[HN Gopher] HH70, the first high-temperature superconducting Tok...
___________________________________________________________________
HH70, the first high-temperature superconducting Tokamak achieves
first plasma
Author : zer0tonin
Score : 135 points
Date : 2024-06-22 20:01 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.energysingularity.cn)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.energysingularity.cn)
| ab5tract wrote:
| And here's why it's irrelevant and inconsequential...
| mnau wrote:
| Please do go on? I won't say irrelevant, but when compared to
| SPARC project, it seems kind of underpowered?
|
| HH70: major radius: 0.75 m, magnetic field 0.6 T SPARK: major
| radius: 1.85 m, magnetic field 12.2 T
|
| HH70 has the advantage of actually existing and working, but to
| my completely layman eyes, it doesn't seem that using high
| temperature superconducting magnets brought expected increase
| in parameters.
| K0balt wrote:
| I think this is a reference to the normal pattern in the
| tortuously slow development of practical fusion power.
| Despite all of the significant milestones, fusion remains
| about 20 years down the road, for the last 50 years.
| mnau wrote:
| Considering the funding for past 50 years has been _below_
| "fusion never" level, I think they made a great progress.
|
| See fusion budget vs expected timelines:
| https://imgur.com/u-s-historical-fusion-budget-
| vs-1976-erda-...
| K0balt wrote:
| Wow, I never imagined that fusion funding was that
| paltry. Considering the insane things that have to be
| built to make it work, it is very impressive what has
| actually gotten done.
| mnau wrote:
| To be fair, that's budget for magnetic confinement
| fusion. US has always been more interested in inertial
| fusion (i.e. shoot it with lasers). Likely because of
| synergy with military application of lasers.
|
| The thing it, inertial confinement seems to be a dead end
| and has been for quite a while. At least rest of the
| world has decided to fund magnetic confinement (plus few
| oddballs with z-pinch), so I assume it's more promising
| approach.
| ilaksh wrote:
| It seems that the investment in fusion is incredibly tiny
| relative to the potential payoff and compared to other
| trivial or even destructive pursuits?
| dang wrote:
| If you have a substantive point, please make it thoughtfully;
| if not, please don't comment until you do.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| convolvatron wrote:
| "HH70 has independent intellectual property rights, with a
| localization rate exceeding 96%."
|
| what...does that mean?
| datameta wrote:
| Not relying on licenced IP? 96% in-house? That's my guess but
| I'm just a dude on HN.
|
| Also, this is kinda like SpaceX getting a Falcon 9 to orbit the
| first time but in fusion land.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| It's a bit difficult to parse the analogy since you're
| comparing something that has never been done (and is a
| notoriously difficult technology to crack) to something that
| had been done by many others, many times. But, even so, and
| despite the lack of specific information about the
| test/achievement, I have a feeling you're over selling this
| by quite a bit. If you want to compare to spacex, I'd say
| it's more like the first time they demonstrated that they
| could control a re-entering booster stage with grid fins--a
| notable step to booster reuse.
| margalabargala wrote:
| The analogy is apt. Many, many, many fusion reactors have
| achieved first plasma. This is comparable to a rocket
| achieving orbit.
|
| This company's ultimate goal is commercial fusion power,
| which has never been done. SpaceX's goal is landing people
| on Mars, which has never been done. The milestones being
| discussed are just stepping stones.
| multjoy wrote:
| That chinese -> english machine translation still has some way
| to go.
| yorwba wrote:
| Chinese version is here: https://energysingularity.cn/%E6%B4%
| AA%E8%8D%9270%E6%89%98%E...
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| No, localization rate is the right translation, you just need
| to understand the context. They've been on a mad dash to
| domestically source techonology parts and intellectual
| property, ever since all the sanctions. Foreign suppliers are
| seen as unreliable now.
| mnau wrote:
| That means when they inevitably appear on sanction list of US
| government, they won't have to close the shop.
|
| It's a Chinese project.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Though that depends on what the remaining 4% is. Curious
| about that. (E.g., for an aircraft the engine being local is
| more important than the seats being made locally.)
| jetrink wrote:
| I would guess that it means that 96% of the components come
| from within China. Self-sufficiency is important in China right
| now, and it's doubtful that 'localization' refers to just the
| company itself.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Dumb question, but is the basic idea that you need to harvest
| more heat energy from the plasma than is needed to maintain the
| magnetic field?
|
| Also, very dumb question but the plasma means that fusion is
| actually occuring, right?
|
| And does anyone know how this one collects the heat and converts
| it into electricity or whatever?
