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ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

bbc.co.uk

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Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#121

Post by Normille »

qwertox wrote: post #19
mbgerring wrote: post #12

> The facility could see plasma generated in the machine - a notional start to operations - shortly after the assembly phase ends in 2025. So you're saying it's... 5 years away?

The generation of plasma is approximately 5 years away. Around 2035 the first experiments with tritium will me made, at least that's the expectation. And even then ITER isn't designed to be a usable reactor, it's just a prototype. They intend to build a real one afterwards, and even that one will be a demonstration reactor.

With all this talk of the colossal ITER project merely being a warm-up for the even bigger DEMO one to follow which, in its turn will be but a pre-cursor to the real thing, I can't help being reminded of Douglas Adams's 'Deep Thought'

“There is no problem,” said Deep Thought with magnificent ringing tones. “I am simply the second greatest computer in the Universe of Space and Time.”

“But the second?” insisted Lunkwill. “Why do you keep saying the second? You’re surely not thinking of the Multicorticoid Perspicutron Titan Muller are you? Or the Pondermatic? Or the . . .”

Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer’s console.

“I spare not a single unit of thought on these cybernetic simpletons!” he boomed. “I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me!”

Fook was losing patience. He pushed his notebook aside and muttered, “I think this is getting needlessly messianic.”

“You know nothing of future time,” pronounced Deep Thought, “and yet in my teeming circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta streams of future probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, but which it will be my fate eventually to design.”

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#122

Post by bobthechef »

andrepd wrote: post #39
usui wrote: post #7

I am going to need some help on this one as my knowledge on physics is limited: What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale? I desperately want nuclear fusion to work because nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone. It's also 500% more important…

I'm also a fusion power fanboy but >nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone This is just not true, there's no way you can say this. Solar costs are going down massively. Hydro is dirt cheap already. So renewables can absolutely be part of an energetic transition in the near future, while fusion is a…

Are you factoring in the costs and environmental impact of producing and maintaining storage for solar, the production and maintenance of solar cells and all the other externalized costs and impacts of so-called renewables? From what I understand, there is a great deal of hype around these technologies that doesn’t really stack up and that the renewables industry is rife with shady practices and bogus claims.

Personally, I think nuclear (fission and hopefully fusion) are the best options, though I can accept a minor niche role for tech like solar.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#123

Post by gbrown »

cesarb wrote: post #101
jjoonathan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro is actually pretty bad in terms of big safety incidents (Banqiao: 171000 dead, Machchu: 5000 dead, South Fork: 2208 dead) and solar/wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death/watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt. Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contrac…

> Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip & falls add up even though they'll never get an HBO mini-series. Most solar power will not be distributed power, but large-scale solar power plants. All large-scale solar power plants I've read about are on the ground, whic…

> increasing the height of the panels on a solar power plant gains nothing

Well, not nothing, since less atmosphere means less energy dissipated before light hits the panels, but certainly it’s a better tradeoff cost-wise to keep them low.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#124

Post by epistasis »

ovi256 wrote: post #45
toohotatopic wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>looming energy crisis Where do you see the crisis? Unless you want to provide everybody with an abundance of energy, people need food and shelter, some electricity for electronics and some transportation once in a while. Of course, any amount of energy can be burned for simulations and bitcoins but that's simply limited by supply. There will be a crisis when bitcoins and simulations are more valuable than human live…

>people need food and shelter, some electricity for electronics and some transportation Modern shelter, food and transportation means a lot of energy. Modern shelter means operating energy for heating or air conditioning, plus embedded energy used to create its components. If the shelter is green, or "energy efficient", it means it is operating energy efficient, but it contains a huge amount of embedded energy in the…

However, we need less energy by the year to maintain an identical standard of living, because we are making everything far more efficient. Our energy use has been extremely inefficient up until now. Modern heat pumps alone will revolutionize heating, requiring 2-3x less energy for heating.

Moving around massive cars by burning gasoline is a perfect example of a hugely inefficient and primitive system. Mere electrification requires many times less energy.

