[HN Gopher] Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plas...
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Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma duration
Author : mpweiher
Score : 206 points
Date : 2025-02-18 19:26 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cea.fr)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cea.fr)
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| "1,337 seconds." Nice.
| dgan wrote:
| Erm. Why?
| leca wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Classic MegaTokyo strip[1] for illustration purposes.
|
| [1]: https://megatokyo.com/strip/9
| akkad33 wrote:
| Why
| leca wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet
| number6 wrote:
| WEST beat EAST... what a bunch of nerds :)
| temp0826 wrote:
| WEST side is the BEST side
| HPsquared wrote:
| Next milestone is 69 minutes. No, not 60.
| Tagbert wrote:
| First they need to achieve 42 minutes sustained
| sroussey wrote:
| Full 420 minutes.
| muscomposter wrote:
| but 69 is lame because it merely is 3*13
|
| I don't care about sex jokes. 42 (or 72) OTOH are cool
| because both are surrounded by twin primes!!! how cool is
| that? (semiprime coolness is significantly smaller than twin
| prime coolness)
| wussboy wrote:
| I think you're doing it wrong
| affenape wrote:
| Would be really NICE.
| muscomposter wrote:
| this just gets my conspiracy nutjob of a mind flying.
|
| how about the NORTH versus SOUTH team contests? ugh
| kamma4434 wrote:
| To eat the plasma? Hope they are missing an H
| microtherion wrote:
| You have to imagine the press release being read in a French
| accent.
| moffkalast wrote:
| If you lean your ear to the reactor you can faintly hear a "Om
| nom nom nom nom"
| MisterTea wrote:
| It's pretty tasty actually though you can only taste it once
| :-/
| poincaredisk wrote:
| >1,337 seconds: that was how long WEST, a tokamak run from the
| CEA Cadarache site in southern France and one of the EUROfusion
| consortium medium size
|
| Is this a joke and reference to internet culture or a
| coincidence? Probably the latter, but i found it entertaining.
| battleof-fusion wrote:
| The last record was 1066
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Would it make any sense for the Chinese to choose such a
| date?
| Y_Y wrote:
| It was the year of Halley's Comet.
| pinoy420 wrote:
| They turned it off specifically then. Just like the previous
| one at 1066. We used to do stuff like this in our labs as a
| joke. Or try and stop timers exactly on :00
| westurner wrote:
| > _1337 seconds_
|
| AFAIU, no existing tokamaks can handle sustained plasma for any
| significant period of time because they'll burn down.
|
| Did this destroy the facility?
|
| What duration of sustained fusion plasma can tokamaks like EAST,
| WEST, and ITER withstand? What will need to change for continuous
| fusion energy to be net gained from a tokamak or a stellerator
| fusion reactor?
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| If this destroyed the facility that would be the headline this
| news article.... WEST highest is 22 minutes (it's in the title)
| and you could google EAST and ITER but the title tells you it
| is less than 22 minutes. WEST is a testing ground for ITER. The
| fact that you can have sustained fusion for only 22 minutes is
| the biggest problem since you need to boil water continuously
| because all power sources rely on taking cold water and making
| it warm constantly so that it makes a turbine move.
| westurner wrote:
| To rephrase the question: what is the limit to the duration
| of sustained inertial confinement fusion plasma in the EAST,
| WEST, and ITER tokamaks, and why is the limit that amount of
| time?
|
| Don't those materials melt if exposed to temperatures hotter
| than the sun for sufficient or excessive periods of time?
|
| For what sustained plasma duration will EAST, WEST, and ITER
| need to be redesigned? 1 hour, 24 hours?
| Y_Y wrote:
| EAST, WEST, URNER
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| The magnets in the device make the plasma be in a doughnut
| like shape to prevent it from touching the rest and it has
| active cooling, the parts that are around the plasma are
| made out of tungsten to dissipate heat. The sustained
| plasma duration would have to be turned on for as long as a
| traditional power generation device like a fission reactor
| or an oil / coal power station.
| metalman wrote:
| there is destroyed and then there is a smoking hole in the
| side of the planet:) but I think it fair to say, that after
| 22 min running, that there is no way that it can be turned
| back on later kind of thing, fairly sure its a pwhew!,
| lookatdat!, almost lost plasma containment.... keep in mind
| that they are trying to replicate the conditions found inside
| a star with some magnets and stuff, sure its ferociously
| engineered stuff but not at all like the stuff that could
| exist inside a star so all in all a rather audacious
| endevour, and I wish them luck with it
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| The system is not breakeven and the plasma was contained
| for 22 minutes so the situation would be the plasma was
| contained until it ran out of fuel. It is made out of
| tungsten for heat dissipation, has active cooling, has
| magnetic confinement with superconductors to prevent the
| system from destroying itself.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEST_(formerly_Tore_Supra)
| westurner wrote:
| Fusion energy gain factor:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor :
|
| > _A fusion energy gain factor, usually expressed with
| the symbol Q, is the ratio of fusion power produced in a
| nuclear fusion reactor to the power required to maintain
| the plasma in steady state_
| westurner wrote:
| > _all power sources rely on taking cold water and making it
| warm constantly so that it makes a turbine move._
|
| PV (photovoltaic), TPV (thermopohotovoltaic), and thin film
| and other _solid-state thermoelectric_ (TE) approaches do not
| rely upon corrosive water turning a turbine.
|
| Turbine blades can be made of materials that are more
| resistant to corrosion.