|
| Or any other fusion device, how does it actually collect or
| output energy from the fusion. And how much do they make, and how
| far off is that from matching the input power?
|
| Maybe it was some protons escaping from the plasma and hearing
| something external or something.
| virtue3 wrote:
| I dont believe magnetic containment would contain heat, so just
| run a liquid through the reactor and use it to heat up water to
| make steam and drive a turbine. Nuclear plants do this.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Well it's a torus right? So you put a turbine in the middle?
| I don't think I've heard that explanation before.
|
| Or maybe it can go in the outside. I guess it's like, you
| need a huge amount of electricity to make the magnetic field
| strong enough, right? So the question is, how do you collect
| enough heat without melting key components?
| baq wrote:
| No unless you want your turbine to be neutron activated.
| (You don't.)
|
| You would pump water through the reactor and use a heat
| exchanger to a secondary water loop which powers the
| turbine. Maybe you can do without the secondary loop
| altogether, not sure; this ITER document suggests only one
| loop, but it's super vague:
| https://www.iter.org/sci/MakingitWork
| mnau wrote:
| > the plasma means that fusion is actually occuring
|
| No. Plasma simply means a specific state of a matter. E.g. the
| fluorescent lamps (the long tubular lights that flicker on
| start) have a plasma inside when it produces light
| ilaksh wrote:
| Your reply implies that in this specific case there is no
| fusion. I know that plasma can occur without it, but this
| discussion is about the specific machine.
| jfengel wrote:
| In the case of this machine it implies that they got plasma
| by fusion. Which means the fusion is working. It's a
| milestone, albeit one of many.
| johnbcoughlin wrote:
| You don't ever create plasma via fusion, fusion occurs in
| plasma that has reached a certain temperature and density
| threshold.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You make the plasma before any fusion can happen.
|
| Just there being plasma there means nothing, you inject it
| on the machine already that way.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| 1. Yes, sorta, but it's more than just the magnetic field.
| You're also heating the fuel, so you have to offset that too.
| Plus there are pumps which circulate coolant to carry heat away
| from the plasma and towards a turbine, so you have to offset
| their power. Probably a few other things as well.
|
| 2. I don't think plasma == fusion. You can get plasma just by
| heating a gas beyond a certain point. Plasma cutters, for
| instance, operate on super heated air, no fusion anywhere
| nearby.
|
| 3. I think the wall of the reaction chamber heats up because
| they're being bombarded by radiation.
|
| Most of the radiation incident on the reaction chamber walls is
| infrared, radiated from the hot plasma, but there are also more
| exotic things like stray neutrons also crash into the sides of
| the thing. These cause the metal to deteriorate over time (and
| become somewhat hazardous), but they also they impart
| additional heat energy.
|
| So you have to have two cooling systems, one to keep the
| magnets actually cold so they they remain superconducting, and
| another to keep the housing below the point where it melts.
| It's this second one that let's you pull heat away from the hot
| metal donut that is a tokomak and use it to make electricity.
|
| Between the magnet coolant and the chamber coolant and the
| reacting plasma you have some of the steepest thermal gradients
| anywhere in the known universe.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Thanks..right I know about plasma in general, I just assumed
| in this case it was caused by the fusion. Maybe not. But they
| have fusion right? Just not recovering any/enough energy to
| make up for power requirements.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| The article is light on details. It doesn't mention an
| operating temperature or Q factor.
|
| I would hazard to guess that no - they did not achieve
| fusion. They achieved plasma which is a precursor to
| fusion. Controlled plasma, at a high enough temperature, is
| an environment in which fusion can occur. All this article
| says is they created controlled plasma. Crucially, they did
| so with high temperature magnets which is fairly novel.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor You
| might also be interested in reading this. Q factor is
| what's used to discuss whether a fusion device is
| generating net positive energy.
| pfdietz wrote:
| No tokamak, even one intended to achieve fusion, would
| first be operated on D or DT. They'd first extensively
| test it with ordinary hydrogen.
| johnbcoughlin wrote:
| I doubt they have achieved any fusion reactions. They don't
| state any numbers on density or temperature so it's
| impossible to know. But in general plasma is never "caused
| by" fusion. Creating a plasma is quite easy compared to
| getting it hot and dense enough to fuse.
| cyberax wrote:
| They likely can have some fusion reactions (if they use
| fusible fuel, like D-D). Fusion is not that hard to
| achieve, you can do that on a table-top scale (Farnsworth
| Fusion).
