[HN Gopher] More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months th...
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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.
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