Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

news.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#11

Post by exo762 »

vosper wrote: post #4

Fusion is still exciting, but with normal renewable (solar, wind) costs plummeting the way they are is there still such a compelling case for pouring money into fusion? This one aims to produce a working plant within 15 years. I'm not sure that any of the other efforts are closer to being viable (if they work at all). That's the kind of time frame in which we may master offshore wind and grid-attached storage like th…

Renewables are ecological disaster in slow motion. Renewables do not provide baseline energy. Renewables do not produce anywhere amount of energy fusion can produce. Fusion is the cleanest energy source. Fusion allows to cheaply reverse any chemical process that is reversible using huge amounts of energy. I.e. fusion makes electric cars obsolete - just produce high-energy-density whatever chemical fuel you can imagine. Fusion revolutionizes agriculture - you can produce fertilizers very very cheaply. Fusion makes desalinization cheap and affordable for anyone.

Fusion is civilizational game changer.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#12

Post by iamgopal »

markvdb wrote: post #9

Cheap nuclear fusion energy would be a great human achievement. I do wonder about its effects on society though. Any reading containing well reasoned speculation on that? Here's what I can think of myself. * A cheaper, cleaner energy source might outcompete fossil fuel. Less air polution, yay! * Cheaper energy would significantly increase energy consumption. Think Jevons paradox[0]. The effect of that increased heat…

Mini-Self Contained Electric Charging Stations, that can charge 100-200 cars simultaneously. Better recycling of material due to energy abundance. Less Waste on Energy Transport. Tons of light pollution. Did I say, Much better recycling technologies ?

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#13

Post by sgt101 »

exo762 wrote: post #11
vosper wrote: post #4

Fusion is still exciting, but with normal renewable (solar, wind) costs plummeting the way they are is there still such a compelling case for pouring money into fusion? This one aims to produce a working plant within 15 years. I'm not sure that any of the other efforts are closer to being viable (if they work at all). That's the kind of time frame in which we may master offshore wind and grid-attached storage like th…

Renewables are ecological disaster in slow motion. Renewables do not provide baseline energy. Renewables do not produce anywhere amount of energy fusion can produce. Fusion is the cleanest energy source. Fusion allows to cheaply reverse any chemical process that is reversible using huge amounts of energy. I.e. fusion makes electric cars obsolete - just produce high-energy-density whatever chemical fuel you can imagin…

Wohha - we need to go to 0 emissions in 30 years. Even in the very best case Fusion will be producing ~20% of our energy by then (and I stress, this was achieved with Fission in some states because of bomb making; so it proves it's possible but definitely not going to happen by itself). So we need renewables and electric cars for at least 70 years. And electric cars actually seem better (faster, more reliable) than ice ones.

Also, just because you can make fertilizers and put them on crops doesn't mean that's a good idea. Water courses all over the world are poisoned with chemical fertilizers. Same for desalinization - the by products are nasty.

And fusion itself will produce radioactive waste. The linings of the reactors become ablated and radioactive and I think that one of the great benefits of Professor Whyte's scheme is that servicing the reactor becomes much easier and faster - but the removed components need to be dealt with carefully.

It's a great and exciting thing - but not a panacea; we have to work hard to deliver a liveable world for 10 billion and the 500 years after the peak.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#14

Post by MayeulC »

This is yet another area where high temperature superconductors revolutionizes its engineering. I can't wait for more insights to be made in this domain: the way superconductors behave is actually becoming clearer and clearer from one year to another.

Ambient temperature superconductors are the holy grail of the field, of course, but this project shows that even ~80 K superconductors can substantially reduce the size of magnets (cooling apparatus included), which can open doors to new applications.

Exciting times... Oh, and I can't wait for ITER either. While the project was never meant to be commercially viable, it should offer some great insights into commercial fusion energy.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#15

Post by erikj »

markvdb wrote: post #9

Cheap nuclear fusion energy would be a great human achievement. I do wonder about its effects on society though. Any reading containing well reasoned speculation on that? Here's what I can think of myself. * A cheaper, cleaner energy source might outcompete fossil fuel. Less air polution, yay! * Cheaper energy would significantly increase energy consumption. Think Jevons paradox[0]. The effect of that increased heat…

Fusion propulsion would be very beneficial to any space operations beyond the Earth's orbit. I think NASA have a project investigating this technology.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#16

Post by mtgx »

markvdb wrote: post #9

Cheap nuclear fusion energy would be a great human achievement. I do wonder about its effects on society though. Any reading containing well reasoned speculation on that? Here's what I can think of myself. * A cheaper, cleaner energy source might outcompete fossil fuel. Less air polution, yay! * Cheaper energy would significantly increase energy consumption. Think Jevons paradox[0]. The effect of that increased heat…

I'm not even sure fusion would compete with solar/batteries by the time it's practical to use it.