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Dumb question, but is the basic idea that you need to harvest
| more heat energy from the plasma than is needed to maintain the
| magnetic field?
|
| No, since creating and maintaining the magnetic field in
| principle consumes no energy. All the energy put into a
| superconducting magnet (1/2 L I^2) can be recovered.
|
| What is needed from a physics point of view is for fusion
| energy production to comfortably exceed the energy put into the
| _plasma_. And there 's also a whole host of engineering and
| economic issues beyond that.
|
| Energy is recovered from DT fusion by stopping the neutrons in
| a blanket, converting their energy to heat, and taking that
| heat away in a fluid.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > plasma means that fusion is actually occuring, rigth?
|
| As mentioned plasma is just another state of matter[1], where a
| significant portion of the electrons and ions a separate rather
| than combined as atoms.
|
| Fusion happens when you overcome the electrostatic repulsion of
| nuclei, bringing them close enough together so they can
| fuse[2]. Typically, in reactors like this, that means you
| confine (compress) a sufficient amount of material ("fuel") to
| a small volume and heat it up sufficiently. Both are needed to
| make it possible for the nuclei to come close enough to fuse.
| The heat required is so great the material _will_ turn into a
| plasma.
|
| > And does anyone know how this one collects the heat and
| converts it into electricity or whatever?
|
| This depends somewhat on reactor design, including fuel used.
| However they're all fancy steam generators in the end, so not
| unlike a traditional nuclear power plant in that regard.
|
| From what I know, typically the "surplus heat" of a fusion
| reactor comes in the form of energetic neutron radiation[3].
| This radiation is ionizing and as such shielding is required,
| and this shielding will heat up as it slows down those
| energetic neutrons.
|
| In the ARC reactor[4] for example, a liquid shielding "blanket"
| surrounds the fusion chamber. As the neutrons heats up the
| liquid, the liquid gets pumped through a heat exchanger to
| produce steam to run a steam turbine.
|
| edit: I found this talk[5] from one of the folks behind ARC to
| be very illuminating in how fusion power works and the
| challenges involved. It's from 2017, but the basics haven't
| changed.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Requirements
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_radiation
|
| [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor
|
| [5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk
| baq wrote:
| If this isn't a Sputnik and/or an Apollo 11-level wake up call to
| the western leaders I don't know what has any chance of working.
| wredue wrote:
| With currently half the western population pushing a
| significant anti-science agenda (even greater than half if you
| consider that there's also not insignificant anti-science
| ideals in various left wing groups as well, albeit not usually
| to the point of ripping kids out of education), that seems like
| a nearly impossible proposition unless there's a significant
| political awakening.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. The original
| question is political in nature and polls run by both major
| sides of the political spectrum in the USA support your
| argument.
| robocat wrote:
| Anything political or feeding the flames is not encouraged
| on HN. Especially if it appears bipartisan, personally. And
| many of us are in other countries so the whole subject is
| usually annoying.
| bequanna wrote:
| Why?
|
| Assuming this is real and not exaggerated propaganda, does
| China think IP theft is a one way street?
| baq wrote:
| > Why?
|
| IP theft is a thing and yet China can't make Nvidia GPUs and
| I can bet $10 it won't be able to in 2030. I don't see why
| the west could 'just' copy a Chinese energy-positive tokamak
| even if it had all the plans. (Yes I know this one isn't
| that.)
|
| The wake up call is for the west to be able to do that at the
| very least.
| kibwen wrote:
| Fusion is never, ever going to be economical. The fuel is
| basically free, which is great. Meanwhile, the reactors
| themselves are arguably the most complex and expensive
| machines ever built, and they are essentially disposable
| due to the nature of fusion reactions.
|
| There's a reason that the wise engineers who built our only
| working fusion reactor put it about 1 AU away from us. Much
| cheaper and easier to just catch the energy it sends us.
| tensor wrote:
| To be fair the US also can't make Nvidia GPUs and neither
| can anyone outside of Taiwan. Agreed that IP isn't
| everything but the chip shortage during covid sure as hell
| WAS a wake up call to the west.
|
| Now they are finding that actually its going to take a
| decade to reproduce what the chip fabs in Taiwan have built
| even _with_ their help.
| to11mtm wrote:
| Given the impact the world has already seen because we let
| two companies tie up LiFePO4, after we let a few companies
| tie up other battery patents for hybrids before that...
|
| TBH I would judge the world if they just went ahead and
| 'stole' it vs RAND licensing...
|
| At the same time, I can see it being one hell of a
| hypothetical 'carrot' for lots of things, and of the current
| major powers, China is the only one with enough overall
| (political+humanpower+etc) _will_ (at this time, anyway) to
| possibly make Fusion happen sooner than ITER can.
