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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

#151

Post by mytailorisrich »

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…

A lot of the Manhattan Project's spending was to scale the processes to industrial level in order to produce what was necessary to build bombs.

The situation is quite different with nuclear fusion.

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

#152

Post by rwmurrayVT »

UnchartedSystem wrote: post #94
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…

But does this person own all of the intellectual property?

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

#153

Post by gwbas1c »

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 fusion expert)

I get the impression that there's still plenty of details that we don't understand how to do. It's not like solar + batteries where we have plenty of working solar + battery setups, and we just need to figure out how to make more of them more cheaply. It looks like there's still some fundamental research needed before fusion can generate more power than it consumes.

Heck, 10-ish years ago, I met someone who told me his cabin in the woods was off-grid solar because an off-grid system was cheaper than running electricity to the cabin. We're not even close to that state with Fusion.

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

#154

Post by throwaway316943 »

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?

Ethanol is wasteful, hydrogen is a beast to store, kinetic requires too many moving parts. If you want to store renewables you should turn them into methane, best storage volume, safe and proven hardware for storage, transportation and power generation. It’s even better if you can efficiently obtain atmospheric CO2 for the reaction, closes the loop.

Honestly, fission is probably the best 0 carbon power technology though, it just blows everything out of the water. We’re almost recovered from the no nuke nonsense of the 60s and the rumblings of new power plant designs and companies are growing louder so there’s hope yet.

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

#155

Post by benhurmarcel »

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'.

And yet quite a few Musk promises perpetually planned in the coming years will probably end up with that kind of timeframe too.

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

#156

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Hammershaft wrote: post #90
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So by your estimate (~1%), a gram of deuterium can provide power equivalent to a year of intense sunshine?

That statement doesn't make any sense without a unit for the amount of sunshine.

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

#157

Post by smichel17 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #70
jdeibele wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

...and I remember paying almost $4/gallon, around 10 years ago (I think), with no expectation that the price would drop. Gas is crazy cheap rift now.

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

#158

Post by frockington1 »

pstuart wrote: post #92
wiml wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not just Afghanistan, Biden we'll get us back to bombing Libya and other nations soon

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

#159

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by yostrovs »

wil421 wrote: post #146
Seanambers wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, the most expensive program was The B-29 bomber program, which cost 50% more than the Manhattan project. Then one B-29 had an emergency landing in Sovjet and the soviets reversed engineered it into the TU-4. Tu-94 which is still flying is a newer scaled up version of this. It's amazing how much of the innovation the U.S did in the 1940s ended up in others hands(the bomb, B-29). The world would pr…

The physicists knew an atomic bomb was possible the US just did it fist. I am sure secrets got out that helped the Soviets create one but I think they would've created one regardless.

History says that that's not true and the Soviets relied on extensive networks of spies to get tech secrets, be it the bomb or so many other military projects.
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