The US depends on massive amounts of energy because we outlaw city construction that enables car free living, but that will begin to change too if younger generations can ever wrest control away from the boomers.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#125

Post by 6nf »

sedgjh23 wrote: post #115
6nf wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro's main problem is that it's just not available in most countries / areas. Solar's main problem is that it's not reliable everywhere. Try setting up solar in Chengdu and you'll find that there's just not enough cloud free days in the year to make it worthwhile. We need baseline power and renewables are not usually enough. If you're lucky enough to have a river or sunny climate then great, but that's not possible…

Is it windy?

In Chengdu? No wind on most days, which is (in part) why the fog / smog blocks out the sun almost every day of the year.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#126

Post by Scarblac »

cesarb wrote: post #101
jjoonathan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro is actually pretty bad in terms of big safety incidents (Banqiao: 171000 dead, Machchu: 5000 dead, South Fork: 2208 dead) and solar/wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death/watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt. Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contrac…

> Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip & falls add up even though they'll never get an HBO mini-series. Most solar power will not be distributed power, but large-scale solar power plants. All large-scale solar power plants I've read about are on the ground, whic…

It gains the space underneath. Flat roofs (of large commercial buildings, for instance) sound like a good place for them. I don't understand why they are put on the ground instead so often.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#127

Post by Reason077 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #62
andrepd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a fusion power fanboy but >nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone This is just not true, there's no way you can say this. Solar costs are going down massively. Hydro is dirt cheap already. So renewables can absolutely be part of an energetic transition in the near future, while fusion is a…

Hydro is actually pretty bad in terms of big safety incidents (Banqiao: 171000 dead, Machchu: 5000 dead, South Fork: 2208 dead) and solar/wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death/watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt. Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contrac…

> "solar/wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death/watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt."

That may be so. But solar and wind are clear winners when it comes to cost/watt, and that's what determines which gets built.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#128

Post by cwhiz »

dantillberg wrote: post #100
cwhiz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to see some models on how solar power could work in northern cities, or honestly any city. The NYC metro area has over 23 million residents and there is essentially zero space for a solar farm. In the winter it's cloudy almost all day and there are only 9 hours of sunlight. Rooftop solar is an option but the models I have seen show a theoretical max around 1,200 MW which is about 1/30th of the NYC metro…

You could imagine building a globe-spanning power distribution network. Solar panels on one side of the planet could provide power at night on the other side of the planet.

If we could transmit power across vast distances like that then we wouldn't even need to bother with solar. We could build a thousand nuclear power plants in the middle of nowhere.

Unfortunately, power transmission suffers from line losses. Even a few hundred miles requires several hundred thousand volts to avoid losses. Maybe that's an easier problem to solve than fusion.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#129

Post by arkh »

jpdus wrote: post #105
jjoonathan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro is actually pretty bad in terms of big safety incidents (Banqiao: 171000 dead, Machchu: 5000 dead, South Fork: 2208 dead) and solar/wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death/watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt. Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contrac…

> Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip & falls add up even though they'll never get an HBO mini-series. This is a very flawed and short-sighted argument. Averages don't matter when you are talking about fat-tailed/power law risk distributions. Nobody would be op…

> But (almost) everyone would be opposed to a fission plant or nuclear waste facility next door - and rightfully so.

Reading this kind of debate from France is a good laugh.

If you're interested you can check where our electricity comes from here: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricit... (between 60 and 70 percent of nuclear energy today).

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#130

Post by petschge »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #119
petschge wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that has a big impact. The quality of a tokamak (as meassured by the triple product density, temperature, and confinement time) goes up like B^3 (IF I remember correctly, I do plasma physics but not fusion stuff) and the fussion power goes up like B^4 or something like that. So larger magnetic fields help a lot. But back when ITER was designed we did not have such strong superconductors yet. PS: Google found DOI…

Is there a successor to iter already being worked out on paper that takes into account new developments?

There is things such as SPARC by Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) using rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) superconductors. Not quite the scale of ITER, but it should give us some first experience working with that material. If that works out the next step would be ARC [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor

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