusion reactors, there are no words about Q plasma or Q
| total:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY&t=5s
|
| so the affirmation that "Nuclear Fusion Is Close Enough to Start
| Dreaming" could be other speculation of the press not supported
| by facts. Obviously I hope to be wrong.
| imaginary_unit wrote:
| Well, at least this physicist has a completely different opinion
| on how far nuclear fusion is away:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
| gus_massa wrote:
| That video is about the ITER that is designed using the tokamak
| model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak
|
| The device proposed by Helion is very different. I think they
| are overoptimistic, but anyway the analysis of the video is not
| applicable.
| benreesman wrote:
| I'm an interested layperson at best, but I gather that we know
| how to build safe fission reactors now, and that the safe storage
| of spent (or "slightly used" as I've heard it called) fuel
| pellets is a much harder political problem than technical
| problem.
|
| Gorbachev once speculated that it was actually Chernobyl that
| brought down the USSR.
|
| I personally wonder if it's also why we're going to have a
| climate catastrophe.
| Animats wrote:
| What to do with spent fuel rods is more of a political problem
| than a technical one. Read up on Yucca Mountain.
|
| Current thinking is that the best approach to long term
| disposal is to find a cold hard-rock mountain where nothing has
| changed much in millions of years. Dig tunnels that are far
| above any possible flooding. Drill vertical holes in the
| tunnels. Package the nuclear waste in stainless steel thimbles,
| with the waste embedded in ceramic. Place thimbles in holes.
| After a few decades of nothing happening, fill in the tunnels.
|
| Sweden and Finland, which have lots of stable, isolated hard
| rock mountains, are working on this. So is China, which now has
| two vitrification plants for nuclear waste.
| tzs wrote:
| Why do the tunnels need to be above any possible flooding?
| With the waste contain the way you described it being
| submerged in a flood doesn't seem like it would cause
| problems.
| mgarfias wrote:
| Why don't we just end Carter's prohibition On reprocessing
| the spent fuel rods?
| bluecalm wrote:
| First question I have about it: wouldn't it be an attractive
| target for bombing/terrorist attacks or would it be rock
| solid enough to withstand those?
| The_Colonel wrote:
| If you have weapons able to blow up tens/hundreds of meter
| thick rock, then you have much more attractive targets with
| more "spectacular" results.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| Terrorists are never a problem in the real world.
|
| Eh, Americans.
| Eelongate wrote:
| The threat of terrorism is massively overblown across the
| board, not just with respect to nuclear waste. The means to
| make conventional explosives are widely available, yet
| outside of a handful of conflict zones it is rarely done.
| Americans can buy gunpowder at walmart, yet how many
| pipebomb attacks have you heard of? A handful, but not
| many. Not many considering the country has hundreds of
| millions of people with ready access to the means to make
| them.
|
| The incidence rate of people inclined to terrorism is
| vanishingly low. And when you start talking about plots
| that require numerous people to cooperate, rather than a
| single lonewolf nut, there is even less to worry about. The
| more people a plot requires, the less likely it is to
| actually happen. Coordinated attacks against nuclear power
| plants or waste disposal facilities are fantasy.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Lftr, no stupid spent rods. Online reprocessing, thorium fuel,
| 99% fuel use. No meltdown risk. No huge containment domes.
| Scale in size.
|
| Lftr can use old waste for fuel or breed yo usable fuel.
|
| Transport of spent fuel rods is a legitimate problem.
| Animats wrote:
| _I gather that we know how to build safe fission reactors now._
|
| One can hope. "Gen III" fission reactor construction is coming
| along, mostly in China. Sanmen Nuclear Power Station has two
| Gen III reactors, designed by what's left of Westinghouse.
| Future versions are being entirely designed in China.
|
| Most of the "small cheap reactor" concepts are arguments for
| why they don't need a containment vessel. That's probably not
| going to sell. Chernobyl wasn't supposed to need a containment
| vessel, and didn't have one. Fukushima didn't have a big enough
| one. Three Mile Island did have a good containment, which is
| why that meltdown was expensive, but didn't cause much trouble
| outside the plant.
| [deleted]
| wffurr wrote:
| "Too cheap to meter". How does this compare with 1950s futurism?
| It at least has a nod to climate change and carbon capture and
| fuel synthesis.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| "Too cheap to meter" == the investment does not pan out to the
| private sector. That's been the historical problem. No one
| wants to build a big fancy thing and thing run it at cost.
