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ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

bbc.co.uk

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Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#51

Post by korantu »

vosper wrote: post #29
usui wrote: post #7

I am going to need some help on this one as my knowledge on physics is limited: What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale? I desperately want nuclear fusion to work because nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone. It's also 500% more important…

> nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone I assume by "energy crisis" you mean "how do we continue to generate energy while drastically decreasing climate effects"? Because if we're not worried about climate there's no looming energy crisis. There's plenty of oil, gas, and coal out there still. And…

The fundamental difference between nuclear and any other source is energy density. It boggles ones mind that your can replace burning 14 thousand tonns of coal _every day_ with something that needs to be refueled once a year.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#52

Post by kibwen »

thechao wrote: post #22
gautamcgoel wrote: post #2

I think fusion is cool, but I also think it distracts from more important and promising approaches to clean power. No one has ever demonstrated a self-sustaining, net positive fusion reaction. It will probably take >30 years to make this technology cheap , safe and reliable and another >20 years to deploy it at scale. We don't have 50 years to wait on clean energy, we need it today. We should be focusing our attentio…

Net-positive was achieved in 2013. As far as I can remember, ITER is a test-bed for economical and scalable nuclear fusion. Also, the corporate world (at least here in Texas, of all places) is perfectly capable of rolling out state-scale renewable power (wind).

> Net-positive was achieved in 2013.

Do you have a source for this? I was also under the impression that fusion has never yet produced a net of energy.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#53

Post by scythe »

andrepd wrote: post #39
usui wrote: post #7

I am going to need some help on this one as my knowledge on physics is limited: What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale? I desperately want nuclear fusion to work because nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone. It's also 500% more important…

I'm also a fusion power fanboy but >nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone This is just not true, there's no way you can say this. Solar costs are going down massively. Hydro is dirt cheap already. So renewables can absolutely be part of an energetic transition in the near future, while fusion is a…

>This is just not true, there's no way you can say this. Solar costs are going down massively. Hydro is dirt cheap already. So renewables can absolutely be part of an energetic transition in the near future, while fusion is at best many decades away. So while I think fusion energy has the potential to transform energy generation, and by extent everything about our life, it's wrong to assume renewables aren't probably our safest bet in the near future.

We need nuclear to meet baseload because the storage requirements (for PV particularly, by far the largest renewable) would be absurd without it. But since peak load can be several times average and nuclear plants can't be spun up in a day, we also need storage, and with storage around renewables can be cheaper than nuclear. It's not an either-or question; both should be used.

Climate agreements have largely avoided the thorny question of providing nuclear power to the developing world, but if they're to achieve a prosperous standard of living in a sustainable future based on foreseeable technology, this has to be addressed.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#54

Post by usui »

svara wrote: post #41
usui wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think solar is going to work. As you say, it might take up to 50 years to crack the case on nuclear fusion. I argue that it might take up to 50 years for governments and companies around the world to even begin cooperating in a fashion such that they make a dent in carbon-based energy sources at the global scale using solar. The reason why solar is not going to work mostly is because there is no legitimate m…

It's a bit odd to me that you seem to deem fusion power realistic, while discounting other ways of generating and storing power that are basically available already. Power from renewables can be stored for the long term as hydrogen. That's well understood technology, scaling up is an engineering problem. When the sun shines and the wind blows, solar and onshore wind are the cheapest ways to make electricity, so there…

Thanks for pointing out, because now that I think of it, my view does come off as odd. What I think it reflects is that despite nuclear fusion being a technical, engineering problem, I believe getting companies/governments to abandon carbon for wind/solar to the point of carbon-neutral is even more insurmountable. Does that viewpoint make sense? For them to get off fossil fuels, it's going to need a ball-out-of-the-park solution. It's too hard to compete with the fracking revolution.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#55

Post by entropicdrifter »

bawolff wrote: post #40
vosper wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone I assume by "energy crisis" you mean "how do we continue to generate energy while drastically decreasing climate effects"? Because if we're not worried about climate there's no looming energy crisis. There's plenty of oil, gas, and coal out there still. And…

> There's plenty of oil, gas, and coal out there still. I was under the impression we only had ~100 years worth of oil left, just that its not talked about because climate is more pressing and normal ecconomic pressures will fix the problem if we run out of supply. Is that wrong?

It's likely that we have more than that now thanks to newer methods of oil extraction like fracking. That said, hopefully within my lifetime the primary use of oil will be for plastics rather than power.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#57

Post by Certhas »

Avicebron wrote: post #37
Certhas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simply not true that nuclear is the only way. Renewables plus methanization can definitely do it at a price not much above what we currently pay. It's not clear at all that nuclear is cheaper, though it would require less restructuring of infrastructure.

I'm not familiar with how you are using methanization in this context. Are you referring to deliberately pumping methane into the atmosphere?

You generate hydrogen using excess renewables, then turn that into methane and store it to burn in conventional gas power plants. Look up various versions of Power2Gas. It's not economical right now because we have few times when renewable production exceeds demand but is a natural component of a fully renewable power grid.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#58

Post by ejolto »

OptionX wrote: post #33

Sorry I'm a layman at best on the subject, buts whats the difference between this project and, for example, W7-X?

W7-X is a stellarator [1], and ITER is a tokamak [2]. They are two different approaches to achieve controlled nuclear fusion.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#59

Post by wtallis »

kibwen wrote: post #52
thechao wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net-positive was achieved in 2013. As far as I can remember, ITER is a test-bed for economical and scalable nuclear fusion. Also, the corporate world (at least here in Texas, of all places) is perfectly capable of rolling out state-scale renewable power (wind).

> Net-positive was achieved in 2013. Do you have a source for this? I was also under the impression that fusion has never yet produced a net of energy.

Probably referring to this highly controversial re-definition of Q: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor#Scie...

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#60

Post by jfarlow »

nharada wrote: post #20
usui wrote: post #7

I am going to need some help on this one as my knowledge on physics is limited: What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale? I desperately want nuclear fusion to work because nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone. It's also 500% more important…

There's a good talk here about why ITER is so large: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk The idea is essentially that to get the parameters needed to make net energy with tokamaks, you need either very strong magnets or a large device. At the time of ITER's design, they used the strongest magnets they could find and then made the thing big enough to get the energy gain they wanted. The speaker of this talk ar…

^ That is a _fantastic_ talk for someone who know's some physics get a quick grasp of the state of the field, the different approaches being taken from a set of first principles, and how to evaluate them.
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