Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

imperial.ac.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 494 posts

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

#361

Post by tuatoru »

rfrey wrote: post #289
ChuckMcM wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, 100% props for the experience. And I totally respect it. The GP question was "what makes fusion different", and the only thing that is different really is the economics of how much it costs vs how much energy you get out. Energy out is, by definition, the amount of heat differential you can generate. Cost is, again by definition, the total operating cost of the heat source. So this is where the author and…

But the LCOE is a normalized (usually to $/kwh) price that accounts for the amount of energy produced for a given capex, plus the operating costs, plus the cost of capital, plus the lifetime of the plant. It tries to bake that all in. Your position is that LCOE will be much lower, because (as I understand you) the plant cost will scale much better than, say, 100MW natural gas plants. I totally accept that my assertio…

Fusion plants cannot be 100x bigger.

The grid doesn't cope well with current 2GWe plants going offline suddenly. It would not cope at all with a 200GWe plant doing that.

Besides the waste heat dissipation issues...

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

#362

Post by LegitShady »

ransom1538 wrote: post #304
throwaway894345 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, the consequences of climate change are billions cast into abject poverty, wars over resources and land, and so on. Moreover, if we do away with carbon subsidies (i.e., implement carbon pricing and border adjustments), then yes the cost of fossil fuel energy goes up, the consequence is the society adapts to using power more efficiently. We make less disposable shit, our industrial processes improve to keep…

"Of course, the consequences of climate change are billions cast into abject poverty" The only way to end climate change is to have a serious debate about population control. But no one wants difficult debates (at least people that matter). Nuclear fission once pulled off will make things much much worse. I foresee a population explosion into areas once uninhabitable.

a really serious conversation about population control is an armed conflict and only a fool will think otherwise. I think you can choose to not have children, but if you want to force others to not have children, prepare to be at war because that's what it will come to.

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

#363

Post by tuatoru »

hellohntoday wrote: post #294
AlbertCory wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skin in the game [1]. OP has actually done it ("CTO of a company providing heat-to-electricity plants"). Have you? Or you just read about it? [1] https://www.amazon.com/Skin-Game-Hidden-Asymmetries-Daily-eb... ?

OP doesn't bring up the different temperature and pressure differential of heat sources. That's a huge red flag. For all we know the CTO role at that company was entirely focused on keeping the staff laptops running and is largely disconnected from the fundamentals of heat to electricity generation. Why the hell would she (or he) ask here when (s)he has current or former colleagues in the industry to ask. My BS detec…

Please bring better data or logic to the discussion, not ad hominem attacks.

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

#364

Post by inetknght »

javajosh wrote: post #273
specialp wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>They are not required to disclose the contents of the fracking wastewater fluid. >Majority of water used in hydro fracking is slick water. This is normal water with friction reducers added to it. Typically 1%. Though can change based on the design of the frack. These are maybe not disclosed to the public since they typically are proprietary formulas that each vendor creates on their own. Each wanting to protect the…

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. 1% is actually an enormous amount since toxins are measured in ppm. Imagine being asked, for every 100 cups of water you drink, to drink a cup of mystery fluid. Actually, it's worse because any (non volatile) additive will tend to concentrate over time in food (and then concentrate further in animals if the food used for feed), and in addition any chemical is bound to change over t…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-cC3BXwoMQ

I think that was from Nebraska and not CA, and also from 2016. But it's pretty interesting anyway.

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

#365

Post by ChuckMcM »

grkvlt wrote: post #351
ChuckMcM wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, 100% props for the experience. And I totally respect it. The GP question was "what makes fusion different", and the only thing that is different really is the economics of how much it costs vs how much energy you get out. Energy out is, by definition, the amount of heat differential you can generate. Cost is, again by definition, the total operating cost of the heat source. So this is where the author and…

are you suggesting that fusion plants will be petawatt sized? because that's really not the case. i think the lcoe of fusion is predicted to be around the same as natural gas, with the DEMO reactor costing twice as much.

No.

There are a lot of unknowns around fusion plants (with the current big one being is it even feasible to build one). The last time I was looking at grid infrastructure questions the largest power plants on US grids stayed below 3GW because, as I was informed but cannot cite/verify, that was the limit on infrastructure carrying capacity of the western grid.

One of the unknowns is what is the minimum cost to build a plant capable of sustained nuclear fusion. Once you know that, you will also know what its net energy output is as well. Next you will want to know what is smallest practical increment of net energy output and what is the marginal cost of that increment.

Then, as we've been discussing here, what is the sweet spot with respect to total plant cost versus kW capacity (it's LCOE). I have chosen to use as a base estimate the cost of building a nuclear plant (the discussion of nuclear LCOE is here[1], here[2], and here[3]). I base that assumption that if we're going with heat conversion then the primary differences between fusion and fission plants will be reactor construction and fuel efficiency.