|
| The reason fission is going for prefab is not only volume
| lowering costs, but selling gizmos for a profit that the
| _buyer_ runs at cost does make sense.
|
| (There are some interesting vaguely Marxian dynamics with high
| tech with minicsule operating costs that should always be
| considered. That we all drive cars and not ride trains is
| similar. The car industry surely involves 3+ orders of
| magnitude more people per mass * distance transported)
| [deleted]
| platz wrote:
| > The nuclear fusion startup Helion, which announced last week
| that it has raised $500 million, says it has developed new
| technologies that may make nuclear fusion viable -- practically,
| economically and environmentally.
|
| This is the only actual news in the article. The rest is bog-
| standard speculation.
| [deleted]
| dwheeler wrote:
| "May" is pretty specious. Is there any evidence of something
| likely to work? I would love to see practical fusion, but I see
| no reason to believe it will exist soon. Someone has to figure
| out how to actually make it practical first.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| In magnetic confinement fusion, power density scales to the
| fourth power of the magnetic field strength. The only way to
| reasonably achieve the kind of magnetic fields needed without
| massive constant power draw is superconducting magnets. For a
| very long time, the best superconductors available limited
| the maximum field strength to ~ 5-6T. This limited the space
| of possible magnetic confinement reactors into basically
| ITER, or "big enough that you need a major multi-decade
| international collaboration to build it".
|
| Last decade, major discoveries were made in practical high-
| temperature superconductors. By 2017, you could commercially
| purchase superconducting tape that can do >8T, the state of
| the art has improved since, and keeps improving. All the
| constraints and limits on fusion that were known since the
| field began are changing now. Most importantly, with high-
| field magnets, the size of a theoretically functional net-
| energy fusion reactor comes way down, to what is achievably
| by a reasonably well funded startup. The whole field is open
| now, and all the different magnetic confinement fusion
| technologies that were tested and discarded over the first 60
| years of fusion research are now being re-evaluated in ligth
| of the new magnets that are available. That's why there are
| now like a dozen well-funded fusion startups.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Do you mean that ITER could be obsolete before even
| reaching a production phase ?
| neltnerb wrote:
| Absolutely, as is the case in any huge project, it takes
| long enough to build that at some point you have to
| freeze the design and technology keeps progressing. It's
| hard to predict which pieces of technology will mature on
| what timeline, and at some point you just have to start.
|
| That ITER doesn't use superconducting magnets to me means
| that it will definitely be "obsolete" in the sense of
| using the most modern technologies, but it's still going
| to do the job it was designed for.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Iter uses superconducting magnets. They are the best
| superconducting magnets that were available when the
| design was finalized in 1998. Modern ones are much
| better.
| Eelongate wrote:
| It already is, they're still using Nb-Sn superconductors
| for ITER. The whole project is a manifestation of the
| sunk costs fallacy.
| kortex wrote:
| Yes and no. Yes in that the technology will be stale and
| there will be far superior materials science,
| electronics, etc, by the time it is online.
|
| No, in that its principle purpose is fusion and plasma
| research. It'll still be able to do science.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Sounds like the story of deep learning once computing power
| cheapened.
| aetherson wrote:
| Note that seven years ago, Helion said they were three years
| away from energy positive fusion. Today, they say they're...
| Three years away from energy positive fusion.
| mandelken wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| Note it's an opinion piece published on bloomberg, not an
| actual bloomberg article.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Thanks, glad I didn't buy a subscription to Bloomberg for that.
| peter303 wrote:
| This sounds like 1950s claims of Fission being so cheap and clean
| that electricity would be almost free. Unanticipated
| externalities appeared in practice, resulting in high cost and
| pollution. Fusions heel may stray neutrons turnin reactor wall
| material highly radioactive.
| deegles wrote:
| Think of all the fusion powered direct air CO2 capture we could
| have <3
| laurent92 wrote:
| As usual, everything that is infinite meets another barrier in
| physics. Initial investment is the barrier for every energy
| plant. But I also imagine ourselves already using energy like
| it's cheap, trying to illuminate the moon with a big ad for
| Coca-Cola, "since we now have enough energy for it".
| 7373737373 wrote:
| I wonder how many capture plants and energy would be required
| to bring it back to a normal level.