|
| On turbine efficiency:
|
| "How the gas turbine conquered the electric power industry"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=38314774
|
| It looks like the GE 7HA gas/hydrogen turbine is still the
| most efficient turbine?
| https://gasturbineworld.com/ge-7ha-03-gas-turbine/ :
|
| > _Higher efficiency: 43.3% in simple cycle and up to 64% in
| combined cycle,_
|
| Steam turbines aren't as efficient as gas turbines FWIU.
|
| /? which nuclear reactors do not have a steam turbine:
|
| "How can nuclear reactors work without steam?" [in space] htt
| ps://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7ojhr8/how_can_...
| :
|
| > 5% efficient; _you usually get less than 5% of the thermal
| energy converted into electricity_
|
| (International space law prohibits putting nuclear reactors
| in space without specific international approval, which is
| considered for e.g. deep space probes like Voyager; though
| the sun is exempt.)
|
| Rankine cycle (steam)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_cycle
|
| Thermoelectric effect:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect :
|
| > _The term "thermoelectric effect" encompasses three
| separately identified effects: the Seebeck effect
| (temperature differences cause electromotive forces), the
| Peltier effect (thermocouples create temperature
| differences), and the Thomson effect (the Seebeck coefficient
| varies with temperature)._
|
| "Thermophotovoltaic efficiency of 40%"
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04473-y
|
| Multi-junction PV cells are not limited by the Shockley-
| Queisser limit, but are limited by current production
| methods.
|
| Multi-junction solar cells:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-
| junction_solar_cell#Mult...
|
| Which existing thermoelectric or thermopohotovoltaic
| approaches work with nuclear fusion levels of heat
| (infrared)?
| westurner wrote:
| > _Multi-junction PV cells are not limited by the Shockley-
| Queisser limit, but are limited by current production
| methods._
|
| Such as multilayer nanolithography, which _nanoimprint_
| lithography 10Xs;
| https://arstechnica.com/reviews/2024/01/canon-plans-to-
| disru...
|
| Perhaps multilayer junction PV and TPV cells could be cost-
| effectively manufactured with nanoimprint lithography.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Okay so I meant to say the simplest way is to heat water in
| this situation. But there are alternatives here https://en.
| wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power?wprov=sfti1#Tripl...
| westurner wrote:
| I wouldn't have looked this up otherwise.
|
| Maybe solar energy storage makes sense for storing the
| energy from fusion reactor stars, too.
|
| There's also MOST: Molecular Solar Thermal Energy
| Storage, which stores _solar_ energy as chemical energy
| for up to 18 years with a _" specially designed molecule
| of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen that changes shape when
| it comes into contact with sunlight."_
|
| "Chip-scale solar thermal electrical power generation"
| (2022) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2022.100789
| ianburrell wrote:
| There is no danger of destroying the facility. The problem is
| keeping the plasma going. Even with self-sustaining fusion, the
| plasma doesn't have that much energy, it is really hot but low
| density.
|
| The duration is because plasma is heated by rising current, and
| that hits limit after some period of time. With self-sustaining
| fusion, heating shouldn't be needed after the initial pulse.
| RecentlyThawed wrote:
| 1337 seconds... nice
| llm_nerd wrote:
| For people more aware of the fusion industry, what is it that
| stopped the plasma at 22 minutes (or lower times in alternate
| tests)? Did they just stop injecting power to maintain the heat
| as they achieved their benchmark?
|
| Is this something where it's on the precipice and small tweaks
| bridges from 22 minutes to basically indefinitely?
| willis936 wrote:
| Tokamaks need the central solenoid to have a current ramp, so
| at some point you run out of voltage. You can turn that way
| down, but you get less plasma performance. You're traditionally
| limited by heat rejection capabilities of the vacuum vessel.
|
| These are science machines to learn about plasma and increase
| performance of future machines. A real reactor involves a lot
| of engineering to handle the heat rejection problem (and turn
| it into a revenue stream if you're clever). In terms of the
| pulsed nature: not really a problem if you keep the duty cycle
| high enough and maintain sufficient buffers in your coolant to
| keep the turbines happily turning away.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Does that mean it's impossible to have steady-state
| operation? (And are stellarators different here?)
| sounds wrote:
| The current ramp in the central solenoid is used to set the
| plasma rotation direction. Theoretically this is more like
| Alternating Current, since there is not a fundamental
| reason the central solenoid couldn't ramp back down (and
| then proceed to ramp up in the opposite polarization). The
| existing plasma would need to be cooled and removed first,
| or some similar mechanism of stabilizing the torus again in
| the opposite direction.
|
| I look at it as a large optimization problem at this point.
| Each part of the machine is workable but not yet
| sufficiently optimized to achieve profitable operation.
| topspin wrote:
| I learned recently that another limit to plasma duration is
| contamination. As fusion occurs and high energy particles
| that escape magnetic confinement blast the toroid wall, ions
| of metal get mixed into the plasma and degrade performance.
|
| I've seen photos of what the inside of experimental tokamaks
| look like after many cycles. Metal is eroded away and
| deposited around the chamber in interesting patterns.
| Unfortunately a image search isn't surfacing the images I
| have in mind.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| nice to see the competition between the east and west as this
| records was broken just a few weeks back
|
| https://physicsworld.com/a/chinas-experimental-advanced-supe...
| rozap wrote:
| I had no idea that Commonwealth fusion was already well into
| their construction of a grid connected plant. Apparently it might
| finally be happening?
|
| I'm not sure how this works, how are they confident enough that
| they can make it produce net power?