|
| Strategically speaking, it would 'make sense' for them to
| pursue... Would the European union force NL's hand, to make
| ASML sell machines for whatever comes after EUV, in exchange
| for Fusion tech? Or all sorts of other fun things for the
| right Q factor?
|
| Things become murkier.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I think "western leaders" should be more worried about another
| thing: Constituents(?) exhibiting totally uncritical acceptance
| of a literal corporate press-release.
| baq wrote:
| I don't have a problem with that if it results in funding
| fusion research properly for once
| jfengel wrote:
| I don't understand. They built a thing. We also have similar
| things, don't we?
|
| Wouldn't the Sputnik moment require actual energy generation?
| It doesn't sound like they're any closer than we are.
| londons_explore wrote:
| When talking about the price of energy produced by fusion,
| various estimates put it at 'probably about the same as nuclear
| fission, maybe a bit higher, but it won't have the proliferation
| risk/contamination risk of fission'.
|
| However, because the tech was '50 years away', it never made
| sense for private sector investors, so most investment was from
| governments.
|
| However, with solar and wind now far cheaper than nuclear due to
| no need for massive capital investments in concrete and steel
| upfront many years before production starts, does it even make
| sense for governments to go down this route?
| sofixa wrote:
| > However, with solar and wind now far cheaper than nuclear due
| to no need for massive capital investments in concrete and
| steel upfront many years before production starts, does it even
| make sense for governments to go down this route?
|
| Cheaper per watts generated, which aren't constant. Cheaper for
| a constant output? Reliable to actually power a full grid
| through downturns such as storms, winters, etc? No, not really.
| There are exactly zero currently available widely usable grid
| scale (being able to have enough capacity to power the grid for
| up to days at a time) solutions. Pumped up hydro is the only
| one coming close, but it's expensive and it requires specific
| geography. Just saying "batteries" or "supply and demand by
| load shedding" doesn't magically solve this problem.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| > with solar and wind now far cheaper than nuclear ... does it
| even make sense for governments to go down this route?
|
| If this works without the sun shining then, yes, it makes
| sense. It is always good to have multiple sources of energy
| even if only as a form of redundancy. Our world _depends_ on
| power.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > If this works without the sun shining
|
| HVDC lines are already mature enough that the cheapest route
| is to just wrap the Earth with them to form a planetary grid.
|
| The sun always shines _somewhere_.
| fooker wrote:
| If the earth was a uniform sphere without oceans and
| mountains, sure.
| molszanski wrote:
| One can't power Tokyo (metaphorical) with sunwind
| cm2187 wrote:
| A bit tiring to see the price of solar and wind being compared
| to nuclear. Nuclear can produce electricity on demand. Solar
| and wind cannot. You need to pair them with either some
| humongous energy storage facilities (and then you need to also
| over-provision), or some other on-demand source of electricity.
| Once you factored those costs, then you are not comparing
| apples and oranges.
| baq wrote:
| Nuclear really isn't anywhere close to 'on demand' at least
| if you consider unit economics. It really wants to be just
| 'on' instead.
| krasin wrote:
| > However, with solar and wind now far cheaper than nuclear due
| to no need for massive capital investments in concrete and
| steel upfront many years before production starts, does it even
| make sense for governments to go down this route?
|
| If we would like to stop polluting the air, the future of
| maritime shipping is nuclear (fusion or fission). China
| understands that, and invests in R&D necessary to make it
| happen.
|
| Plus, on ships, there's no competition with solar or wind. And
| nuclear will actually be quite cheaper than bunker oil, if
| executed correctly.
| mdorazio wrote:
| I don't really buy this argument. Maritime alternatives like
| hydrogen fuel cells and biodiesel seem like far more
| realistic plays than installing nuclear reactors on thousands
| of vessels.
| Angostura wrote:
| Not to mention modern sail
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| what modern sail
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Fuel cells don't scale well to multiple megawatts when
| compared with combustion technologies. Hydrogen is tricky
| to store. Most likely option is ammonia in steam or gas
| turbines or large slow ICEs; next most likely option is
| liquid hydrogen in the same engines.
|
| Biofuels is also severely limited in supply and will in the
| future most likely be reserved for aviation, which is a lot
| more constrained than shipping etc. when it comes to which
| fuel options can be retrofitted on existing systems.
| cyberax wrote:
| Ammonia is simply nonsense. It's not going to happen for
| a variety of reasons. Liquid hydrogen is an even bigger
| nonsense.
|
| Realistic fuels that are being used now: 1. Methanol. 2.
