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Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#111

Post by fvold »

formvoltron wrote: post #105

OK so with fusion everybody loves it because the fuel would be clean and nearly endless. Isn't that what solar power offers? Nobody wants to deploy solar due to high upfront cost. However, wouldn't the startup on a fusion reactor be much greater?

The thing is, a commercial-scale fusion reactor could produce the same energy as a truly vast solar array, and also produces power at night, does not need to be exposed to wind and rain to operate and can be scaled directly instead of with costly battery arrays.

Solar has the upside of actually producing a power surplus already, though.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#112

Post by kiba »

m_fayer wrote: post #104
twobitshifter wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it takes 200 years it is likely still worthwhile. Unfortunately we, as a culture, have a problem seeing and planning across generations. https://longnow.org/

I'm happy to hear someone make this point. Rather than sneering "vaporware" when decades fail to crack a problem, I would prefer us to keep in mind that if we never try multi-generational projects, we will never taste the fruit of multi-generational projects, and those are some sweet fruit indeed.

I am not sure if we have a project that spans multiple generations?

It would be easier to do a project that provide some kind of immediate benefit while having long term multigenerational long term effect.

Science is kinda that way. We get immediate knowledge with long term unknown payoff.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#113

Post by gtirloni »

formvoltron wrote: post #105

OK so with fusion everybody loves it because the fuel would be clean and nearly endless. Isn't that what solar power offers? Nobody wants to deploy solar due to high upfront cost. However, wouldn't the startup on a fusion reactor be much greater?

Solar panel manufacturing and disposal is far from clean though.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#114

Post by okuntilnow »

formvoltron wrote: post #105

OK so with fusion everybody loves it because the fuel would be clean and nearly endless. Isn't that what solar power offers? Nobody wants to deploy solar due to high upfront cost. However, wouldn't the startup on a fusion reactor be much greater?

Solar takes up quite a lot of space, but most importantly only works for a portion of a 24 hour cycle.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#116

Post by cnasc »

formvoltron wrote: post #105

OK so with fusion everybody loves it because the fuel would be clean and nearly endless. Isn't that what solar power offers? Nobody wants to deploy solar due to high upfront cost. However, wouldn't the startup on a fusion reactor be much greater?

Imagine you live in a smallish, not-so-sunny country like the UK. How much of your land area do you have to cover with solar panels in order to completely rid the nation of fossil fuels?

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#117

Post by n4r9 »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #108
tankenmate wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EUROfusion is a consortium of national fusion research institutes located in the European Union, Switzerland and Ukraine. It was established in 2014 to succeed the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) as the umbrella organisation of Europe's fusion research laboratories. The consortium is currently funded by the Euratom Horizon 2020 programme. [0] -- Wikipedia So the reason it is called European is that it wa…

I think the point that your parent commenter was making is that Oxford is in the UK and the UK is no longer a member of the EU or Euratom, although it has various agreements with both.

I think OP was commenting more on the emphasis, i.e. one of the titles highlighting the name "Oxford" just because it's famous. The UK is still in Europe and will likely be for decades to come.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#118

Post by mschuster91 »

biorach wrote: post #84
mschuster91 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Injecting a large amount of capital all at once into a project just isn't efficient. SpaceX would beg to disagree here. The reason why they are so cheap, agile and sustainable (=reusable rockets) is precisely because SpaceX got a load of money without the "pork" requirements that were commonplace with ULA & friends. That enabled SpaceX to embrace vertical, on-site integration and go for what was technically the bes…

ITER vs SpaceX is a really poor comparison. ITER is a high risk foray into still-experimental technology with no hope of direct return on investment (it can not function as a commercial power plant). It had to be built at this scale because they had reached the limits of smaller-scale prototypes (tho I think there was not unanimity about this). Pooling resources makes sense here. SpaceX is a more efficient take on te…

> Pooling resources makes sense here.

Yes, but still - instead of all the components needed being manufactured on or near site, they are shipped from across the world... so parts end up damaged [1], not made according to spec or the spec having errors introduced somewhere among dozens of companies and institutions. With sometimes weeks or months of shipping round-trip times, that is causing a fucking lot of delays. Not to mention that shipping all the stuff around itself is also causing issues given the current COVID-caused shipping delays.

The problem is that ITER, ULA, EADS, Airbus, the ISS and a bunch of other international cooperative projects all are considered by politicians primarily as a way to distribute pork, secondarily as a way to show off on the international stage and only then as a way to actually advance scientific knowledge.

[1]: https://news.newenergytimes.net/2021/09/26/component-issues-...

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#119

Post by kimbernator »

formvoltron wrote: post #105

OK so with fusion everybody loves it because the fuel would be clean and nearly endless. Isn't that what solar power offers? Nobody wants to deploy solar due to high upfront cost. However, wouldn't the startup on a fusion reactor be much greater?

Solar comes with a lot of challenges for large-scale usage as a replacement for coal, nuclear, etc. Really, the only thing better about solar at the moment is that it is available.

First off, the daylight cycle is an obvious concern and there still isn't a great way to store solar energy during the day for use by cities (or generally large consumers) at night. Not to say it's not possible, but people are largely still trying to figure out what the right solution for that is.

Second, the startup requires a significant amount of land in advantageous locations for sunlight. There's a lot of the planet that just won't see the same advantages as others, and transporting energy long distances to them is another unsolved problem.

Lastly, and this is more for fun, but solar won't be as useful when we as a species aren't exclusively on earth anymore. Fusion would be a pretty nice step forward for things like space travel.

Both have a really high startup, but achieving fusion would mean 24/7 clean energy that works regardless of environment.

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