From the announcement: "This device will, if all goes according to plan . . . ."
. . .just nother example of throwing hard earned money into the fantasy of fusion, it will never be realized . . .
MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
31–40 of 74 posts
Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
#32Fusion 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…
If we put aside the energy requirements for our planet and think more upward bound.
Fusion solves the problem of being too far away from the Sun and using that as an energy source. Imagine being able to live in Mars, Titan, Ganymede, Enceladus or beyond and have access to energy.
It would truly be a game changer. In a 100 years of it's inception, humans could truly be a multi-planet species.
Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
#33Also discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16550252
Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
#34Fusion 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…
Solar and wind will never be enough to cover all energy demand. It is a common misconception, it is not even possible to reduce energy consumption to low enough that solar and wind would be sufficient. If we want to stop burning fuel, we must research nuclear. Of course it is unlikely that we would stop burning fuel any time soon, and that's why 15 years is unfortunately not an inconvenient timeline. If you're intere…
We're not going to stop burning fuel, because of the superior energy density of hydrocarbons. It's important for e.g. aircraft.
This needs not be fossil fuel, though; with plenty of electric energy, liquid fuels can be synthesized.
Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
#35This 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…
I cannot help but think that ITER has been a harmful mistake. With at least 17 years to go before it is operational, it already seems obsolescent in some key technological areas, such as magnets, yet it keeps on going, sucking up funds that might be better applied elsewhere (though whether they would be is an open question.) The project reminds me of Britain's attempt to build the airliner of the future in the Bristo…
Your 17 years are off, experiment begin is in 2027: https://www.iter.org/construction/timeline
And even then, the time until “operational” is not spent idling, the project has sparked and funded lots of research in various domains. It’s like the space race, at some point you just have to start building something for there to be any actual progress.
Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
#36Fusion 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…
Electric cars are vastly simpler (no injection, no drivetrain) and zero-emission (important in cities). They are not going to go obsolete.
With abundant electricity, they'd become cheaper to operate, and easier to recharge everywhere, e.g. even inductively on special road segments.
Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
#37Fusion 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…
Solar and wind will never be enough to cover all energy demand. It is a common misconception, it is not even possible to reduce energy consumption to low enough that solar and wind would be sufficient. If we want to stop burning fuel, we must research nuclear. Of course it is unlikely that we would stop burning fuel any time soon, and that's why 15 years is unfortunately not an inconvenient timeline. If you're intere…
> it is not even possible to reduce energy consumption to low enough that solar and wind would be sufficient.
What do you really mean by that? Solar has enough capacity to power some million times our energy usage, so you are clearly not talking about bare capacity.
Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
#38This 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…
I cannot help but think that ITER has been a harmful mistake. With at least 17 years to go before it is operational, it already seems obsolescent in some key technological areas, such as magnets, yet it keeps on going, sucking up funds that might be better applied elsewhere (though whether they would be is an open question.) The project reminds me of Britain's attempt to build the airliner of the future in the Bristo…
ITER is a political tool, not a scientific one. The real cutting edge fusion research is being done at some small private companies trying to make aneutronic fusion work, and from places like MIT. If we’re ever going to break the endless cycle of “in 50 years” it will not be a result of ITER.
Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
#39Cheap 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…
Point 2 is largely not an issue, solar insolation vastly outweighs human energy consumption in all forms.
CO2 is bad because it increases the energy trapped from insolation, a CO2 free power source that double energy consumption as a whole would be far better than the effects of CO2 on the atmosphere, very much a nice problem to have tbh.
> Global energy consumption is roughly 15 terawatts annually. The sun provides around 174 petawatts of energy to Earth, of which 89 petawatts is absorbed by the planet.
Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
#40Cheap 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…
The demand for Russian natural gas will only plummet if there's a huge shift from natgas heating to electric heat, and that would take hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of Euros to accomplish.