Urjfjvjvjdj
Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest
161–170 of 373 posts
Re: Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest
#162How's the Lockheed effort coming along?[1] [1] https://lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion.htm...
Looks like they're still working, and on their fifth test reactor, the largest so far: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29074/skunk-works-exot...
Re: Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't know that. What if you had spent 1000x the budget of the manhattan project on building an atom bomb in the year 1789? You would have gotten squat.
I don't think that's quite an apt comparison. The fundamental physics of an atomic bomb were not well known until the late 1800s. Apparently the Manhattan Project cost about $23 billion in 2007 dollars. ITER apparently had an initial budget of around $5 billion in 2005-6. By now, the construction cost is estimated to be at least $22 billion. It seems plausible that if we throw $15 or 20 billion at it in 2006, we coul…
Yes exactly, this is what Nassim Taleb writes about in Anti fragile. Bets with a known limited downside and the potential of an almost unlimited upside.
Re: Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
My layman's understanding is that recently available (~last 5 years) industrial scale processes to produce rebco tape[1] is the specific advance in superconductor tech that's specifically enabling higher tesla magnetic field strengths from significantly smaller and lighter and easier to manage magnets, so you can get a system that's "powerful enough" to run net posititve at a size that's small enough to be built by a…
Yep; the key technology that took magnetic confinement fusion from 'ITER will probably work' to 'Maybe we should just go ahead and skip ITER' is rebco tape. The problem is that all known superconducting materials known will lose their ability to superconduct when exposed to a sufficiently strong magnetic field. The large field strengths induce eddy currents in the material which disrupt the propagation of the cooper…
Would it be feasible to upgrade ITER into a much more powerful plant with the new magnets, or are they basically spending another 15 years building a huge thing that is already obsolete?
Re: Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is ~zero expectation in the scientific community that fusion is going to be cheap at scale. It might eventually be cheaper than fission due to several factors. But, even that’s looking a long way off.
How so? Unlimited, non-radioactive fuel and inherent safety of the system alone could tip this scale pretty severely in favor of fusion once it becomes energy-positive. And remember, once that happens, investment is going to be through the roof, which will accelerate progress. Either the "scientific community" (whatever that means) is either too pessimistic about this, or you've just made this up.
"Non Radioactive Fuel" is technically correct.
But.
The fusion produces neutrons.[1] That means that at least some parts of the infrastructure can't avoid becoming radioactive. Decommissioning -- at the very least -- is still a problem.
Any actual nuclear physicists want to chime in here?
[1]Yes, the concept of "Aneutronic fusion" exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion>. But read the parts about the required conditions being much more extreme than D-T fusion.
Re: Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was my understanding that fission and fusion both use the same Nuclear Power Plant sized facility. Fusion just replaces the radioactive bit, you still need steam/electricity conversion/transmission/cooling... it's not like a suitcase you can plug wires into, you still need a massive 'factory' to make electricity, just the one bit is a safer.
I am really not buying the fact that nuclear is expensive because it's nuclear. I think the fears around it, the overregulation and opposition to it make it costly. Obviously, there have been plenty of plants that were profitable. Also, nuclear fusion is possibly the cleanest energy source we could get. If we touch this, we might have a real path forward.
That just isn't the case. Nuclear (fission) has always been the single most expensive way to generate electricity, and the expense has only increased. Uranium is crazy expensive. Security is very expensive. Spent fuel storage effectively never stops costing, and it isn't ever cheap. If nuclear was simply expensive because of regulations, investors would find a way, and you could not beat them away from building nuclear power plants. But that just isn't where the expense lies. Today it costs $20B to build a nuclear power plant, and that does not include the cost of spent fuel storage or decommissioning. Investors are actually pretty shrewd to stay away from that kind of an investment that always loses. The idea of "electricity too cheap to meter" simply never materialized. Today, electricity generated from solar power is cheaper than electricity generated from nuclear power. The main reason the 110 or so commercial nuclear plants were ever built is that the US military vastly overestimated its need for fuel for bombs.
