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Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

nature.com

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Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#141

Post by ambrozk »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #117
cstross wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, this is good news. JET is a 1980s research project into how to contain a plasma and squish it enough to achieve fusion at all, not a practical generator. It doesn't have superconducting magnets, it runs on big lumps of copper, with limited cooling and no way of recovering output power. In the latest run, they achieved fusion and kept it running until JET ran out of power for its magnets . The plasma didn't touc…

This is a really great achievement for a fusion reactor, and actually is a breakthrough that makes me think that it might be on its way to serious commercialization. Unfortunately, a lot of other fusion news is not similarly fundamental, though, so it can get tiring to see "we made a few extra watts but the reactor still went unstable."

A lot of research into plasma confinement is completely empirical. No theory at all. The scientists try new settings, see how they work, and draw a line on a graph extrapolating from them to higher power settings. That's why you need all these small experiments, which have no hope of generating net energy: because you're trying to solve plasma confinement by tinkering, without much of a map to guide you.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#142

Post by vlovich123 »

pfdietz wrote: post #97
joss82 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more there is, the cheaper it gets. This also applies to nuclear fusion (and, BTW, fission) reactors.

Actually, fission power plants have shown a distressing lack of good experience effects. They got more expensive as more were built, not less expensive.

Fission did keep getting cheaper up until FUD about accidents and explosions caused regulations that strangled it (that and overblown fears about proliferation of nuclear weapons).

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#143

Post by freemint »

panick21_ wrote: post #114
freemint wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doomed? Because ever person on earth needs access to energy in the end. Simplified this leads to 5 outcomes: - keep burning fossil fuels and have resulting climate change - nuclear power stations in every country including unstable countries, countries with high corruption, dictatorships ... Which means proliferation risk ~1. - nuclear power generation in "stable" countries and a world wide power grid to distribu…

- nuclear power stations in every country including unstable countries, countries with high corruption, dictatorships ... Which means proliferation risk ~1. Overblown issue when you think about it. And there are many reactor designs and fuel cycles that make it totally unpractical for a whole host of reasons. Neither for dictators nor terrorist are these all that relevant targets. It would take to long to get into th…

> Overblown issue when you think about it.

>> Assume good faith.

I think about it and I come to a different conclusion. Thank you for stating that I type such a long message without thinking about it.

> And there are many reactor designs and fuel cycles that make it totally unpractical for a whole host of reasons.

I am not convinced this is true. Please suggest a fuel cycle which could not be use for proliferation when one is allowed to spike it with other materials and one also can add steps to the waste nuclear processing to extract products? Fuel cycles also don't address nuclear waste which can be processed further allowing at least dirty bombs and fuel can be disposed in manners which violate out western sensibilities in totalitarian states.

> The reality is, its a very unlikely vector, if a nation has the finances to do it, they will just do it.

Well having nuclear capabilities makes it a lot more feasible to have the means and money to build them.

> you basically have the same thing as a Concentrated Solar Plant.

Except instead of solar mirrors which can be taken care of by every country you have a highly complicated plant which locals might not be able to maintain, build in slightly unsafe ways, not inspect properly, not maintain properly, not shutdown when it needs to be shutdown, shutdown wrongly or use for proliferation.

> So every country could be safe in assuming that they would continue to have power even if international trade was blocked.

This would be objectively be a bad thing though. Isolationism is what allowed for war in the last century. Borders which goods cross, soldiers (or nukes) do not. It also would weaken human rights in countries which are no longer dependent on the good will of the world. I hope that you were not aware of these implications.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#144

Post by tsimionescu »

beowulfey wrote: post #131
tsimionescu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if fusion succeeds in net positive energy (which is still a ways off - even ITER, planned to finish in 2030, will not actually generate energy, they didn't even add a turbine to try), there are huge hurdles to scanning it up. It's impossible for fusion to be a significant source of energy in the time left to avert catastrophic global warming. Even with the most optimistic estimates, we will at best have a handfu…

Fusion vs. renewables are not zero-sum. It’s possible to research one while supporting the other. All these fusion threads bash on fusion because renewables are here now, but in actuality fusion research and renewable rollouts can come from very different budgets.

I'm not saying research into fusion should be stopped. But I also don't think it's important to increase spending into fusion power, as the comment that I was replying to suggested. Even more so, i don't think we should be blocking investment into fission power on expectations that fusion power will make it deprecated in 10 years.

It's good to have fusion power in our back pockets, but we shouldn't be relying on it for our energy plans quite yet.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#145

Post by tsimionescu »

DennisP wrote: post #140
tsimionescu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if fusion succeeds in net positive energy (which is still a ways off - even ITER, planned to finish in 2030, will not actually generate energy, they didn't even add a turbine to try), there are huge hurdles to scanning it up. It's impossible for fusion to be a significant source of energy in the time left to avert catastrophic global warming. Even with the most optimistic estimates, we will at best have a handfu…

We should really stop using ITER as the reference. SPARC uses the same plasma physics with newer superconductors, and is expecting ITER-level performance in 2025. Most fusion scientists agree with that assessment. SPARC won't have a turbine either, but with a construction time of four years, it brings us a lot closer to the next reactor which will.