| sebsebmc wrote:
| The location they have that's "well into construction" is
| SPARC, which is not intended to be a net power production
| facility. It will host their net gain demonstrator that they
| intend to have first plasma in next year and target a net gain
| demonstration in 2027.
|
| ARC which they announced siting for and is intended to be their
| first grid-attached net power provider only just had the
| location selected so I don't believe its got much construction
| going on yet. The goal for that plant to be producing power is
| "early 2030s".
| legitster wrote:
| This is pretty cool, but it's a good reminder that commercially
| viable fusion electricity still remains a looooong way off.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| We don't know what innovation will bring or when. The important
| thing is trying and the direction of travel.
| pinoy420 wrote:
| No it's pointless doing it because some guy on HN said it's a
| long way off and therefore you are not allowed to be excited
| or enthusiastic about it.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| What's pointless for anyone who cares about fusion is
| commenting on it from the peanut gallery (i.e., any form of
| social media) rather than participating in R&D in any way
| whatsoever. The same goes for online outrage:
| https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10095997
|
| This entire site is nothing more than a sales and marketing
| tool and otherwise exists to waste peoples' time.
| kergonath wrote:
| > What's pointless for anyone who cares about fusion is
| commenting on it from the peanut gallery (i.e., any form
| of social media) rather than participating in R&D in any
| way whatsoever.
|
| Some of us do both :)
| pinoy420 wrote:
| Beautiful irony in getting ratioed for this post.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| What's funny is that AI has been failing to be achieved for
| much longer than fusion energy yet so many here are
| convinced we're on the cusp of an AI apocalypse.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I have more faith in fusion power in 20 years than anyone
| claiming AGI is coming in the exact same timeframe.
| JackFr wrote:
| The thing is, after repeatedly getting excited about
| commercial fusion power for the past sixty years, it's
| tough to maintain enthusiasm.
|
| For me I worry it's like the search for the northwest
| passage. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage).
| Explorers spent about 400 years searching for something
| that they knew just had to be there, but when they finally
| did it (1957), it really wasn't important anymore.
| sophacles wrote:
| The Northwest Passage is important now tho. The short
| path from most of Eurasia to North America goes through
| the Arctic. Ice caps are diminishing/going away. The US
| wants Greenland. All of these are related.
| kergonath wrote:
| > The thing is, after repeatedly getting excited about
| commercial fusion power for the past sixty years, it's
| tough to maintain enthusiasm.
|
| It's very easy if you're even a tiny bit interested in
| the scientific aspects. Since we started we've had
| several generations of superconductors, huge advances in
| our understanding of materials and plasma physics (a bit
| niche but still very cool).
|
| ITER itself is fascinating if you're into large-scale
| engineering and planning. If you are into this and not
| interested in ITER, I would recommend having another
| look.
|
| > Explorers spent about 400 years searching for something
| that they knew just had to be there, but when they
| finally did it (1957), it really wasn't important
| anymore.
|
| Yes, it's a risk and it might well end up that way.
| Still, many discoveries have already been made along the
| way, and it is impossible to predict its success or
| failure without actually trying to do it.
| floxy wrote:
| Does anyone have a top 5 issues list of things that are
| holding up fusion progress? Like there are basic material
| science issues that still need work to bring costs down, so
| that critical materials don't cost too much? Or there is
| still some theoretical plasma physics that we're still
| working out the details on? Or magnetic confinement
| simulations are still too crude, and we need 100x on
| computing power. Or whatever.
| Yizahi wrote:
| If I understand correctly, the Top 1 and 2, 3, 4, 5 etc.
| issue is how to make that plasma do actual work. So far the
| designs which boast Q>1 or are close enough, all produce
| plasma in short burst and no one has invented a way to make
| that burst generate electricity somehow. And tokamak design
| has clearer path to generating electricity but have
| problems in reaching stable Q>1 at all. This is all very
| amateurish understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong.
| DennisP wrote:
| Series of short bursts, which heat a neutron-absorbing
| fluid. That part is relatively straightforward.
|
| Helion is an exception, since they have a different fuel
| which gives them a way to extract electricity directly.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Why is that the correct interpretation? It seems like another
| would be: "This is a ~33% improvement over a record set only
| three seeks ago. Innovation is rapidly accelerating to a point
| where plasma can be contained indefinitely."
| darkwater wrote:
| And we are on the verge of AGI any week now. And Full Self
| Driving.
| legitster wrote:
| > Nevertheless, given the infrastructure needed to produce
| this energy on a large scale, it is unlikely that fusion
| technology will make a significant contribution to achieving
| net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. For this, several
| technological sticking points need to be overcome, and the
| economic feasibility of this form of energy production must
| still be demonstrated.
|
| It's very cool, but the article itself paints a long time
| line. Indefinite containment is just one part of the puzzle.
| cubefox wrote:
| Commercially viable likely also means: cost competitive with
| nuclear fission. Which might well _never_ happen, since the
| reactor designs for fusion are orders of magnitude more complex
| (and therefore more expensive).
|
| They also need a lot of ignition energy which requires a
| powerful separate power source, which limits where the fusion
| reactor can be built.
|
| Moreover, there is the issue of the reactor core being degraded
| by the heavy neutron radiation which is produced by the fusion
| reaction. So the chamber has to be replaced regularly. Which
| may also be quite expensive.