| Liquid methane.
| screcth wrote:
| How difficult would it be to use nuclear power to make
| synthetic hydrocarbons?
| credit_guy wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Proliferation will always be a risk with nuclear reactors.
| We will never have nuclear powered civilian ships, as long
| as there exist pirates out there. Sure, Russia operates
| nuclear powered ice-breakers, but there are no pirates in
| the Arctic Ocean, plus, for Russia the distinction between
| civilian and military is not all that clear.
|
| As for hydrogen, I think ships are the killer app. High
| pressure tanks or cryogenic tanks benefit from the square-
| cube law. If you want them to be economical, they need to
| be really large. They will never make sense for cars, or
| even trucks, but they can make sense for trains, and
| certainly for ships.
| pcl wrote:
| As a lay person, it seems like trains are pretty much
| always suited to electricity. Adding a power line
| alongside the existing right of way seems like it's a
| pretty straightforward option. What are the conditions in
| which on-board power storage is preferable?
| to11mtm wrote:
| > Proliferation will always be a risk with nuclear
| reactors.
|
| Wasn't one of the promises of thorium reactors a much
| lower risk of non-proliferation? (Here's a fun question,
| can one make a pebble bed reactor design with pebbles
| designed such that if a ship sank, could a special
| magnetic sphere of a 'correct' size pull in the pebbles
| but keep a safe distance? IDK but trying to think outside
| the box here...)
|
| I think it's worth remembering that for the sake of many
| ships, we do not need the power-density of an SXX or even
| an AXX _per-se_.
|
| > As for hydrogen, I think ships are the killer app. High
| pressure tanks or cryogenic tanks benefit from the
| square-cube law. If you want them to be economical, they
| need to be really large. They will never make sense for
| cars, or even trucks, but they can make sense for trains,
| and certainly for ships.
|
| The bigger the tank, the more rigorous the inspection has
| to be to avoid risks due to hydrogen embrittlement.
|
| I'll admit, I'm -less- worried about that property on a
| train than a ship, but on a ship I think we'd first need
| to see good evidence we can maintain things of such size
| on ground safely.
| to11mtm wrote:
| ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?
|
| We gotta remember what a lot of the Marine world really
| looks like, under the covers.
|
| That is, lots of them will use HFO aka Residual Fuel oil or
| 'bunker fuel'.
|
| Switching to Biodiesel? Probably the 'cheapest' of the
| options, not sure what if any implications exist from the
| switch (lots of ships will stop burning HFO in ports and
| switch to more common diesel/etc, however not sure if there
| is a difference in some engines with doing so long term)
|
| Hydrogen Fuel cells are likely as much of a 'refit' from a
| labor standpoint as switching over to a nuclear reactor;
| Also the general issues of hydrogen embrittelment and the
| like have not yet been solved AFAIK especially for the
| volumes needed for large ships, also not sure if there have
| been a lot of studies as to whether the hydrogen
| embrittlement problem could lead to larger structural
| integrity issues on such a vessel.
|
| Nuclear, OTOH, has had at least a few 'non-military' ships
| (mostly nuclear icebreakers) with good success.
|
| The current 'whitewashing' strategy of cruise lines is LNG,
| for whatever -that- is worth...
|
| Edit: finger slipped and hit post too early, so a bit was
| added, apologies!
| ok_dad wrote:
| I'll eat my hat if cargo ships go nuclear. Even the US Navy
| stopped using nuclear for all but carriers. Shipboard nuclear
| is on another level to regular power plants for many reasons.
| kibwen wrote:
| This. If you could make ship-sized nuclear reactors easy
| and affordable, the US navy would be knocking down your
| door. There's no lack of DoD funding, no lack of operator
| expertise, and no nimbyism from dolphins, so the fact that
| the USN doesn't have a reactor in every single Arleigh
| Burke is purely because it's not economical.
| coolspot wrote:
| > I'll eat my hat if cargo ships go nuclear.
|
| Would you like some ketchup or ranch sauce?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput
| bonzini wrote:
| Does that count as "going nuclear"? Four have been built,
| and as of now they've all been decommissioned.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Why is it impossible to use wind and solar for ships? I mean,
| most of our history, ships used wind.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I suspect we're quite close to ships switching to wind
| simply because it's cheaper.
|
| Huge kilometer square kites would be pretty cheap compared
| to the fuel budget of a ship, and clever routing and
| control systems can probably mean they reduce fuel
| consumption 80% for the same travel speed.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > The kite in question has been named Seawing, and may
| help ships reduce their fuel emissions by between 10 and
| 40 percent
|
| Not KM but 822m seems pretty close. I think you're
| grossly overestimating the benefit from the kite.
