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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

#321

Post by hiptobecubic »

selectodude wrote: post #313
JohnBooty wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The opposition and scaremongering from the fossil fuel industry and scaremongering science-deniers has been utterly effective. No surprise there. What's dismaying and frankly shocking is the utter failure of the nuclear industry to mount even a feeble defense in the public eye.

There is zero risk, none, to government regulatory bodies when they say no. Saying yes is putting your ass on the line. The NRC has absolutely no reason to say yes to anything and there is a positive feedback loop for them to regulate nuclear out of existence in the US.

That's only true because the public has been convinced that it's high risk high reward. Otherwise, you could say the same about anything. There's no reason to do _anything_ while in office.

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

#322

Post by freeflight »

MaxDPS wrote: post #150
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…

I'd imagine the excess energy goes out into space. They key difference between nuclear and fossil fuels is the emissions each generates. Fossil fuels burn into greenhouse gasses which trap in heat. If we switch to nuclear, those greenhouse gasses won't accumulate as much.

The near-perfect vacuum of space actually makes it quite bad at absorbing heat, that's why anything we put up there, like space stations and satellites need huge radiators to keep everything cool enough to actually operate.

While thermal pollution in Earths atmosphere is a very real and relevant issue with energy generation and all kinds of other human activities; A whole bunch of French fission nuclear reactors are regularly shut/throttled down during summer heat waves due to lack of appropriate cooling.

The combination of these factors sometimes makes me wonder if the game Oxygen Not Included is a crude simulation of what we are doing to this planet. There the biggest end-game problem is the asteroid colony overheating due to creating a whole bunch of extra heat inside of it from using up fossil fuels, yet lacking any good way to actually vent all these massive amounts of extra heat from the little biosphere.

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

#323

Post by acidburnNSA »

miles wrote: post #281
acidburnNSA wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Japan confirms first Fukushima worker death from radiation https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45423575

That's basically a judge saying it. The scientific basis is very unclear.

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

#324

Post by acidburnNSA »

pfdietz wrote: post #257
DennisP wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if we never use fast reactors, which fission almost all the long-lived stuff. Take what's left, encase it in glass and bury it, and it'll be back to the radioactivity of the original ore in 300 years.

Well, except for the 7 long lived fission products. Those are possibly good targets for space disposal.

You can separate them out and transmute them in fast reactors as well.

https://www.iaea.org/publications/7112/implications-of-parti...

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

#325

Post by cratermoon »

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…

See also "Former fusion scientist on why we won't have fusion power by 2040" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U

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

#326

Post by Retric »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #268
godelski wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't understand why we can't do both. I don't think this has to be framed as a zero sum problem (I think way too many issues are naively framed that way). With reference to the article, the funding levels over the past decade (globally) were roughly $200m/yr. That's really nothing in terms of government money and well within the realm that just the US could sustain such an effort alone. It would be rough…

Sure, that's a good and fair point. I shouldn't say I oppose fusion R&D. I feel more like we should be more focused on deploying 100s of serialized LWR fission plants right now alongside all the wind/solar/batteries/hydro to solve climate change, while also investing R&D into things like advanced fission and fusion, and geothermal. There's certainly an under-investment in low carbon energy tech in general compared to…

The issue when you say let’s build X00 new LWR is just cost vs benefit. Something like 5 Trillion in additional nuclear subsidies might slow down climate change a low single digit percentage over the next 30 years. This relates not just to the high cost of nuclear but also the delay between deciding to build nuclear and actually getting low carbon energy from a nuclear reactor.

Spend 1/4th that on solar or wind subsidies and you get vastly more carbon free energy sooner without any concerns for politically inconvenient disasters. 1 nuclear reactor can be quite safe, but 500 of them is 500 times the risk. Even a largely non issue Fukushima style disaster is still a major political and economic issue.

Fission is quite useful, and I hope it continues to provide largely carbon free energy into the future. It’s just not a great use of the resources required to make a real difference.

The outlook for Fusion over the next few decades doesn’t look very good, but it’s also received vastly less investment. It’s IMO a low odds but low cost bet that might pay off but probably won’t.

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

#327

Post by AughFuckFusion »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #317
AughFuckFusion wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tf say does the public have? This is a terrible excuse. The public doesn't have any say in the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of decision making that happens in this country.... blame politicians ffs, not people who don't matter.

You have clearly never been in the public comment session at a Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting. The public has a huge amount to do with it.

No post body was provided.

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

#328

Post by AughFuckFusion »

JohnBooty wrote: post #296
AughFuckFusion wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tf say does the public have? This is a terrible excuse. The public doesn't have any say in the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of decision making that happens in this country.... blame politicians ffs, not people who don't matter.

blame politicians ffs, not people who don't matter. Politicians and parties base their platforms on polling data and voting patterns. Sure -- it's a highly inefficient system, and there are plenty other inputs into their behavior. But at the end of the day, they still have to actually win elections. It's a crap system in many ways but public opinion definitely matters.

No post body was provided.

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

#329

Post by acidburnNSA »

lven wrote: post #303
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…

I tried to describe this problem in further detail in a post called con-fusion. Kind of sad to see money burn like this. https://lvenneri.com/blog/ConFusion

Excellent post with lots of detail, thanks, and wow! I'm not alone in my skepticism it seems.

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

#330

Post by dongobongo »

lawrenceyan wrote: post #315
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…

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it impossible for fusion to generate a nuclear meltdown scenario that fission has the potential for?

Meltdown accident: basically, reactor is turned off, however heat continues to be generated because of a thing called decay heat which is when isotopes generated by the fission reactions decay to more stable isotopes and release energy. It's about 7% of a fission reactor's power and continues for a few hours until it's negligible. 7% of a gigawatt reactor is like having a couple of jet engines going full blast inside the core. This heat has to be removed, and meltdowns happen when people fail to do so - basically pumps break, coolant leaks, or coolant is blocked from cooling down the core. Recent micro reactors get around this because they don't need active coolant or people to cool down the reactor - they just cool off by conduction or simple heat rejection systems. I read recently that fusion reactor will also generate decay heat from all the activated components and this is comparable to a fission reactor. The difference is there's a lot less radioactive crap in a fusion reactor - but the fusion reactor will still meltdown and they are expensive...
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