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MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

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

#181

Post by eigenhombre »

apendleton wrote: post #29
shmageggy wrote: post #7

These university press releases are always very positively framed. This one makes the new magnet seem incredibly promising and fusion seem like almost an inevitability now, but decades of failure have us conditioned for skepticism. What's the catch this time?

I think the framing of what's happened so far as "failure" is probably the main thing responsible for this perception. It's true that progress has been slower than many had hoped and the most optimistic had projected, but "failure" sort suggests that the things the research community have been trying haven't represented meaningful progress towards the goal of power production, which isn't the case. Q (the ratio of en…

> Recent advances in materials science (mostly REBCO magnets) and computing, though, offer a path to progress ...

What sort of computing advances? Modeling? Real time controls? I'm guessing modeling, but would like to know more details.

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

#182

Post by ncmncm »

sbierwagen wrote: post #156
pas wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!)

Nor ever produce so much as one solitary erg to flash an LED.

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

#183

Post by craftinator »

ncmncm wrote: post #143
pfdietz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Anybody looking at numbers sees fusion never, ever producing so much as a single erg of commercially viable energy. So, anybody saying otherwise is simply making it up.

> So, anybody saying otherwise is simply making it up.

You do see the irony of embedding this statement in a comment full of generalization and hyperbole, and lacking any evidence or credible sources, right? I genuinely laughed until I realized it may not have been intended as a joke.

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

#184

Post by xbmcuser »

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…

Yeah we need Fusion if we want to put back the carbon into the ground as the rest can mostly help us bring down new carbon use but Fusion can bring down the cost of carbon capture to actually reverse global warming as well. So far the world is just looking at mitigating or slowing it down only which is simply put not enough.

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

#185

Post by zarzavat »

maccam94 wrote: post #160
fragmede wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd say what SpaceX optimises for most is iteration time. They have benefited hugely from an iterative development pattern contrasted to the waterfall pattern of NASA et al. Time is your biggest cost.

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

#186

Post by ncmncm »

IntrepidWorm wrote: post #154
ncmncm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is the same process we see everywhere that massive cost overruns and unlimited delays manifest. Modern management methods can control cost and schedule where that is an actual goal. Where they don't demonstrates the actual goal. Every penny of cost overrun goes into some pocket. Smart management ensures many, many pocketholders are allied to keep the gravy train running.

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

#187

Post by craftinator »

ncmncm wrote: post #182
sbierwagen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!)

Nor ever produce so much as one solitary erg to flash an LED.

You do seem to be going on quite the hatefest of Fusion, but continue to add nothing to the conversation, including sources of information. So how much energy is in an erg?

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

#188

Post by craftinator »

ncmncm wrote: post #186
IntrepidWorm wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations? Or just idle theorizing?

It is the same process we see everywhere that massive cost overruns and unlimited delays manifest. Modern management methods can control cost and schedule where that is an actual goal. Where they don't demonstrates the actual goal. Every penny of cost overrun goes into some pocket. Smart management ensures many, many pocketholders are allied to keep the gravy train running.

> Modern management methods can control cost and schedule

Perhaps the stupidest, most vacuous comment I've read this week.

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

#189

Post by ethbr0 »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #115
zetalyrae wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered: why exactly is ITER so expensive, and slow? Is the engineering required at such a standard that it should takes decades of planning and construction and tens of billions of dollars? The timeline is so dilated (started in 1988, first plasma planned for 2025!) it feels like the kind of project that's expected to be cancelled from the start. It just doesn't strike me as obvious that reducing the ma…

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…

Time has its own cost, especially multi-stage construction projects.

Being delayed imposes costs on downstream work, which must now be ready but in some kind of holding pattern, which imposes costs on work downstream of that work.

So a large part of throwing "Manhattan project" / excess funding (and the potential savings by just funding it that way from the start) is avoiding these delays, to the extent possible.

It costs +$200,000 to tackle some challenge in a critical piece? Sometimes it's cheaper just to pay.

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

#190

Post by pfdietz »

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.

That would make sense if he's comparing only against fossil fuels. But what was written was:

> I like to think of solar, batteries, fission, and wind as compelling ways to go mostly carbon free and lower energy costs about 2x over the next 20 years or so.

> Fusion is what reduces energy cost potentially another 10x, which really changes the game for lots of things. Exciting stuff. Kudos to this team.

If the 10x is from avoiding fossil fuels, why does fusion get that credit, but the other non-fossil sources don't?

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