111–120 of 686 posts
This is great news. That said, what the literal fuck -- we've previously been investing 1/850,000th of global GDP in one of 4-5 truly promising energy technologies while the world burns before our eyes?
Fusion isn't a silver bullet even if it works. If it costs more than solar+battery then it's worthless.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
59 megajoules of sustained energy ^over the course of a few seconds^. Ideally this energy output would be sustained for days within ITER. JET is not designed to do this, as it has a copper magnet system, which means if you try to sustain such a plasma (confined with around 5 T magnet and around 2 MA plasma current) for longer than a few seconds, you would melt the magnet. Edit: ITER would operate at 5-10 T, and aroun…
Note that these are 59MJ of energy released by the fusion reaction. No attempt was made to actually catch them. And even if they had been captured, they would not have been able to power the magnets + cooling systems used to confine the plasma. We are very very far away from actually producing even 1W of usable fusion power.
Current fusion devices are not nor were they ever designed to generate electricity for a grid.
This is why we build ITER, and DEMO thereafter. Generating 'usable fusion power' is limited to building reactor scale experiments, which to date, has not been done (ITER will be the first).
Something I wondered about fusion is, where does all that 'excess energy' go? I mean don't understand me wrong, it is obvious that is a much better form of energy release than all the other forms of energy production we have; but let us consider we manage to gain energy from fusion, the electricity released still releases heat, so how does it dissipate, if we have near-infitite energy, and anyone can spend as much as…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't say the (recent) past was grim, but rather that the technology to build an _affordable_ commercial device had not yet been developed yet. We designed and built ITER at such a large size and cost (€20 billion) since high temperature superconducting magnets were not yet available. In the meantime, all of the experimental devices (JET, AUG, EAST, DIII-D, etc.,) have been gathering evidence on how to operate I…
> We designed and built ITER at such a large size and cost (€20 billion) since high temperature superconducting magnets were not yet available. This is one of those numbers that only seem big without context. Medium-sized cities spend more than this on interchanges and highway development over shorter timespans than any of the various multi-decade price tags that get thrown around for ITER.
The hefty price tag seems smaller when considering the development and design of ITER began during the cold war.
The literal size is definitely big even without context, which is why it has the nickname: gigantomak :D.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The past of fusion has been grim, but the future looks (probably) bright. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-f...
I wouldn't say the (recent) past was grim, but rather that the technology to build an _affordable_ commercial device had not yet been developed yet. We designed and built ITER at such a large size and cost (€20 billion) since high temperature superconducting magnets were not yet available. In the meantime, all of the experimental devices (JET, AUG, EAST, DIII-D, etc.,) have been gathering evidence on how to operate I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it will be for the second half of this century, if we make it there. Side comment: fusion can be seen as a solution to many of our worst problems. But another way to see it is that without a complete change in what societies value and how they act (i.e. a cultural/philosophical/storytelling change), fusion is just going to increase the rate at which we are transforming this planet into a giant pile of garbage, w…
I don't know what makes you so so confident about your prediction, and what you've written about fusion's relationship to waste is, I'm pretty sure, inaccurate.
There's a huge amount of hype in fusion these days. Companies are getting big investments just by saying "we're over unity." None of their investors will recoup any money. Getting above unity is important but it's still a very long way from systemic over unity of the entire lifecycle of the process that turns fusion into electricity on the grid. And that simply won't happen in my lifetime or most of your lifetimes. W…
Private Investments usually need returns within a 10-15 year time scale. Once practical fusion gets to that point, we should expect money to come pouring in which will help make it a reality. We’re seeing something similar happening in self driving cars
In other words, I suspect it's not fueled by a technology trend, but by trying to capture a potential customer trend.
This is great news. That said, what the literal fuck -- we've previously been investing 1/850,000th of global GDP in one of 4-5 truly promising energy technologies while the world burns before our eyes?
This is great news. That said, what the literal fuck -- we've previously been investing 1/850,000th of global GDP in one of 4-5 truly promising energy technologies while the world burns before our eyes?
I can't remember who said it but I remember reading a quote one time to the effect that the man who invented a new form of energy for the world without also inventing a new heat sink would be history's greatest monster. Not sure I agree, but does give one pause if prone to pessimism as I am.
This is great news. That said, what the literal fuck -- we've previously been investing 1/850,000th of global GDP in one of 4-5 truly promising energy technologies while the world burns before our eyes?
Compare that to what we have invested in crypto globally and weep.