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China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

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Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#161

Post by loup-vaillant »

marcosdumay wrote: post #137
loup-vaillant wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the nasty stuff comes from the fact that current (light water) reactors were actually meant to produce military plutonium. Bombs first. Energy was a by-product, and a very nice way to sell nuke-making to the civilians. There is another way of doing fission, that was demonstrated (working prototype and all) in the 60's: molten salt. You basically dissolve the fissile matter in molten salt, provide initial heat…

Molten halogen salts are nasty stuff. I'm sure with some extra R&D people could make those reactors reliable, but if you search the new generation reactors on Wikipedia, you'll see every one of them ended in some kind of failure.

I'll wager this was mostly because of the lack of funding. Those reactors were not as thoroughly researched as the light water ones. In a sense, they're still stuck in the 60's. (Really, putting molten salt reactors in the "new generation" bucket is a bit of a joke. It's old stuff that was shut down mostly for military and economic reasons, and only recently got more traction.)

Another possible cause is path dependence. We have a whole industry around solid fuel, light water reactors. Switching to molten salt throws much of that away.

Much research still need to be done. We may want cleaner salts, we want even less radioactive waste, and we definitely want to accurately assess the safety of this stuff ("passive security" is not enough by itself). This means more prototypes reactors, of various sizes, each more expensive than before. We want a few million dollars for the small ones, then a few billions for the big ones.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#162

Post by alkonaut »

Jedd wrote: post #116
sonium wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might sound a bit like a buzz-kill, but I don't think fusion power is necessarily competitively cheap. I think it will be comparable to nuclear power with a ~ 10 times higher capital investment to build a fusion-plant. Already now solar is said to be cheaper then nuclear. But nevertheless humanity should explore fusion since it is more or less the only significant power source not (indrectly) depending on the su…

> This might sound a bit like a buzz-kill, but I don't think fusion power is necessarily competitively cheap. Buzz kill on hn is fine so long as you back up your opinions with rational arguments and / or citations rather than simply sharing more of your opinions as ersatz supporting evidence. > I think it will be comparable to nuclear power with a ~ 10 times higher capital investment to build a fusion-plant. This is…

To be fair, "nuclear power" has been used for decades as a shorter way of saying "nuclear fission power". I don't think any confusion arises when saying things like "nuclear compared to fusion".

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#163

Post by 3chelon »

komali2 wrote: post #34
Taek wrote: post #32

Doesn't fusion pose the ability to overcome our energy needs without threatening the environment? Also, if one nation were to gain exclusive access to fusion, wouldn't they have an extreme advantage? Should we be doing a Manhattan project to get fusion powerplants?

Building a wall is our first priority. /s

I thought it was powering everything with coal again.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#164

Post by kobeya »

Gigablah wrote: post #109
wastedhours wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially on the front of medical trials, a recent Chinese government probe found 80% of data used was falsified [0] [0] http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/clinical-fakes-0927201...

Sounds like a better track record than Theranos to me.

You are demonstrating awareness of the point being made: if scientific fraud was as rampant here as it is in China, Theranos wouldn't even be remarkable and still unknown. But it is in fact rare enough to cause scandal.

If you want to keep that attitude and make non-contributory quips, go back to Reddit. It is not appreciated here.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#165

Post by marcosdumay »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #161
marcosdumay wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Molten halogen salts are nasty stuff. I'm sure with some extra R&D people could make those reactors reliable, but if you search the new generation reactors on Wikipedia, you'll see every one of them ended in some kind of failure.

I'll wager this was mostly because of the lack of funding. Those reactors were not as thoroughly researched as the light water ones. In a sense, they're still stuck in the 60's. (Really, putting molten salt reactors in the "new generation" bucket is a bit of a joke. It's old stuff that was shut down mostly for military and economic reasons, and only recently got more traction.) Another possible cause is path dependen…

I was serious when I said I was sure some extra R&D would solve those problems.

It may not be just lack of founding. Materials science has advanced a lot since then, and those problems look solvable now, but I'm not sure they could be solved by the 60's.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#166

Post by kobeya »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #46
dghughes wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to admit a bubble imploding and heating up to nearly 20,000C is pretty amazing even if it isn't fusion.

Sure, I will be more excited when it is independently replicated as any science of this type should no matter where it comes from.

It was replicated. It just was found to be an interesting result of cavitation, not fusion.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#167

Post by kobeya »

voxic11 wrote: post #24
ChrisClark wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, you might be thinking of the second one, the RTS? The first had Earth struck by an asteroid that split in two when trying to defend. The entire game was on a far planet you travelled to, turn based strategy I believe. Intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtfmvwyHuNs

I personally loved outpost 2. There is a fan maintained version of the game which is still fun to play. http://outpost2.net/

I personally enjoyed the novella that came with it more than the game itself. I got frustrated having to beat these stupid levels in order to read the next chapter..

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#168

Post by fisherjeff »

valarauca1 wrote: post #160
Cerium wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we already have a clean fusion reactor with wireless power transfer to every location on earth (weaker signal at poles). All we need to invent is the wireless energy receiver!

All we need to invent is the wireless energy receiver! We did, and we've already hit the quantum limit of how efficient they can be. It isn't enough. Well it is enough, but there isn't an efficient method to store or transmit the captured power. Solar is awesome, but the places it is most available also happens to be where it is least needed, in general, I'm aware of Saudi Arabia. It should also be pointed out that S…

Not disagreeing with anything you said but it's worth pointing out that concentrated solar is competitive in terms of GHG emissions.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#169

Post by neutronicus »

akiselev wrote: post #6

For someone more knowledgeable about the state of fusion research: is this really a "breakthrough" or just another incremental step? It seems they only kept it stable for about twice as long as they did four year ago and that's not much of a breakthrough even if we did break the arbitrary one minute limit (or maybe its not arbitrary and becomes harder to keep stable approaching a minute for some reason?) At this poin…

It's incremental, but, really, pretty much every development in fusion energy is going to be incremental, just given the scale and complexity of the facilities.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#170

Post by neutronicus »

simonh wrote: post #88

The Manhattan Project cost about $26bn in 2016 dollars, while ITER is expected to cost over $20bn by the time it's done. The problem with trying to solve something like this by throwing money at it too early, is what if the technological approach chosen doesn't work out? The more money you put into it, the more you would waste. Right now there at least half a dozen possible ways Fusion could be achieved commercially,…

> least half a dozen possible ways Fusion could be achieved commercially

What? There's like two Magnetic Confinement schemes (Tokamak and Stellarator), and one Inertial Confinement scheme.

At least, I was just at a Plasma Physics conference and that's all I saw there...

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