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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

#191

Post by adonovan »

dahfizz wrote: post #177
dahfizz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if we went the other way: "they spent billions on solar infrastructure, so that they could keep the lights on only when the sun was shining". We don't have the storage. We are not close to sniffing the amount of storage we need to be 100% reliant on solar + wind.

To get a sense of scale: The USA uses on average ~76 twh per day. Tesla produced ~100 gwh of batteries over the whole last year. So if we nationalized all the tesla gigafactories, it would take us over 760 years to produce enough batteries to store a single days worth of electricity . I do not think grid storage is solvable with current technology.

So don't use batteries. Pumping water uphill is still the most efficient large-scale technology for electrical storage.

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

#192

Post by regularfry »

freemint wrote: post #91
danuker wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not mention fusion, but they are still clearly against fission: > Wir vollenden den Atomausstieg und bekennen uns zum verabredeten Pfad der Endlagersuche mit höchsten Sicherheitsstandards bei größtmöglicher Transparenz und Beteiligung der Bevölkerung. Der Rückbau der bestehenden Atomkraftwerke muss schleunigst und ohne Zeitverzögerung auf höchstem Sicherheitsniveau erfolgen. Die Atomfabriken in Gronau und Lin…

The last time I checked the sun is shining 24/7.

A useful distinction if one migrates between locations in the Arctic and Antarctic Circles that are never clouded, possibly. Anyone else has to deal with pesky details like weather and night-time.

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

#193

Post by regularfry »

rndphs wrote: post #34

Sad that JET is still the premier fusion machine in existence. Forty years! Fusion is always x years away because nobody has been building anything of significance for so long. All eggs in the ITER basket. Big mistake.

It's not like the reactor they're running today has had the same parts for those 40 years. In fact this experiment was partially to test an upgrade.

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

#194

Post by dahfizz »

adonovan wrote: post #191
dahfizz wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get a sense of scale: The USA uses on average ~76 twh per day. Tesla produced ~100 gwh of batteries over the whole last year. So if we nationalized all the tesla gigafactories, it would take us over 760 years to produce enough batteries to store a single days worth of electricity . I do not think grid storage is solvable with current technology.

So don't use batteries. Pumping water uphill is still the most efficient large-scale technology for electrical storage.

Pumped hydro is a lot more promising than batteries for sure, in that current capabilities is off by a factor of a thousand instead of a million.

The largest pumped hydro station[1] provides up to 24 gwh of storage. So three thousand of these stations (costing $12 trillion) would store one day's worth of electricity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

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

#195

Post by regularfry »

londons_explore wrote: post #52

Are we actually learning new bits of fundamental science from these experiments? Are there still bits of these fusion reactions we can't simulate accurately enough due to insufficient compute? Or is it just a matter of ironing out engineering issues?

It depends where on the "fundamental science engineering" spectrum you think materials science sits. Some of the thorniest problems in reactor design are "wtf do you make it out of and can such a thing exist". There's some science going on confirming material theoretical properties under reactor conditions.

Mind you, insufficient compute is also a problem. Although "insufficient" is probably underselling the scale of the issue. Simulating plasma is horrid. It's all the worst bits of both fluid dynamics and electromagnetics all rolled into one: you've got a potentially chaotic fluid where all the particles aren't just interacting with the things they bounce off, they're also interacting with other particles all throughout the body of the fluid through electromagnetic effects. Everything affects everything else, and (because chaos) the details matter.

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

#196

Post by tus666 »

I truly hope to live long enough to live in a fusion-powered "free energy" world. It will be truly science fiction. Along with positronic brains and anti-gravity devices, to get a glimpse of my childhood Asimov dreams again will be a fitting end to my life.

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

#197

Post by wanda »

tus666 wrote: post #196

I truly hope to live long enough to live in a fusion-powered "free energy" world. It will be truly science fiction. Along with positronic brains and anti-gravity devices, to get a glimpse of my childhood Asimov dreams again will be a fitting end to my life.

Sadly, the notion of "free energy" in a capitalist context is probably why the concept hasn't taken off.

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

#198

Post by orthecreedence »

ncmncm wrote: post #38
Aeolun wrote: post #17

As much as I enjoy reading this news. It is feels heavily sensationalized. "Smashes" the energy record. We're talking about a fusion generator here, that after 25 years of work, now manages to output 'double' the energy, to 59 MJ in 5s -like 20 MW- while requiring 180 MJ input power. Somewhere hidden in the article is the news that this could mean a input/output ratio of 10 in a full scale reactor, but that's also so…

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…

> That is not a bad thing: solar and wind are wholly up to the task

Exactly! If we just used every last drop of fossil fuels we had to build, ship, and constantly replace solar and wind generators (and do the same for the massive battery arrays we'll need), nuclear will be a distant memory.

> fission reactors are today not competitive

...because price =/= cost. Fission is the least costly form of energy generation, but our economy is too worthlessly opaque to realize the true cost of building all those beloved solar panels. If we got price and cost more in parity, nuclear would be the painfully obvious choice.

Markets fail yet again, I suppose.

> The only reliable product of the hot-neutron fusion research industry is dishonesty.

I can agree with you there. Every few months there's a "breakthrough!!" article where Qtotal is still < 0.01...cool, that's helpful...

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

#199

Post by orthecreedence »

pfdietz wrote: post #129
parkingrift wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China will construct 150 fission reactors between now and 2035 to produce 200 gigawatts of power at a total cost of $440B. A similar buildout in the US would take 70 years and cost well over a trillion dollars. Do you think China is building all those reactors for political reasons as opposed to generating reliable power 24/7 for a century?

Do you think China does things without regard to politics? They have clear political motivation to continue to build nuclear power plants. For example, this keeps their nuclear sector occupied and preserves the technology against deterioration. Even if civilian NPPs are not military, the overall technology has direct connection to their military (as it does in France.) Even with that, they are installing more renewab…

> They have clear political motivation to continue to build nuclear power plants.

If realizing what a terrible bet solar and wind are is political, then yes I agree their motivation is political.

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