| Seating's current website says:
|
| > A 1000m2 sail surface to harness the power of the wind
| and tow ships. Based on modelling and preliminary land-
| based tests, Airseas estimates that the Seawing system
| can reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions
| by an average of 20%.
|
| I don't think better routing will increase that to 80%
| even if you combine it with next gen tech that knows wave
| patterns and when a slot will be available to minimize
| speed and energy loss.
|
| We need a path to remove fossil fuels from ships (&
| planes). There's also industrial applications that need
| high heat that solar can't really accomplish. Finally,
| solar & wind need insane battery capacity which when
| included pushes the economics strongly back in favor of
| fission and fusion.
| m463 wrote:
| I think it makes a lot of sense. You could probably seal the
| engine compartment for decades at a time.
|
| I read somewhere that running on bunker fuel was the
| equivalent pollution of 50m cars.
|
| https://sustainability.stackexchange.com/questions/10757/doe.
| ..
|
| I think it was russia? that had nuclear powered ice breakers.
| Made sense as the constant power demands must be phenomenal.
| energy123 wrote:
| Why not hydrogen?
| mnau wrote:
| > does it even make sense for governments to go down this
| route?
|
| For past 50 years, we had ["fusion never" level of
| funding](https://imgur.com/u-s-historical-fusion-budget-
| vs-1976-erda-...). Because of climate change, there is a sleuth
| of nuclear startups.
|
| I wouldn't hold my breath for any of the startups. None of them
| (at least non-state backed ones) seem to have realistic way to
| the goal.
|
| I remember reading a post from one of startups after rejection
| from NRC. It read like a blog post after being dumped by a
| girlfriend written at 3 AM, drunk.
|
| On the other hand, it's not like nuclear is going away, e.g.
| Uganda and Kenya are planning on nuclear reactors. Maybe we
| should have a better option to offer than the light water
| reactors.
| beambot wrote:
| No love for Commonwealth Fusion? They seem to have solid
| backers, technologists & approach.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I've been following them since they were giving promising
| lectures at MIT and I absolutely think they have the most
| solid approach! Tokamaks are well understood, they
| supposedly have the same plasma physics as ITER which has
| been heavily scrutinized and supported by work at JET, and
| their concept is simple - Tokamak but with very high field
| superconducting magnets using technology that wasn't
| available when ITER was conceived, and apparently higher
| field strengths mean a smaller reactor for the same power
| gains. As a lay person the story is simple and that's good!
| Then they demonstrated their magnets and got $2B in funding
| and now they're deep in the construction phase for SPARC.
|
| I encourage anyone curious to look up videos on SPARC on
| YouTube. It's very encouraging! It seems honestly very
| reasonable that they will see sustained net energy gain for
| their entire power plant before 2030 (tho SPARC is still a
| demonstrator not designed for continuous service, so
| "sustained" means like one minute).
|
| Here's some videos:
|
| 8 years ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/KkpqA8yG9T4
|
| 2 years ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/KkpqA8yG9T4
|
| Latest update posted yesterday:
|
| https://youtu.be/w3Giq6NuPYs
| AlexErrant wrote:
| As context, they're aiming for first plasma in 2026
|
| https://www.axios.com/pro/climate-
| deals/2024/05/01/commonwea...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Wonderful, thanks for the context! I knew they originally
| had plans for mid-decade, but I wasn't sure what their
| current timeline was.
| mnau wrote:
| I have a lot of love for CF. But when I talked to someone
| who actually knows about the stuff, the business plan of
| all fusion startups is basically to sell know-how/IP, once
| a state actor decides to go at it.
|
| That's a good plan, but ultimately, it's going to be a
| state backed (that's why I have "non-state backed ones"
| qualifier). CF is going to have a reactor with fusion with
| Q>1, but commercial product?
|
| China is working on MSR. It has employs something like 700
| Phds and 700 support personel for over a decade and has
| only recently made a research reactor. That's what I
| consider a serious effort (and that's for far simpler
| technology).
