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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

#311

Post by mytailorisrich »

clomond wrote: post #91
mytailorisrich wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro is extremely restricted because of geographical and environmental constraints. Solar is also quite constrained by lack of large-scale storage and environmental concerns, and just by the weather. Same goes for wind. Keeping in mind that electricity production has to increase significantly to absorb the shift from ICE to EV vehicles I would tend to agree that there is no way to meet demand without nuclear even if…

I will challenge your assertion that energy storage is some kind of “deterministic barrier” that needs to be crossed before decarbonizing our grid. Solar is still negligible in terms of penetration in many places in the world (even though it and wind are the cheapest new build primary energy today, so expect this to rapidly change). As well, you can add quite a bit of solar to a grid before curtailments become necess…

> I will challenge your assertion that energy storage is some kind of “deterministic barrier” that needs to be crossed before decarbonizing our grid.

This is clearly not my assertion.

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

#312

Post by undreren »

karxxm wrote: post #309
irthomasthomas wrote: post #304

I'm surprised that we're still chasing moon shots in strong force fusion, while weak fusion, which has actually been demonstrated already, gets little attention. Chemically assisted/low energy nuclear reactions have been proven to produce clean energy and useful transmutation. This process can be used to turn radioactive waste into inert material. For example, technetium-99 is a particularly pernicious by-product of…

So you suggest that they should dump nearly 2 decades of work because there is something else which seems to be a potential energy source? The ITER project was founded in 2007. From there on hundreds of physicist, chemists, engineers and computer scientists started planning this RESEARCH project in order to better understand this kind of technology. Shouldn't we stick to what we have started (since this is (more than…

> So you suggest that they should dump nearly 2 decades of work because there is something else which seems to be a potential energy source?

OP said nothing of the sort. They said that they didn't understand the prioritization of funding given an alternative that they found personally much much more valuable.

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

#313

Post by jansan »

bjackman wrote: post #163
kristianp wrote: post #56

18b doesn't seem like a huge amount of money these days with the economic stimulus funds being announced around covid-19.

For some reason I often think about things like this in terms of NHS budgets. 18bn is, very roughly, 2 years of healthcare for London.

Why did you pick London as an example? It has about 0.1% of the world population.

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

#314

Post by jansan »

nikanj wrote: post #283
bjackman wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason I often think about things like this in terms of NHS budgets. 18bn is, very roughly, 2 years of healthcare for London.

Or like three pre-launch startups

I don't even want to know how may Aeron chairs you could buy for that money.

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

#315

Post by wfreeborn »

karxxm wrote: post #309
irthomasthomas wrote: post #304

I'm surprised that we're still chasing moon shots in strong force fusion, while weak fusion, which has actually been demonstrated already, gets little attention. Chemically assisted/low energy nuclear reactions have been proven to produce clean energy and useful transmutation. This process can be used to turn radioactive waste into inert material. For example, technetium-99 is a particularly pernicious by-product of…

So you suggest that they should dump nearly 2 decades of work because there is something else which seems to be a potential energy source? The ITER project was founded in 2007. From there on hundreds of physicist, chemists, engineers and computer scientists started planning this RESEARCH project in order to better understand this kind of technology. Shouldn't we stick to what we have started (since this is (more than…

That's the very definition of a sunk cost fallacy

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

#316

Post by mytailorisrich »

nicoburns wrote: post #185
mytailorisrich wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro is extremely restricted because of geographical and environmental constraints. Solar is also quite constrained by lack of large-scale storage and environmental concerns, and just by the weather. Same goes for wind. Keeping in mind that electricity production has to increase significantly to absorb the shift from ICE to EV vehicles I would tend to agree that there is no way to meet demand without nuclear even if…

My bet is that large scale storage is a much, much easier problem to solve than power-generating nuclear fusion.

Yes, but that does not change anything to the point of the importance of nuclear (fission) power.

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

#317

Post by karxxm »

undreren wrote: post #312
karxxm wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you suggest that they should dump nearly 2 decades of work because there is something else which seems to be a potential energy source? The ITER project was founded in 2007. From there on hundreds of physicist, chemists, engineers and computer scientists started planning this RESEARCH project in order to better understand this kind of technology. Shouldn't we stick to what we have started (since this is (more than…

> So you suggest that they should dump nearly 2 decades of work because there is something else which seems to be a potential energy source? OP said nothing of the sort. They said that they didn't understand the prioritization of funding given an alternative that they found personally much much more valuable.

I am pretty sure that this project is not prioritized in any way. It's a research project with funding from all over the world. It should be compared to the CERN project where scientists from all over the world try to understand science behind it better. One could argue that CERN is a waist of money since there are other fields of study in physics which seem to have more potential. We should be happy that states from all over the world are willing to pay for a research project, which does not have a direct "value" for the next couple decades. There will never be a private investor for this scope of project since there is no monetizable value behind it yet and maybe in the next 50 years.

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

#318

Post by selfmodruntime »

karxxm wrote: post #309
irthomasthomas wrote: post #304

I'm surprised that we're still chasing moon shots in strong force fusion, while weak fusion, which has actually been demonstrated already, gets little attention. Chemically assisted/low energy nuclear reactions have been proven to produce clean energy and useful transmutation. This process can be used to turn radioactive waste into inert material. For example, technetium-99 is a particularly pernicious by-product of…

So you suggest that they should dump nearly 2 decades of work because there is something else which seems to be a potential energy source? The ITER project was founded in 2007. From there on hundreds of physicist, chemists, engineers and computer scientists started planning this RESEARCH project in order to better understand this kind of technology. Shouldn't we stick to what we have started (since this is (more than…

Not only that, before ITER we used to work on JET in 1991, which is in kind of a twin relationship with ITER. Abandoning ship now for a technology that isn't even proven to be viable in large scales would be insanity.

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

#319

Post by VMG »

karxxm wrote: post #309
irthomasthomas wrote: post #304

I'm surprised that we're still chasing moon shots in strong force fusion, while weak fusion, which has actually been demonstrated already, gets little attention. Chemically assisted/low energy nuclear reactions have been proven to produce clean energy and useful transmutation. This process can be used to turn radioactive waste into inert material. For example, technetium-99 is a particularly pernicious by-product of…

So you suggest that they should dump nearly 2 decades of work because there is something else which seems to be a potential energy source? The ITER project was founded in 2007. From there on hundreds of physicist, chemists, engineers and computer scientists started planning this RESEARCH project in order to better understand this kind of technology. Shouldn't we stick to what we have started (since this is (more than…

> ITER began in 1985 as a Reagan–Gorbachev[18][19] initiative[19][20] with the equal participation of the Soviet Union, the European Atomic Energy Community, the United States, and Japan through the 1988–1998 initial design phases. Preparations for the first Gorbachev-Reagan Summit showed that there were no tangible agreements in the works for the summit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Background

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

#320

Post by wiz21c »

oraphalous wrote: post #206
Godel_unicode wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incredibly short-sited. I'm glad for you that your startup was able to make money, but do you really think that the long-term economic value created is higher by making yet another piece of graphics software than from fundamental research? I would argue this entirely the other way; whenever the smartest people are sucked away from foundational work to make money "up the stack", it makes us all the poorer.

Cool your boots... The claim was that there is a trade off - which is a pretty common sense assertion... The comment you to which you are responding even asserted that basic research does have value - and does not assert that the trade offs go one way or another. The implication of the comment as I read it was that we should at least critically think about those trade offs rather than just writing a blank check to wh…

Funny, the comment from the start-uper, to me, sounds like a implicit explanation that basic/fundamental research is OK as long as it has less priority than economy (in the sense of money making money).
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