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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

#351

Post by pfdietz »

arkh wrote: post #129
jpdus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip & falls add up even though they'll never get an HBO mini-series. This is a very flawed and short-sighted argument. Averages don't matter when you are talking about fat-tailed/power law risk distributions. Nobody would be op…

> But (almost) everyone would be opposed to a fission plant or nuclear waste facility next door - and rightfully so. Reading this kind of debate from France is a good laugh. If you're interested you can check where our electricity comes from here: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricit... (between 60 and 70 percent of nuclear energy today).

And then check out the cost overruns on Flamanville 3. What is now, 4x the initial cost promise? Or is it 6x?

New nuclear is dead in France just like it is in the US.

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

#352

Post by SolarNet »

imtringued wrote: post #326
godelski wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion of billionaires building "CERNs" came out of a discussion I was having with a friend as a way to quantify how rich these people are in terms more understandable. Graphics like pixel wealth[0] just show scale, but doesn't put things in perspective. But a Forbes analysis estimates the cost of finding the Higgs at around $14bn (rounding up)[1]. I also tried using Super Computers, but at around $300m a pie…

Regarding mkorostoff's 1 pixel wealth page. Taking wealth from the richest is very difficult. You'll have to find a way to make them agree with it. If you forcibly take money from people then you're just an angry mob. The only thing that would appear fair is higher taxes and maybe a wealth tax [0] but a 100 billion dollars buys you a lot of lobbying power. The worst case scenario is that the rich just hide their weal…

> You'll have to find a way to make them agree with it. If you forcibly take money from people then you're just an angry mob.

Not really. They use the "mob"'s roads and banks to make their business work and store their wealth. They use the "mob's" courts and police to protect themselves and their property. We live in a society, if your worry is that they are too powerful for them to participate in that society (e.g. because their power would let them hide their wealth away), then that just makes the ridiculousness of their wealth all the more apparent.

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

#353

Post by enaaem »

godelski wrote: post #154
landryraccoon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without giving a strong opinion either way on whether this particular project is a good investment or not : Science, as an institution imo undervalues good marketing and good PR. For profit enterprises are under no illusion that they can succeed without good marketing and public perception. If large expensive projects like this are needed to increase public awareness and support for basic scientific research then I a…

This is why I'm particularly upset about SSC's[0] failure to be built. There are many advantages to housing the smartest scientists in the world within the borders of your country, and those benefits aren't limited to scientific output. After all, a big part of these multi-national projects is the culture war. And let's be real, which is worth more? A super collider that runs for decades or the F35 (which cost more,…

I can actually argue for the F35. F35 and Carrier groups ensures open oceans and secure maritime trade for all. 90% of global trade is over the sea and is worth Trillions of dollars.

There were times when countries would actively block maritime routes and steal cargo. A well integrated global economy, with open and secure maritime trade is beneficial for everyone and particularly the USA.

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

#354

Post by SolarNet »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #177
godelski wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm particularly upset about SSC's[0] failure to be built. There are many advantages to housing the smartest scientists in the world within the borders of your country, and those benefits aren't limited to scientific output. After all, a big part of these multi-national projects is the culture war. And let's be real, which is worth more? A super collider that runs for decades or the F35 (which cost more,…

What you mention about billionaires paying for it piques me especially. For someone like Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg or any number of other ultra rich individuals, the PR value of simply stating that they will themselves pay for such a collider up to the cost of its proposed budget (maybe so long as some organization or government promises to cover any cost overruns, or overruns beyond a certain percentage) would be eno…

> (the conspiracy theories around that alone have been absurd, despite all its excellent health programs for the developing world)

I mean, super science mega charity is going to have worse conspiracy theories. It's going to be the Gates foundation stuff mixed with the LHC stuff.

Like he's opening a portal to hell to mine energy from or something. No wait that's DOOM.

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

#355

Post by ragebol »

What downsides are there to fusion power, assuming it's commercially viable in a couple of decades? What negative externalities are there that could make it prohibitive? Fossil fuel has pollution etc, solar takes up lots of space and is apparently also ugly, wind energy is ugly and makes noise (according to NIMBYs).

What argument could a NIMBY person have against fusion power, besides the big building in their back yard?

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

#356

Post by pfdietz »

maccam94 wrote: post #331
fabian2k wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much the possible magnet strength affects the design of a tokamak. There are very clear limits on the field strength you can achieve with classical superconductors, and I know e.g. in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance those limits had been almost hit maybe a decade ago or so. But very recently spectrometers based on new high-temperature superconductors have been delivered, so the technology seems to be far enou…

Cambridge Fusion Systems[1] is a private company spun out of MIT that is building a proof-of-concept reactor based on these new magnets within the next 5 years. Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion? - Prof. Dennis Whyte (2016) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 Timeline (in case you want to skip over some parts): 00:01:00 - introducing Dennis Whyte, MIT department head for nuclear science 00:04:24 - presentation…

And then you go to the arxiv paper for ARC and learn: the power density is 40x worse than a PWR primary reactor vessel, and their projected cost is $29/W(e) (vs. Compact high field tokamaks have better power density that ITER or DEMO would, but they still are very inferior to fission reactors. And fission reactors are far out of the running economically.

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

#357

Post by 666lumberjack »

pfdietz wrote: post #260
cwhiz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to see some models on how solar power could work in northern cities, or honestly any city. The NYC metro area has over 23 million residents and there is essentially zero space for a solar farm. In the winter it's cloudy almost all day and there are only 9 hours of sunlight. Rooftop solar is an option but the models I have seen show a theoretical max around 1,200 MW which is about 1/30th of the NYC metro…

https://model.energy/ Generally, low latitude places want more solar + batteries, high latitude ones want more wind + hydrogen. When optimizing with these four, plus nuclear, with the costs at that site, nuclear typically optimizes to 0%.

Using their data for the UK (2011 weather) and the 2020 technology scenario (rather than the projections which conveniently make renewables and storage significantly cheaper and Nuclear costs constant) and requiring that the system be carbon neutral it only takes very small tweaks to their assumptions to make Nuclear a clear winner. They are assuming by default that countries will be able to use salt caverns for hydrogen storage, which seems unrealistic given the amount of it their scenarios require. Using the numbers they give for steel tank storage instead, it only takes a 5% cost reduction for nuclear (which seems self-evidently possible with economies of scale) to make the optimal solution a 100% nuclear grid.

Right now I don't think people are pragmatic enough for that to be politically viable in most western countries, but that may shift as the adverse effects of AGW start to be more acutely felt (and, hopefully, as more and stricter carbon taxes are implemented across the world).

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

#358

Post by blazekp »

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…

> What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale?

I guess there are too many physicists who can lobby well and their income depends on it.

I don't expect any results after the many attempts (as opposed to fission, which had almost immediate results).

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

#359

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

> The claim was that there is a trade off - which is a pretty common sense assertion...

It also happens to be wrong.

If more projects that require nuclear physicists get funded, more people can become nuclear physicists. We're nowhere near the point that we're going to run out of potential nuclear physicists who could be trained if there was more demand for them.

At some kind of abstract level there are a finite number of people in the world so anybody who does something can't be doing something else, but there are more than enough people for whom the "something else" is either unemployment or some net-annihilating occupation like divorce attorneys or advertising that we shouldn't have to worry about people spending their time doing something actually beneficial.

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

#360

Post by pfdietz »

Certhas wrote: post #57
Avicebron wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or, just store the hydrogen.
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