More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by justforthisandn » Sun, Jul 24, 2022, 7:54 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #326

acidburnNSA wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 subsi…

People have issues with really visualizing and understanding order of magnitudes, I get it.

> Spend 1/4th that on solar or wind subsidies and you get vastly more carbon free energy

Have you done the math, or are you just making that figure up? One single LWR generates from 1GW onwards. Do you know how much solar you need to generate the same amount of power? And that's disregarding the obvious issues with non-constant energy output.

Plus - solar and wind, if you factor in the energy required to manifacture the components necessary for their operation, have negative EROI. https://energyeducation.se/wind-and-solar-energy-are-neither...

I have literally no idea why people think that solar and wind are a solution to the energy problem. It's like nobody has actually looked into the math and said "wow this makes me feel good so I'll support it". Let me repeat it, solar and wind have _negative_ EROI. If you invest in solar and wind, you're net losing energy.

> 1 nuclear reactor can be quite safe, but 500 of them is 500 times the risk

Modern nuclear is exceptionally safe. Europe is switching to freaking _coal_ in an effort not to freeze this winter. Statistically, they're killing hundreds of times more people than if they switched to nuclear at the right time. They're shutting down most of their nuclear for unknown reasons as well.

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

#392

Post by adrianN » Sun, Jul 24, 2022, 7:55 AM UTC

manmal wrote: post #380

joak wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

Storage is certainly not harder to build than nuclear power plants. Power-to-Gas is technologically quite straightforward. The research that's currently happening is just to make it cheaper until we have enough renewables for grid-scale storage to make sense. The really hard part of becoming carbon neutral is the sectors other than electricity, e.g. heating and transportation, but nuclear power won't help you there.

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

#393

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, Jul 24, 2022, 7:55 AM UTC

V__ wrote: post #30

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?

There seems to be a lot of innovative ideas and a lot of them seem to be quite doable, which is interesting for investors. One I really like is FirstLightFusion [1]. They are using a ballistic system to shoot at a small fuel cube, which creates a fusion reaction and then use the generated heat to power a turbine. There is a nice behind the scene video with some interview from FullyCharged [2]. [1] https://firstlightf…

Inertial confinement fusion is orders of magnitude less likely to ever be economically viable than magnetic confinement. The targets (and projectiles in this case) will require such high precision to be able to achieve fusion in the moment of impact that it is virtually impossible to imagine this could ever be done economically.

Further, you will need huge quantities of such targets and projectiles, as the power plant will have to destroy them at a rate of one per second or so, in constant operation. So even for a single day, you will require 86,400 targets and as many projectiles - each being a marvel of precision engineering. Also, there is a good chance that you wouldnt even be able to recycle the material from spent targets to make new ones, as they will become radioactive from being in contact with the fusing plasma.

Essentially an ICF plant would actually be running on the world's most expensive fuel, and consuming it at an extraordinary rate.

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

#394

Post by jeltz » Sun, Jul 24, 2022, 7:56 AM UTC

smaudet wrote: post #364

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…

> The cost of climate change clearly far outweighs the cost of nuclear plants and waste. Um, yes until you factor in failure rates due to incompetence + natural failure. Chernobyl, look it up, massive cost, massive loss of land, death/cancer rate of all exposed nearly 100%. Until you can solve the "corrupt bureaucrat cuts corners he doesn't understand" problem, and also demonstrate that the failure of a single reacto…

So how do you think that we should solve energy storage? Both batteries and dams are dangerous and can lead to disasters. Dams failing have killed way more people than nuclear ever has.

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

#395

Post by felixmeziere » Sun, Jul 24, 2022, 7:58 AM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #228

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…

> fusion is just going to increase the rate at which we are transforming this planet into a giant pile of garbage That rate does not scale negatively with energy prices. It scales positively with population, in the West. We could just accelerate towards stagnant global population growth. Improving economies and access to contraceptives in poor nations could do that. Everybody wins, except the very richest. Coercing t…

> That rate does not scale negatively with energy prices. It scales positively with population, in the West.

I wouldn't uses "prices" here as a framing. If you plot the graphs of worldwide energy usage and worldwide garbage emissions (let's take greenhouse gases or amount of artificialized soil as examples), you will see that they are correlated. We have grown to this gigantic population solely thanks to our mastery of energy, that's the one factor that enabled all the rest (abundant food, time to go to college instead of farming, developments in medicine to make your life longer, retirements, consumerism etc.).

What I'm saying is that, looking at what we've done so far with energy, it's not entirely sure more energy will be good for our prospects of survival. We need to have a collective philosophical revolution first.

