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U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

sciencemag.org

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Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#41

Post by gibolt »

tomrod wrote: post #14
est31 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now it's cheaper to deploy fossil fuels than using one of the more expensive storage technologies. Hopefully with time the price will come down though. Trends are quite promising.

Yes, but my understanding is that this relative cheapness is in large part due to externalizing the environmental costs to future generations

Don't forget the literal Trillions of dollars big oil gets annually, just from the U.S.

Take that away and the wells lose their competitiveness really quickly

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#42

Post by sbierwagen »

wcarss wrote: post #12

Serious question: how does an article like this get written without mentioning SPARC[1] once? They're hardly secretive, they're MIT's people, they're moving on a plan to get results in ~5 years, and they're talking about the same kind of things: tokamaks, better computer modeling, and easier to make higher temperature superconductors for stronger magnets. I'm just a layperson, I only know pop science level stuff here…

The article image is of ARC, the predecessor to SPARC.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#43

Post by Lammy »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #36
spo81rty wrote: post #15

Meanwhile, reportedly China has already built one and is testing it now. So the USA is 20 years behind?

Building one is not the same as getting useful power out of it.

Yep, USA will make sure of that if Iran is any indication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet#Affected_countries

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#44

Post by Retric »

est31 wrote: post #37
Retric wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s more lithium in earths crust than Lead yet we mine ~50x as much lead. The only limitation on mining lithium is how concentrated is making it more or less expensive to extract. Currently raw Lithium is extremely cheap, it’s highly refined battery grade lithium that’s somewhat expensive. Rank 33: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...

Abundance in the crust is one thing, ability to mine it is another. That's why you need to look at reserves [0] instead of resources. And there are way more lead reserves (88 million tons in 2016 [1]) than lithium ones (17 million tons [2]). [0]: https://newpacificmetals.com/mining-101/mineral-estimates-re... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead#On_Earth [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Reserves

Proven reserves are dependent on actual mining.

“Worldwide lithium resources identified by USGS started to increase in 2017 owing to continuing exploration. Identified resources in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 were 41, 47, 54, 62 and 80 million tonnes, respectively.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Reserves

There is little to suggest this trend will suddenly stop unless we simply stop looking. Further, a 5x increase in lithium has minimal impact on the long term EV or grid storage economics. That’s a lot of wiggle room for more expensive extraction.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#45

Post by baking »

sbierwagen wrote: post #42
wcarss wrote: post #12

Serious question: how does an article like this get written without mentioning SPARC[1] once? They're hardly secretive, they're MIT's people, they're moving on a plan to get results in ~5 years, and they're talking about the same kind of things: tokamaks, better computer modeling, and easier to make higher temperature superconductors for stronger magnets. I'm just a layperson, I only know pop science level stuff here…

The article image is of ARC, the predecessor to SPARC.

Well, SPARC is a mini version of ARC. Smaller and without a blanket.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#46

Post by deeviant »

elihu wrote: post #31
tahoeskibum wrote: post #4

I think that solar/wind + battery (e.g. Tesla Megapack) will make fusion irrelevant.

Well, maybe. We can probably meet our current energy needs with solar/wind and some kind of energy storage and more long-distance transmission lines, but it won't be cheap or easy. (Maybe it'll be cheap in the long run, but in the short run it's a lot of infrastructure to build out.) Fusion shouldn't be considered an essential prerequisite to address climate change, but it would be better to have it as an option than…

Solar is the cheapest source of power in a wide range of markets. Storage will become economical long before fusion at this point.

Also storage isn't even a concern until solar/wind reaches far greater penetration.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#47

Post by jeffbee »

Lammy wrote: post #40
jeffbee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wut?

Industry uses three-phase power unlike residential (USA perspective anyway). You'd need one of these for your solar farm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_micro-inverter

Industry often goes to great lengths to rectify 3-phase power. In some cases they'd much rather just have the DC anyway. But that's neither here nor there since utility-scale solar power feeds the AC grid and its alternating electrons are completely fungible and indistinguishable from other electrons.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#48

Post by [deleted] »

est31 wrote: post #37
Retric wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s more lithium in earths crust than Lead yet we mine ~50x as much lead. The only limitation on mining lithium is how concentrated is making it more or less expensive to extract. Currently raw Lithium is extremely cheap, it’s highly refined battery grade lithium that’s somewhat expensive. Rank 33: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...

Abundance in the crust is one thing, ability to mine it is another. That's why you need to look at reserves [0] instead of resources. And there are way more lead reserves (88 million tons in 2016 [1]) than lithium ones (17 million tons [2]). [0]: https://newpacificmetals.com/mining-101/mineral-estimates-re... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead#On_Earth [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Reserves

[deleted]

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#49

Post by Hasz »

tahoeskibum wrote: post #4

I think that solar/wind + battery (e.g. Tesla Megapack) will make fusion irrelevant.

No one is giving you numbers for why this is wrong, so let me ballpark.

Typical solar irradiance is 1000W/m^2. Mean sunshine hours where I live is 3000hrs/y. Assuming 100% efficiency, 100% solar irradiance, perfect angle etc for those 3000hours, we get ~10^10J of energy. Those are bad assumptions, but very generous.

In a gram of deuterium, per e=mc^2, we get ~10^12J. There is 100x more energy in a single gram of deterium than a year of intense sunshine. Deterium is far from rare -- 1 part in ~10,000. Consider the vast amounts of deterium in the oceans and realize if fusion becomes a reality, nuclear, solar, oil, wind etc all become irrelevant overnight.

I recommend this https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/01/nuclear-fusion/

for a layman's introduction of the energy scales involved here.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#50

Post by est31 »

Retric wrote: post #44
est31 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abundance in the crust is one thing, ability to mine it is another. That's why you need to look at reserves [0] instead of resources. And there are way more lead reserves (88 million tons in 2016 [1]) than lithium ones (17 million tons [2]). [0]: https://newpacificmetals.com/mining-101/mineral-estimates-re... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead#On_Earth [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Reserves

Proven reserves are dependent on actual mining. “Worldwide lithium resources identified by USGS started to increase in 2017 owing to continuing exploration. Identified resources in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 were 41, 47, 54, 62 and 80 million tonnes, respectively.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Reserves There is little to suggest this trend will suddenly stop unless we simply stop looking. Further, a 5x…

Not sure if you've seen my edited version of the comment or replied to the earlier version. There is a distinction between resources and reserves.
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