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Will we ever get fusion power?

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Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#171

Post by tsimionescu »

nvader wrote: post #121
rmbyrro wrote: post #95

In 100,000 years from now, after we're past the next ice age, archeologists will unearth tokamaks all around the world. Regular people will speculate aliens and a worldwide connection between the peoples of the world to explain the multiple occurrences. They'll have unlimited energy based on some quantum shit.

Hopefully nobody reads this comment of mine, but there's something I've been drying to get off my chest. With no evidence, I believe that there is a quantum computing algorithm for fusion. It feels like there might be some way of using quantum computers to fuse "qubits" in such a way as to generate netenergy, one particle at a time. But of course, ancients fantasized a boat could land on the moon.

You can't get energy out of computation. This follows directly from mathematical principles and the definition of energy.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#172

Post by tsimionescu »

nicoburns wrote: post #151
iceyest wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less then 99% means not having a working fridge for 3-12 hours or more in 30c heat so there went all your perishable foods. It means no lights in the house will work. No cooling or heating of any kind. No computers. No phone. None of your other random applicances will work either. None of the stuff you use to navigate a city like street lights will be working. Of course it can be mitigate with a generator or an expen…

> or an expensive battery bank Expensive for now. I'd expect that to be a cheap battery bank in <10 years.

Based on what?

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#173

Post by TrainedMonkey »

tedd4u wrote: post #150

From 2 years ago. Large region of Australia running fully on solar/wind/storage for 10+ days. Seems like the focus has to be on storage and continued improvement of grid-scale and rooftop solar and wind. South Australia has just chalked up what is undoubtedly a world first – a run of more than 10 consecutive days over which the average production of wind and solar accounted for 100 per cent of local demand. No other…

[flagged]

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#174

Post by romski »

RAM-bunctious wrote: post #20
choilive wrote: post #11

We already have a zero maintenance fusion power plant that will last billions of years and that outputs millions of times more energy per second than humanity uses in a year. We already have technology that can take the electromagnetic waves this fusion power plant produces and directly convert it into electricity without needing pesky intermediaries like boiling water to turn a turbine. This technology is relatively…

I think it's clear that solar panels, while working today, clearly haven't been able to solve today's problems, or else this discussion wouldn't be happening. But we should keep investing in them, one way or another. Similarly, we should keep investing in the prospect of commercially viable fusion reactors. The harnessing of fusion reactors would be instantly revolutionary as opposed to the incremental progress solar…

Find the graph of GW of solar installed over time

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#175

Post by notTooFarGone »

deburo wrote: post #66
jandrese wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I would bet against commercial fusion power plants. It was always questionable if they would be cost competitive with fission power plants, but now even those are being replaced by renewables and grid storage. The bigger problem is that fusion plants aren't useful for making weapons. Fission plants were basically a side project of the nuclear arms race, which is why they're a dying industry now. The wor…

There's a huge surge of investment into Nuclear these last few years. Innovation is starting again in that sector, I wouldn't bet against it.

So replacing old infrastructure is now an investment? There are just many reactors EoL and I'd say replacing those is not a sign that nuclear is booming right now.

The future is wind/solar/battery on cost alone.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#176

Post by ropejumper »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #173
tedd4u wrote: post #150

From 2 years ago. Large region of Australia running fully on solar/wind/storage for 10+ days. Seems like the focus has to be on storage and continued improvement of grid-scale and rooftop solar and wind. South Australia has just chalked up what is undoubtedly a world first – a run of more than 10 consecutive days over which the average production of wind and solar accounted for 100 per cent of local demand. No other…

[flagged]

Why would ChatGPT have any idea about this at all? Its dataset wasn't made up of estimations for energy funds, and it makes absolutely no sense to ask it about that? I'm not sure why these figures or even their ratio would be trustworthy.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#177

Post by howerj »

diordiderot wrote: post #134
7thaccount wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Storage can come to the rescue if this is a few hours, but over much longer time periods will be a problem. It's rare, but not unheard of. Gas will be part of the solution for many years to come.

Transmission loses are 3% per 1000km so moving electricity from morroco to the UK would result in ~6% loss in electricity. Saying > There will be times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine Is just FUD. The wind is blowing and the sun is shining in many places within 2000km no matter where you live

I find that fact that the UK would depend on another country for power generation in a serious way really really dumb. There is no other way of putting it. If we did that we might as well sell off our armed forces and declare global peace unilaterally, that is how naive that option is. It would make the UK, or any country that did that, incredibly vulnerable. We cannot ever lose power.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#178

Post by vasco »

ggm wrote: post #165
vasco wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cigarette lighter held next to petrified wood (to use an atomic bomb era analogy) Can you, or anyone, explain the lore here? I get it's impossible to light it on fire, but what's the context? I tried searching for the expression and couldn't find anything.

George Gamow found a way to dramatize how unpromising Teller’s Super had proven to be. John McPhee reports the story as Los Alamos physicist Theodore Taylor remembered it. “One day, at a meeting of people who were working on the problem of the fusion bomb . . . Gamow placed a ball of cotton next to a piece of wood. He soaked the cotton with lighter fuel. He struck a match and ignited the cotton. It flashed and burned…

Perfect, thank you.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#179

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #139
nox101 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to several studies you need up to 2 weeks of storage, not just 24hrs, because checking on the long term, every decade or 2 you get 2 weeks of clouds or 2 weeks of no wind, etc....

There are counter arguments to this. Clouds and wind are local weather patterns. We can use cables to move power around between areas with and without clouds. Moving power over large distances has gotten more feasible with high voltage direct current (HVDC) cables. There are a few projects in the works to move power from e.g. Australia to Singapore and Morocco to the UK. And there are already cables moving power betw…

A reminder that 40% of the world's shipping is just there to move oil and gas around.

If someone was starting from scratch and looking at fossils, the arguments against would be so obvious and compelling that any arguments for would look insane. Nukes aren't much better.

The arguments against renewables are purely opportunistic and political.

We need clean energy now, not 10/20/50 years from now. We could have clean energy with some fairly cheap local build out - panels over carparks, for example - combined with regional power farms, and buffered with existing storage technologies and an improved grid.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/09/25/loud...

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#180

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

howerj wrote: post #177
diordiderot wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmission loses are 3% per 1000km so moving electricity from morroco to the UK would result in ~6% loss in electricity. Saying > There will be times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine Is just FUD. The wind is blowing and the sun is shining in many places within 2000km no matter where you live

I find that fact that the UK would depend on another country for power generation in a serious way really really dumb. There is no other way of putting it. If we did that we might as well sell off our armed forces and declare global peace unilaterally, that is how naive that option is. It would make the UK, or any country that did that, incredibly vulnerable. We cannot ever lose power.

Just wait until you find out how much oil and gas the UK imports.
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