51–60 of 157 posts
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> We’re still a few years away from having them in actual power plants I admire your optimism. I'd say half a century, if things go well, but I'm not convinced fusion will ever be economically feasible.
It feels like fusion energy is perpetually 50 years away.
Just like COVID helped the mRNA/CRISPR technology evolve and come faster and closer to us, with the potential for many more usages in various diseases, I hope that the ongoing/coming energy crisis will help all nuclear fusion technologies tokamak/stellarator become real. We’re still a few years away from having them in actual power plants and a few decades away from solving our energy problems for every, but I hope w…
About mRNA vaccines I agree with you, because they indeed have been a niche thing before covid, but then they were the first available vaccines while the alternatives were still being researched when the first mRNA vaccines got their emergency approval. But how has CRISPR benefitted from covid? It doesn't seem to be used anywhere in therapeutics, no?
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> And it would face the same showstoppingly bad volumetric power density as tokamaks, because of limits on that energy flow through the surface of the reactor. I do think it is worth persevering though. The future of energy is Solar/Wind but Fusion should not be ignored. It is one of Nature's fundamental processes. Mastering fusion could turn out to be useful in ways we cannot possibly fathom at the moment right now.
I agree. If we were able to eventually miniaturise fusion reactors, they would be incredible for space flight. Back on Earth, if they could be made safe enough, maybe we could even use them to run container ships?
In practice, synfuels would be better than either for ships on Earth.
Just like COVID helped the mRNA/CRISPR technology evolve and come faster and closer to us, with the potential for many more usages in various diseases, I hope that the ongoing/coming energy crisis will help all nuclear fusion technologies tokamak/stellarator become real. We’re still a few years away from having them in actual power plants and a few decades away from solving our energy problems for every, but I hope w…
"our need will be the real creator" - Plato
I've been quoting the proverb for a long time. Thank you for the quote, I feel it says basically the same thing but I appreciate the different wording and that it is attributed to Plato.
Just like COVID helped the mRNA/CRISPR technology evolve and come faster and closer to us, with the potential for many more usages in various diseases, I hope that the ongoing/coming energy crisis will help all nuclear fusion technologies tokamak/stellarator become real. We’re still a few years away from having them in actual power plants and a few decades away from solving our energy problems for every, but I hope w…
> Just like COVID helped the mRNA/CRISPR technology evolve About mRNA vaccines I agree with you, because they indeed have been a niche thing before covid, but then they were the first available vaccines while the alternatives were still being researched when the first mRNA vaccines got their emergency approval. But how has CRISPR benefitted from covid? It doesn't seem to be used anywhere in therapeutics, no?
I imagine it's on the comment because it was used to create many of the non mRNA vaccines.
But I don't think it got popularized. It was already widely popular.
Just like COVID helped the mRNA/CRISPR technology evolve and come faster and closer to us, with the potential for many more usages in various diseases, I hope that the ongoing/coming energy crisis will help all nuclear fusion technologies tokamak/stellarator become real. We’re still a few years away from having them in actual power plants and a few decades away from solving our energy problems for every, but I hope w…
> We’re still a few years away from having them in actual power plants I admire your optimism. I'd say half a century, if things go well, but I'm not convinced fusion will ever be economically feasible.
Not on Earth. But put a good enough fusion reactor on a rocket, and you can reach neighboring stars in 3 or 4 decades instead of the 15 one would expect for fission. (Of course, nobody is even sure reactors can get that good, but it does look possible.)
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> How to keep the blanket from quickly degrading and becoming nuclear waste seems to be an open problem Not really. Most reactors plan to also use the neutrons to breed the tritium fuel for the reactor, so the blanket would consist of liquid metallic lithium. The only products from neutrons reacting with lithium nucleii (either 6 or 7) are He-4 and tritium. The open problem is how to safely maintain the reactor-facin…
It looks like all the isotopes of LI are very short lived. Is the problem some of the daughters, or perhaps the Fe and C in the steel that are the problem? https://www.thoughtco.com/lithium-isotopes-radioactive-decay...
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More opaque than every nth HN title referring to some cutely-monikered code framework that presses all the wrong mental buttons in those oblivious to its nature? Surely not.
Splark: a new phlinto framework built in blenk. And the thread is just Blenk fans arguing with Fobl fans.
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> We’re still a few years away from having them in actual power plants I admire your optimism. I'd say half a century, if things go well, but I'm not convinced fusion will ever be economically feasible.
I think that 50 years is a reasonable timeframe to give fusion the possibility of delivering results. But I agree with you, it's pretty much impossible that anything will come out of fusion in the coming 10-15 years, despite the publicity we keep hearing lately.
Just like COVID helped the mRNA/CRISPR technology evolve and come faster and closer to us, with the potential for many more usages in various diseases, I hope that the ongoing/coming energy crisis will help all nuclear fusion technologies tokamak/stellarator become real. We’re still a few years away from having them in actual power plants and a few decades away from solving our energy problems for every, but I hope w…
> ongoing/coming energy crisis This has been IMHO inappropriately hyped. We have an expected gas shortfall in Europe due to the mess made by one rogue actor (though Putin hasn't shut the pipes off yet, The existing price shocks are all speculative!). Petroleum production is fine. Gas production outside of Europe is fine. Existing interests in those industries have been exploiting the resulting price shocks (which are…