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

Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 827 posts

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#281

Post by rytill »

treis wrote: post #251
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.

It runs into the spaceship problem where later iterations of a spaceship reach the destination first because new technology allows them to fly faster. At some point (maybe) materials and other technology will develop enough so that fusion becomes feasible on a decades or so timeline. Or solar & battery technology will develop to the point where fusion isn't really needed.

But if the first spaceship was never developed, would the second spaceship have been?

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#282

Post by whimsicalism »

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.

Sabine is not as "right" as many of her pop-sci fans seem to want. Most of her opinions about the direction of theoretical physics are not really falsifiable or "right."

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#284

Post by yholio »

Aperocky wrote: post #248

> This is more than double [the energy] what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997. I was excited for a little bit there.

Yup, a major breakthrough in this glacial field is doubling the energy output in 25 yeas.

So by the time captain Picard is born, we might have a very expensive and massive fusion reactor that will generate the same kind of energy we can generate today with very expensive and massive fission reactors.

Really now, this is pure garbage and does not solve the major problems in the field nor do most of the myriad startups trying to cash in on speculative seed funds.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#285

Post by rlt »

spuz wrote: post #142
cnasc wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.fi…

Of course that 6% only counts land usage by humans. How many (additional) non-human habitats would you have to decimate to cover 12% of the land with (ugly) solar panels?

Maybe thats acceptable in some deserts, but pretty terrible in other places. 1 step forward, 1 step back.

Plus that figure is for our current energy usage, which is only going to increase over time.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#286

Post by j245 »

pulse7 wrote: post #243
j245 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

My point is the comparison is meaningless.

If they get this to work, they will just build something with 100x or 1000x the output.

The number isn’t really important here, some indication of how the development of the technology is coming along is what we care about. Compare this energy to the last best output.

If this works and we productionize it, we will suddenly go from 1/4 Tesla battery to 10,000 Tesla batteries.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#287

Post by Joeri »

ajuc wrote: post #137
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/le…

But nuclear power is also not predictable, as plants regularly experience unexpected downtime. No power source is fully predictable, which is why you need controllable power sources to make up the difference.

I would say solar’s problem is controllability. You can only turn it up to the limit of the amount of sun received, which is none at night, and sometimes very little in the day.

It remains to be seen how controllable fusion power will be. Will it be for base load only, or will it also be useful to flexibly dial up and down for variable load? Much of current nuclear power is base load only. Clean base load power is still super useful, but it is not a complete solution.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#290

Post by chucksmash »

causi wrote: post #50
mannykannot wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess you could argue that you wouldn't evaporate all water in the kettle... One does not have to argue for that interpretation - raising the temperature to boiling point, not boiling it dry, is indisputably the accepted and intended meaning of the phrase wherever English is spoken... though it would fit with a certain stereotype of scientists if a bunch of plasma physicists did not know how to make a pot of tea!

indisputably the accepted and intended meaning of the phrase wherever English is spoken Not exactly. In American English "bring a pot to a boil" is much more common. When I read "enough energy to boil 60 kettles of water" I thought "vaporize".

> Not exactly. In American English "bring a pot to a boil" is much more common. When I read "enough energy to boil 60 kettles of water" I thought "vaporize".

Disagree that this is a) a much more common phrasing or b) that your interpretation would be the common one. I've yet to run into a situation where somebody asked me to "boil some water" and intended for me to vaporize all the water in some vessel.

Post reply on HN