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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

#161

Post by elihu »

Scarblac wrote: post #126
cesarb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Most people live in cities where land is very expensive, but rural land is cheap. So, it makes sense to do large-scale solar projects that aren't near cities at ground level, and put solar panels on roofs in cities and towns where the power is being used on-site and land is expensive.

If people are putting installing solar panels at ground level in expensive urban settings, then yeah I think that's pretty weird. (It might be an artifact of land use planning rules in some towns where people put solar panels in places where they aren't allowed to put buildings or parking lots, for whatever reason.)

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

#162

Post by Xixi »

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 don't know about the details of why size matters, but in terms of producing energy: "When supplied with 300 MW of electrical power, ITER is expected to produce the equivalent of 500 MW of thermal power sustained for up to 1,000 seconds" [1]

That's thermal power, not electricity, so that's not enough yet to break even as a power plant, but it's a big step in the right direction.

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

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

#163

Post by bjackman »

kristianp wrote: post #56

18b doesn't seem like a huge amount of money these days with the economic stimulus funds being announced around covid-19.

For some reason I often think about things like this in terms of NHS budgets.

18bn is, very roughly, 2 years of healthcare for London.

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

#164

Post by valuearb »

godelski wrote: post #154
landryraccoon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without giving a strong opinion either way on whether this particular project is a good investment or not : Science, as an institution imo undervalues good marketing and good PR. For profit enterprises are under no illusion that they can succeed without good marketing and public perception. If large expensive projects like this are needed to increase public awareness and support for basic scientific research then I a…

This is why I'm particularly upset about SSC's[0] failure to be built. There are many advantages to housing the smartest scientists in the world within the borders of your country, and those benefits aren't limited to scientific output. After all, a big part of these multi-national projects is the culture war. And let's be real, which is worth more? A super collider that runs for decades or the F35 (which cost more,…

My software startup was a huge beneficiary of the SSC cancellation, it freed up a nuclear physicist to write graphics software for us, which became one of our biggest products.

I’m in favor of pursuing basic research, but there is always a cost. When you take a group of your smartest people and focus them on non-economic activities, the economy loses something.

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

#165

Post by kbenson »

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.

Really, this makes me think one thing, jobs. We can take steps to make jobs safer, but if solar/wind get even close to nuclear but employ a lot more people, then that's a huge gain overall.

Reducing personnel costs is a gain for a company's bottom line. Increasing personnel costs is good for society, as it means either more employed or higher wages (assuming it's not higher wages that somehow results in fewer people). Decreasing company/product costs with a new technology that also does so while employing significantly more people is a huge win for everyone (except those that refused to diversify from the old technology).

Edit: whoops s/jobs cheaper/jobs safer/

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

#166

Post by elihu »

CarbyAu wrote: post #148
Scarblac wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I keep coming back to this "$1 billion idea" of building a solar plant on big shed roofs. Quite literally buy a reasonable sized property in the country(with/near rail) and cover it in sheds. Once the solar energy output is established then the shed can be used for productive work. Preferably with some level of energy storage but a lot of productive sheds don't need much overnight electricity.

Sounds like a pretty good idea. You could run it as effectively two separate business, one is a power utility and the other rents storage or workshop space.

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

#167

Post by jtolmar »

beachy wrote: post #135
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…

If as you say... "nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century" because... "most people around the world think that nuclear fission is scary" then we are fucked as a species. Science does not respect people's feelings. If people have scary feelings about energy/climate change/wearing masks to prevent a disease that travels in the air, then those feelings need to be ch…

Here's a video where an energy professor goes through the finances of gas vs nuclear power (very slowly) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY

In short, it takes a very long time for a nuclear power plant to become profitable. Investors would rather pick something like gas that starts being profitable earlier, so they have the profits available to reinvest into other enterprises.

I think this, rather than public perception, is why we don't do nuclear power (after all, our society does plenty of other things despite similar levels of outcry).

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

#168

Post by andrepd »

kbenson wrote: post #165
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…

> solar/wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death/watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt. Really, this makes me think one thing, jobs. We can take steps to make jobs safer, but if solar/wind get even close to nuclear but employ a lot more people, then that's a huge gain overall. Reducing personnel costs is a gain for a company's bottom line. Increasing personnel costs is good for society,…

>Increasing personnel costs is good for society

This is your brain on capitalism. :p

More seriously: more jobs, more human effort, more accidents and injuries and death, less free time... this is objectively a bad thing. It's only from the lens of the current economic system that it becomes a positive thing, which speaks volumes in itself.

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

#169

Post by the8472 »

eximius wrote: post #73

It is hard for me to conceive of the steps required in these projects that add up to years - just in assembly. Is it due to precision requirements being difficult to achieve? Supply chain delays for custom parts? Lots of experimental runs that require dis-assembly and tuning?

One part of it is that it's a research project. The other part is the bureaucracy of international cooperation and the pieces being built all over the world according to a huge centrally managed specification. It's not like SpaceX that starts with a small design and then builds incrementally larger versions to have something to show in the meantime. It's from 0 to finished product.

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

#170

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

Aerroon wrote: post #152
landryraccoon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without giving a strong opinion either way on whether this particular project is a good investment or not : Science, as an institution imo undervalues good marketing and good PR. For profit enterprises are under no illusion that they can succeed without good marketing and public perception. If large expensive projects like this are needed to increase public awareness and support for basic scientific research then I a…

I think a problem with ITER for PR isn't the cost. It's time. I learned about it and got excited more than a decade ago. It'll still take years of time for it to be finished. I'm not really sure how to express this, but the huge amount of time just diminishes the impact of it for me.

I have similar feelings about the James Webb Space Telescope too.
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