|
| In my opinion, people underestimate how brutally hard it is
| to make new technology to work reliably. E.g. Superphenix,
| sodium cooled reactor had a capacity factor of 7.9% over a
| decade of production. That was after they had a demo
| reactor Phoenix with capacity factor 65%.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| We don't have enough production of basic materials like steel
| to scale solar and (especially) wind to cover our entire energy
| needs, regardless of energy storage. Fission and fusion will
| become inevitable in a decade or two.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Why do we have to make solar panel infrastructure (grilles,
| consoles etc.) from steel? I'm sure more common materials can
| be used.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| For general power delivery to the grid I think renewables make
| a whole lot of sense. But for specialty industrial processes
| that require very large levels of constant power, I think
| nuclear fusion is very interesting. I worry about environmental
| effects of mass industrialization but at the same time, I
| wonder what we could achieve if we had 100x more power
| available for this or that industrial process. Would it be
| helpful in decarbonizing steel refining or other metallurgical
| work?
|
| I think if we develop the technology we will find a use for it
| and be grateful that we have it, even if it's hard to predict
| today what those uses will be.
| cyberax wrote:
| > However, with solar and wind now far cheaper than nuclear
|
| They are not cheaper. They produce very low-quality
| electricity. If you want them to provide any supply guarantees,
| their price skyrockets.
| adrian_b wrote:
| It will have the same proliferation risks.
|
| A fusion reactor is an extremely intense source of neutrons.
| The neutrons can be used to transmute elements, e.g. to
| transmute cheap natural uranium or depleted uranium into
| plutonium 239, which can be separated easily (in comparison
| with enriching uranium) and it can be used to make nuclear
| bombs.
|
| Besides producing plutonium for nuclear bombs, it is also easy
| to use a fusion reactor to produce any kind of dangerous
| radioactive isotopes that could be used in terrorist
| activities.
|
| So no, a fusion reactor that uses the fusion reactions that are
| possible today will not be any safer than a fission reactor,
| from the point of view of the proliferation risks.
| ufmace wrote:
| AFAIK it's not at all clear that solar and wind are really
| cheaper when making up a substantial part of a large-scale
| power grid that meets our current expectations of 100%
| consistent and reliable power everywhere, no matter what.
|
| The unreliability of solar and wind requires either hot
| (constantly running and spinning) non-renewable backups or
| grid-scale power storage (has never been done so ? on cost to
| build and upkeep) to guarantee reliable voltage and AC
| frequency. The cost of that should be factored into determine
| the true cost of these power sources.
|
| The stability of the grid is dependent on the collective
| physical inertia of the many tens of thousands of huge and
| heavy spinning turbine-generator sets that make up the majority
| of the current generating capacity. Most current solar power
| sources rely on grid-following inverters, which are not stable
| without a grid stabilized by a preponderance of large spinning
| turbines. There has been some work on grid-forming inverters
| that are less impacted by this, but AFAIK there aren't
| currently any that can replicate the grid stability provided by
| that physical inertia.
|
| I'm less certain about wind turbines, but I think they have
| this problem too. I don't think they're controllable enough to
| be mechanically synced to the grid frequency.
|
| I'd love to be wrong about this, please prove me so if you can!
| But I don't often hear these points addressed, and we're not
| helping anything by ignoring the complexity of the real world.
| fungi wrote:
| Battery backed renewable energy with grid upgrades is cheaper
| today and getting cheaper.
|
| https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-
| space/energy/Gen...
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > grid... grid-scale power storage... stability of the grid
| ... grid-following inverter ... grid stabilized by ...
|
| The problem isnt solar, or wind, or storage ... the problem
| is the grid. Were running on a system that was never designed
| to do what were asking of it, and yes its going to be a
| number of problems to solve. All of those are jobs, economic
| action and improvements to reliability and quality across the
| board.
|
| > I don't think they're controllable enough to be
| mechanically synced to the grid frequency.
|
| Google, there are a number of ways this gets addressed.
|
| > There has been some work on grid-forming inverters
|
| Yes, we know how, and the race to build them is on... this
| isnt a hard problem it's just a problem.
|
| > grid-scale power storage (has never been done so ?
|
| Already deployed in a few places with battery systems (hati,
| Australia both have them. Possibly Hawaii too). We're doing
| quite a bit of this. Again a quick google will give you a sea
| of sources.
| epistasis wrote:
| Inverters can easily replace physical inertia, it just
| requires technology developed within the past 30 years, and
| most grid folks haven't thought about new technology for far
| longer than that.
|
| As more and more intermittent renewables get pushed onto
| grids, they become more reliable. Most outages are from
| single points of failure from large generators or
| transmission. Dealing with highly distributed renewables
| means that grid ops get used to acting fast, and there's
| greater redundancy instead of so many SPOF. Kind of how cloud
| services got reliable by expecting there to be failure and
| designing it into the system.
|
| Storage is advancing super quickly, is super fast to deploy,
| and can replace a lot of more expensive things like
| transmission upgrades.
