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More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

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Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#161

Post by einpoklum »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

> It's way easier.

Is that why power plants go years over time and hugely over-budget?

> It has been working fine since the 1950s.

Oh, yeah, just fine, not a hitch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident...

> Waste problem is solved

The solution being: Ignore it, I guess?

> net saves millions of lives by displacing air pollution

And we fight wars for peace too.

> It's zero carbon

Not if you count the mining aspect. But even if you didn't: Wind and solar are now 3 times cheaper or more, and take a lot less time to set up. The power output stability benefit is wearing thin.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#162

Post by ClumsyPilot »

adventured wrote: post #95
Teever wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. There will always be places where solar+battery isn't viable. Northern Canada and Alaska come to mind.

Along with small and or very high population density nations. India is going to end up with perhaps two billion people and will have extraordinary population density/spacing problems. They're going to desperately need huge numbers of nuclear fission power plants or fusion plants to provide for that. They will not have the space for epic scale solar farms. Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippi…

> They will not have the space for epic scale solar farms. ...space vs population situation.

Your math is totally wrong, space was never an issie for solar. It tales 100x less space for a coutry to cover it's power needs with solar, than it does for a country to grow it's own food and feed it's own people. So every country thats not a city-state, like Vatikan, is fine.

All the challaneges of Solar are around intermittency, cost and ofcourse it's less viable in northern lattitudes. But none of them are around space.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#163

Post by goodpoint »

felixmeziere wrote: post #37
greenthrow wrote: post #5

I 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.

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…

> fusion is just going to increase the rate at which we are transforming this planet into a giant pile of garbage

Thank you for saying this. Unlimited almost-free energy makes energy-saving measures moot, including building insulation. People would heat or cool even open spaces with little regard for the environment.

And all the heat is eventually released into the atmosphere.

Consumerism would be supercharged as well. Indeed we need a huge shift of societal priorities.

(Needless to say, when I point that out HN downvoted me. Here technology is always and only good.)

edit: there you go, already downvoted at -2 for saying the same thing as the parent.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#164

Post by googlryas »

sva_ wrote: post #109

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…

We could build a bunch of space radiators. But really this isn't something we need to think about for a while...global energy consumption is less than 1/10,000th of the energy deposited in soil and water by the sun.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#165

Post by goodpoint »

idlehand wrote: post #155
felixmeziere wrote: post #37

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…

Commercial fusion power probably makes it more economical to spend more energy recycling materials.

And 100x more economical producing more and more new stuff.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#166

Post by mwint »

einpoklum wrote: post #161
acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

> It's way easier. Is that why power plants go years over time and hugely over-budget? > It has been working fine since the 1950s. Oh, yeah, just fine, not a hitch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident... > Waste problem is solved The solution being: Ignore it, I guess? > net saves millions of lives by displacing air pollution And we fight wars for peace too. > It's zero carbon Not if you coun…

Waste problem - drive through the US state of Nevada. There’s nothing for hundreds of miles. You could likely just throw the waste out of an airplane over Nevada and be more or less fine.

With containment techniques combined with the ridiculous amount of uninhabited desert the US has, this is a non issue.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#167

Post by robotresearcher »

einpoklum wrote: post #161
acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

> It's way easier. Is that why power plants go years over time and hugely over-budget? > It has been working fine since the 1950s. Oh, yeah, just fine, not a hitch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident... > Waste problem is solved The solution being: Ignore it, I guess? > net saves millions of lives by displacing air pollution And we fight wars for peace too. > It's zero carbon Not if you coun…

> > It's way easier.

> Is that why power plants go years over time and hugely over-budget?

'Late and over-budget' sounds easier than 'has never been demonstrated'.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#168

Post by goodpoint »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #152
Nition wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point that I hadn't considered before. Like how adding more lanes to a road just creates more traffic. I hope things don't go that way but I can see it happening.

Sigh, this again. Induced demand is still valid economic demand, and congested roads are still being used productively. There's a reason why sane governments don't regularly "improve" roads by removing lanes.

> Induced demand is still valid economic demand

That does not justify it.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#169

Post by acidburnNSA »

einpoklum wrote: post #161
acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

> It's way easier. Is that why power plants go years over time and hugely over-budget? > It has been working fine since the 1950s. Oh, yeah, just fine, not a hitch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident... > Waste problem is solved The solution being: Ignore it, I guess? > net saves millions of lives by displacing air pollution And we fight wars for peace too. > It's zero carbon Not if you coun…

Groan here we go again.

> Oh, yeah, just fine, not a hitch:

Now show me list of the 8 million people who die per year from air pollution.

https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution

> The solution being: Ignore it, I guess?

I mentioned the solutions but didn't provide a link. here you go.

https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html

> And we fight wars for peace too.

See the literature https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/kh05000e.html

> Not if you count the mining aspect.

Nuclear has rock bottom full lifecycle carbon emissions of 12 gCO₂-eq/kWh, including mining. C.f. 11 for wind, 40 for solar, 490 for gas, 800+ for coal. Hard to beat.

> Wind and solar are now 3 times cheaper or more

You're comparing the worst US nuclear builds with wind/solar without storage, transmission, overbuilds needed for storage, etc. LCOE is not an appropriate metric for systems costs. Never was. Lazard are a bunch of kooks. Look at Hualong One costs.

Details on cost comparison for deeply decarbonized grid here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#170

Post by shadowofneptune »

Apocryphon wrote: post #7

Crazy to imagine what would’ve happened if in the past it had been more than sub-fusion never. http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fus...

I've known about this chart for a long while, but recently I've become skeptical of it. What says that fusion would be a success even if that level of funding was reached? The most mature fusion reactor being built, ITER, is gigantic and it's not clear how it could be made cheaper or miniturized.
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