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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

#61

Post by Retric »

est31 wrote: post #50
Retric wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s my point, resources are probable sources of economically extractable resources. It’s mostly a long term vs short term question, so limiting things to reserves vastly underestimates availability in 2040+.

Even resources is an underestimation as again it’s based on economic assumptions that are quite flexible. New technology for example can change what’s considered economically feasible.

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

#62

Post by dchichkov »

kortilla wrote: post #25
free_rms wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God I wish we could Manhattan Project this shit. I'm a layman too but I get the impression that the theory is basically there and we just need to figure out the engineering. That's a solvable problem with lots of money and lots of teams. Are we going to wait until the sea level rises 20 feet and then say, geez, compared to the costs this imposed, fusion would have been easy?

Fission is a solved engineering and science problem though and we’re still blocking it to let the sea levels rise. Point being, nobody actually cares about climate change enough to make hard decisions so a Manhattan style project is highly unlikely.

Is there a way to make people care?

Personally, I think, for United States it does make perfect sense to redirect, say, half of the military budget onto solving real homeland security issues: climate change, sustainability, ecology, pandemics. There might be enough budget there to address climate change [1].

It'd be a risk to spend less on military, but considering that the United States has nuclear weapons and allies, is it a risk really?

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02460-9

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

#63

Post by orthecreedence »

jeffbee wrote: post #39
orthecreedence wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I know, wind/solar cannot power industrial needs, only residential. So we can get power at home to heat our house and watch netflix, but there will be no TVs or heaters to run off of the power.

Wut?

Not enough output.

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

#64

Post by coliveira »

The big problem with fusion is the enormous costs associated with producing energy. I guess we need to generate large amounts of energy to justify the expenditures. Based on that, I believe that China is the only country that has both the money as well as the large-scale need to make fusion practical.

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

#65

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

gameshot911 wrote: post #17

2040s? 20+ years from now!?! Too fuckin slow!! For all Musk's faults, he recognizes such timelines are untenable, and pushes people to do the 'impossible'.

I'm not a fan of this sentiment. Sometimes things are just really f'ing hard, and no amount of "pushing people" is going to change the reality of how long those things take.

I mean, if you look at both Tesla and SpaceX, nothing they've done was thought to be "impossible" from the outset from a scientific perspective. Electric cars already existed when Tesla was started, and we've been shooting rockets into space for decades. This isn't at all meant to minimize the huge achievements of those companies, but the science was never really in question.

Viable fusion is simply much harder.

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

#67

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Hasz wrote: post #49
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 dete…

> In a gram of deuterium, per e=mc^2, we get ~10^12J

Deuterium is not antimatter, where they entire mass of the substance is converted to energy. In nuclear reactions only a very small percentage of matter (~1%) is converted to energy.

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

#68

Post by wiml »

garmaine wrote: post #33
howardr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a letter in the Financial Times over the weekend... > Forty years ago, when studying for my engineering degree, I learnt a rule of thumb that said that nuclear fusion is always 20 years away. I was therefore reassured by the date given in the report (“Sites sought for Step change in energy supply”, December 3) for the Step nuclear fusion plant — 2040. (Edit: Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall but will include…

For most of my life fusion has been perpetually 30 years away. Now it is only perpetually 20 years away. That's progress!

This graph often gets mentioned in the context of "always 30 years away": https://imgur.com/3vYLQmm

It's not on "schedule" because we aren't putting the resources towards it.

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

#70

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

jdeibele wrote: post #55
orthecreedence wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I've been saying it over and over: raise the price of oil until gasoline et al are $20+/gallon. Then nuclear will be cheap . Why are we letting a silly thing like scarcity, supply, and demand dictate whether we self-destruct?

I've been saying for a long time that the US should increase the tax on gas steadily every year. Even a nickel a year would be OK but more would be better. People would be able to plan on the price increasing every year and make sound economic decisions on whether they wanted to move closer to work, etc. Unfortunately, it became apparent about the same time that the US is almost incapable of doing something in an org…

Fuel in the US is already much more expensive than two decades ago. I remember buying a gallon for around 90 cents in 1999, and at the same time I read a newspaper article about some immigrant-run stations on the Jersey shore that had slashed their prices to several cents below that, as they were content to make a tiny profit margin and play a long game. Now a gallon costs more than twice as much as then, but as far as I can tell the average American has not made significant lifestyle changes with regard to vehicle usage: they just suck it up.
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