|
| We have all the tech to replace fossil fuels on the grid with
| the above. The only question is the final cost. It's likely
| to be far far lower than using existing "hard" energy,
| because by the time we can deploy 50 TWhs of storage, it will
| have gotten so cheap. We don't know when costs will
| stabilize, but they have a loooong distance to fall.
|
| And we have all sorts of other technologies that will make
| all this far cheaper: enhanced geothermal, enhanced
| geothermal with temporal storage based on injection pressure
| and release, iron air batteries, flow batteries, thermal
| storage for industrial process heat, etc. etc. etc.
|
| For every area of the energy economy, there are two to three
| solutions that look promising. Fusion and fission look
| promising for none. That's not to say that they can't have
| some serious innovation and start dropping their costs, but
| nobody currently operating in the field has demonstrated a
| path. _Yet._
| mlsu wrote:
| the cost of solar/wind depends on how much solar/wind is
| actually deployed.
|
| 1kWh of solar delivered midday, when there is 20% penetration?
| easy peasy.
|
| 1kWh of solar delivered at 2AM, when there is 65% penetration?
| much much more difficult.
|
| These types of price comparisons are always unfair, always
| apples and oranges, because they always compare a 2AM kWh of
| nuclear with a midday kWh of solar, and of course solar wins
| that comparison.
| fellowmartian wrote:
| Depends on whether we want to reach a qualitatively different
| (and better) level of civilization, or at best stay at the
| current level (but in a carbon-neutral way).
| themgt wrote:
| Insane factoid (post from Feb 27, 2022) ... this was funded by a
| Chinese gaming company and built in 2 years for relative
| pennies??:
|
| _MiHoYo, the developer of Genshin Impact, has led a $65m funding
| round in Shanghai based Energy Singularity which is a company
| involved in nuclear fusion technology, tokamak devices and
| operational control systems._
|
| _The company plans to build its own Tokamak device by 2024._
|
| https://x.com/ZhugeEX/status/1497957735337443331
| beefnugs wrote:
| The old saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely
| clearly has parallels in all other fields: Absolute money
| corrupts vision and focus.
|
| Tesla: "We did it. We have become profitable and created a real
| product people want. Now we can laser focus on making it better
| and more reliable and cheaper for everyone!" "haha nope! lets
| put it all into crypto and humanoid robots and impregnating as
| many CEOs as possible, let that bet ride bayyybeeee!!!!"
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Also Tesla: drive the price of EVs down to parity with ICE
| cars while delivering a superior product, built out the
| nations charging infrastructure (and got everybody to switch
| to NACS), and oh yeah: made self driving available to
| everybody for next to nothing.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| "Self driving"
| 2four2 wrote:
| > for next to nothing
|
| Their cars are certainly out of my price range. Plus,
| openpilot has been doing it for free for years.
| mappu wrote:
| I don't think this is a corruption of focus - MiHoYo has had
| "Tech Otakus Save The World" as their slogan long before
| Genshin made its first billion dollars.
| theogravity wrote:
| I've always wondered what they meant with that slogan, but
| now it makes sense.
| CDSlice wrote:
| Not to mention that they can make back $65M in just a few
| weeks from one of their two mobile games and they are about
| to launch a new one. This is basically pennies to them.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| I just see some great market politics from Chinese leadrs
| chewbacha wrote:
| Unrelated to what you are citing, but I believe a "factoid" is
| something that looks like a fact but is not. Like how a
| planetoid looks like a planet but isn't one.
|
| I only realized this myself decades after using the term
| factoid due to pages in highlights for kids.
| cwillu wrote:
| "A factoid is either an invented or assumed statement
| presented as a fact, or a true but brief or trivial item of
| news or information."
| throw101010 wrote:
| _Literally_ a useless word on its own now that the
| definition evolved this way... many such cases
| unfortunately.
| Scarblac wrote:
| The other meaning is a small or trivial bit of (true)
| information.
| chewbacha wrote:
| Quite that factoid. How do we know which it is? ;p
|
| Guess it goes both ways... which is kinda worse.
| arijun wrote:
| I thought the second definition came about from continual
| misunderstanding of the word, like how literally no longer
| means literally.
| wumeow wrote:
| Even more reason to dislike Genshin Impact.
| upmind wrote:
| For someone who doesn't know much about physics, what
| significance does this have?
| physicistphil wrote:
| Tokamak energy did this back in 2015[1,2] (the article is wrong)
|
| [1]: https://tokamakenergy.com/about-us/#trackrecord
|
| [2]:
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.201...
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