| ericd wrote:
| Let's run the numbers. I believe Climeworks' Orca is the
| largest DAC plant right now, and they claim it'll capture
| 4000 tons/year. We currently emit something like 40
| gigatons/yr. (4*10^10)/(4*10^3) = 10^7 DAC plants. So let's
| say that DAC isn't a silver bullet :-) There are a whole
| portfolio of other carbon capture and sequestration
| technologies that'll be needed to get us carbon-negative
| enough to avoid going over +2 degrees C.
|
| Of course, by the time we have spare fusion power, that'll
| also have replaced much of those 40 gigatons, and Orca is
| certainly not the upper limit in terms of scale.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| And we've emitted 2 teratons of excess CO2 that needs to be
| dealt with as well.
| mikewarot wrote:
| >Think of all the fusion powered direct air CO2 capture we
| could have <3
|
| Oh, trees? ;-)
| Smaug123 wrote:
| This popped up on HN reasonably recently
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/so-you-want-
| to... - basically "it's not necessarily as simple as that,
| where are you getting the water from?".
| junga wrote:
| Is this still an issue when fusion power is available?
| Smaug123 wrote:
| No, but the parent to my comment implied trees as being
| the source of that fusion power. Nobody's going to be
| able to use _trees_ to power the desalination plants that
| allow us to irrigate the land so that we can grow those
| trees.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| People have been growing coppice forests with salt
| tolerant trees such as willow for ages. No need to
| desalinate, the trees do it themselves. You can also use
| algae, which can grow in salt water.
|
| The fusion energy that is powering the system is that of
| our sun. No perpetual motion machine required, our planet
| is being bathed in outside energy.
| [deleted]
| Eelongate wrote:
| For a tree to be an effective long-term sequestered of
| carbon, you have to ensure the tree never burns or decays.
| Obviously this can be done; you can sink it in anaerobic
| water or bury it deep in a mineshaft... but just letting
| forests grow wild doesn't get the job done anymore. Not since
| the end of the Carboniferous era. New forests don't make new
| coal deposits, that's a thing of the past.
|
| Trees are still great though, for innumerable other reasons.
| gus_massa wrote:
| When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
|
| The first landmark is to make coal plants unprofitable. Once
| all (most of) the coal and oil plants are closed, it would be
| interesting to use the spare electricity for carbon capture.
| Otherwise you are burning coal to power the carbon capture
| facility.
| civilized wrote:
| I don't know, we might need technology to save us from our
| seemingly bottomless stupidity. Maybe in 2050, Robo-Joe
| Manchin will secure a permanent government slush fund for
| Greater West Virginia coal mining and we'll have to stick a
| fusion-powered CO2 capture facility right next to where they
| burn it.
| wittycardio wrote:
| Don't disagree but we are already at the stage where we
| have the technology to solve climate change , what we have
| is a problem of status quo-ism
| civilized wrote:
| I just don't know if we should firmly say "we have enough
| technology so now the only problem is how to make humans
| amenable to radical change". It's frustrating but maybe
| "more technology" is a more practical path that can still
| get us to the same place.
| legulere wrote:
| It's cool that cheap money means that there's investment in stuff
| like fusion. I just hope when they inevitably go bankrupt when
| the money dries up the knowledge does not just get lost.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| By cheap money you mean the rich have become so obscenely
| wealthy they can afford to spunk their money on moonshot ideas
| like interfering in elections or building rockets.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Nuclear Fusion has been 20 years away for 70 years.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| I was hopeful for a bit, then I saw some stuff like this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U and realized
| nothing has changed. It's the same old shit: reporters being
| willfully ignorant, business people misleading the public, and
| on and on. Wake me up when you have plans for a full-scale,
| fully-functional fusion plant that can actually be built in an
| economically feasible way. Until then, I don't care.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| The headline says "close enough to _start dreaming_ "
|
| I don't get it. If you're not into following the tech
| development, only interested in the final stage, why would
| you even open this and bother commenting?
| willis936 wrote:
| It really makes you (not) think.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Just like electric cars...
|
| Oh, wow, now we're actually driving electric cars!
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| We had electric cars 130 years ago.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Exactly. Just like we have fusion for decades.
|
| As fusion isn't practical, electric cars were not practical
| mass mean of transportation until very recently.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Electric cars have always been doable, they've just been
| more expensive than fossile fuel alternative which is
| ostensibly free energy. The situations are not at all
| comparable. Nuclear Fusion has still barely been
| demonstrated as a proof-of-concept.
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