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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

#91

Post by pjc50 »

nine_k wrote: post #72
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?

Most fossil-based electric generation is not oil; it's either natural gas (reasonably clean, though it does produce a lot of CO₂), or coal (terrible on many counts). I'd say that killing coal would have a large effect. It would also put entire town populations out of work — a really hard problem, read about how UK tackled it in 1970s and 1980s, it was painful and ugly.

The death of UK coal was all to do with economics of importing coal and labour prices and relations, rather than climate change. But also that's why most green parties talk of a "just transition", subsidy to the workers who will lose their jobs.

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

#92

Post by pstuart »

wiml wrote: post #68
garmaine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But we can spend ~$40B per year on our misadventures in Afghanistan. It's maddening.

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

#93

Post by pjc50 »

ilaksh wrote: post #2

How much of the excess renewable energy is being wasted rather than stored? Maybe fuel generation like hydrogen or ethanol, or kinetic can help make nuclear less crucial?

Very little; the term to look for is "curtailment", and it happens a few days a year.

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

#94

Post by UnchartedSystem »

pontifier wrote: post #69

Ok, say I've got a new design for a fusion reactor, but it takes me 5 years to convince anyone that it's worth investigating. Fusion power has been set back 5 years. Someone please help me evaluate my design. Please! http://www.DDPROfusion.com

I've been helping with messaging for somebody looking for demonstration funding for an experimentally proven clean oil recovery technology and it makes me feel hopeless seeing there are so many people struggling to demonstrate potentially game changing technologies, often because people investing or allocating money have little technical competence.

for those curious: http://www.envirotechdme.com

If I could offer you some pointers:

- Separate the Youtube account you use for this technology from the one you use personally.

- Specify in nontechnical language the advantage this tech has over similar fusion technologies. (still working on this myself)

- Seek peer review and then highlight that peer review directly on your website. My intuition is that most people or departments who are capable of funding a demonstration are not capable of validating the science behind your technology.

- I would recommend writing and attaching a succinct summary of your technology distinct from your patent, and devoid of the legalese and cruft that fills up a patent.

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

#95

Post by trhway »

gpm wrote: post #53
trhway wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And fortunately soon Musk will need fusion for Mars travel and colonies. He just personally got extra 100B to burn - i think SpaceX will start to hire nuclear scientists and engineers soon :)

Fission seems like the better option for mars. The technology is ready now, and no one cares about a bit of nuclear waste on mars anyways.

yes, technically the next generation of Starships flying to Mars would be fission powered. Unfortunately the regulatory regime makes any fission related development close to impossible. Add to that practical unavailability of fission fuel - even NASA has issues getting those mere kilograms of plutonium, and even Musk wouldn't be able to get nor breeder reactor, nor enrichment plant (here on Earth i mean).

As a result, the fusion "in 20 years" is much more plausible and feasible for the likes of SpaceX than fission.

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

#96

Post by adrianN »

logicchains wrote: post #60
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?

>God I wish we could Manhattan Project this shit. Interesting point of reference: the Manhattan project cost around around $25 billion in today's dollars. The US government spent at least $6 trillion on the coronavirus response, which could buy 200 Manhattan Projects. Coronavirus will kill around a million people this year at most; air pollution kills around five million per year (and sea level rises could kill a lot…

Things sure were cheap back then. ITER alone is expected to cost at least 22 billion Euros.

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

#97

Post by halfdan »

Lammy wrote: post #38
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…

I am pro-nuclear, and I think it would be a mistake to assume this article is also pro-nuclear. Heck, the very first six words ("U.S. fusion scientists, notorious for squabbling") prime a reader to see those hardworking people as bickering nerds working on fleeting, individual, theoretical interests. I sincerely doubt we will see any uranium-based energy technology ascend to dominance/ubiquity while over half of Eart…

You are talking about fission, not fusion.

Nuclear plants are using radioactive sources like uranium to generate energy. Fusion tech would use hydrogen and fuse it to helium.

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

#98

Post by BorisTheBrave »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #65
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…

While you are right that Musk favors engineering/cost improvements on existing ideas. I don't think there's a clear dividing line between science and engineering.

SpaceX has numberous "firsts", including reusable rockets and some engine designs. So it's not right to say they just do things we've been doing for decades.

And on the other end, the physics behind fusion is pretty well understood. The difficulties/expense are in building the thing, and dealing with issues like plasma instability. We call that "science" mostly because it is a state funded project. If a private company were doing the same thing, it would be called R&D.

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

#99

Post by SiempreViernes »

free_rms wrote: post #20
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…

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?

Its amazing how cutting emission by regulation is completely left out of the list of options, somehow spending infinite money is seen as easier than getting congress to act...

Anyway, I let Wellerstein reply to this:

"""The Manhattan Project was an unusual, somewhat dubious enterprise that had massive, world-affecting consequences. Ignoring that not only misunderstands the Manhattan Project, it misunderstands what happens when you pour essentially unlimited resources into a given field — which actually is the primary goal of those who use this metaphor.

The problem is, the Manhattan Project “worked,” if by “worked” you mean, “produced atomic bombs for use in the Pacific theatre during World War II.” It almost didn’t work — there are plenty of reasons to believe that the war would have been over fairly soon with or without the bombs (the main historical question is not whether it would soon end, but on what terms and at what costs)."""

http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/04/02/do-we-want-another...

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

#100

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

Xorlev wrote: post #76
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

$0.90 in 1999 is $1.41 today. Near me, gas is ~$2 (give or take). So, more expensive (~40-50%), but not double.

Granted, it may not be quite double, but average American salaries have not entirely kept pace with inflation in the last twenty years, so fuel expenses are appreciably higher than simply counting the inflation in.
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