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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

#201

Post by GoodbyeMrChips »

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…

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

#202

Post by mrshadowgoose »

eatonphil wrote: post #3

The 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?

The taste of immense profit is in the air. In the minds of potential investors, fusion is no longer a "lol maybe in 50 years" technology. Advances in magnetic modeling and magnet technology have resulted in cheaper, easier-to-develop alternatives to the classic Tokamak. Timelines are now believably "this decade" for demonstration reactors.

Energy production/harvesting is a foundational element of our civilization. Literally all of the comforts of modern society require the expenditure of some form of energy. Any entity that develops an unlimited, clean and cheap source of energy essentially has access to a money printer.

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

#203

Post by danaris »

shadowofneptune wrote: post #170
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.

That's part of the problem with fairly basic research like what we're putting into fusion. Without making the investment, doing the science and engineering to actually study these things and learn how they work and how we can do them better, we won't know how or whether they can be made cheaper, miniaturized, etc.

This isn't the same kind of problem that most of us are used to dealing with in our daily lives—where the fundamental components, and the fundamental science, that make it all up are well-understood and fairly mature, and what we have to do is come up with creative ways to apply it. This is the kind of "we don't know if any specific avenue of research will ever pay back a positive monetary ROI, but pursuing them is important anyway" science that we need to be doing with or without fusion as a specific goal, because over time, it will produce years or decades of silence, punctuated by small, incremental improvements in our understanding of the universe...and then an amazing breakthrough like practical, commercially-viable fusion power.

But only if we are willing to patiently fund it through those years or decades of boring stuff.

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

#204

Post by iambateman »

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…

This was a great comment and very helpful.

I think it’s all a PR issue. The public doesn’t really understand and there are a lot of lobbyists pushing every other kind of energy.

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

#205

Post by blubbi »

jmyeet wrote: post #200
acidburnNSA wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/kh050…

> Groan here we go again. Yeah, we do with more pro-nuclear propaganda and outright falsehoods (again). > Now show me list of the 8 million people who die per year from air pollution. No, it doesn't. Here's the exact quote from your source: > The combined effects of ambient air pollution and household air pollution is associated with 7 million premature deaths annually. Not "die from" but "is associated with". What d…

"As of June 2021, China has a total nuclear power generation capacity of 49.6 GW from 50 reactors, with additional 17.1 GW under construction" (1)

Fair enough, I have not checked whether those are the previously mentioned lwrs, but I would argue that those numbers are definitely "scale"

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

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

#206

Post by mathlover2 »

jmyeet wrote: post #200
acidburnNSA wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/kh050…

> Groan here we go again. Yeah, we do with more pro-nuclear propaganda and outright falsehoods (again). > Now show me list of the 8 million people who die per year from air pollution. No, it doesn't. Here's the exact quote from your source: > The combined effects of ambient air pollution and household air pollution is associated with 7 million premature deaths annually. Not "die from" but "is associated with". What d…

> One study estimates 100,000 Americans die every year from air pollution

That's still a lot more deaths than commercial nuclear fusion has been associated with in the US. It's also, incidentally, a lot of deaths.

> 1. Not a single nuclear power plant has been built without significant government subsidies.

This is a non-sequitur. Just because something needs government subsidies doesn't make it bad. Things like the Internet, modern solar energy, and the USPS were built with either massive initial subsidies or even complete government involvement throughout their ongoing lifetimes. That doesn't make them bad.

> 2. Nuclear power plant falsely reduce costs by externalizing significant costs such as the processing of fuel, the processing of fuel processing waste, maintenance, inspection (eg by the NRC), switching out fuel, processing nuclear fuel, the time-to-build or the failure modes of nuclear plants. Lest we forget, the Chernobyl Absolute Exclusion Zone is 1,000 square miles 35 years later.

Versus coal and oil plants, which externalize the costs of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Also, comparing a shoddily built and designed Soviet plant to modern Western ones isn't a good comparison.

> If these next-generation LWRs are so economical, why isn't someone building them at scale? The standard response is political opposition but what about China?

In the West, it's negative perception that largely predates widespread public awareness of climate change. As for China, it looks like China's getting in on the nuclear game too, precisely because of air pollution concerns. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

> delusional as climate deniers

Yeah, no. Even if us supporters of nuclear power are wrong, we don't need to be compared to people who are on the level of flat earthers.

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

#207

Post by dmead »

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…

Is it wise to write off safety issues? Chernobyl, Fukushima and three mile island all seem pretty bad.

There is also the Robert Heinlein story "Blowups happen". I'm just not understanding how this can all be hand waved away.

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

#208

Post by serf »

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.

> Sigh, this again.

has this kind of initial dismissal ever won anyone any favor in an argument?

I see it all over the thread, and I find myself having a hard time wanting to consider the argument afterwards even if I am personally aligned with them just because it seems so inconsiderate and rude.

Is it supposed to signal your experience in the field, having heard this argument so many times -- or does it signal the opponents inexperience? Either way I find that approach to come off as arrogant and rude.

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

#209

Post by acidburnNSA »

dmead wrote: post #207
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…

Is it wise to write off safety issues? Chernobyl, Fukushima and three mile island all seem pretty bad. There is also the Robert Heinlein story "Blowups happen". I'm just not understanding how this can all be hand waved away.

They were bad, but just bad enough to roll over and give up on fission.

While Chernobyl killed people from radiation (around 50, with a hotly debated number between 0 and 4000 from long term effects), TMI and Fukushima did not. We have only directly amd definitively linked about 50 deaths to radiation released in commercial fission accidents. It's like a really bad bus crash. And that doesnt even count the social and emotional costs of fear and evacuation, which are large.

But context matters. Particlates from fossil and biofuel cause more death every 7 hours than the high estimate of deaths from nuclears entire history (using 4000 in chernobyl).

So nuclear fission is very safe. It's not perfectly safe, but it is orders of magnitude safer than the average energy source. Oh and it is carbon free so it prevents future deaths from climate change. So yeah.

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

#210

Post by dodobirdlord »

cyanydeez wrote: post #196
nine_k wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France, with much less uninhabited land, and vastly more nuclear power plants, somehow manages to place waste in a way that's acceptable for an EU country, and neighboring countries. (But of course "waste" is not really waste, it's fuel spent for a few per cent; a breeder reactor + reprocessing should burn it again and again and again.)

>After decades of cooling, France, like most other nuclear power generating countries, has no long-term solution in place for high and intermediate spent fuel waste disposal. https://www.power-technology.com/analysis/managing-nuclear-w... Yes, short term they manage it. When we are discussing the future, our concern is long term.

The long term plan is to reprocess it, which is why we need to keep it around in the meantime. If we just wanted to get rid of it that would be trivially easy. But we don’t want that because we know in future we’re going to want to get it back from wherever we put it.
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