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Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

imperial.ac.uk

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Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#201

Post by whatshisface »

mcguire wrote: post #171
whatshisface wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people claim that it's safe for decades when our computer models can't predict the weather accurately next week. The models may or may not be accurate but they have nothing to do with predicting the weather. There isn't any weather underground... It's all slow diffusion and buoyancy. A better starting place might be asking where the model inputs come from.

Doesn't "diffusion and buoyancy" technically describe the weather, too?

Diffusion and buoyancy are indeed both things about the weather, but the nonlinearity of the navier-stokes equation stems from the ability of convection to transport momentum. Fluids moving through rocks can't go fast enough for that to happen.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#202

Post by cmrdporcupine »

brightball wrote: post #86
vilhelm_s wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural gas plants are cheap but they cause global warming, so soon we will not be able to use them. For example, the U.S. target is to have zero carbon emissions from electricity generation by 2035, and zero carbon emissions at all by 2050.

Their carbon emissions are still dramatically lower than those of coal and oil. There are bigger fish to fry than NG. NG is likely going to be a critical transitional fuel for the planet to depend on while we get to more abundant renewable options, grid batteries and nuclear/fusion/thorium.

Leaks and emissions specific to NG aside, NG is primarily a byproduct of the oil extraction industry. It lives in a symbiotic relationship with it. To truly get off oil we need to get off gas as well. There's a reason why oil patch boosters and lobbyists and climate change deniers in places like Alberta are also pushing natural gas; the fortunes of oil and gas are tied together. This is a lobby and sector we need to deprecate not support.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#203

Post by adrianN »

myself248 wrote: post #108
adrianN wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PV+storage is how many hours of storage? Storing enough power to last a night is just getting close to commercially viable afaik, but storing enough power to last a winter is still quite expensive.

The best storage is no storage at all, it is demand-response. Things like responsive appliances and EV chargers that can schedule their load rather than insisting that limitless power be available instantaneously. I don't care when the dishwasher runs as long as the dishes are clean by tomorrow, you know? Of course right now, putting the word "smart" on an appliance doesn't imply any of that, and the way it ends up i…

I agree, but I think you can't demand-response away all of winter. People still want to drive their EVs and heat their homes and industrial processes can't be time shifted for weeks or even months.

You'll need some storage. Right now that would probably be Hydrogen or Methane, and making those is pretty expensive. Perhaps something better will come along, or it gets cheaper with scale, but at the current CO2 price it's not competitive with fossil fuels.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#204

Post by Robotbeat »

brightball wrote: post #86
vilhelm_s wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural gas plants are cheap but they cause global warming, so soon we will not be able to use them. For example, the U.S. target is to have zero carbon emissions from electricity generation by 2035, and zero carbon emissions at all by 2050.

Their carbon emissions are still dramatically lower than those of coal and oil. There are bigger fish to fry than NG. NG is likely going to be a critical transitional fuel for the planet to depend on while we get to more abundant renewable options, grid batteries and nuclear/fusion/thorium.

In the US, natural gas produces more emissions now than coal, if you include heating. NG is now the big fish to fry.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#205

Post by mcguire »

dragontamer wrote: post #104
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We should put more resources into breeding faster horses now, internal combustion can wait." - someone in late 19 century.

The benefits of a car were immediately obvious as soon as supply lines were considered. Feed for horses was something like 30% of all deliveries in a horse-based supply chain. Railroads run off of coal, but steam-engines were huge. ICE engines were miniature engines that also ran off of a fuel source (eventually settling upon oil, but many different fuel sources were considered in those early days, including electric…

"But nuclear is reliable and doesn't need this "natural gas assist". Even if a hurricane sweeps over an area, the nuclear power plants will keep working."

Actually, they don't.

"As a precaution measure, the reactor shall be shut down at least two hours before the hurricane’s strong winds arrive at the location. Generally this happens when the speed reaches between 70 and 75 mph (between 113 and 121 km/h)." (https://www.foronuclear.org/en/nuclear-power/questions-and-a...)

Also, they need electrical power to keep the reactor cool---typically the power grid and co-located diesel generators, not necessarily the best redundant backup system.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#206

Post by regularfry »

connicpu wrote: post #183
xxpor wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference: 1 MJ = 0.277778 kWh. Not trying to knock the progress made or anything like that, I just needed the conversion to a more familiar unit in order to appreciate what sort of scale they're talking about.

Though, when 1 MJ is generated in a fraction of a second, that does mean its instantaneous output was in the MW+ range

Unfortunate, though, that NIF can't do continuous generation by design. It's good for learning from and validating stuff instantaneously, but it's almost certainly an architectural dead-end otherwise.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#207

Post by myself248 »

pstrateman wrote: post #159
myself248 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best storage is no storage at all, it is demand-response. Things like responsive appliances and EV chargers that can schedule their load rather than insisting that limitless power be available instantaneously. I don't care when the dishwasher runs as long as the dishes are clean by tomorrow, you know? Of course right now, putting the word "smart" on an appliance doesn't imply any of that, and the way it ends up i…

There really aren't many things that can be off for significant periods of time without making them useless. Indeed I can't think of any that can be off for more than a day. Can you?

Most EVs have enough battery to cover more than a week of daily commute. If you could charge for significantly cheaper and greener than you do right now, by simply telling it to only charge when the panels on the roof are producing a surplus, isn't that sort of a no-brainer?

Maybe you'd go back to grid mode when anticipating a weekend trip, or when the charge hits some sort of level of concern. And I expect polar places with cloudy winters would probably run a fair bit of conventional generation like we do now, in the winter. But during the sunny season, shut it down!

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#208

Post by m4rtink »

after_care wrote: post #144
einpoklum wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if we'd have gone down that road, plus strong environmental awareness, maybe the Earth wouldn't be warming up so badly right now, and the oceans wouldn't have islands of plastic (= oil) waste. Now, sure, we wouldn't have enjoyed some of the benefits of car technology, but - public transport (esp. trains) makes up for a lot of that. OTOH, public transport pollutes too.

I’d much rather take an ICE train than a steam engine train…

Forget ICE, kets build a ICF powered train! :D

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#209

Post by mcguire »

Robotbeat wrote: post #196
scoopertrooper wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy falls flat because we're still decades away from a functional fusion power plant. "Why breed faster horses now when maybe my grandchildren will get to zoom around in cars?"

We aren’t. MIT’s SPARC Tokamak design could be ready for commercialization by a decade. Less time than completing a high speed rail project in the US.

The word "could" is doing a lot of work, there.

And how many times have we heard the phrase "a decade" in this field?

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