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

#396

Post by jabl » Sun, Jul 24, 2022, 7:58 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #273

acidburnNSA wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, then we're on the same page. But one note, I don't think fusion has the same uphill battle that fission does. You mentioned that the fission industry just hasn't been able to properly demonstrate what they can do, but I don't think this is entirely it. We do have to consider the decades worth of campaigning and lobbying by coal and gas that went after nuclear. That these campaigns even infiltrated the biggest g…

> Fusion doesn't have this same battle to overcome.

Ha ha, Greenpeace has already per-emptively decided they hate fusion too.

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

#397

Post by einpoklum » Sun, Jul 24, 2022, 7:59 AM UTC

acidburnNSA wrote: post #169

einpoklum wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/kh050…

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

Are you comparing to coal-fired plants? I'm talking about solar and wind.

As for fossil fuels, the expected deaths and environmental from nuclear accidents are - well, TBH, I don't know the math for that, but I would expect it would be on the order of magnitude of the extra deaths from fossil fuel electricity generation.

> I mentioned the solutions

I will actually look into that. However, the website says: "Finland ... No other country has yet reached the implementation phase of final disposal. ... final disposal of high-level spent nuclear fuel has not yet been launched anywhere."

So, that's not what's being used so far. This company's new approach - maybe it's great, I don't know, but it needs to last thousands of years, right? That's a very high bar - and a significant maintenance and hazard-management burden going forward.

> Lazard are a bunch of kooks.

That's a pretty strong claim. But - since I'm not an expert, I can't outright dismiss it. They're a popular source for a "bunch of kooks"... care to elaborate?

> Look at Hualong One costs.

I would look into them, if I could.

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

#398

Post by felixmeziere » Sun, Jul 24, 2022, 8:00 AM UTC

lambdaba wrote: post #252

slothtrop wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not "warm", because with fusion filling this cache, energy usage wouldn't lead to CO2 pollution. They're suggesting it would lead to increases in consumption which means waste. Notwithstanding that a) life won't necessarily get more affordable for people, and stuff costs money, b) there are innovations now, and expected in the future, which would drastically curtail waste, though some regulatory measures might be nec…

I don't see why it goes without saying the extra energy would necessarily go towards consumerism. There is still a long way to go towards getting every human a decent life and opportunity to reach their full potential. There's no way we're getting there without the extra energy. For providing healthcare, nutricious food, education, etc.

So far, extra energy has been entirely targeted at increasing consumerism: it's the famous "such and such country is finally getting a sizeable middle class".

Translation of "middle class": class of mass consumers.

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

#399

Post by bratbag » Sun, Jul 24, 2022, 8:01 AM UTC

dignick wrote: post #381

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…

There are several problems with fission (probably fusion too) as I understand it: 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable. 2. Construction time - average is 10 years, we don’t have that long to wait. 3. Decommissioning is expensive and a long way in the future. Is that cost built into the cost per MW? How can we…

Cost factor isn't as relevant as you think, as this is an apple's to oranges comparison.

Renewables are too unreliable to act as baseline generation for a country.

In the UK last year for example we had very little wind, so we had to ramp up our gas power output to make up for our shortages in renewables. We burned through much of our gas reserves before the Ukraine war started, because of Renewable power unreliability.

Fission is the replacement for that baseline role that hydrocarbons currently fill, not the unpredictable-but-clean role that renewables fill.

The ideal future has both, with renewables producing as much power as possible and fission running on low capacity and ready to ramp up when renewables fall short.

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

#400

Post by tsimionescu » Sun, Jul 24, 2022, 8:01 AM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #383

dreamcompiler wrote: post #76

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…

I think investments are happening because recent progress in this space is indicating that this might in fact happen in the next decade or so. The cliche that fusion reactors are perpetually 30 years away, might have actually been correct up to about 20 years ago. There are no guarantees here of course, but there are now quite a few companies acting like they are going to get their first test plants up and running in…

The biggest problem to take any of these companies seriously, even the MIT spin-off, is that no one has ever attempted yet to extract a single watt of electricity from the fusion reaction. The part where the thermal energy is actually converted to electrical power is still entirely at the theoretical design level. While it is nowhere near as complex scientifically as actually containing the plasma, it will still be a huge engineering challenge.

When these companies come and claim that their better magnets will allow them to supply power to the grid 3 years from now when they haven't even arrived where JET is yet, so they haven't even started in the unknowns of actually running the reactor continously and extracting power from it, it is clear that they are gifting with their timeline. And if they are willing to lie about the timeline, I don't see why anyone believes them about the fundamental technology as well.