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Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#731

Post by socialdemocrat »

gtirloni wrote: post #113
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 panel manufacturing and disposal is far from clean though.

You can easily throw solar panels in a land fill. It isn't a big problem. Slag heaps from coal is already a much larger problem than a solar panel landfill would ever be. A single coal mine has a bigger slag problem than all the worlds solar panels combined.

Yes, we should take the problem serious, but it is also grossly overrated. It is certainly not a reason to avoid solar panels.

https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/recycling-solar-panel-wa...

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#732

Post by NateEag »

kadoban wrote: post #706
avidphantasm wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, I think fusion has the best chance of saving us from ourselves wrt to climate change, so long as the unforeseen consequences aren’t too bad.

It doesn't seem like it's quick enough. We're, at minimum, decades away from it even being built out commonly, and to _really_ save ourselves we should have already replaced a substantial portion of the world's energy generation decades ago.

Sure, it may be too little, too late.

You don't know that until the failure is complete, though, and "it may fail" is a terrible reason to not try the best shots we have.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#733

Post by bobsmooth »

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.

Have you heard of General Fusion? They're using liquid metal as both containment and energy extraction. Really cool, they're building a demo plant in the UK.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#734

Post by [deleted] »

ppaattrriicckk wrote: post #59

In extension to this news and the press conference, one thing I am super excited about, is the private SPARC project and the MIT-spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). If you don't know about it already, I would highly recommend checking it out (e.g. by searching YouTube for "MIT Sparc Fusion Reactor" for some fairly accessible videos on the theory behind why they should achieve fusion way faster than the current…

[deleted]

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#735

Post by TheProbes »

ppaattrriicckk wrote: post #59

In extension to this news and the press conference, one thing I am super excited about, is the private SPARC project and the MIT-spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). If you don't know about it already, I would highly recommend checking it out (e.g. by searching YouTube for "MIT Sparc Fusion Reactor" for some fairly accessible videos on the theory behind why they should achieve fusion way faster than the current…

There's no such thing as a room temperature super-conducting magnet. You are talking about "high temperature" magnets, which are YBCO tape magnets. High temperature, in this case, means about -290 degrees F.

The next breakthrough that will come will be YBCO powder-in-tube wires, that will allow much stronger fields than currently. They'll be here within a decade, probably much less, as working prototypes exist now.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#736

Post by kadoban »

NateEag wrote: post #732
kadoban wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem like it's quick enough. We're, at minimum, decades away from it even being built out commonly, and to _really_ save ourselves we should have already replaced a substantial portion of the world's energy generation decades ago.

Sure, it may be too little, too late. You don't know that until the failure is complete, though, and "it may fail" is a terrible reason to not try the best shots we have.

I mean, it _will_ fail at stopping global warming, there's no "may" about it. It will probably have other positive effects though.

I'm very onboard for any potential fusion power generation, I just don't think it has any hope of saving us from global warming.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#737

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #727
dahfizz wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today Boston has a sunrise at 11:47 am utc and Los Angeles has a sunset 1:30am utc. That is 10+ hours where the USA gets zero sunlight. Inconveniently, we also hit peak energy usage during those 10 dark hours. So if you want to ignore the storage problem, you need to rely on wind only. And if you have to dramatically over provision production to be able to meet demand, the cost benefits disappear. Storage is a must f…

> And if you have to dramatically over provision production to be able to meet demand, the cost benefits disappear. "Not cost-effective to be the majority of power production while CO2 pollution is free." is very different from "near useless".

> the cost benefits disappear

But I am not claiming there is any cost benefit at all - alI am claiming it's doable, and we will have zero or negative electricity price on windy days, that coupd be put to good use for electrolysis, hydrogen production, etc.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#738

Post by AtlasBarfed »

drjesusphd wrote: post #713
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The LCOE of solar and wind is cheaper than all fossil fuel plants and nuclear plants. Existing generation will peak load.

Look, any new nuclear or fusion project won't turn on for a decade. Given that even with inflation wind/solar STILL dropped in LCOE cost last year, and still likely has technological and economies of scale, you REALLY think a 10 year out fusion or nuclear project will launch at a price competitive with what even solar/wind + storage will be?

Solar/wind likely will be half the inflation adjusted cost it currently is now even with storage in 10 years.

LFP batteries are coming on the market now for storage that are half what lithium ion cost. Sodium will be release by CATL later this year or next. I'm not handwaving anything.

There is a LOT of roof real estate. A fair amount more than the interstate system. The costs are already pushing wind/solar to deploy as fast as it can be made, it basically is a production scaling problem.

New Jersey is not a large state, given we have west texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and lots of other desert. Which we don't need, because of rooftops and wind.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#739

Post by nielsbot »

kadoban wrote: post #736
NateEag wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it may be too little, too late. You don't know that until the failure is complete, though, and "it may fail" is a terrible reason to not try the best shots we have.

I mean, it _will_ fail at stopping global warming, there's no "may" about it. It will probably have other positive effects though. I'm very onboard for any potential fusion power generation, I just don't think it has any hope of saving us from global warming.

Can we use it to put the CO2 back in the ground?

I guess there are some irreversible effects once warming reaches a certain threshold however.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#740

Post by ClumsyPilot »

thehappypm wrote: post #509
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does 'fundamentally expensive' mean? If it does not incluse precision engineering to build largest vacuum vessel, supercomputers, superconductors, generation and containment of hottest substance on the planet, and largest magnetic fields we can produce. If that's not 'fundamentally expensive', then what is? Especially when your interlocutor is asking for geothermal, a.k.a. a hole in the ground?

There’s no piece of the Tomamak individually that can’t be miniaturized or benefit from economies of scale. It doesn’t require exotic fuel like nuclear fission reactors do. It doesn’t need gigantic quantities of space and material like wind and solar. It doesn’t have high up front engineering costs like geothermal. One day a tokamak might be an off the shelf industrial purchase, maybe akin to an MRI machine.

"It doesn’t have high up front engineering costs like geothermal."

You are commenting on an article about how scientists had to build a reactor out of berillium and tungsten.

Have you ever touched those materials? Is there any berillium in your car, or your washing machine? If you go around your neighbourhood looking for someone who can weld or work tungsten, will you find anyone? Can you buy a tool on amazon that will cut tungsten?

The number of facilities that can produce precision-enginered thousand-ton vacuum vessel with exotic materials, are counted with fingers on one hand.

> Tritium is very exotic, and fuel cost is a small and irrelevant cost to fission powerplant

This is downright delusional, solar is the only technology that you can go and buy off the shelf and it is much cheaper than an MRI machine, any joe with basic electrical education can put together a solar power system and poor people in developing nations do it. Anyone who thinks that fusion will be easier than slapping solar panels together is smoking some serious dope

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