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| Does the commercial viability change when one considers
| regulatory constraints on building new fission plants? People
| may be more inclined to allow fusion reactors than fission
| reactors, since the former doesn't require uranium. (I'm sure
| there are dangerous failure modes for fusion, like there are
| for everything else, but Chernobyl continues to haunt the
| nuclear industry in the popular imagination.)
| legitster wrote:
| My understanding as well is that fusion could take care of
| base load, but it can't be scaled up or down based on grid
| demand to the same degree that fission reactors can. So
| fusion and renewables alone would not be capable of a carbon-
| free future grid.
| floxy wrote:
| >the issue of the reactor core being degraded by the heavy
| neutron radiation which is produced by the fusion reaction.
|
| There are some reactor designs that use aneutronic fusion,
| which eliminate this particular issue.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| CFS is building their demo reactor that should achieve Q>1 and
| are already building their first commercial plant:
| https://blog.cfs.energy/cfs-will-build-its-first-arc-fusion-...
|
| Barring some kind of engineering failures and delays they seem
| on track to have things ready in the early 2030s.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Related?
|
| Nuclear fusion: New record set at Chinese reactor EAST
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42917662 03-feb-2025
|
| China's artificial sun burns for 1000 secs, creates record in
| fusion research https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42854306
| 28-jan-2025
| HPsquared wrote:
| I wonder how much of an effect this kind of truly international
| (not in the same 'bloc') competition will have on budgets and
| speed of progress. Cold war tech race, etc.
|
| It should be a good time to be an engineer.
| belter wrote:
| Still 50 years away...
| belter wrote:
| Ok this was a terse comment, but so is a downvote. Please
| explain why is not 50 years away from first real industrial
| use. I am waiting....
|
| https://youtu.be/RbZ-XYy0k10
| Gud wrote:
| https://news.mit.edu/2024/commonwealth-fusion-systems-
| unveil...
|
| So according to the industry leaders, we will have the
| first 400MW plant within 10 years.
| andriesm wrote:
| How can they build something commercial/grid-scale when
| not a single research-level reactor truly generates net
| energy out, and none can do it anywhere near continously
| enough to be of any practical use?
|
| This news is either based on misleading the public, or I
| am about to be updated with where Fusion is?
| epistasis wrote:
| What makes them industry leaders? Do they have a
| prototype? Can they get Q>1, much less >5 or similar for
| what will be needed to break even on all the rest of the
| inefficiencies?
|
| If they don't have a prototype, and are going straight to
| plans for a 400MW "commercial" plant, why should we
| believe this is possible? What evidence is there that
| these plans for a massive breakthrough ten years from now
| will work out?
|
| This looks, walks, and talks like a ploy to get in on AI
| energy demand hype. It may not be, but it has all those
| features, and not many other features.
| gpm wrote:
| > What makes them industry leaders?
|
| They have a plausible relatively well understood path to
| fusion, have credibility with their background (coming
| out of fusion research at MIT), and have raised something
| like 2 billion dollars in funding.
|
| > Can they get Q>1, much less >5 or similar for what will
| be needed to break even on all the rest of the
| inefficiencies
|
| They think so
|
| > and are going straight to plans for a 400MW
| "commercial" plant
|
| They aren't. They're currently developing "SPARC", a Q>1
| demonstration plant targeting 2027. The 400 MW commercial
| plant, ARC, is a follow on design targeting 2030s.
|
| > This looks, walks, and talks like a ploy to get in on
| AI energy demand hype
|
| They predate the AI boom by a lot. The project started in
| 2018. They had a $1.8 billion dollar funding round in
| 2021.
|
| The basic concept is "hey look, someone figured out how
| to build better superconductors. What if we took what
| ITER is trying to do, but used modern super conductors to
| make it smaller and actually achievable". I'm not saying
| I think they're certain to succeed, but I don't think
| they're a scam and I think it's very reasonable to
| include them amongst the group of "industry leaders"
| dark-star wrote:
| our physics teacher at school (late 90s) already joked that
| "usable fusion power is only 30 years away, for 30 years in a
| row now"
| adfm wrote:
| From the announcement, "1,337 seconds: that was how long WEST,
| a tokamak run from the CEA Cadarache site in southern France
| and one of the EUROfusion consortium medium size Tokamak
| facilities, was able to maintain a plasma for on 12 February.
| This was a 25% improvement on the previous record time achieved
| with EAST, in China, a few weeks previously."
|
| 1,337-second burn.
| theultdev wrote:
| how many more seconds did they push it to hit 133t xD
| adfm wrote:
| Considering it's fusion we're talking about, 1,337 seconds
| is about as arbitrary as 1,000 seconds. On a 24-hour clock,
| 13:37 is 1:37pm. 137 is the fine-structure constant or a.
| Who knows what they're actually capable of. A second more
| at this point would be pointless.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Lots of leet scientists there, in all seriousness. CEA is my
| alma mater, though I worked on quantum computing, not fusion.
| typon wrote:
| Imagine if the world's engineering talent was focused on this
| rather than making AI to generate slop?
| cdirkx wrote:
| As a secondary effect it kind of is; the general assumption
| still is that the slop-generating AI will need a lot of power
| to train, so there is surprisingly a lot more private
| investment into fusion and fission innovation in recent years.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Well, AI also has something else for it : at this point, no
| one is expecting any ROI soon, but they all imagine that it's
| going to be huuuuge, so the "expected" (as in, "wished for")
| ROI might as well be infinite.
|
| As soon as AI investors start demanding dividends, then the
| ROI of investing in AI will be compared to the ROI of
| investing in electricity production "for production sake".
|
| Even if we shut down chatgpt, people who still switch light
| on.
|
| If we only keep enough fusion reactors to run LLM inferences,
| but no one can afford lights, well...
| krystofee wrote:
| Maybe the AI trained by the best engineers will help other
| people get into physics and then study nuclear fusion.
| mhandley wrote:
| There's a good chance this is not an either/or question, but
| that AI will get us to viable fusion power much earlier. For
| example:
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/23/doe_fusion_ai/
|
| https://openai.com/index/strengthening-americas-ai-leadershi...
