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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

#181

Post by pfdietz »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #178
Gwypaas wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the major differentiator be the safety standards? You can't have a runaway reaction, because you need energy input to the magnet field to get more energy out. Instead of creating the right environment to get a chain reaction started if your control rods end up in the wrong place. Drop the magnet field and it all collapses. Even if you lose control of it with the magnet field on the quantity is limited, tokam…

Fusion will also be pretty much mandatory for deep space exploration and space colony ships, if we ever get that far

No, it won't. It is inferior to fission, solar, and beamed power.

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

#182

Post by bwanab »

inglor_cz wrote: post #102
logicchains wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

In my opinion, the main reason for success of the Manhattan Project wasn't the budget, but getting people such as Feynman, Fermi, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Szilard and Wheeler to work on the project together with a sense of urgency. 25 billion USD buys a lot of necessary stuff, but one Feynman doing his best to crack a secret of nature is priceless.

That budget was essential. A hundred Feymans would have been useless without those thousands of engineers and workers who built and operated the plants Kringle Washington and Tennessee that produced fissionable enough fissionable material.

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

#183

Post by Aeronwen »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #151
logicchains wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

To be fair, it did scale for fusion bombs.

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

#184

Post by garmaine »

mchusma wrote: post #58
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!

Both ITER is scheduled to be done and SPARC are trying to make net energy in 5 years. They probably won't hit those dates, but we aren't really talking about 20 years anymore. (I agree with several commenters on this thread that any project with a 20 years to completion timeline should be shelved for things with <10 year timelines).

Those are research plants, not regulatory approval for commercial designs. We're still at least 20+ years away.

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

#185

Post by pfdietz »

throwaway316943 wrote: post #154
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 tho…

Storing hydrogen underground is demonstrated, practical, and very cheap.

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

#186

Post by SiempreViernes »

kenneth wrote: post #108
SiempreViernes wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

It's widely believed that the use of the bombs in WWII as a practical demonstration of the technology is what lead to there not being a WWIII and generally a period of (granted, uneasy) world stability throughout the cold war. Thanks to the bomb's use at the end of an almost-finished conflict, everyone was too afraid of the destruction to turn the cold war hot. Without it, the cold war would have turned hot and a lot…

See wikipedia's list of common misconceptions for a demonstration of the explanatory power of things that are widely believed. Nuclear peace is a theory that find limited support for it's more conservative claims: as the single basis for the "long peace"* it is plainly lacking.

*So called because intra-state conflict outside of NATO doesn't count.

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

#187

Post by lambdatronics »

Animats wrote: post #6

This is more like "Fusion physicists rally around plan to improve message asking for more money". It's not like there's a serious plan to build a power plant. Except at Lockheed's Skunk Works, which is quietly plugging away on their own.

If you read between the lines, the private companies got their wish: a change in emphasis for the federal program toward doing the supporting work on nuclear materials science that (for example) Commonwealth Fusion has been suggesting.

The other wishlist item is to build support for doing cost-share programs with industry to implement the larger facilities. If this gets traction, then the government wouldn't actually build the power plant, it would be more like NASA COTS where they help sponsor private companies that actually carry out the work. The INFUSE and ARPA-E fusion programs are tentative steps in this direction.

Edit: BTW, rallying around an improved pitch is big deal for the federal fusion program. Budgets have generally been in decline ever since it peaked in the 70's, and for many years there was nothing much in terms of a vision for the next steps.

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

#188

Post by lambdatronics »

divbzero wrote: post #78

Are at an inflection point for fusion power? With interest and funding for it finally gaining steam? I’ve noticed several announcements about independent efforts this past year [1–6] but not sure if (a) it’s always been this way or (b) my view is skewed by HN. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21806334 "General Fusion" [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23979608 "ITER" [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com…

Not yet, in my opinion. Things will really change once some group achieves 'scientific breakeven' (gain > 1) or better yet 'engineering breakeven' (gain > 10). ITER targets gain ~5-20 sometime after 2035, and SPARC targets gain ~ 2-10 sometime after 2025. So there's a possible inflection point on the horizon, which explains all the press.

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

#189

Post by lambdatronics »

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

Fusion physicist here. What's to prevent you from evaluating it yourself? I would start with Todd Rider's PhD thesis https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/11412

See if you can convince yourself that the arguments he makes about non-equilibrium systems don't apply to your concept, and then write a white paper explaining your argument.

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