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Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#141

Post by marcus_holmes »

n4r9 wrote: post #117
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.

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.

I'm wondering about what you know that we don't? Is there a project to move the UK physically out of Europe?

Or will this fusion go out of control and demolish the UK in a nuclear fireball?

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#142

Post by spuz »

cnasc wrote: post #116
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?

Apparently, about 12% of the land or 29,690 sq km in order to meet current energy demands (electricity, petrol, oil and gas). Apparently, only 6% of the country is currently built on which suggests that for any country of a similar latitude, you can estimate a land total of double that currently used per person. This does not take into account energy storage and assumes no energy is generated at night.

https://www.finder.com/uk/solar-power-potential

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#143

Post by epistasis »

twobitshifter wrote: post #110
epistasis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense do you think this is good for sustainable energy? Do you think it will cost less, or have less environmental impact than, say, newer deep well geothermal? I'm not so optimistic that costs could ever be competitive with geothermal.

The idea is that it would cost less and make energy so cheap and abundant that it would completely change society. Fusion would allow you to get 30x energy out vs energy in and has 10,000x the energy density of coal. If you want to explore space, it’s a good option.

I guess, why is it thought that it could be cheaper than geothermal, for example? Geothermal doesn't have fuel at all. I don't see how fusion produces energy cheap enough for it to be super abundant. And maybe that's just a failure of my imagination, but there seem to be massive gaps in others' reasoning that nobody has been able to fill me in on.

Space travel is an entirely separate type of energy use, and I could see it being the only option for lots of applications. But that would be much further away, and the significant hurdles there can also be solved by other future tech advances like direct conversion for fusion to electricity.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#144

Post by belorn »

kimbernator wrote: post #119
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 stil…

An other large drawback with solar is the required latitude. The further north it gets the fewer hours of sun light, and the energy you get is lower from the lower angle of attack. At the same time the energy needed for heating goes up during winter.

Solar makes great sense for places where energy consumption is higher during the summer than during winter.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#145

Post by numbsafari »

whimsicalism wrote: post #136
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"

Which Q? Qtotal or Qplasma?

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#146

Post by phkahler »

oakwhiz wrote: post #135
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?

The problem is press/marketing. When you read about this stuff 1.0 is claimed to be break-even, the threshold where fusion start to become practical. So in one piece of writing they will talk about this important number and (deliberately) conflate it with fusion being practical. Yes, getting Q plasma above 1 is necessary, but it's about an order of magnitude too low in reality. Sure everyone in the field know that. Her criticism is thats not how its presented to the outside world.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#147

Post by Bootvis »

baxtr wrote: post #138
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

I don’t see much criticism about that video in the linked submission.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#148

Post by rtsil »

baxtr wrote: post #138
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't see any criticism of her video in the link you provided.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#149

Post by mchusma »

jcfrei wrote: post #88
axg11 wrote: post #37

What is stopping one of the major western governments from printing $50B of their own currency and investing it all in an intensive fusion programme? There doesn’t seem to be much to lose (these economies are already unreasonably inflated) but so much to gain from viable fusion.

In the current economy the funding of these types of projects is usually not the bottleneck. It's finding the people and achieving the actual scientific / engineering breakthroughs. The marginal return on more money is pretty insignificant for that. If you just threw a ton of money at it much of it would probably be splurged or straight away misappropriated. Then you'll get a whole lot of terrible press, undermining…

I don't believe that is true. This famous chart shows funding levels versus requested since the 1970s:

https://images.app.goo.gl/58YdLFt7R9uY8dyR6

The much maligned prediction that fusion is 30 years away was always anticipating stronger financial support.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#150

Post by kalium-xyz »

whimsicalism wrote: post #136
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"

ITER is a bit too optimistic IMHO. For example I've always found the "UNLIMITED ENERGY" on their website a bit funny https://www.iter.org/
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