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Why would comp sci majors be working on plasma? Prob want
| physicists working on that stuff.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I do enjoy sharing this kind of news with all the fusion haters
| online. Fusion tech is legitimately cracking away on their
| "perpetually X-years away" stigma. That perpetual barrier can
| very reasonably be viewed as a normal technology barrier now.
| sightbroke wrote:
| At the risk of coming off as a nay-sayer, let's say engineering
| hurtles related to fusion power generation is overcome. How is
| the presumably high upfront capital costs going to compare with
| the ROI?
|
| That is, it would seem likely that fusion power would be costly
| to build. It would also seem apparent that if it were to fulfil
| its promise then the power it generates is sold at or less than
| the current amount. That would then seem to imply a lengthily
| time to make a return on the initial investment. Or am I
| missing something else with this equation?
| jl6 wrote:
| Even if fusion is an expensive power source, it may still be
| desirable in areas which aren't well suited to wind or solar.
| ponty_rick wrote:
| If we figure it out, it might end up being cheaper than
| fission eventually.
| epistasis wrote:
| Compared to fission? It's still quite unclear that fusion
| will provide improvements over fission.
| colechristensen wrote:
| People won't be afraid of fusion, fusion plants can't be
| used to make bombs, fusion plants could maybe explode,
| but they won't poison the nearby land (or the whole
| planet) for decades-eons.
| jahnu wrote:
| I wouldn't bet on a sane response to it. People are
| afraid of 5G, vaccines, and even masks.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Man I was doing ok this afternoon, why did you have to go
| poke a stick in people's totally rational responses to
| respiratory PPE?
| elcritch wrote:
| IMHO, dislike of masks is built into us as a social
| species that place significant value on facial
| expressions. Makes sense from an evolutionary game theory
| perspective for societies to discourage them.
|
| Easy to find research showing the detrimental effects of
| masks on communication, etc:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10321351/
| gpm wrote:
| Without any of the meltdown concerns a fusion powerplant
| is a _lot_ simpler to actually build than a fission
| plant. It has a small fraction of the security,
| reliability, regulatory, etc concerns (not none, just way
| way less). Unless it 's so marginal that it's barely
| producing electricity I'd be pretty surprised to find out
| we had Q>1 fusion and yet it couldn't out compete fission
| anywhere fission is practical.
| beeflet wrote:
| I think that it will depend on economies of scale.
| epistasis wrote:
| That's astounding, I've never heard anybody claim that
| the reactors would be _simpler_ before! Do you have any
| estimates of anybody working on the problem that thinks
| that?
|
| Every schemer I have ever seen is quite a bit more
| complex than a fission reactor. Often, designs will
| depend on materials that do not yet exist.
|
| That said there is a tremendous variety of techniques
| that fit under the umbrella term of "fusion," so I'm
| hoping to learn something more.
| elcritch wrote:
| Not simpler in terms of technology, but simpler in terms
| of deployment, regulation, and security. Those are the
| majority of costs in fission power plants.
| epistasis wrote:
| The majority of the cost in fission is in the massive
| construction build, change orders, logistics, massive
| concrete pours, welding, etc.
|
| I've looked a lot into this in terms of how to get a
| project like Georgia's Vogtle to have cost less, or
| Olkioluoto in Finland, or Flamanville 3 in France. Big
| complex construction projects are expensive, and it's not
| clear at all to me that fusion would be simpler or
| smaller, or escape the rest of Baumol's cost disease that
| has been plaguing fission in highly developed economies.
| elcritch wrote:
| That'd be interesting to learn more about. What I've seen
| always leans toward regulation driving costs.
|
| Though I guess some of that infrastructure could be
| overbuilt due to excessive regulation.
|
| Also much of the concrete and steel is needed for the
| containment domes. Fusion power likely wouldn't require
| nearly as much protection. Perhaps just a fairly standard
| industrial building.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| I would guess the preventative maintenance over the
| lifetime of a fission reactor exceeds the initial build
| costs.
| 00N8 wrote:
| Modern fission designs mitigate meltdown concerns well
| enough that I'm not sure the safety & security around a
| fusion plant would actually be any better/cheaper,
| although public sentiment may be enough of an advantage.
| Tritium & neutron activated metals are dangerous enough
| to require keeping the traditional nuclear plant
| safeguards IMO. As far as proliferation concerns go, I
| don't see any reason you couldn't breed plutonium in the
| neutron flux of a fusion reactor, & the tritium is
| clearly viable for boosted warheads.
| gpm wrote:
| Modern fission designs _plausibly_ mitigate meltdown
| concerns well enough...
|
| To move that "plausibly" into "actually" you have to have
| very careful design review by regulators. Very careful
| review of construction to make sure what is constructed
| is what was designed. And so on and so forth. It's a lot
| of friction that skyrockets costs. Legitimately. People
| inevitably attempt to cut corners, and there's no way to
| make sure they aren't on the safety parts without
| checking. Actual currently regulatory costs seem to bear
| out the difference between these, with SMR people
| spending large amounts of money to convince regulators
| they didn't screw up, vs Helion fusion being "regulated
| like a hospital".
|
| I'm not saying fusion has _no_ proliferation concerns.
