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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#191

Post by soperj »

dylan604 wrote: post #188
soperj wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not true. The original quote was 30 years given current funding. They reduced the funding and surprise surprise it didn't get done. It's like when you estimate how long a project will take given a thousand people, and they reduce the number of people on the project to one person and then hold you to the original estimate.

Okay, but then if the funding has decreased, what hasn't the "years away" increased? No, that wouldn't sound good in a press release now would it. So they keep saying it is just around the corner. It's like the religious people saying that the second coming is right around the corner for over a thousand years now. I know, I know, religious zealots and science (zealots?) are different. Or are they?

Show me a fusion scientist saying fusion is 30 years away. No one in the article is even saying that. It's people in the comments repeating the same thing from the 80s.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#192

Post by JumpCrisscross »

megaman821 wrote: post #189
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most assuredly rely on natural gas from Texas traveling through a long underground pipeline to heat your homes and businesses Last I checked, we mine our own coal, pump our own oil and put up our own wind farms [1]. Minnesota, for what it’s worth, runs on renewables, coal and nukes [2]. The fifth of natural gas it does use comes from Canada, the Dakotas and Iowa. These cold-state energy security concerns are a big…

In northern states almost all residential energy use is heating. The amount of electricity used is minimal, therefore even modest amounts of electricity generation can meet need. Wyoming is the only northern state that has natural gas in notable amounts, all other states import a lot of their energy (especially heating) needs. If most states stopped importing energy they would have to go back to wood and coal-fired s…

> almost all residential energy use is heating. The amount of electricity used is minimal

Resistive heating.

> most states stopped importing energy they would have to go back to wood and coal-fired stoves

Most states don’t have high-baseload, low-latency life-or-death energy requirements. Those that do have the options I outlined above.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#193

Post by VaxWithSex »

ThomPete wrote: post #149

By now everyone knows that Fusion, if we succeed, is going to provide us with abundant clean energy. But Fusion is not just another way to power your lightbulbs, fusion is a completely new type of energy. With fusion we can in principle reach 10% of the speed of light which would be revolutionary for space travel. But even wilder, because it's technically a sun we would over time be able to create basic materials lik…

It's a different environment than the sun and other isotopes are fused. The plasma is a lot less dense, with a lot less pressure but much higher temperatures. The current technology will not generate other elements. And Gold etc are not created in the sun via fusion. they are generated by a different process involving stellar catastrophies.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#194

Post by _ea1k »

coldpie wrote: post #74
toomuchtodo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and batteries are already cheaper than fossil fuels in most markets. Nuclear isn’t competing with renewables, it’s competing against batteries and almost free renewables that charge them. Nuclear is still possibly a great fit for niche locales where renewables aren’t feasible at all. Not a nuclear hater by any means (we need every innovation we can get), just show your math. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…

Are solar + batteries feasible to heat every house in Minnesota with electricity when it's below -20F (-30C) for a week, we have > just show your math. I admit I can't. It's mostly gut-feeling from various science news sources I keep up with (e.g. Ars Technica; Skeptic's Guide to the Universe).

To keep warm, I'm estimating 2,628 kwh for a month for a home for a family of 3. In our magical Minnesota where everyone lives in houses with 3 people and only electric heat pumps, we'd have 1,900,000. This means, we'd need 4,993,200,000 kwh in the coldest month (4.993 Twh).

500,000 kilowatt of panels would produce ~33 gwh in the worst month (January). So, we'd need 151 times that many to have a good chance of doing this with purely solar. That'd mean 75,500,000 kw of solar panels. Assuming that we could install these for $1.50/w, that'd cost 113,250,000,000 and there's still a chance that we'd freeze people to death.

To mitigate that risk, we'd want to add ~500 gwh of batteries (just guessing as to needed capacity here). At a price of ~150/kwh, we'd be looking at ~75,000,000,000 in energy storage prices.

Feel free to check my math, as I did that pretty quickly. The figures are absurdly high due to scaling for the worst case type scenarios. Summer months would correlate with lower demand and more than double the supply.

