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China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

en.people.cn

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Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#131

Post by ryuker16 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #48
maxander wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite possible that most of the new inventions will be coming from China, and also most of China's scientific production will be rubbish. China has been great with scaling up its scientific community, but the problem of establishing an academic culture of scientific honesty is harder.

I'm a bit confused by this comment. Are you implying that "an academic culture of scientific honesty" is something the non-Chinese world has but China doesn't? I'll concede it's probably a matter of degree.

It's pretty questionable actually...it will hopefully improve.

It's a bit like their economic reporting...too good to be tru ed.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#132

Post by nnq »

avar wrote: post #130
nnq wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NO... humanity should explore fusion because we might desperately need it to survive . To what amount can you scale up solar in a particular region?! Yeah, I know, we're into low-power everything nowadays... but let's say that you end up with a desperate need for smth like 1 TW of power for something like a sea-water desalination plant, massive irrigation needs because climate change fucked you up, or building a huge…

You don't need to scale up solar or wind in a particular region, you just transfer it from afar via HVDC. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec Sure there's engineering challenges in that, but no more than some hypothetical case where we need an entire fusion plant in some locality right now .

It's not engineering problems. It's assumptions about how humans will behave!

Maybe the region where solar needs can be scaled is not in your country. Maybe you're at war with that country. Or maybe the company producing that power would only sell you the power at some outrageous price that you don't want to pay. Maybe you want to be the one selling not buying that power, you want to be the one making profit. Maybe your neighbor just considers you're an inferior race so he will not even sell you the power for the flood dams or the desalination plant. Or maybe you're the bad guy, but now because people won't sell you what you need at realistic prices you contemplate of... maybe nuking some sense into them, because if 1mil of your people might die of hunger, why not have 2mil of theirs die burned and irradiated?

Any solutions that assumes people working well together in some "perfect world order" are very dangerous. Humanity ain't "a giant organism". We're a bunch of warring tribes with carefully disguised racist, xenophobic and even purely sadistical tendencies just waiting for an excuse to come out!

We need more technologies that just work and can be used SUSTAINABLY in any random place and at any scale regardless of how bad we fucked up or we're planning to fuck up.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#133

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #74
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, we have to be careful about these things. Replication is key, which is where the Utah results fell down quickly. Not sure why I'm getting down votes on parent, but there it is.

I suspect it's your unequivocal use of the word "had". All we know for sure that they had was one unreplicatable experiment which has since been shown to be deeply flawed in both execution and observation.

It was a big scandal at the time (late 80s), and a cautionary tale shared quickly with us Utah phd students. Cold fusion is (or was) synonymous with research break throughs promoted too early that are later found to be BS.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#134

Post by fooker »

ryanhuff wrote: post #31
fooker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a few decades, when most of the new inventions will start coming from China, this attitude is going to be very difficult to maintain.

The track record of research results will define China's reputation.

I would say producing and designing interesting things that work at half the price of the rest of the world might have a better correlation with China's reputation.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#135

Post by marcosdumay »

nnq wrote: post #122
sonium wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might sound a bit like a buzz-kill, but I don't think fusion power is necessarily competitively cheap. I think it will be comparable to nuclear power with a ~ 10 times higher capital investment to build a fusion-plant. Already now solar is said to be cheaper then nuclear. But nevertheless humanity should explore fusion since it is more or less the only significant power source not (indrectly) depending on the su…

NO... humanity should explore fusion because we might desperately need it to survive . To what amount can you scale up solar in a particular region?! Yeah, I know, we're into low-power everything nowadays... but let's say that you end up with a desperate need for smth like 1 TW of power for something like a sea-water desalination plant, massive irrigation needs because climate change fucked you up, or building a huge…

Do you need 1TW tomorrow? If so, you are fucked, sorry.

Fusion takes longer to scale than any kind of power supply we use. At least H2 + H3 fusion, that is the easiest kind does. You'd be much better building a huge solar array on demand.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#136

Post by ryanSrich »

kybernetikos wrote: post #84

I would love to see a huge effort towards fusion, on the same (or even greater) scale as the Manhattan project or the Apollo program. I had been disappointed in the way that fusion always seemed to be 30 years away no matter how many years went past, but I just assumed that that was because the science was hard and just the way it had to be. https://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg https://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Article…

I was under the impression that fusion is held back by two major things.

1.) cost. It's incredibly expensive

2.) speculation. We don't _really_ know if it'll work yet.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#137

Post by marcosdumay »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #129
andygates wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very high cost of fission has a lot to do with how nasty, awkward, long-lasting and expensive the fuel and waste are. We really won't know until we try building a power plant.

Much of the nasty stuff comes from the fact that current (light water) reactors were actually meant to produce military plutonium. Bombs first. Energy was a by-product, and a very nice way to sell nuke-making to the civilians. There is another way of doing fission, that was demonstrated (working prototype and all) in the 60's: molten salt. You basically dissolve the fissile matter in molten salt, provide initial heat…

Molten halogen salts are nasty stuff.

I'm sure with some extra R&D people could make those reactors reliable, but if you search the new generation reactors on Wikipedia, you'll see every one of them ended in some kind of failure.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#138

Post by bduerst »

ryanSrich wrote: post #136
kybernetikos wrote: post #84

I would love to see a huge effort towards fusion, on the same (or even greater) scale as the Manhattan project or the Apollo program. I had been disappointed in the way that fusion always seemed to be 30 years away no matter how many years went past, but I just assumed that that was because the science was hard and just the way it had to be. https://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg https://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Article…

I was under the impression that fusion is held back by two major things. 1.) cost. It's incredibly expensive 2.) speculation. We don't _really_ know if it'll work yet.

Re: 2) it's already working, it's just the energy in isn't less than the energy out yet (but it's constantly getting better).

Harnessing fossil fuels for cheap energy was so revolutionary that it's necessary for almost all aspects of our life. It would be great to do that with hydrogen too.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#139

Post by fma »

maxander wrote: post #28
fooker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a few decades, when most of the new inventions will start coming from China, this attitude is going to be very difficult to maintain.

It is quite possible that most of the new inventions will be coming from China, and also most of China's scientific production will be rubbish. China has been great with scaling up its scientific community, but the problem of establishing an academic culture of scientific honesty is harder.

Quite a few Chinese with PhDs earned it from abroad (US, Europe). With the lack of resources in the US for students obtaining professorship, many of them are going back to China with lucrative offers. They will bring back whatever they learned in the US - and if they saw scientific integrity in the labs here, then they will transform it in China.

In parallel, like how China has been cracking down on political corruption because it doesn't benefit the people, I imagine/hope they do the same for academic dishonesty.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#140

Post by dermotbrennan »

nnq wrote: post #132
avar wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to scale up solar or wind in a particular region, you just transfer it from afar via HVDC. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec Sure there's engineering challenges in that, but no more than some hypothetical case where we need an entire fusion plant in some locality right now .

It's not engineering problems . It's assumptions about how humans will behave! Maybe the region where solar needs can be scaled is not in your country. Maybe you're at war with that country. Or maybe the company producing that power would only sell you the power at some outrageous price that you don't want to pay. Maybe you want to be the one selling not buying that power, you want to be the one making profit. Maybe…

Energy diversity and energy security are important.

On the one hand, global trade can strengthen relationships between nations and make war less likely. On the other hand, look at how Russia uses the threat of turning off gas supplies to pressure european countries.

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