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Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

nature.com

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Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#11

Post by d-gearloose »

calibas wrote: post #8

Note, the power output was about 1/3 the power needed to sustain the reaction. > JET’s latest experiment sustained a Q of 0.33 for 5 seconds, says Rimini. JET is a scaled-down version of ITER, at one-tenth of the volume — a bathtub compared to a swimming pool, says Proll. It loses heat more easily than ITER, so it was never expected to hit breakeven. If engineers applied the same conditions and physics approach to IT…

The good thing about fusion is that a lot of problems stem from the size of the surface area as compared to the volume.

The bigger the reaction vessel gets, the favorably this ratio is.

This experiment just shows that the predictions about ITER seem to be in a realistic region.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#12

Post by d-gearloose »

4WIW wrote: post #10
pixelpoet wrote: post #2

Excellent news, we need this so badly, especially now in Europe with Germany shutting down its nuclear (fission) plants and NS2 being cancelled. It's astonishing to me that the world isn't pulling out all the stops on fusion development, something like the space race or Manhattan project. Unfortunately, last I heard ITER building has halted: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-h...

I would think about more practical ways to reduce cost fuel consumption. We are still 10-15 years away from practical fusion. We have been, for the last 50 years. As for Germany, maybe it would make more sense not to hastily shut down nuclear reactors, in favor of coal and gas, or at least until the equivalent capacity of renewable energy is online, if they really cared about the environment?

The distance to energy production through fusion is better expressed in funding, less so in time.

https://m.slashdot.org/story/167399

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#13

Post by DoingIsLearning »

epistasis wrote: post #5
pixelpoet wrote: post #2

Excellent news, we need this so badly, especially now in Europe with Germany shutting down its nuclear (fission) plants and NS2 being cancelled. It's astonishing to me that the world isn't pulling out all the stops on fusion development, something like the space race or Manhattan project. Unfortunately, last I heard ITER building has halted: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-h...

Fusion will not solve any energy problems we have today, and is unconnected to them. Fusion will have to, maybe, compete with solar/wind/storage in 20-30 years, and beat the prices for that 20-30 years from now. With solar+storage being cheaper than many fossil fuels today, fusion is going to have to be extremely cheap to be able to be a competitive terrestrial energy source with 20-30 years more of solar and storage…

I agree that solar/wind price points have massively gone down but how is storage a solved problem? I have only seen research projects in this field, is there anyone who has commercially deployed an energy storage solution? (other than hydro projects)

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#14

Post by phreeza »

d-gearloose wrote: post #12
4WIW wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think about more practical ways to reduce cost fuel consumption. We are still 10-15 years away from practical fusion. We have been, for the last 50 years. As for Germany, maybe it would make more sense not to hastily shut down nuclear reactors, in favor of coal and gas, or at least until the equivalent capacity of renewable energy is online, if they really cared about the environment?

The distance to energy production through fusion is better expressed in funding, less so in time. https://m.slashdot.org/story/167399

... says researcher trying to get their research funded.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#15

Post by stormbrew »

tsimionescu wrote: post #4
pixelpoet wrote: post #2

Excellent news, we need this so badly, especially now in Europe with Germany shutting down its nuclear (fission) plants and NS2 being cancelled. It's astonishing to me that the world isn't pulling out all the stops on fusion development, something like the space race or Manhattan project. Unfortunately, last I heard ITER building has halted: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-h...

Even if fusion succeeds in net positive energy (which is still a ways off - even ITER, planned to finish in 2030, will not actually generate energy, they didn't even add a turbine to try), there are huge hurdles to scanning it up. It's impossible for fusion to be a significant source of energy in the time left to avert catastrophic global warming. Even with the most optimistic estimates, we will at best have a handfu…

This is a really common kind of comment to this issue, but I think it's extremely short-sighted. At this point, because we're probably well past the point that anything we can practically do is likely to get us to net zero carbon before catastrophe (it's already here, really), we're at a point where we're probably going to need to go extremely negative even once we do get there. We're (ironically) going to need a lot of non-carbon-sourced energy to do that, it seems to me.

We can't just be thinking about what we'll do to stem the tide, we have to keep working on how we're going to push it back.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#16

Post by inglor_cz »

pixelpoet wrote: post #2

Excellent news, we need this so badly, especially now in Europe with Germany shutting down its nuclear (fission) plants and NS2 being cancelled. It's astonishing to me that the world isn't pulling out all the stops on fusion development, something like the space race or Manhattan project. Unfortunately, last I heard ITER building has halted: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-h...

I can't see the European Green movement embracing anything that has "nuclear" in it.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#17

Post by Aeolun »

As much as I enjoy reading this news. It is feels heavily sensationalized.

"Smashes" the energy record.

We're talking about a fusion generator here, that after 25 years of work, now manages to output 'double' the energy, to 59 MJ in 5s -like 20 MW- while requiring 180 MJ input power.

Somewhere hidden in the article is the news that this could mean a input/output ratio of 10 in a full scale reactor, but that's also something we've been waiting on for decades.

I find it easy to be enthusiastic about fusion, but the news and research surrounding it makes me sad.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#18

Post by samwillis »

epistasis wrote: post #5
pixelpoet wrote: post #2

Excellent news, we need this so badly, especially now in Europe with Germany shutting down its nuclear (fission) plants and NS2 being cancelled. It's astonishing to me that the world isn't pulling out all the stops on fusion development, something like the space race or Manhattan project. Unfortunately, last I heard ITER building has halted: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-h...

Fusion will not solve any energy problems we have today, and is unconnected to them. Fusion will have to, maybe, compete with solar/wind/storage in 20-30 years, and beat the prices for that 20-30 years from now. With solar+storage being cheaper than many fossil fuels today, fusion is going to have to be extremely cheap to be able to be a competitive terrestrial energy source with 20-30 years more of solar and storage…

The issue with solar is the land area usage in densely populated countries, less of a problem in the US but here in the UK the is a lot of push back against building solar farms on agricultural land. There is a convincing argument that we need to discourage the practice in order to maintain domestic food production.

Obviously there are alternative locations such a roofs of commercial buildings and over the top of car parks. But that bring some of there own problems, structural problems with old roofs and cost to modify car parks.

The UK have done a brilliant job of offshore wind, that works well.

My point is traditional Nuclear and Fusion use a lot less land and that is an important factor to consider long term.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#20

Post by markvdb »

inglor_cz wrote: post #16
pixelpoet wrote: post #2

Excellent news, we need this so badly, especially now in Europe with Germany shutting down its nuclear (fission) plants and NS2 being cancelled. It's astonishing to me that the world isn't pulling out all the stops on fusion development, something like the space race or Manhattan project. Unfortunately, last I heard ITER building has halted: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-h...

I can't see the European Green movement embracing anything that has "nuclear" in it.

I have anecdotal evidence to the contrary: myself.

In the short and medium term, it's obvious that wind and solar are going to help us avoid the worst of the climate crisis. In the long term, we might need something more to reverse climate change.

Existing nuclear fission energy capacity might be a short term stopgap. It's just clearly not sustainable because inherently too risky:

- military/terror/nuclear proliferation risk

- uninsurable accident risk

- long-lived waste risk

- uranium sourcing geopolitical risk

Nuclear fusion however should be able to avoid most of these risks.

All of this could be moot of course if dangerous idiots like Vladimir decide to solve the problem by killing a sufficiently large fraction of humanity. I'm cautiously optimistic though that a better solution is possible.

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