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Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#241

Post by fragmede »

kiba wrote: post #112
m_fayer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many churches built before the industrial age took multiple generations to build.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#242

Post by arlort »

derriz wrote: post #140
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'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 s…

You might've noticed more and more but it's always been the case

It's probably related to brexit in that this outlook is very likely at least part of why Brexit happened (or rather why the UK was never a particularly good fit for the EU)

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#243

Post by pulse7 »

j245 wrote: post #229
pulse7 wrote: post #218

59 megajoules (MJ) = 16.4 kWh. For comparison: Tesla Model 3 (Standard Range) has 60 kWh battery. So they made about 1/4 of the full Tesla Model 3 battery.

> So they made about 1/4 of the full Tesla Model 3 battery. Focusing on absolute numbers is pretty irrelevant, wouldn’t you say ? We know once we get a working prototype it can be scaled up relatively easily. Strange to see a storage mechanism (battery) compared to a generation mechanism (fusion plant)

So comparison is about the "amount of energy", not about mechanisms...

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#244

Post by sdunwoody »

kiba wrote: post #112
m_fayer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not a scientific achievement, but doesn't the Sagrada Família count?

"On 19 March 1882, construction of the Sagrada Família began ... It was anticipated that the building would be completed by 2026, the centenary of Gaudí's death, but this has now been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic."

Continuing construction (admittedly not continuosly) for roughly 150 years is pretty impressive in my opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#245

Post by willis936 »

ggrrhh_ta wrote: post #233
Retric wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pl…

But her point stands even if there were mistakes: the press and many scientists, even if unwillingly, have failed to communicate the real state of fusion as an energy source. And I can believe that maybe some representatives did not fully understand the difference between Qtotal and Qplasma and the amount of time a reaction can be sustained (all three things that they would understand if they were explained clearly).

Some context please. Where did they make this failure in the hour long press release?

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#246

Post by orangepurple »

andruby wrote: post #151
time_to_smile wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, but if we can crack fusion energy, we can stop burning fossil fuels and we might even have ample energy to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.

We already have the capability to economically capture atmospheric carbon with existing nuclear power generation systems

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#247

Post by lisper »

grogenaut wrote: post #236
lisper wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy" means a single burst produced that much. In what sense is that "sustained"? A typical power plant produces that much energy in less than a second on a continuous (i.e. sustained) basis. Producing 59 megajoules once is basically a joke. It is analogous to detonating a pipe bomb (at a cost of several billion dollars) and claiming that as significant progress towards an inter…

internal combustion engines do this and are basically sustained. integrate over cylinders and time. Aka diesel or gas generators.

See this comment for my reply:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30274449

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#249

Post by willis936 »

jfengel wrote: post #209
whimsicalism wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

That's kind of her thing. She is usually right, but also overly pessimistic in a way opposite from the popular press over-optimism. I get frustrated because it paints science in an undeserved negative light. It is at least truthful, in a way that most anti science writing is not. Mostly I find it unhelpful in that it points out problems without either explaining why they were reasonable or giving a real alternative.

Indeed. Her arguments made in the aforementioned video are slanted. There are many lies by omission that paint an inaccurate worldview for laypeople.

It's incredible that the term "Lawson criterion" wasn't mentioned once.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#250

Post by Rygian »

lisper wrote: post #163
reacharavindh wrote: post #107

As an uneducated observer to nuclear physics, I could not tell the significance of this achievement. Did we finally learn how to extract more energy from a fusion rector than we supplied to operate it? Could anyone more in the know here explain in simpler and more practical terms please?

> Did we finally learn how to extract more energy from a fusion rector than we supplied to operate it? No. > Could anyone more in the know here explain in simpler and more practical terms please? It's impossible to tell because the story is incoherent. The central claim is that they "release[d] a record 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy" but this makes no sense. One can talk about sustained power (over a perio…

> You can get 59 megajoules out of your wall socket if you wait long enough.

Assuming a French wall socket, 240 V at 13 amps, and a pure resistive load, that will take

  $ units
  Currency exchange rates from FloatRates (USD base) on 2020-11-15
  3677 units, 109 prefixes, 114 nonlinear units
  
  You have: 59 MJ
  You want: (240 V * 13 A) * s
          * 18910.256
          / 5.2881356e-05
  You have: 18910.256 s
  You want: hms
          5 hr + 15 min + 10.256 sec
which helps put the figure in perspective.
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