21–30 of 101 posts
Climate change is an emergency, one that we're far behind on tackling. Talking about future technologies that are many decades away (if ever) is the opposite of helpful.
Imagine in 1943 the headline:
"Can hypersonic missiles put the brakes on Hitler's Army?"
In a fission reactor, I know the energy goes into the water, which creates steam and that turns a turbine. But it looks like fusion reactors use a near vacuum and high powered magnets. Once two atoms actually fuse, where does that energy "go"? Does the new helium atom just bounce around the containment unit? How do we actually extract meaningful energy from such a closed system? Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT…
In a fission reactor, I know the energy goes into the water, which creates steam and that turns a turbine. But it looks like fusion reactors use a near vacuum and high powered magnets. Once two atoms actually fuse, where does that energy "go"? Does the new helium atom just bounce around the containment unit? How do we actually extract meaningful energy from such a closed system? Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT…
Heat is extracted to run a turbine, as with any reactor.
Nuclear fission is good enough, available right now, causes much fewer deaths than the alternatives, does not pollute the atmosphere, and accidents are extremely rare and nowhere near as dangerous as they've been portrayed. To wit, Fukushima: 1 dead from the nuclear accident, compared to 10000 from the tsunami.
Even China, which internally can impose any policy it wants, can't build them fast enough to match e.g. wind in terms of GWh delivered. That has been the case since 2012 or so.
Probably not. ITER takes 440 megawatts of total power to generate 500 megawatts of power, at the cost of many years of development & billions of dollars. [1] [1] http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nuclea...
I used to be so excited about fusion, but then I actually learned more about it. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the benefits over fission seem underwhelming. It's about the same cost on a per-megawatt basis. Modern fission plants are totally safe. Nuclear waste is basically a non-problem, especially with the most recent technology. And fission has the huge benefit of being a mature, proven technology. What's the…
Don't you think that the fact that you can use sea water as input and you get hydrogen as output is a huge advantage over fission? Add to that the fact that there is no fukushima style meltdown in a fusion power plant. If something goes wrong, it just stops. Finally, contrary to fission, fusion power plants will be able to adjust their power output as fast as gaz power plants. It takes months to turn on or off a fiss…
If it reduces the cost. But it doesn't seem to.
>Add to that the fact that there is no fukushima style meltdown in a fusion power plant. If something goes wrong, it just stops.
Same as the most recent fission plants.
Probably not. ITER takes 440 megawatts of total power to generate 500 megawatts of power, at the cost of many years of development & billions of dollars. [1] [1] http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nuclea...
From your article it's more: "Okay, so ITER will have delivered in that full demonstration that we could have okay 500 Megawatt coming out of the 50 Megawatt we will put in."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heat is extracted to run a turbine, as with any reactor.
Sure, but how? What physical processes are being used? Most of us can understand how hot fision encased in water turns to steam and runs a steam engine (even if the reality is still quite complex). But how does the thin-plasma get converted to steam?
The rest of the power gets dumped into the divertor. This is a pretty violent section of the hull that has an enormous power density slamming into it (in ITER it will be similar to an atmospheric re-entry vehicle). There are games to play here though and the strike points can be blown up in size.
In a fission reactor, I know the energy goes into the water, which creates steam and that turns a turbine. But it looks like fusion reactors use a near vacuum and high powered magnets. Once two atoms actually fuse, where does that energy "go"? Does the new helium atom just bounce around the containment unit? How do we actually extract meaningful energy from such a closed system? Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT…
I used to be so excited about fusion, but then I actually learned more about it. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the benefits over fission seem underwhelming. It's about the same cost on a per-megawatt basis. Modern fission plants are totally safe. Nuclear waste is basically a non-problem, especially with the most recent technology. And fission has the huge benefit of being a mature, proven technology. What's the…
> Modern fission plants are totally safe. Nuclear waste is basically a non-problem Just removing that as part of the rhetoric around the tech makes fusion invaluable.