Sensibly speaking, noone would try to do this. Its like building an offgrid home. You can get 90% of the way there and add a generator, or you can spend 10x more be truly offgrid. Almost everyone chooses the former. Maybe even 80%. Solar is great and very cost effective, but the returns diminish the deeper one goes.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#195

Post by codealot »

gabesullice wrote: post #68
rapsey wrote: post #51

Even if fusion ends up producing more power than consuming in the real world, it still has to compete on cost. People too enthusiastic about fusion tend to ignore that it might not actually be a cost effective source of power. Solar panels are cheap and batteries are easier to build and there are lots of ways of making them.

Pessimists were saying solar panels and batteries were too expensive too, not so long ago. If we discover fusion power to be viable in our lifetime, it will be a breathtaking accomplishment to witness. It's a fork in the timeline with repercussions that will reverberate for millenia, across trillions of human lives.

Beautifully stated. I teared up. This and watching us settle on the moon and Mars would be incredible. And achieving more breakthroughs in AI and medicine and everything else. I am an optimist and really excited by everything on the horizon.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#196

Post by coldpie »

_ea1k wrote: post #194
coldpie wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are solar + batteries feasible to heat every house in Minnesota with electricity when it's below -20F (-30C) for a week, we have > just show your math. I admit I can't. It's mostly gut-feeling from various science news sources I keep up with (e.g. Ars Technica; Skeptic's Guide to the Universe).

To keep warm, I'm estimating 2,628 kwh for a month for a home for a family of 3. In our magical Minnesota where everyone lives in houses with 3 people and only electric heat pumps, we'd have 1,900,000. This means, we'd need 4,993,200,000 kwh in the coldest month (4.993 Twh). 500,000 kilowatt of panels would produce ~33 gwh in the worst month (January). So, we'd need 151 times that many to have a good chance of doing…

Nice. I just looked up last February's bill for my ~1700sqft detached SFH in Saint Paul. It was apparently 6.8 therms/day (12 deg F average temp for the month). That maths out to about 5916 kWh for the coldest month (6.8 therms * 29 kwh/therm * 30 days), or a little more than double your estimate. March was 5.9 therms/day and Jan was 5.4 therms/day. So I think your costs are on the conservative side of things... or possibly my home is very inefficient :)

E: Ah, it occurs to me that you're using electric heat pumps, which are probably much more efficient than my NG boiler.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#197

Post by ThomPete »

VaxWithSex wrote: post #193
ThomPete wrote: post #149

By now everyone knows that Fusion, if we succeed, is going to provide us with abundant clean energy. But Fusion is not just another way to power your lightbulbs, fusion is a completely new type of energy. With fusion we can in principle reach 10% of the speed of light which would be revolutionary for space travel. But even wilder, because it's technically a sun we would over time be able to create basic materials lik…

It's a different environment than the sun and other isotopes are fused. The plasma is a lot less dense, with a lot less pressure but much higher temperatures. The current technology will not generate other elements. And Gold etc are not created in the sun via fusion. they are generated by a different process involving stellar catastrophies.

It's a different environment which is in principle possible to recreate. First step is to get basic fusion working.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#199

Post by toomuchtodo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #192
megaman821 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In northern states almost all residential energy use is heating. The amount of electricity used is minimal, therefore even modest amounts of electricity generation can meet need. Wyoming is the only northern state that has natural gas in notable amounts, all other states import a lot of their energy (especially heating) needs. If most states stopped importing energy they would have to go back to wood and coal-fired s…

> almost all residential energy use is heating. The amount of electricity used is minimal Resistive heating. > most states stopped importing energy they would have to go back to wood and coal-fired stoves Most states don’t have high-baseload, low-latency life-or-death energy requirements. Those that do have the options I outlined above.

Heat pumps should be paired with rooftop solar and batteries whenever possible for resiliency. I admit the use of natural gas will decline in my lifetime, but probably won’t be fully deprecated.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#200

Post by deelowe »

0xbadc0de5 wrote: post #182
deelowe wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that this is proposed, but has not yet been tested. In fact, one of the goals of ITER is to test various breeder blanket designs.

Isn't this the case with nearly every aspect of "proposed" fusion reactors. Just because it's proposed or "not yet tested on a commercial fusion reactor" does not necessarily mean that the mechanism is not well understood.

I think if it were so well understood, ITER wouldn't be testing over 100 different breeder blanket designs. I've seen breeder blanket design described as one of the biggest challenges with fusion today.
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