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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

#641

Post by Banana699 »

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…

According to my layman's understanding and Issac Arthur's science and futurism videos, fusion is great because of how universally common the fuel is. Maybe fission fuels are not a big deal on Earth, but they are on the moon, Mars, orbital habs or Europa. Meanwhile fusion is just hydrogen. Literally what's the universe is mostly made of.

So maybe right know fission is as good as fusion (better because it exists), but space is soon, and fusion is better for space.

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

#642

Post by Banana699 »

markvdb wrote: post #403
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…

> They were bad, but just bad enough to roll over and give up on fission. Competent engineers are perfectly capable of maintaining a nuclear reactor, _technically_ speaking. Large projects are vulnerable to all vices of human nature though. Idiots in manglement. Greedy people trying to squeeze out more profit. Terrorists. Maffiosi, whether running a country or not. Let's not forget that scale is not just about money…

This still doesn't address GP's comparison to fossil. Fossil powerplants are no less vulnerable to all of those things you listed, and in fact they were indeed used in wars, from Saddam burning Kuwait's fields in 1991 to Houthi drones attacking Saudi fields more recently to Libyan civil war. None of that is used against fossil the same way it's used against nuclear.

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

#643

Post by pfdietz »

dmitriid wrote: post #628
pfdietz wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1 death from radiation So far. The population dose will likely cause many more fatal cancers than that (maybe 200?). That those will be impossible to detect above the normal cancer background doesn't mean we can pretend they aren't there.

So, after a full-scale catastrophe it's still significantly fewer casualties than from normal operation of coal, for example.

"Cleaner/safer than coal" is damning with faint praise.

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

#644

Post by willis936 »

lostmsu wrote: post #575
dogcomplex wrote: post #368

A friendly reminder that the idea posed by a pioneer of nuclear energy of just dumping big bombs in a hole and harvesting the heat energy with steam/plasma has never been invalidated and remains the most efficiently-simple solution immediately viable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER If containment is your concern (though underground blast effects are decently understood, and blast chambers could be constru…

Another no container idea (this one is crazy): just blow them in the ocean, that will evaporate some water and speed up evaporation of some more. Harvest energy with existing hydroelectric setuos once it passes the weather cycle.

There are much less ecologically disastrous and less illegal cloud-seeding techniques. They're still very illegal though.

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

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

#645

Post by hexnuts »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #627
hexnuts wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly curious, what do you see as a solution to the heat problems reactors are experiencing? There was discussion about the combination of lack of sufficiently cool water and droughts in the new heatwave cycles.

Most of those problems are related to fish populations and their tolerance of warm water. I think we will probably need to either adjust the regulations and/or somehow keep the fish farther away from the discharge so that they don't get injured. Cooling a 375°C core with ambient water can be done even well into climate change conditions. As for drought, if reactors are cooled by rivers that can dry up rather than oce…

Thank you for the reply, it was informative. =^.^=

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

#646

Post by mlindner »

lven wrote: post #582
mlindner wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read recently that fusion reactor will also generate decay heat from all the activated components and this is comparable to a fission reactor. I'd like to know where you read that as the entire idea is to build a reactor out of things that don't activate or are very hard to activate. i.e. things that thermalize or reflect neutrons. Fission reactors produce tons of neutrons too (they kind of have to to work more s…

I think they are talking about me. Here's two papers about decay heat in ITER: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/092037... , and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092037961... I used their data to find power density and compared it the micro modular fission (MMR) fission reactors. “MMR has a lower decay heat power density than fusion systems like SPARC or ARC, DEMO, or ITER and or…

Isn't ITER specifically not designed for that issue given it's not intended for long term operations? They even have the coil magnets directly in the neutron flux.

I don't think using ITER as an example here is relevant.

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

#647

Post by V1ndaar »

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…

> What's the point?

Energy density.

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

#648

Post by fredestine »

Krasnol wrote: post #530
fredestine wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macron removed investment and focus on nuclear in his last mandate before realising that being woke made france broke (luckily not like germany broke - you know like in a way that when there is no sun or wind they need to call Putin to send some energy) now he reverted his thinking because money and energy is more important than beliefs when you needs them. just like usa or germany reactivated coal and biden is selli…

> macron removed investment and focus on nuclear in his last mandate before realising that being woke made france broke None of those problems OP described have anything to do with that overblown statement. Investment may have been removed for FUTURE projects but not for current operation which is highly subsidised by the French taxpayer guaranteeing the fixed price the Government decides on. Also Germany reactivated…

the investments included maintenance of existing infrastructure. france has more than half its reactor being off right now. guess what? invest more 5 years before and we wouldnt be there today. so yes. it is not overblown it is factual

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

#649

Post by dx034 »

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…

Any green gas could be that storage. With solar power around $.01/kwh in some sunny places, converting that energy into storable gas/liquids can be profitable even at low efficiency rates. And we already have an existing network to transport, store and burn gases. Converting those from natural gas to other gases is likely easier than rebuilding everything.

From all that I read, Ammonia is a prime candidate. Especially because there's an existing large market for it, so producers don't have to bet on a new market to ramp up production. But there's no real reason why some power plants, ships and maybe even trucks couldn't be driven by Ammonia in the future.

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