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Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#711

Post by lumost »

mcv wrote: post #646
iaw wrote: post #632

I am a strong proponent of Fusion energy and did some work on the subject in undergrad. This is not a major breakthrough, it's a benchmark. A major breakthrough would be materials that could withstand the neutron bombardment longer, the ultimate limiting factor for fusion energy plants after we achieve positive net energy.

I used to like the idea of fusion energy, but practical application has always seemed to be 40 years in the future, and it's starting to sound more like 60 years now. I hope it will be possible some day, but it's not going to help with out energy needs in our lifetime. (Unless that longevity research is going to pay off, I guess.)

There is a class of problems that I've become accustomed to being forever in the future.

- Nuclear Fusion - AGI - Driverless cars - Quantum Gravity - Carbon Nanotubes

There appears to either be a problem where these are either convenient money sinks, problems that are missing key break-throughs or missing critical technologies. Nuclear Fusion would be easy if we had 400T magnetic fields and the structures to support them.

We seem to be missing a critical cultural element required to drive these types of innovations - or we are missing the slow tooling, process, and incremental innovations required to support these technologies.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#712

Post by Dylan16807 »

HanyouHottie wrote: post #637
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in theory they'll be generating over 10x the amount of power that they're putting into it Does this mean 9/10ths of the power can be sold and the other 1/10th can be re-used to power the reactor endlessly? How much power does this produce compared to a nuclear reactor?

> Does this mean 9/10ths of the power can be sold and the other 1/10th can be re-used to power the reactor endlessly? No: https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY

That video's a bit confusing because it purely talks about watts and not everything is continuous.

Anyway, the important part: In addition to the output being thermal, with losses from conversion, only the energy going into the plasma is being counted. So measuring the entire system, this reactor might still be a little short of break-even.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#713

Post by drjesusphd »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #497
dahfizz wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind + Solar are near useless without storage, and we do not have anything close to the storage necessary.

Storage likely will be a non-issue once sodium ion batteries scale up, even cheaper and safer than LFP. A couple more years of scale efficiencies and alt+storage will be cheaper without subsidies. Consumer solar+storage will be cheaper than nat gas in a couple years with any rational subsidy. Land issues? Seriously? The land issue for solar is a non-issue, it's like fake hand-wringing by the oil astroturfers over bir…

The land requirement for solar should not be so casually dismissed.

To power the US energy needs, you need an area about the size of New Jersey. Also roughly equivalent to the area taken up by roads. The interstate highway system alone has been cited as the largest public works project in history, and that's "just" asphalt.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#714

Post by oddlama »

lumost wrote: post #711
mcv wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to like the idea of fusion energy, but practical application has always seemed to be 40 years in the future, and it's starting to sound more like 60 years now. I hope it will be possible some day, but it's not going to help with out energy needs in our lifetime. (Unless that longevity research is going to pay off, I guess.)

There is a class of problems that I've become accustomed to being forever in the future. - Nuclear Fusion - AGI - Driverless cars - Quantum Gravity - Carbon Nanotubes There appears to either be a problem where these are either convenient money sinks, problems that are missing key break-throughs or missing critical technologies. Nuclear Fusion would be easy if we had 400T magnetic fields and the structures to support…

You can add graphene based technologies to that list.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#715

Post by Dylan16807 »

credit_guy wrote: post #683
bsder wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to like the idea of fusion energy, but practical application has always seemed to be 40 years in the future, and it's starting to sound more like 60 years now. You have to understand that fusion has been funded at "fusion never" levels for 5 decades now. The amount of money that we poured at the mining engineering that later became "fracking" was larger. Had we funded fusion at the amount we have funded petr…

Who is "we"? Fracking was funded with private money. It was "conventional" technology, no edge-of-science stuff, so private entrepreneurs could afford it, and the rewards were quick to materialize. Nuclear fusion? There's this urban myth that fusion could have been achieved if only we'd have poured more money into it, but where's the evidence? Plasma modeling requires a lot of computational power. What you have now i…

At the very least I would have expected money to help with superconductor research.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#717

Post by socialdemocrat »

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?

Fusion power could give you power when you need it unlike solar power which would need storage. Of course Fusion power is so complex and expensive that it is likely far cheaper to simply build solar panels and add storage.

While Fusion obviously has merits I think it is overhyped as a solution. Molten Salt Reactors are a much more sensible solution if nuclear power is the desired solution. Why? Because they actually generate LESS nuclear waste than Fusion power plants.

The big selling point of Fusion reactors is that they don't generate any nuclear waste. Except they kind of do. Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) in contrast actually "eat up" nuclear waste. You can power them on nuclear waste and get less waste out. Thus an MSR has negative radioactive waste production. Fusion has positive waste production.

Unlike Fusion reactors we have already proven that we can build MSR reactors. It doesn't mean I think we should give up Fusion research. I just think that if we want to get cheap, clean and reliable power today, then solar, wind and MSRs are probably the most sensible options, not fusion.

https://erik-engheim.medium.com/yes-clean-nuclear-power-exis...

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#718

Post by twarge »

hattmall wrote: post #692
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to work at CFS. Cambridge, MA is right down the road from me and there is no greater cause right now than fusion energy in my opinion.

Why though, we already have Nuclear energy, we could easily build enough that it could power the world's energy needs. The issue is storage, until we have a revolutionary storage solution very little will change with fossil fuel usage.

However! fusion plants are much larger than fission cores, and the neutrons are an order of magnitude more energetic, so you wind up with both way more mass and way higher activation.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#719

Post by Dylan16807 »

0n34n7 wrote: post #606
jjeaff wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

110v can easily kill you. It's a little harder to get a good solid connection through your body and into the ground than 220v. But it certainly can and does happen.

Amps kill, not volts. Hence high voltage low amp Tesla coil spark shows.

Your comment is completely irrelevant to wall sockets because they can all supply more than a tenth of an amp.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#720

Post by socialdemocrat »

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…

Storing solar power for the night isn't hard. It has been possible to do so for decades with concentrated solar power (CSP). You heath up salt directly with the sun. The hot salt can then drive steam turbines at night.

CSP has been dying for years however because Photovoltaics are cheaper. However, this is largely due to regulation. Solutions are picked based on price per kWh. CSP cannot compete on that with Solar cells. However today government have started modifying regulation so that a premium price is paid to those which can deliver power at night.

CSP projects then become competitive since unlike solar cells they can deliver power at night. In the past CSP projects delivered power the whole day. Now they are increasingly only delivering power at night, thus getting the premium price.

This goes to show that to get desired development in renewable energy it is crucial to get regulation right. Until now, regulation has not properly rewarded projects which can deliver power on demand.

However once that is in place, thermal and cryogenic storage of power will become competitive and be built.

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