| But it 's the difference between "low grade nuclear
| waste, or a very high tech very advanced program to
| weaponize a working reactor" and "even a broken reactor
| can be strapped to some explosives to make a dirty bomb".
| I can't say I'm very aware of how much proliferation
| concerns drive costs.
|
| Public sentiment also helps.
| colechristensen wrote:
| There is a certain amount of "who cares about the cost" when
| it comes to fusion power. Nations will want to build them to
| lower or eliminate reliance on foreign energy, to address
| climate change concerns, and as a backup for renewables, and
| for other non-economic reasons. Many things that governments
| will want to fund that have nothing to do with directly "how
| much does the electricity cost?" or "when can we expect a
| return on investment?"
|
| And the first generation will be expensive. That's how all
| new technology is.
| sroussey wrote:
| The non-national-state investors care about the cost and
| roi.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > return on the initial investment.
|
| It's not only initial investment. Half of the fusion fuel is
| tritium, which is one of the most expensive substances on
| Earth (a google search finds that the price of tritium is
| about $30k per gram [1]). For comparison, fission reactors
| need enriched uranium, and that costs only about $4000 per
| kilogram [2]. People have the idea that fusion produces many
| times more energy than fission, probably because fusion bombs
| have a higher yield than fission bombs. This is not true. The
| most typical fusion reaction involves one deuterium and one
| tritium and yields 17.5 MeV from a total or 5 nucleons. A
| fission reaction involves one neutron and one atom of U-235
| and yields 190 MeV from 236 nucleons. So fusion yields about
| 4.3 times more energy per nucleon. That's respectable, but in
| the popular imagination fusion yields 100 or 1000 times more
| energy than fission, so the fuel cost can be neglected.
| Nothing could be further from the truth.
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=tritium+price
|
| [2] https://www.uxc.com/p/tools/FuelCalculator.aspx
| zdragnar wrote:
| The myth of unbounded / free energy from fusion comes from
| being able to use any old hydrogen atoms, rather than the
| much rarer deuterium and tritium.
|
| Perhaps one day we'll get there, but I worry that the
| current advancements using the rarer isotopes will end up
| proving to be a dead end on that road, much like so many
| attempts at GAI. In the short term I suspect we'd have
| better odds with getting thorium reactors to be economical.
| DennisP wrote:
| Deuterium is not rare at all. There's enough in your
| morning shower to provide all your energy needs for a
| year.
|
| https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/01/nuclear-fusion/
|
| Tritium is rare but lithium isn't, and we can make
| tritium from lithium using the neutrons from fusion. (We
| also get tritium from fission plants, which is how we'd
| build the first fusion reactors.)
| credit_guy wrote:
| > we can make tritium from lithium using the neutrons
| from fusion
|
| Each fusion reaction consumes one tritium atom and
| produces one neutron. If that neutron hits a lithium
| atom, it can split that and produce a tritium atom. If
| everything goes perfectly and there are no losses, then
| you get a 100% replacement of all the tritium that you
| consume. If you have a 90% replacement ratio (highly
| optimistic), you essentially lower the cost of your
| tritium fuel by a factor of 10, so from $30000 per gram
| to $3000 per gram, or $3 MM per kilogram.
|
| > We also get tritium from fission plants
|
| Yes we do. Mainly from Candu reactors. There are 49 Candu
| and Candu-like reactors in the world, and each produces
| less than 1kg of tritium per year. According to [1] a 1
| GW fusion power plant would consume about 55 kg of
| tritium per year. So you'd need to run more than 50
| fission power plants to operate one fusion power plant.
| Most people who dream of fusion think that fission will
| become irrelevant, not that you'll need 50 fission power
| plants for each fusion power plant.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii
| /S09203...
| pfdietz wrote:
| No, it comes from foolishly thinking that the cost of
| fuel will dominate cost of energy. That doesn't require
| fusion of protons; deuterium and lithium are cheap.
| aptitude_moo wrote:
| I don't know much about this but I assume that the tritium
| will be created somehow while fussion is done [1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium%E2%80%93triti
| um_fu...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| We'll never know until (or if it ever comes) but there's
| reason to believe Fusion _could_ be >50% cheaper than
| Fission.
|
| That would still be more expensive than Solar and Wind (by
| 100% or more) - but I am skeptical in the same time frame
| those sources will be able to take over baseload generation.
|
| It's really comparing apples to oranges.
|
| Plus, it's a very hypothetical future. Anything could happen
| between now and then.
| myrmidon wrote:
| What is your exact scenario for cheap fusion?
|
| Because IMO the only approach that is even capable of
| delivering here is the Helion one (=> direct conversion).
| And that design is incredibly far from ready, the whole
| approach is completely unproven and their roadmap is mainly
| wishful self-delusion (from what we can tell by evaluating
| past milestones, like "first 50MW reactor finished by
| 2021"-- there is no 50MW reactor even now).
|
| From my PoV, ITER-style tokamaks are the most
| conservative/certain design, and also the furthest along by
| far. That would imply:
|
| => Cryogenics for the magnets
|
| => big hightemperature vacuumchamber for plasma
|
| => all the thermal/turbogenerator infrastructure needed in
| conventional plants
|
| => super high neutron radiation flux (this is a problem)
|
| I just don't see where you save anything. This is basically
| just a fission reactor, only a magnitude more complicated
| and demanding. I absolutely don't see how it could ever get
| significantly cheaper than conventional nuclear
| powerplants.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| > At the risk of coming off as a nay-sayer, let's say
| engineering hurtles related to fusion power generation is
| overcome. How is the presumably high upfront capital costs
| going to compare with the ROI?