Re: Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest
#167I wish these people the best, and I really hope they get a working fusion plant soon. That said, I can't resist sharing Admiral Rickover on academic reactors vs practical reactors: Important decisions about the future development of atomic power must frequently be made by people who do not necessarily have an intimate knowledge of the technical aspects of reactors. These people are, nonetheless, interested in what a…
It's a good contribution to the conversation, keeping in mind that Adm. Rickover wrote these words in 1953.
Anyone could have said similar things about computers in 1953, and been just as correct.
Are nuclear reactors computers? Of course not, and neither have practical reactors kept pace in development with practical computers.
But neither is it inevitable that steady progress cannot grind down the latter set of characteristics into the former. Indeed, that's what I would bet on, and I think the Admiral would be disappointed in the progress we have(n't) made.
Re: Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> this is still exciting given how anemic advancement in the fusion space has been for 50+ years At the top of my list for when I'll be king for a day is - massive, national-scale investments (think: reaching towards one percent of GDP) in fusion research. This is a major roadblock, but things look awesome on the other side. We just need to get our stuff together to hop over this fence somehow.
I think it’s generally very hard to force technological progress along by just throwing money at it. Let’s suppose this proposal works out, ITER will become a very expensive boondoggle. A technological dead end. But if you’d taken the ‘Manhattan Project’ approach and thrown 10x as much money at fusion research 20 years ago we’d most likely have spent most of it on a super-ITER. It might be operational by now and migh…
ITER is not cheap. But it is expected to get to first plasma by 2025. There will be things learned at ITER that will be applied to SPARC and other smaller reactors. ITER is expected to cost a bit over twice what a fission plan costs. Considering the stakes, spending that money to learn things about fusion power generation seems well worth it.
Re: Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was my understanding that fission and fusion both use the same Nuclear Power Plant sized facility. Fusion just replaces the radioactive bit, you still need steam/electricity conversion/transmission/cooling... it's not like a suitcase you can plug wires into, you still need a massive 'factory' to make electricity, just the one bit is a safer.
You don't need as much containment as you do for fission, because you don't deal similarly large amounts of highly radioactive isotopes. Consequently, the safety standards required are closer to fossil plants than to nuclear plants, and these safety standards are really what drives the cost of nuclear fission. The steam/electricity conversion/transmission/cooling" are also present in fossil plants, and these are sign…
It’s not that simple.
Fission’s primary form of shielding is generally large pools of water or other coolant which don’t directly become radioactive. Fusion on the other hand needs to maintain a near vacuum so your pressure vessel is under heavy neutron bombardment. However, small amounts of radioactive materials get dissolved in the fission’s water which the goes on to contaminate the primary coolant loop which increased decommissioning costs. Fusion reactors primarily containment vessels becomes extremely radioactive and all the remote handling equipment also needs decontamination, but it’s unclear if the primary coolant loop will need similar types of decontamination.
And by small amounts, divers occasionally go in the same pools storing years of spent fuel rods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool
Running the numbers the real difference is fission reactors need more protection from the outside world and containment for a potential meltdown. Thus thick though still fairly cheap walls, which generally don’t become radioactive. They last for 50 years and don’t actually cost that much to construct. Fusion however is a vastly more complex device which will also increase construction and decommissioning costs.
Re: Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s generally very hard to force technological progress along by just throwing money at it. Let’s suppose this proposal works out, ITER will become a very expensive boondoggle. A technological dead end. But if you’d taken the ‘Manhattan Project’ approach and thrown 10x as much money at fusion research 20 years ago we’d most likely have spent most of it on a super-ITER. It might be operational by now and migh…
ITER is a research project and will likely be very valuable, even more so when the compact reactors turn out to be viable. As amazing as the compact reactors are they still face many of the same challenges as ITER.
ITER is a make-work project, with the goal of demonstrating a brave new world of international coöperation. Any research which emerges from the maelstrom is a nice bonus.