ITER is still the biggest and best funded project. If SPARC shows anything impressive, we'll see, but so far I'd still bet on the bigger project.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#146

Post by scythe »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #68
ncmncm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are forever smashing this or that record, on the verge of break-even, on track to producing free energy without nasty radionuclides. But it is always a con. If they ever do get Q high enough to make energy production conceivable -- it will need Q > 100, when said and done -- a Tokamak reactor will cost 10x much as the equal-grade fission reactor, and cost >10x as much to operate. As fission reactors are today no…

> fission reactors are today not competitive, and get less competitive by the day No, we are just incompetent idiots. This has nothing to do with fissions and everything to do with degradation of contruction and practical egnineering skills - now it takes 30 years and 100 billion dollars to make a small railway in California. Victorian England or China could do this without much trouble. The english-speaking western…

>the only proven viable storage is large scale hydro

Japan's experience with sodium-sulfur batteries stands in contrast.

https://www.sandia.gov/ess-ssl/wp-content/uploads/2021/LDES/...

Na-S is less popular for new projects these days because of rapid decreases in the price of lithium batteries, but that's not a fundamental limitation of the technology — and we have no risk of running out of sodium nor sulfur.

In fairness, Japan's construction sector seems much healthier than that of the United States.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#147

Post by imhoguy »

pixelpoet wrote: post #2

Excellent news, we need this so badly, especially now in Europe with Germany shutting down its nuclear (fission) plants and NS2 being cancelled. It's astonishing to me that the world isn't pulling out all the stops on fusion development, something like the space race or Manhattan project. Unfortunately, last I heard ITER building has halted: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-h...

> and NS2 being cancelled

Only the certification has been suspended. I bet it resumes before the next winter season. All in good faith ofc - to overcome the inevitable energy crisis. Which in turn results from lobbying to shutdown so many nuclear plants so quickly.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#148

Post by devonkim »

parasubvert wrote: post #126
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fission reactors are today not competitive, and get less competitive by the day No, we are just incompetent idiots. This has nothing to do with fissions and everything to do with degradation of contruction and practical egnineering skills - now it takes 30 years and 100 billion dollars to make a small railway in California. Victorian England or China could do this without much trouble. The english-speaking western…

The west’s engineering skills are not in decline, though if you have a metric that indicates that, it would be interesting. Europe has not had USA-level problems with building a popular rail network, or other major works. The main differences in costs and time from 150 years ago are: (A) Accounting for Extrinsic Costs. as the nations have become more dense and more democratic, peoples voices need to be heard. Environ…

(E) has been going on for hundreds of years in the US is the thing. The difference is that the cost of goods used to be where the primary grift was instead of on labor (T&M contracts historically). But now T&M contracts are not very common at least in DoD but there is still obviously some level of grift but it’s partly due to extremely terrible guidelines for government procurement processes leading to contractors that do the bare minimum getting more money than contractors that exceed expectations (one rare exception of this happening was during the reconstruction of Atlanta’s I-95 when contractors were getting massive bonuses for finishing ahead of schedule contingent upon safety inspections passing - all work completed months ahead of schedule).

Note that South Korea and France have nuclear cheaper than renewables still because their processes over decades have led to basically producing nuclear plants with horizontal scaling, driving costs down dramatically. In essence, all energy production within the borders of a country is a matter of political will moreso than even technical requirements. If a culture wants to push back on X and wins politically, it becomes more expensive and distorts intrinsic costs. If a culture pushes for Y and eventually subsidizes it, it becomes dramatically cheaper even below intrinsic costs and is over-consumed (see: fossil fuels)

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#149

Post by mrfusion »

panick21_ wrote: post #78

Fusion has no practice reason to exist compare to advanced fission. The improvements in energy density are not really relevant factor at that scale, meaning the difference from oil to fission, and oil to fusion doesn't really gain you much. Fusion fuel cost over the long term is likely more expensive then a fission fast breeder (not to mention a potential of thorium thermal breeder). Is a fusion reactor going to be c…

Even if true, fusion could definitely have a place in space travel where every kg matters.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#150

Post by m0llusk »

tsimionescu wrote: post #145
DennisP wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should really stop using ITER as the reference. SPARC uses the same plasma physics with newer superconductors, and is expecting ITER-level performance in 2025. Most fusion scientists agree with that assessment. SPARC won't have a turbine either, but with a construction time of four years, it brings us a lot closer to the next reactor which will.

ITER is still the biggest and best funded project. If SPARC shows anything impressive, we'll see, but so far I'd still bet on the bigger project.

> ITER is still the biggest and best funded project.

Which may be the core explanation for its failure.

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