|
| Does money even matter once fusion is attainable?
| epistasis wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're being serious, but I'm going to
| assume you are. Let's say energy costs 1/10th it does
| today. That's far cheaper than I see anybody predicting
| fusion will be, but I think renewables will get there. How
| much does cheap energy change in the economy? What is
| bottlenecked by expensive energy at the moment? It turns
| out that matter, people, people's wants, still have a huge
| impact.
|
| Make all energy free. What does that change? It lowers
| operating costs for many things, but up front capital costs
| are still there. Land still matters. Food still matters.
|
| Money will still matter. Allocation of time, of resources,
| all that still matters a lot. Energy is big for the
| economy, but if its free we shift our focus to other
| matters of logistics.
| legitster wrote:
| CEA themselves are saying fusion is not going to be ready by
| 2050.
|
| Don't mistake skepticism for hate. I will be the first one to
| applaud a commercial fusion reactor. But fusion proponents
| often use it's pending development as an argument against
| fission - a technology we already have and desperately need to
| adopt _now_.
| kergonath wrote:
| Yes, there are significant issues. Nothing we do not
| anticipate solving, but still. It will take time and solving
| these issues in a resource-effective way so that it can
| actually work as a power plant will be a challenge.
|
| > But fusion often use it's pending development as an
| argument against fission - a technology we already have and
| desperately need to adopt now.
|
| If it helps, CEA is also doing a ton of R&D on fission (and
| batteries, among others). But there, the real issues are
| mostly political.
| simonw wrote:
| Now that we've made it to 2025, 2050 doesn't feel nearly as
| far away to me.
| willis936 wrote:
| As a big proponent of fusion: we should be spending more
| money and effort on it. We should be spending more money and
| effort on fission too. Sustainable energy sources shouldn't
| be fighting for scraps.
| bluGill wrote:
| 20 years ago I would have agreed with you. However today we
| have proof that wind and solar work, are cheap, and are
| useful. The world doesn't need fusion or fission, other
| technology is plenty good.
|
| Unless you can do a science fiction thing of turning off the
| sun, and harvesting the hydrogen in it to power local
| reactors in earth orbit to provide the energy (light) we need
| without letting the vast majority escape our solar system
| unused. Otherwise that big fusion reactor in the sky provides
| all the energy we need.
| otherme123 wrote:
| I don't hate it, but am not fanboy either. Imagine you can have
| nuclear fission and uranium is already found in nature ready to
| go to the reactor. Even in that case, nuclear fission could not
| beat solar or eolic ROI.
|
| Even if nuclear fussion had the advantage of free combustible,
| the costs of building and manteinance alone could make it not
| practical. As of today it's not enough to have positive net
| return, but to have a LCOE of maybe $60/MWh (and going down).
| Current estimates put fussion at $120/MWh.
|
| If it can't keep up with solar and eolic rade of fallig prices,
| it might be only suitable to replace fission power (which is
| not falling), about 10% of the grid. And there have been
| literally billions spent in research.
| legitster wrote:
| Solar is cheap, but it's only a supplementary power source.
| If you add in energy costs it becomes much, much more
| expensive than fission.
|
| The elephant in the room is natural gas which is the true
| competitor to fission and is still dirt cheap in the US.
| pyrale wrote:
| > As of today it's not enough to have positive net return,
| but to have a LCOE of maybe $60/MWh
|
| If you don't count externalities (see cost of firming
| intermitency [1]).
|
| > (and going down).
|
| Not the last two years according to LCOE+ 2024. the main
| culprit is inflation, but the curve was nearing flat anyway.
|
| [1]: https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-
| june-...
| pfdietz wrote:
| When I go to https://model.energy/ and solve for the cost
| of energy from renewables + storage in the US, using 2030
| cost assumptions, the cost is less than $0.05/kWh. This is
| providing synthetic 24/7/365 baseload power, so all
| intermittency has been taken care of.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Even in that case, nuclear fission could not beat solar or
| eolic ROI.
|
| Neither solar or wind are free. There are costs associated
| e.g. with building, shipping, maintaining, decommissioning
| these things (and hopefully at some point recycling, but
| that's not solved). Looking at the whole picture, these costs
| are not that different. These technologies are complementary,
| they have very different characteristics.
|
| > Current estimates put fussion at $120/MWh.
|
| Current estimates are completely unreliable, because no
| industrial-scale demonstrator was built. They are a useful
| tool for planning and modeling, but not solid enough to build
| an industrial strategy on them. (And it's "fusion")
| epistasis wrote:
| I don't think current costs for fusion are useful for
| modeling, or really anything, because there's nothing there
| yet. We don't even have prototypes.
|
| But if there is not a clear and speedy path to get fusion
| to $30/MWh it's not going to make it. Batteries, solar
| wind, and geothermal are all busy deploying and getting
| cheaper every month, year, and decade. The grid system
| possible with 2035's solar and battery tech is going to be
| completely unimaginable to today's grid ops.
| otherme123 wrote:
| Did anybody say they are free? But the costs of running
| solar or eolic are way lower than the costs of running
| fission, or the costs that likely would be running a fusion
| central. In case you don't know what ROI means, it is
| return on investment (i.e. building, shipping, mantaining
| decomission...).
|
| As of today, we are closer to mass batteries as renewable
| companion than fusion, at least in terms of ROI. If both
| end up competing for lithium, it would go to batteries
| unless fusion becomes dirty cheap.
