111–120 of 309 posts
The big problem is that we have funded fusion at "Fusion Never" levels. Had we shoved as much money at fusion as we have at, say, horizontal drilling for liquified dinosaurs, we'd have fusion right now .
The argument "with funding, it will come" is cargo cult thinking, reversing cause and effect.
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I would say it’s clear that solar panels are absolutely working extremely well today, at least as long as you don’t live too close to the poles. Renewables all together is growing faster than nuclear ever did. And solar is now a huge part of that. We have models where solar or solar+wind is providing all the power to everything from small remote weather stations through houses to large islands. Some small countries a…
> all the power to everything from small remote weather stations through houses to large islands Not without very large capacity gas/etc. plants available on standby (unless you’re fine with will below 99% availability)
We already have a zero maintenance fusion power plant that will last billions of years and that outputs millions of times more energy per second than humanity uses in a year. We already have technology that can take the electromagnetic waves this fusion power plant produces and directly convert it into electricity without needing pesky intermediaries like boiling water to turn a turbine. This technology is relatively…
Solar panels clearly don't work wel enough to be able to solve our energy demands. A very significant portion of the day they don't work at all.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
"With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive."
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Just by buying an electric vehicle I already have more than enough batteries to solve these problems for my household. The transition to EVs - which is a hard necessity to solve climate change, and well on the way - implies battery production that’s already within an order of magnitude of storing enough solar to supply power year round. As long as you’re not too close to the poles, but most people don’t live there an…
> Just by buying an electric vehicle I already have more than enough batteries to solve these problems for my household. Not if you live in Northern Europe. Solar is basically worthless there during winter. I’m not even talking about polar nights, just places like Denmark where the difference in production between January and June is 20x. No batteries (that we know of) would solve that.
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Fission is pathway to nukes, so every nation with intention of building nukes invests in fission regardless of commercial viability. Fusion on the other hand is pure r&d project and may give bragging rights if a country gets it first. So even in China it is not priority.
Wait, isn't fusion also possibly applicable as a weapon? I mean, thermonuclear weapons exist today with fission bomb being the fuze, once we achieve fusion ignition can't we build thermonuclear bomb from it that would not need uranium/plutionium?
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Agreed, I think it is a great article. Personally, I'm most inclined to agree with the "bear case" summarized at the bottom of the article: 1. I think it's highly likely that, at some point (and probably in the not-too distant future with ITER and DEMO), humans will produce fusion reactors that are self-sustaining with net positive output (ignition). 2. Given the inherent complexity and difficulty with fusion, I thin…
"Base load" doesn't really enter into it: you just need storage to make renewables make sense by supplying when generation doesn't meet demand and recharging when demand is less than supply. (or, if you have a cheap "base load" you use storage to even out the peaks and troughs in the same way). Base load is just a somewhat arbitrary line drawn across the lowest point of demand, it's not an actual requirement of the g…
We already have a zero maintenance fusion power plant that will last billions of years and that outputs millions of times more energy per second than humanity uses in a year. We already have technology that can take the electromagnetic waves this fusion power plant produces and directly convert it into electricity without needing pesky intermediaries like boiling water to turn a turbine. This technology is relatively…
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Strong Wind doesn't exist on asteroids and many planets, so I think there will be a long term need. Solar power decreases with the cube root of distance from the sun,so twice the distance is 1/8th the flux
I'm not concerned about commercially viable space colonies in my lifetime. The real reason for fusion was that fission is not a renewable resource. In a few thousand years there will be a fuel problem with fission and we would be forced to switch to fusion if we had a fully nuclear power system.
This might sound like the same attitude that put us in our present climate crisis, but that was on the order of decades to centuries. Thousands of years include such unbelievable potential of technological development that there seems no point in trying to predict the actual challenges we'll face.
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Wait, isn't fusion also possibly applicable as a weapon? I mean, thermonuclear weapons exist today with fission bomb being the fuze, once we achieve fusion ignition can't we build thermonuclear bomb from it that would not need uranium/plutionium?
If we could build such a device we would effectively have unlimited energy. At that point, why fight each other when we can colonize the galaxy?
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It would be interesting if there was a global grid and market for (hopefully clean) energy so that a joule of energy could be sold anywhere instantaneously, just like any other commodity. This would allow countries to quickly power up without even building a power plant. It would also allow large base load power stations (like nuclear) to have permanent demand. Of course there are technical challenges of building out…
A global and free market for electricity means that African citizens are going to have to outbid bitcoin miners and ai trainers for electricity. I would much rather see a world where governments are at least partially in charge of the grid to ensure that their population gets their share of the capacity.