Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by hinkley » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

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…

When these things become viable they’re likely to be competing with battery storage systems for cheap power to start and restart the reactors. Though I suspect they’re likely to form partnerships, those partnerships will end up being profit sharing and blunt the prospects of such a plant.

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

#212

Post by ncmncm » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

p1mrx wrote: post #201

ncmncm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problems we have with storage are (1) determining which will end up cheapest, or has the most valuable side benefits, and (2) building out. Hydrogen, anhydrous ammonia, and liquified air all produce a valuable industrial product once the tanks are full. Used to be their round-trip efficiency was considered too low, but with solar panels getting dirt cheap, just putting up more panels accommodates almost any…

> China is even building cables to Chile (!) Where did you read this? China is 18000 km from Chile, so this seems really unlikely.

I doubt it will end up built. But losses would only be like 50% with current tech, which is actually tolerable nowadays because solar panels are so cheap.

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

#213

Post by RandallBrown » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

wanda wrote: post #197

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.

If you can generate the energy for "free" then you can sell it for cheap and undercut every other producer.

It seems to me that it works very well in a capitalist context.

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

#214

Post by pfdietz » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

jfk13 wrote: post #172

pfdietz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long term darkness/calm is solved with hydrogen. Europe has plenty of underground geology suitable for mass hydrogen storage (it's just like natural gas is stored.) Most of the energy still would go directly from solar/wind to the grid, or through efficient batteries, so the low round trip efficiency of power to gas to power doesn't matter much.

I suspect long-term, large-scale hydrogen storage is not "just like natural gas"... those pesky little H₂ molecules are awfully small, and may leak out rather easily compared to hydrocarbons.

There are already underground storage caverns for hydrogen, and more planned. It works fine.

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

#215

Post by pontifier » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

hoelle wrote: post #163

pontifier wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an easy article to write, and it's easy because so many others have written the same thing. It's like articles about Facebook and how their value fluctuates and this or that privacy issue is going to be fixed soon. People have heard about the big players, so big players get the attention. I'm trying to do some fusion research myself, but it's extremely difficult to get anyone to take what I'm doing seriously. I'…

Recommendations include: 1) ditching the toxic negative attitude. It pushes away interest. 2) spend an afternoon or a few bucks on a web designer making your site look better than the "time cube" site. It practically screams crackpot theory. 3) build credibility with academics first. People not in the field will assume you're a swindler by default.

1 - I agree, I've been fighting too many battles on too many fronts and my optimism has been taking a hit.

2 - I see, I'll look into presenting more professionally.

3 - I believe Ideas should be evaluated on their merit, and what people think about the idea or myself isn't going to change the physics. It will either work or it won't

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

#216

Post by stormbrew » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:28 PM UTC

urthor wrote: post #22

stormbrew wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really common kind of comment to this issue, but I think it's extremely short-sighted. At this point, because we're probably well past the point that anything we can practically do is likely to get us to net zero carbon before catastrophe (it's already here, really), we're at a point where we're probably going to need to go extremely negative even once we do get there. We're (ironically) going to need a lot…

We're realistically at a very good point in time to avert some of the worst case scenarios, I fail to see your point? We definitely want to be looking at technologies that have a high ROI for emission reduction in the next 10 year span, mixed with longer term projects. Fission is a longer term project. Simple as that.

> We definitely want to be looking at technologies that have a high ROI for emission reduction in the next 10 year span, mixed with longer term projects.

This... is my point? So I think you do see it. "Fusion can't save us now so we shouldn't invest in it at all" is short-sighted. This is not an either-or proposition, and frankly people have completely out of whack ideas of the scale of money that's been invested in fusion. Tens of billions of dollars are nothing in what's going to be a trillions of dollars problem.

We need to be building out renewables, and ideally fission too, now. We need to get to carbon zero asap. And then comes the project of getting things back to where we need to be, and we are just not ready for the energy we're going to need to do that.

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

#217

Post by stormbrew » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:29 PM UTC

AllegedAlec wrote: post #36

stormbrew wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really common kind of comment to this issue, but I think it's extremely short-sighted. At this point, because we're probably well past the point that anything we can practically do is likely to get us to net zero carbon before catastrophe (it's already here, really), we're at a point where we're probably going to need to go extremely negative even once we do get there. We're (ironically) going to need a lot…

The point isn't that people don't think some green energy source is needed, but that fusion energy has been 'two decades away' for three quarters of a century.

Obligatory "at levels of funding that haven't materialized" reply you can go find sources for elsewhere in this post. Also, when I was a kid it was "always 40 years away" so the timescale of the joke has changed for the better. :P

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

#218

Post by rhn_mk1 » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #207

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm not really seeing the justification for that argument, especially not when expressed as a dichotomy.

Have you really never had to choose between spending money on this or on that? Few lack that experience.

Why don't we choose between spending money on coal/war/farm subsidies/health care or fusion? There are more than two options.

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

#219

Post by stormbrew » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:44 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #207

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm not really seeing the justification for that argument, especially not when expressed as a dichotomy.

Have you really never had to choose between spending money on this or on that? Few lack that experience.

The amount of money spent on fusion research sounds large but it's really not that much in the grand scheme of things. And most of it is really being spent on efforts to improve things that have widespread application outside fusion, like material sciences and superconducting. It's really likely that a lot of major advancements will come of this research, in line with the space race advancing technology at an accelerated pace for a while. At least fusion has, from an optimistic perspective, an inherently worthwhile goal besides climbing an absurdly tall virtual mountain to go with it.

Anyways, at the scale of international project budgets, "killing fusion to increase money spent on other green projects" is, at this point, like not buying a daily coffee so you can afford a car.

Even pessimistic estimates of ITER's cost are still under $100B for a 5 decade long project. Or, put another way, less than $2 billion dollars a year. There are highway interchanges that have cost that much. And the EU and the US alone of ITER's contributors have a combined GDP of $35 trillion.

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

#220

Post by zardo » Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #185

pfdietz wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a terrible argument. A global energy supply system is a huge thing. That means it will make sense to spend literally trillions of dollars on it. This will mean building enormous capacity to build its components, including as many battery factories as we need.

Once we agree that the solar + wind solution will cost trillions and take decades to scale up anyway, the benefits of fusion start to shine through. We may as well invest all that time and money in scalable production that doesn't exhaust the earth's supply of natural resources.

That sounds like a proposal for just not de-carbonizing until fusion is ready. Is that what you mean? When do you think we could have say 5% of the worlds power coming from fusion reactors?