Nuclear fusion has encountered a shortage of tritium

Post by ncmncm » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:03 AM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #82

gitfan86 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last week Elon explained that the problem of fusion is that it will be more expensive than solar and wind.

The real question is whether it's more expensive than solar/wind plus the batteries required for dispatchable power. The answer depends on the reactor design, which Elon doesn't know. There are a lot of possibilities, and if the first ones are too expensive, later ones might not be.

Post by ncmncm » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:17 AM UTC

meowkit wrote: post #103

toomuchtodo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel has working products, customers, shareholders, and fundamentally, accountability for that research spend. Results driven research funding is not unreasonable, unless you want to classify this research in the same vein as particle accelerators and a curiosity with no expectation of success (which is fine; just don’t sell as an energy silver bullet where there’s no evidence it can be delivered on). Hope is not a…

Just because the semiconductor's productivity gains have been massive on a short term time horizon, does not mean that fusion research has been a waste, or that is not on track to "deliver". Fusion as a technology is a long term bet and requires much more capital expenditure, for little short term return, then even semi fabs (which are notorious capital sinks). Your mention of cost justification is ignoring the bigge…

Post by ncmncm » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

Enginerrrd wrote: post #31

fffobar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the problem that the fuse for a fusion bomb is a fission bomb, and a fission bomb very violently disperses lots of radioactive material? What am I not getting?

You control the detonation with either an engineered or natural cavity filled with fluid. You can then use the fluid as a big thermal reservoir to run steam turbines. Per wikipedia: >"Dropping about two bombs a day would cause the system to reach thermal equilibrium, allowing the continual extraction of about 2 GW of electrical power." Now... the part you're not getting is that if you can do all that, you can almost…

Post by ncmncm » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:25 AM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #38

areoform wrote: post #12

Just a quick reminder, we already have practical fusion with tens of thousands of years of runway available to us today. We choose not to do it because it sounds dangerous and it’s not politically expedient. For those unfamiliar, I am talking about Project PACER. The fusion reactor proposed by Teller after the creation of the thermonuclear weapon. It may sound fanciful but it’s based on a simple precept. We can alrea…

> Dropping about two bombs a day would cause the system to reach thermal equilibrium, allowing the continual extraction of about 2 GW of electrical power. So the idea is to drop 2 nuclear bombs per day to get about as much energy as one gets from a pair of nuclear fission reactors? I seriously doubt that's cost-competitive with fission power.

Post by tlb » Sat, May 21, 2022, 5:31 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #116

cogman10 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Future fission reactors both don't need uranium (thorium reactors) and use less of it while waste that isn't radio active for long (breeder reactors).

Thorium turns out not to be the solution to any problem.