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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

#371

Post by smaudet »

pfdietz wrote: post #272
acidburnNSA wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how much less likely the non-DT reactions are than DT ones from a nuclear physics perspective at reasonable plasma temperature, I'd say it's an extra long shot. We'd expect the easy reactions to be done first, followed by the much harder ones. Every advanced anything company says net electricity by 2024. I'm not holding my breath. I'd be thrilled to be wrong.

If the physics issues were the only ones facing fusion, you'd be making a good argument there. But after the physics comes engineering. Helion's approach is to be more aggressive on the physics in order to greatly ease the grave engineering issues that face DT reactors. I consider these latter issues to be so serious that, overall, I rate Helion as less of a long shot at achieving practical fusion than any of the DT…

Not sure why you're being down-voted, easy solutions with numerous problems are generally inferior to more elegant solutions with fewer problems, could you enumerate what these issues are between Helion and DT reactors?

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

#372

Post by thrown_22 »

godelski wrote: post #259
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…

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…

>Honestly, I don't understand why we can't do both.

Because we're been doing neither for 40 years.

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

#373

Post by [deleted] »

godelski wrote: post #259
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#374

Post by thrown_22 »

downrightmike wrote: post #253
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…

The problem is energy companies and the entrenched family assholes that run them. Three Mile Island was being forced to push ahead and use the crane to move the vessel, even though it WAS damaged and would have likely lead to a meltdown. Engineers knew it wasn't safe and were punished and fired for not using the crane unless it was actually checked and in working order. The public is right to be wary of nuclear when…

And how is it better when those assholes kill tens of thousands with coal every year instead?

If we lynched a few of them every time a nuclear reactor blew up we'd have a lot fewer energy related deaths and the market would eventually self correct.

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

#375

Post by JohnBooty »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #311
JohnBooty wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hand-waving. We've got got what, close to a billion fission reactor-hours worth of data? Perhaps more? We know exactly how safe they are. Also: "safety issues?" Useless to talk about safety issues in a vacuum. Safety issues compared to what? - Fossil fuels, which are literally guaranteed to fry this planet? - Wind, water, solar? Great but not sufficient and/or feasible in all locales. - An imaginary energy s…

But that safety comes in large parts from strict regulations which have made nuclear power very expensive. Many seem to live in this alternative reality where we can have bit super safe, lightly regulated and cheap nuclear. I am afraid we can only have one of those attributes. And figuring out how to build cheap nuclear in the West is actually a pretty complex thing. The US cannot even figure out why their roads and…

    I am afraid we can only have one of those attributes.
While I accept that those two things (safe fission power, and cheap fission power) are in obvious tension with each other, your "choose only one" scenario is a false dichotomy.

A well-functioning, technologically advanced, and motivated country could easily overcome this. Standardized reactor designs, simplified reactor designs such as the newer molten salt reactor designs, etc.

We have the technology to do this safely and cheaper than we're doing it now; we just don't have the will.

Also, any talk of cost must include not only the short-term kWh cost, but the long term cost -- ie, the terrible cost of climate change that we'll soon be paying.

    And figuring out how to build cheap nuclear 
    in the West is actually a pretty complex thing
Yeah, no arguments there. The US is no longer capable of tackling long term initiatives like this, because any change will necessarily upset the corporations that effectively own the government.

Nothing will change until the ice caps melt and half our coastal cities are flooded, and at that point something might happen but probably not anything good.

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

#376

Post by tsimionescu »

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…

> Lest we forget, the Chernobyl Absolute Exclusion Zone is 1,000 square miles 35 years later.

Ah yes, the Soviet reactor that was built with a known fatal design flaw, then operated well outside of safety parameters during an experiment, is the be-all end-all of nuclear safety.

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

#377

Post by mlindner »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #354
mlindner wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) not have the same stigma as fission is kind of weird in my mind. The cost of fission comes doubly from the nuclear proliferation risk and the safety risk, neither of which apply at all to fusion. The levels of radioactive waste produced is at basically the same levels as medical p…

No proliferation risk at all in a tritium fountain full of 14 MeV neutrons? Are you sure you know what you're talking about? These will all be guarded with pseudo military guns guards and gates just like fission, and monitored by the IAEA. As for radiological safety, see point about tritium. And google tritium leak nuclear plant for good measure. Youre right that there is less radioactivity in fusion plants, but mayb…

> No proliferation risk at all in a tritium fountain full of 14 MeV neutrons? Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

If you're putting hunks of uranium inside a fusion pressure vessel it'd be really obvious. Tritium itself doesn't have proliferation risk.

> These will all be guarded with pseudo military guns guards and gates just like fission, and monitored by the IAEA.

No they won't. Because even if you crash a truck into them there's no ecological disaster.

> As for radiological safety, see point about tritium. And google tritium leak nuclear plant for good measure.

The tritium stored in the reactor will be in the microgram range.

> Youre right that there is less radioactivity in fusion plants, but maybe not enough less to really matter.

It's several orders of magnitude less. I think that matters quite a bit.

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

#378

Post by mlindner »

smaudet wrote: post #367
acidburnNSA wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No proliferation risk at all in a tritium fountain full of 14 MeV neutrons? Are you sure you know what you're talking about? These will all be guarded with pseudo military guns guards and gates just like fission, and monitored by the IAEA. As for radiological safety, see point about tritium. And google tritium leak nuclear plant for good measure. Youre right that there is less radioactivity in fusion plants, but mayb…

"Still, the NRC and industry consider the leaks a public relations problem, not a public health or accident threat, records and interviews show." https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2012/part-ii-ap-impact-tri... . And this is why we should not trust any fission-bearing folk. Or apparently fusion-bearing folk either.

Tritium leaks are indeed public relations problems, if done in the very small quantities that would be in a fusion reactor.

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

#379

Post by tsimionescu »

geysersam wrote: post #361
pyuser583 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Department of Defense doesn’t generate cash, but people love having those bases nearby.

Thousands of salaries is cash.

That's a cost to the DoD. The point was that government can easily subsidize nuclear waste storage, just as it subsidizes the military.

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

#380

Post by manmal »

joak wrote: post #363
JohnBooty wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think it is more on the climate scientists at this point to be vocal about it. I think you hit the nail on the head here. It's understandable that science-illiterate, climate change-denier types fear fission. The fossil fuel industry has done an excellent job percolating their pro fossil-fuel agenda and fomenting fear of the unknown. This is the unavoidable enemy. The only way to counter this would be for…

This conversation seems to me a bit outdated: building a fission reactor takes one or two decades and its kWh is costlier than alternatives. To get something cheaper, we need to wait for the next gen of technology, in one or two decades. Lucky if we can compete with the costs of solar, wind and batteries in a decade. Even with the support of greens, government, scientists, etc this is going no where. Nuclear fission…

The problem is that the sun is not always shining (and half the year not at the right angle), and wind is not always blowing. Unless a country has access to always-on sources (like sea currents), energy must be stored or things must be burned. Storage is hard and energy intensive to build, and many countries would need a few months worth of storage to never bother about burning stuff again. And that’s _a lot_, you wouldn’t believe the kind of power needed to support some branches of industry, and they won’t shut down in winter of course.
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