|
| Current estimations are useful because they mark the
| starting point for fusion: they are at around 120. They
| need to reach 80 to replace fission. They need to reach 60
| to replace batteries. Assuming batteries don't get better
| ROI.
|
| Same numbers were useful 30 years ago for solar: it was
| fully functional, but not yet economically sound. It was
| not much than a toy and a promise (as it is fusion today).
| Only when prices made sense it turned to a serious energy
| source.
| DennisP wrote:
| I've seen cost estimates around there for tokamaks. If Helion
| actually works, their estimate is more like $20/MWh, and it
| looks pretty plausible given their reactor design. They would
| have relatively low neutron radiation, direct electricity
| extraction without a turbine, factory-built reactors
| transportable by rail, and no particularly expensive
| components like superconductors or fancy lasers.
|
| Some of the other designs also look relatively cheap.
| Tokamaks are just the one we understand the best, so we have
| the highest confidence that they'll work.
| pfdietz wrote:
| We have highest confidence that tokamaks will "work" in the
| sense of reaching a physics goal. We have very little
| confidence tokamaks will "work" in the sense of reaching an
| engineering/economic goal. Too often the former is confused
| with the latter in these discussions.
| p2detar wrote:
| It's insane how many people like that are out there. "Fission
| is bad, fusion is bad, we should only do renewables." C'mon,
| fission brought us where we are and fusion might be the future.
| I believe they both deserve further research and improvements.
| kergonath wrote:
| It's a common fallacy: "$thing is good, new and exciting,
| therefore everything else is old and rubbish". The pattern is
| very easy to see if we pay attention. It's very common in
| tech circles, where people tend to be easily excited about
| new things.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| This has always seemed wild to me. New tech always _always_
| sucks. In complex problem spaces it takes years to
| effectively identify use cases, edge cases, and bugs and
| get all that shit ironed out, and yet the enthusiasm you
| speak of is pervasive.
| himinlomax wrote:
| There's just no economic case for fusion. It's useful research,
| but current fission does the job better, and we already have
| decades of proven reserves, centuries likely if we kept looking
| for new reserves ... and then thousands of years from sea water
| extraction.
|
| There's also many paths to improved fission. Fast neutron
| reactors, thorium, small fast neutron reactors for industrial
| heat, thorium reactors, accelerator-driven subcritical reactors
| ... Millions of years of fuel available and new ways to use the
| output beyond boiling water for electricity.
|
| Note that I'm not mentioning slow neutron SMR, they're mostly
| pointless and just an excuse not to build current and perfectly
| fine PWR/BWR/heavy water reactors.
| felbane wrote:
| I like the idea of the passively-safe, waste-reducing LFTR
| but it's still a materials science issue at this point, and
| there's no real solution in sight.
|
| Fission still has this huge stigma about "nuclear=dangerous
| and bad" which clearly isn't true with the growing number of
| passively-safe designs... but nobody wants to fund
| development of those into proper commercial reactors.
|
| Meanwhile, fusion is still different and futuristic enough to
| have support from governments and the general public.
| naasking wrote:
| > I like the idea of the passively-safe, waste-reducing
| LFTR but it's still a materials science issue at this
| point, and there's no real solution in sight.
|
| Seems ironic that in a thread about fusion with loads of
| difficult technical challenges that will still require
| decades of research after 60 years of investment and
| research have already been poured into it, a minor issue of
| slight corrosion in LFTR requiring maybe a few years of
| research is seen as an insurmountable obstacle with "no
| real solution in sight".
| beeflet wrote:
| Yeah but I still think it would be a great scientific
| achievement and should be pursued.
|
| Fusion has better security properties than fission, so
| perhaps it will find some use case in the far future.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I definitely prefer spending the money on fusion over rushing a
| Mars mission. Fusion is probably cheaper than Mars and will
| actually benefit humanity. Which is not something I can say
| about going to Mars (or even the moon).
| slashdev wrote:
| A Mars mission would benefit humanity, but less directly. The
| past lunar missions and space program benefited humanity in
| many ways.
|
| For pure return on investment, I agree with your take.
|
| Provided of course that any future threats to humanity as a
| single planet civilization don't materialize. There's a low
| and uncertain tail risk ignored in our calculation.
| MaxGripe wrote:
| The planet Mars is a gift from God for humanity
| zamalek wrote:
| I think the funding has had a modest stimulus, and that was
| always the locus of causation for "perpetually x years away."
| Private fusion especially (but I do think their claims are
| somewhat overstated).
| pfdietz wrote:
| I do enjoy how mindless some of the fusion advocacy is.
|
| Why do you think a result like this would make anyone less
| skeptical of fusion? Ability to run a device for this long is
| not the obstacle to success for nuclear fusion. This is just
| another vastly overhyped "breakthrough", which we seem to have
| every week.
|
| I've followed fusion for probably longer than you've been
| alive, and there are fundamental showstoppers for the common
| approaches, particularly tokamaks and stellarators. Fusion may
| have a chance with unconventional approaches, like Helion's,
| but the consensus approach looks like an exercise in groupthink
| that won't lead anywhere.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| WEST vs EAST? Did both sides agree on the naming scheme or
| something?
| hangonhn wrote:
| I was wondering about that too. I think it's deliberate and
| friendly because they're both technology testbeds for ITER.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Advanced_Supercon...
| VeejayRampay wrote:
| well done on the french achieving yet another extraordinary feat
| of engineering and research while still bearing the stigma of
| being shit at everything for some reason
|
| I hope this international race ends up bearing fruit in a few
| decades, we need it
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