Fusion + AI = no more human labor
ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
171–180 of 466 posts
Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the main issue and I don't want to make it any more complicated. But I do want to explain something because people hear arguments between fusion scientists. Within the field no one really doubts that ITER is going to work (there's a few, of course, but the majority don't doubt). The thing they are arguing over is if it is needed. The big reason for ITER is not to generate power but to demonstrate that sustain…
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…
> 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.
Not to mention, this could be an attraction. Sell tickets for guided tours. I would gladly give money to have a guide walk me through that. Granted, at $100 a ticket, and 10,000 people a year, it'll take 20,000 years to recoup the investment.
Therefore, they need to make ITER romantic to have millions of people flock to rekindle an affection as powerful as the sun, and fuse humans as ITER fuses atoms.
You need to create a ritual. A couple would go, each holding a cup of water in their hand. They would then pour the water into the system as individual cups, and ITER would fuse atoms forever.
Now you can have millions of couples instead of two people like me.
Apparently, there are 80 million people per year who visit the frigging mall in Dubai. Many also visit the Eiffel tower, which was built for an exposition by the way.
Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 I assume by "energy crisis" you mean "how do we continue to generate energy while drastically decreasing climate effects"? Because if we're not worried about climate there's no looming energy crisis. There's plenty of oil, gas, and coal out there still. And…
Which fossil fuels are "less bad" for the climate? They're all very bad. Obviously old coal powerplants are the worst, but there's more evidence every year that the allegedly "clean" natural gas is nowhere as clean as advertised once you account for fugitive methane emissions that in practice are largely untracked. And flooding the market with cheap fossil fuel like methane as a "transition fuel" – another marketing…
> Obviously old coal powerplants are the worst, but there's more evidence every year that the allegedly "clean" natural gas is nowhere as clean as advertised once you account for fugitive methane emissions that in practice are largely untracked. And flooding the market with cheap fossil fuel like methane as a "transition fuel" – another marketing gimmick – will only delay the transition to renewables for obvious economic reasons.
None of this makes nuclear, and fusion in particular, necessary in order to avoid a "looming energy crisis"? That's what we're talking about. If we wanted to have better emission tracking and/or carbon capture for natural gas we could probably do it, I'd guess, and it's still not clear natural gas generation is required at all in the face of improving renewables and storage.
Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
#174I 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…
With tokamaks, there is a concept of confinement time. It turns out that plasma is not stable in a standard donut configuration and it likes to twist and break the continuous column, sending all the plasma shooting at the walls. The confinement time is how long it takes for this to happen. After the many plasma experiments over the decades, scientists have a really good idea of how the confinement time scales with ma…
If I recall correctly, the ITER project was very badly managed until 2015, resulting in the project being about 6 years late. A new management took over then, and the project is now moving on pretty swiftly. But indeed it's taking way too long...
Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 I assume by "energy crisis" you mean "how do we continue to generate energy while drastically decreasing climate effects"? Because if we're not worried about climate there's no looming energy crisis. There's plenty of oil, gas, and coal out there still. And…
The fundamental difference between nuclear and any other source is energy density. It boggles ones mind that your can replace burning 14 thousand tonns of coal _every day_ with something that needs to be refueled once a year.
Sure, but energy density (which is essentially hypothetical in the case of fusion, because we don't have fusion power) has got very little to do with the assertion that nuclear energy (and fusion in particular) is the only way to avert a looming energy crisis?
Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 I assume by "energy crisis" you mean "how do we continue to generate energy while drastically decreasing climate effects"? Because if we're not worried about climate there's no looming energy crisis. There's plenty of oil, gas, and coal out there still. And…
It seems to me that it’s a question of long term energy needs, i.e. when civilization goes to the next level and wants to send laser-propelled light-sail equipped probes to other planets with 10% speed of light.
Ok, but that's not the question here :) The question is whether the idea that nuclear (and fusion in particular) is the only way to have climate-friendly energy generation and "avert a looming crisis" is outdated, and maybe no longer stands up when today's technology is taken into account :)
Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
#177Earlier 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,…
What you mention about billionaires paying for it piques me especially. For someone like Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg or any number of other ultra rich individuals, the PR value of simply stating that they will themselves pay for such a collider up to the cost of its proposed budget (maybe so long as some organization or government promises to cover any cost overruns, or overruns beyond a certain percentage) would be enormous.
Not to mention that they would be paying for an immense and unambiguously good scientific gift to posterity that would be free of all the complications, interest conflicts, mismanagements and so forth that come with building a mega-charity like the Gates Foundation (the conspiracy theories around that alone have been absurd, despite all its excellent health programs for the developing world).
It's always hard for a person to say what they'd really do if they were in other shoes, but if I had the sort of fortune that a Bezos or Zuckerberg has and especially with the relative youth of these guys, it wouldn't be hard to convince myself to make such an investment.
The Large Hadron Collider cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 billion dollars. Bezos alone saw his net worth grow by a multiple of that in 2020 alone. This huge cost would barely dent anything else they're doing or funding and in no way dent their personal quality of life.
I'm not at all arguing that they owe something like this to the world, or trying to paint any kind of anti 1% resentment, just pointing out that paying for this doesn't even seem like such a bad idea for people like them and their image for posterity (something always important to most billionaires).
The top four or five billionaires in the world could even cover most of ITER's much larger budget without permanently or seriously denting their fortunes.
Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's incredibly short-sited. I'm glad for you that your startup was able to make money, but do you really think that the long-term economic value created is higher by making yet another piece of graphics software than from fundamental research?
I would argue this entirely the other way; whenever the smartest people are sucked away from foundational work to make money "up the stack", it makes us all the poorer.
Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
#179I 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…
An excellent quantity that indicates progress on fusion and how far designs are from breakeven is the triple product. Here is an EXCELLENT review of fusion progress so far.
(https://www.fusionenergybase.com/article/measuring-progress-...)
Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
[citation needed]
Are you even serious? https://www.google.com/search?q=three+gorges+dam&newwindow=1...
"Xinhua also stressed in its report that all metrics were still up to standard and all the variables being monitored fell within the design parameters."
"Meanwhile, Wang Hao, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and an authority on hydraulics who sits on the Ministry of Water Resources’ Yangtze River Administration Commission, has also assured that the dam is sound enough to withstand the impact from floods twice the mass flow rate recorded on Saturday."
- https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/three-gorges-dam-deformed-but-...
Citation needed for your claim "was about to burst"