If we take it as a given that the LCOE for nuclear is approximately 10 cents per kWh, if our Fusion plants cost the same and can generate twice the power that is 5 cents per kWh. Given the difference in energy production between fusion and fission I'd like to believe it would be closer to 10x more power for the same cost or an LCOE for 1 cent per kWh.

The optimism here stems from an assumption that plant costs scale with size so smaller more powerful plants win in two ways, more power and less cost.

And yes, nobody knows if we can even build these things yet. So it really is all just speculation at this point.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/technology/nuclear-power/Economic...

[2] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...

[3] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf

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

#366

Post by thangalin »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #355
cletus wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is fusion different? It's not but people don't seem to realize this or maybe just don't want to think about it. Spending $100B to produce 1GW of power (made up numbers) is not an economical source of power. So hydrogen being free (deuterium and tritium are essentially free; Helium isotopes are more complicated) is irrelevant until the capital cost of the plane is much, much lower. And even then you still have t…

Here's an article about why fusion is a bad idea [1] and its from the bulletin of atomic scientists so they should know. I'd love to hear it refuted but doesn't seem to have happened. [1] https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk

https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/67rqqg/comment/dgtm...

"For the record The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is a [sic] anti-nuclear advocacy group. They often resort to fear mongering or using the straw man fallacy to advocate their point."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14203206

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

#367

Post by tuatoru »

Robotbeat wrote: post #195
dragontamer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, horse breeders argued the supply lines favored horses as horses could be fed by unlimited biofuels instead of limited fossil fuels. Of course, there was a difference in scale, but it’s just false to claim there weren’t major naysayers about automobiles from the horse industry.

First time I've ever heard this claim about horse naysayers. Do you have citations?

Interesting off-topic: according to Vaclav Smil, the number of horses in the USA peaked in the 1930s. In Europe, later still. David Edgerton's book The Shock of the Old talks about horses as well, among other "outdated" technologies.

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

#368

Post by SuoDuanDao »

xondono wrote: post #347
throwaway894345 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, the consequences of climate change are billions cast into abject poverty, wars over resources and land, and so on. Moreover, if we do away with carbon subsidies (i.e., implement carbon pricing and border adjustments), then yes the cost of fossil fuel energy goes up, the consequence is the society adapts to using power more efficiently. We make less disposable shit, our industrial processes improve to keep…

> Of course, the consequences of climate change are billions cast into abject poverty That may be true, but I was referring to the effects of switching to renewables too early . Since given our technology, the cost per MW is higher from renewables, switching to renewables (as a society) has massive costs. If we rise the price of the MW a 10%, that's a +10% on every MW from now until we find something better . That co…

I hope we could agree though, that the cost of switching to renewables too early is negligible compared to the cost of switching too late. If that can be agreed on by all, the relevant questions are 1) when do we think it would be too late? 2) how certain are we of that date? 3) how long will it take to switch to renewables? and 4) How certain are we of that date?

I don't disagree with your basic premise. Personally I think the answer to 1) is 140 years, so no reason to panic or dawdle. But it's important to remember that the more the economy grows before the switch to renewables is complete, the harder it becomes to make the switch. And, a better invention in renewables without the energy to scale it up won't do us much good, a significant part of our nonrenewables needs to be invested in renewables or the next 140 years of invention won't be much use.

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

#369

Post by pfdietz »

xondono wrote: post #352
outworlder wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a society, every extra dollar spent on pricier energy is an extra dollar that can’t go to social programs, or to new start up, or anywhere. If you are arguing to stop subsidies for fossil fuels, sure! Let's do it. Without any subsidies and with externalities accounted for, fossil fuels would be even more expensive than renewables.

> If you are arguing to stop subsidies for fossil fuels, sure! Let's do it. I'll be all in on that. That's not my point at all. > Without any subsidies and with externalities accounted for, fossil fuels would be even more expensive than renewables. Wow, slow down there. First, subsidies are a confounding factor. I don't care who signs the check, we're all paying for it in one way or another. Let's just assume we join…

> storage is so expensive that the LCOE for Solar/Wind + Storage blows us through the roof again!

Except it's not more expensive, and likely cheaper, than nuclear.

https://model.energy/

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

#370

Post by tuatoru »

Robotbeat wrote: post #225
mcguire wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "could" is doing a lot of work, there. And how many times have we heard the phrase "a decade" in this field?

Kind of a lazy comment. There has been substantial progress with the latest development from NIF as well as SPARC demonstrating a magnet section that would enable ITER at a much smaller scale using fundamentally superior superconducting technology With NIF’s latest result, we’re no longer just generating smoke from rubbing sticks together, now we got a flame. That’s a substantial, qualitative change in the state of t…

The mininum viable Qplasma would be in the neighborhood of 100.[1] Fusion may get competitive for electricity generation with a Qtotal > 500.[2]

1. Sabine Hossenfelder, How Close Is Nuclear Fusion?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY&t=8s

2. Nicholas Hawker, A simplified economic model for inertial fusion, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33040650/

Post reply on HN