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More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
11–20 of 686 posts
Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
#12The article doesn't seem to mention why exactly but I'm guessing it's some combination of 1) visible climate change (extreme heat, wildfires, drought, etc.) so people want better energy sources and 2) the mayhem Russia started seeing as it is one of the bigger energy providers. Or has there been anything else?
REBCO high-temperature superconductors have potentially changed the game. They can support stronger fields which means smaller devices for same confinement. Commercial production seems to only started in the last decade.
MIT's research, spun out as CFS, may be prompting other startups.
Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
#13I’m glad, but I hope we still invest in Plan-B’s because we are literally betting our civilisation on moving away from carbon.
Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
#14I wonder how this compares to the amount of money invested in crypto startups in the past few years. (I don't mean the value of crypto or the amount of money that was traded into it -- just the amount VCs invested into crypto startups.)
I don't know if that means people that allocate capital think crypto has a better chance of changing the world than nuclear fusion -- or if it's something else. But it is strange to compare the funding of each.
Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
#15I don't believe the hype. From what I can see fusion still isn't anywhere near being a viable source of energy, other than in the form or solar power.
So was solar and nuclear.
Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
#16I don't believe the hype. From what I can see fusion still isn't anywhere near being a viable source of energy, other than in the form or solar power.
Agree. There have been no breakthroughs. The projects getting funding are just different enough to be not immediately disprovable and continue to spectacularly overpromise without solving any of the real problems. Chamber embrittlement? Nuclear waste? (activation of the apparatus by the 12 MeV fusion netrons is a lot worse than the 100 keV fission neutron.)
Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
#17One novel approach to clean energy deployment would be to spend some of this money to deploy enough solar, wind and batteries to provide the enormous amounts of energy needed for all these sub-breakeven fusion experiments. Then, whether we get a viable fusion reactor or not, we all win.
Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
#18The article doesn't seem to mention why exactly but I'm guessing it's some combination of 1) visible climate change (extreme heat, wildfires, drought, etc.) so people want better energy sources and 2) the mayhem Russia started seeing as it is one of the bigger energy providers. Or has there been anything else?
Actual advances in fusion and related energy generation tech. For example, at least one startup, Helion, is developing a way to generate electricity directly from the fusion reaction and magnetic field, instead of indirectly by heating water into steam that then turns a turbine generator. The increased efficiency from that might enable it produce net electricity. And quite frankly, it's way past time that we advanced beyond converting energy -> heat -> motion -> electricity, and shortened that cycle to energy -> electricity.
Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
#19I don't believe the hype. From what I can see fusion still isn't anywhere near being a viable source of energy, other than in the form or solar power.
Agree. There have been no breakthroughs. The projects getting funding are just different enough to be not immediately disprovable and continue to spectacularly overpromise without solving any of the real problems. Chamber embrittlement? Nuclear waste? (activation of the apparatus by the 12 MeV fusion netrons is a lot worse than the 100 keV fission neutron.)
> have been no breakthroughs
Magnet miniaturisation and CADs like the stellarator [1] refute this.
With respect to waste and embrittlement, those are simpler consumables and waste products than fossil fuels and atmospheric emissions.
Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
#20Good news. But let's not forget that fission is the present and near future of nuclear energy. And it just works.