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Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#131

Post by axg11 »

nicoburns wrote: post #61
mavhc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem with ITER is it's not 1 country, it's lots, and they all want their piece of the pie instead of doing it efficiently

A $50b program from 1 country would likely have the same problem (as indeed would a large private program). Injecting a large amount of capital all at once into a project just isn't efficient.

Questions about how effective this would be aside. What is there to really lose? If we inflate the economy via current means or inflate the economy via employing scientists and engineers ineffectively, it’s inflation nonetheless.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#132

Post by tithonus »

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 basic problem is energy storage. If your not talking gigawatt-days then it's not feasible and most storage currently is megawatt-hours... i.e. because you need to store energy made during the day to use at night, to make solar power realistic you need a way to store huge amounts energy. BTW: The England power grid is about 30 GW. So 1 GW-day is just shy of an hour of demand.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#133

Post by time_to_smile »

twobitshifter wrote: post #91
dfdz wrote: post #80

> This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997. The experiment produced > 11 megawatts of power and at Jet > two 500 megawatt flywheels are used to run the experiments log_2(2*500/11)*(2022-1997) + 2022 = 2185 At this rate we will have fusion by 2185 I guess?

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/

We're currently on course for having trouble existing across generations. The path we're on now I don't think meeting fusion goals will be big concern if there's anyone around to even be concerned.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#134

Post by Retric »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #109

According to Sabine Hossenfelder, published numbers are frequently mis-stated on purpose. When you look at frequently reported Q Plasma (or plasma efficiency) we are not that far from it being > 1. However, we should look at Q Total (total efficiency), which is still way below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY For years, I was hoping fusion is close. After watching Sabine's video, I'm not so optimistic anym…

She makes several significant mistakes in that video. One example is the energy used to heat the plasma is now heat in the plasma identical to the heat generated by fusion. This means you can recover a percentage of that with a steam turbine.

Second a great deal of ITER’s energy usage is as a science experiment not a fusion reactor. Most of their monitoring equipment for example is irrelevant to an operating power plant. Thus Qplasma is giving relevant information where Qtotal is largely meaningless at this stage.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#135

Post by oakwhiz »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #109

According to Sabine Hossenfelder, published numbers are frequently mis-stated on purpose. When you look at frequently reported Q Plasma (or plasma efficiency) we are not that far from it being > 1. However, we should look at Q Total (total efficiency), which is still way below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY For years, I was hoping fusion is close. After watching Sabine's video, I'm not so optimistic anym…

Why would any experimenters optimize for Q total if Q plasma is a prerequisite to get anywhere?

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#136

Post by whimsicalism »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #109

According to Sabine Hossenfelder, published numbers are frequently mis-stated on purpose. When you look at frequently reported Q Plasma (or plasma efficiency) we are not that far from it being > 1. However, we should look at Q Total (total efficiency), which is still way below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY For years, I was hoping fusion is close. After watching Sabine's video, I'm not so optimistic anym…

Sabine is overly critical IMO. The distinction she is making is known to anyone who has spent a little bit of time thinking about fusion (hopefully that includes the grant writers) and projects like ITER are explicitly aiming for Q=10, not just "breakeven"

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#137

Post by ajuc »

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 problem with solar is unpredictability and A LOT of batteries needed to bridge the mismatch between production peaking at noon and consumption peaking at late evening.

Both of these are solved with fusion power.

Energy market operates on the assumption that whoever unbalances the network has to pay for balancing it. Providing too much and too little energy is both bad - you have to pay someone else to use more/less or to produce less/more to balance the mess you made. There are specialized powerplants for this, they are "on standby" and jump in when needed - and they charge much more than the normal powerplants. When there's a big shortage they can charge absurd prices for energy. And if you caused the shortage by mispredicting weather - you have to pay for it.

This makes the energy provided by solar panels much less valuable than the energy provided by a predictable, controllable source. Often by 1:10 factor.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#138

Post by baxtr »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #109

According to Sabine Hossenfelder, published numbers are frequently mis-stated on purpose. When you look at frequently reported Q Plasma (or plasma efficiency) we are not that far from it being > 1. However, we should look at Q Total (total efficiency), which is still way below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY For years, I was hoping fusion is close. After watching Sabine's video, I'm not so optimistic anym…

No post body was provided.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#139

Post by jeffbee »

skrebbel wrote: post #122
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The UK didn't float away or anything. It's still in Europe.

Consensus among geologists is that substantial portions of that island did in fact drift away from what we know as France.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#140

Post by derriz »

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'm not sure it's Brexit related - but I've noticed more and more that when the UK media uses the expressions Europe or European, they are referring to the European continent as if the UK was not part of it. I've even heard it used in this capacity in a work presentation which caused confusion in the multi-national audience - "in Asia it's X, in Europe it's Y, in the UK it's Z...". I consume quite a bit of UK media so I knew what they meant but others pulled them up on it and the presenter seemed initially perplexed that anyone would think that "Europe" included the UK.
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