In my mind the #1 benefit of fusion will be industrialized space travel within the solar system.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#17

Post by Faaak »

markvdb wrote: post #9

Cheap nuclear fusion energy would be a great human achievement. I do wonder about its effects on society though. Any reading containing well reasoned speculation on that? Here's what I can think of myself. * A cheaper, cleaner energy source might outcompete fossil fuel. Less air polution, yay! * Cheaper energy would significantly increase energy consumption. Think Jevons paradox[0]. The effect of that increased heat…

I'm dreaming here, but could we with "unlimited" power radiate this power into space ?

I'm thinking about a heat pump which would make the Earth colder, and radiate the heat to space, effectively cooling Earth (that's how indians made ice in the past) ?

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#18

Post by Veedrac »

Tokamak Energy[1] seems to have taken a similar path with smaller, HTS-based reactors. I don't have the expertise to evaluate these projects but, judging from the statements of the people working with these new superconductors, fusion power might actually be 10 years away this time.

[1] https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#19

Post by exo762 »

sgt101 wrote: post #13
exo762 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are ecological disaster in slow motion. Renewables do not provide baseline energy. Renewables do not produce anywhere amount of energy fusion can produce. Fusion is the cleanest energy source. Fusion allows to cheaply reverse any chemical process that is reversible using huge amounts of energy. I.e. fusion makes electric cars obsolete - just produce high-energy-density whatever chemical fuel you can imagin…

Wohha - we need to go to 0 emissions in 30 years. Even in the very best case Fusion will be producing ~20% of our energy by then (and I stress, this was achieved with Fission in some states because of bomb making; so it proves it's possible but definitely not going to happen by itself). So we need renewables and electric cars for at least 70 years. And electric cars actually seem better (faster, more reliable) than i…

I never said it is panacea. I said it is civilizational game changer.

Some of your intuitions are wrong because they assume no source of cheap energy. With cheap clean energy you can scrub CO2 out of air, you can rework any nasty byproduct of desalination into its components and recombine them into something safe or reuse in other industrial processes. You can recycle literally anything.

> And fusion itself will produce radioactive waste.

This is not a technical or economical problem. You put this stuff into metal containers, you put those metal containers into a hangar, you put guards to prevent people from damaging containers. We do it now and we do it well.

> And electric cars actually seem better (faster, more reliable) than ice ones.

While I love electric cars (and I want to buy one), they are not really better. Those batteries are both toxic and put a huge ecological burden on environment in production and recycling. They have a short term future and promise, since we need to stop producing CO2 now. Long term? Not so sure, since progress on batteries front is and was very slow.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#20

Post by Yetanfou »

markvdb wrote: post #9

Cheap nuclear fusion energy would be a great human achievement. I do wonder about its effects on society though. Any reading containing well reasoned speculation on that? Here's what I can think of myself. * A cheaper, cleaner energy source might outcompete fossil fuel. Less air polution, yay! * Cheaper energy would significantly increase energy consumption. Think Jevons paradox[0]. The effect of that increased heat…

There is one effect you're missing, the part where those countries which were dependent on income from fossil fuels won't just quietly subside back into their previous state of being. While Venezuela has already dealt with the problem by self-immolation the same can not be said about two other big oil and gas exporters: the middle eastern countries and Russia. To start with the latter, Russia stands to lose not only a major source of income if the demand for natural gas were to plummet but also a lot of influence which they hitherto exert by virtue of having control over the natural gas supply for a large part of Europe. The country has the potential to replace the income from gas with income from other natural resources and from industrial output but they'll need time to gear up their economy for the switch.

The middle east is a different story. Apart from oil and gas exports the region does not have much to offer in the way of natural resources or industrial output. When - not if - oil and gas end their dominance in the energy hierarchy the region will be hit hard, also due to the fact that, in contrast to Norway, no substantial provisions have been made for this scenario. Some countries are trying to find alternative sources of income, e.g. Dubai which seems to be set to become the Las Vegas of the middle east but this scenario is only feasible as long as their is an audience which is willing and able to spend lavishly. When the oil money goes, so does that audience. Fusion energy will be a boon in the long term but in the short time it will have a destabilising effect in at least this region.

Post reply on HN