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MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

news.mit.edu

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Re: MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

#151

Post by ncmncm »

crazygringo wrote: post #145
phscguy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, any positive news on fusion progress and there always seems to be the same set of comments appear that are overwhelmingly critical of fusion development. Fusion is not well funded and imo has been let down by mismanagement of ITER, and despite this keeps making progress. I feel that fusion is one of humanity's best shots at actively reversing climate change, and it is disheartening to see such widespread pessim…

> I feel that fusion is one of humanity's best shots at actively reversing climate change Couldn't the same thing be said about current fission reactors? I get that fusion doesn't have the downsides of fission... but I'm also worried that people will be "scared" of fusion in the same way they're against GMO vegetables and irradiated fruits, totally irrationally...

There is no need worry about that. Extreme high cost will suffice. It could never come within 10x fission cost. You might notice people are not breaking down doors to build fission plants.

Re: MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

#152

Post by ncmncm »

hutzlibu wrote: post #65
jcfrei wrote: post #20

Lots of negative comments in this thread. I've been following CFS for a few years now and I honestly believe this is an historic event - probably the beginning of the "fusion age".

"probably the beginning of the "fusion age"." I wouldn't call it that, even if there would be a energy gain. I call it beginning of "fusion age", when we solved fusion ad can build them reliable and reproducible - and if we still need them by that time, for main energy production.

More importantly, build and operate them for less than, say, 10x the best alternative.

Since any fusion plant would necessarily cost more than 10x fission, and fission is not competitive, that is well out of reach.

Re: MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

#153

Post by ncmncm »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #136
jcfrei wrote: post #20

Lots of negative comments in this thread. I've been following CFS for a few years now and I honestly believe this is an historic event - probably the beginning of the "fusion age".

What makes this such a big deal? There have been many magnet advances before, what makes this one different?

It is a university press release. Literally anything can be called a big deal.

Re: MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

#154

Post by IntrepidWorm »

ncmncm wrote: post #123
thescriptkiddie wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a pet theory that the major cause for cost/time overruns on large projects is the cost constraint itself. In other words, attempting to do things on too small of a budget results in the overall cost increasing, not decreasing. I suspect that there are a few main mechanisms for this: 1. As budget constraints tighten, the number of man-hours spent wrestling with bean counters (and/or waiting around with nothing…

The budget overruns are the whole point of the project. Any sort of apparent science or engineering goal is a smokescreen.

Citations? Or just idle theorizing?

Re: MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

#155

Post by clusterfish »

mchusma wrote: post #112
dfdx wrote: post #34

Plenty of skepticism in these comments. I've been following CFS for a while and can present a point of view for why this time might be different. Fusion energy was actually making rapid progress in the latter half of the twentieth century, going from almost no power output in the fifties and sixties to a power output equal to 67% of input power with the JET reactor in 1997. By the eighties there was plenty of experim…

You are right, people who flippantly dismiss fusion just don't understand it. -Fusion has made consistent improvement, roughly in line with expectations for the level of investment (20 years away predictions were considering if we invested massively, which we did not). - Fusion is in theory something that could give us true energy abundance. Want to just desalinate water like crazy? Want to extract gigatons of carbon…

Is it really limitless if both generating and consuming energy produces heat? Or is that too small of an effect even despite the heat inefficiency of fusion?

Re: MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

#156

Post by sbierwagen »

pas wrote: post #124
fabiospampinato wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a similar picture for SPARC from wikipedia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/SP...

It still need a lot of the (same) support infrastructure. Plus ARC will be bigger than SPARC. That said building the first is a lot harder than scaling it up.

I believe SPARC is a magnet demo, so it won't have tritium breeding blankets like ITER. It also has a shorter pulse time, 10 seconds vs 1000.

(That's right. ITER, which will cost more than $65 billion and take decades to build, can't run continuously!)

Re: MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

#157

Post by [deleted] »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #137
pfdietz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fusion is what reduces energy cost potentially another 10x How did you arrive at that conclusion?

Probably counting in the cost of unlimited global warming and all the damage it will do if we don't stop it, which we won't if current efforts are par for the course.

[deleted]

Re: MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

#158

Post by mauvehaus »

mikepurvis wrote: post #121
Gravityloss wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For NASA science probes, this cost increase and risk averseness spiraling is called when missions become "Battlestar Galactica".

Arguably the Shuttle suffered from this too— instead of being a tightly focused space truck, it needed to be able to do ridiculous things like fly polar missions and grab Soviet spy satellites right out of the air.

Point of order: if the space shuttle were grabbing satellites out of the air, something has gone terribly wrong with both launching the satellite and the shuttle.

Re: MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

#159

Post by vmception »

dfdx wrote: post #34

Plenty of skepticism in these comments. I've been following CFS for a while and can present a point of view for why this time might be different. Fusion energy was actually making rapid progress in the latter half of the twentieth century, going from almost no power output in the fifties and sixties to a power output equal to 67% of input power with the JET reactor in 1997. By the eighties there was plenty of experim…

This is the best synopsis I’ve ever seen about it, but the skepticism comes from the lack of results

A whole generation heard about it in school decades ago. Multiple generations by now, even. Its right up there with battery/energy-storage technologies. Headline after headline, enrapturing a newer and newer idealist set of people to quickly become disillusioned. People just get tired of it.

But I’m glad to understand whats going on behind the scenes now. I’ll pay attention. Looks like a real sleeper.

Re: MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

#160

Post by maccam94 »

fragmede wrote: post #108
dfdx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, ITER was the largest of few options for a fusion researcher to run their experiment in a new tokamak. Everybody wanted to put their work into it, and as more features were added, the more funding it sucked up, leaving less money for other experiments, leading to more people wanting to put their experiment into ITER. Here's a presentation [0] that goes over why SPARC, being so much smaller and simpler tha…

SPARC (as proposed this year, by CFS, which was founded in 2018) also has the benefit of 3 decades worth of advancement in materials science, computers, and other technologies over ITER, which was started sometime in the 1980's. Sometimes being first to market takes a long time and is very expensive because you first have to invent all of the components yourself. SpaceX's advancement is impressive, but if NASA had ne…

SpaceX's main innovation was that they decided to build a rocket that wasn't optimized for performance or reliability, but cost. They were willing to bear huge development risks to create a new price category and capture latent demand for cheaper launches.
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