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Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

nature.com

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Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#21

Post by k0k0r0 »

d-gearloose wrote: post #12
4WIW wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think about more practical ways to reduce cost fuel consumption. We are still 10-15 years away from practical fusion. We have been, for the last 50 years. As for Germany, maybe it would make more sense not to hastily shut down nuclear reactors, in favor of coal and gas, or at least until the equivalent capacity of renewable energy is online, if they really cared about the environment?

The distance to energy production through fusion is better expressed in funding, less so in time. https://m.slashdot.org/story/167399

Thank you very much for this artikel. I found the explainations in that Q&A for most parts very understandable, and felt like they actually give direct answers to direct questions. Also I perceived the questions to be a very good composition.

Unfortunately, it's from 2012, if I understand correctly. Can anybody recommend a similarly braod discussion of the big questions for the 'simple (wo)man'?

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#22

Post by urthor »

stormbrew wrote: post #15
tsimionescu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if fusion succeeds in net positive energy (which is still a ways off - even ITER, planned to finish in 2030, will not actually generate energy, they didn't even add a turbine to try), there are huge hurdles to scanning it up. It's impossible for fusion to be a significant source of energy in the time left to avert catastrophic global warming. Even with the most optimistic estimates, we will at best have a handfu…

This is a really common kind of comment to this issue, but I think it's extremely short-sighted. At this point, because we're probably well past the point that anything we can practically do is likely to get us to net zero carbon before catastrophe (it's already here, really), we're at a point where we're probably going to need to go extremely negative even once we do get there. We're (ironically) going to need a lot…

We're realistically at a very good point in time to avert some of the worst case scenarios, I fail to see your point?

We definitely want to be looking at technologies that have a high ROI for emission reduction in the next 10 year span, mixed with longer term projects.

Fission is a longer term project. Simple as that.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#23

Post by k0k0r0 »

phreeza wrote: post #14
d-gearloose wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distance to energy production through fusion is better expressed in funding, less so in time. https://m.slashdot.org/story/167399

... says researcher trying to get their research funded.

This seems to me like a comment driven by jealousy. Simply because it doesn't add any reason to it, like for example: a discussion or at least a comment about how the capital invested in fusion is needed somewhere else.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#24

Post by gmueckl »

markvdb wrote: post #20
inglor_cz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see the European Green movement embracing anything that has "nuclear" in it.

I have anecdotal evidence to the contrary: myself. In the short and medium term, it's obvious that wind and solar are going to help us avoid the worst of the climate crisis. In the long term, we might need something more to reverse climate change. Existing nuclear fission energy capacity might be a short term stopgap. It's just clearly not sustainable because inherently too risky: - military/terror/nuclear proliferat…

The German green party had made it part of their program to stop all research into all kinds of "nuclear" technologies, explicitly listing fusion research as something to be stopped. I think that this passage has been removed again, but the whole thing still serves as a good indicator for the sentiments here.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#25

Post by VBprogrammer »

samwillis wrote: post #18
epistasis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fusion will not solve any energy problems we have today, and is unconnected to them. Fusion will have to, maybe, compete with solar/wind/storage in 20-30 years, and beat the prices for that 20-30 years from now. With solar+storage being cheaper than many fossil fuels today, fusion is going to have to be extremely cheap to be able to be a competitive terrestrial energy source with 20-30 years more of solar and storage…

The issue with solar is the land area usage in densely populated countries, less of a problem in the US but here in the UK the is a lot of push back against building solar farms on agricultural land. There is a convincing argument that we need to discourage the practice in order to maintain domestic food production. Obviously there are alternative locations such a roofs of commercial buildings and over the top of car…

Solar is probably not the right technology for the UK. That said, on a cool sunny spring day I'm often amazed by the amount of solar energy we are generating, 2-4GW of power. Nearly 10% of the normal demand. Compared to its impact, virtual none, I think that is quite impressive.

There is also a reasonable chance that solar panel efficiency could practically double. That would definitely make things interesting.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#26

Post by VaxWithSex »

jetru wrote: post #3

Skeptical. This video by Sabine clearly explains why a lot of these fusion research claims are dubious with a focus on ITER and JET: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY

Came here to post this. Thanks for your service. Sabine explains clearly the problems while still advocating for Fusion research to continue.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#27

Post by phreeza »

k0k0r0 wrote: post #23
phreeza wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... says researcher trying to get their research funded.

This seems to me like a comment driven by jealousy. Simply because it doesn't add any reason to it, like for example: a discussion or at least a comment about how the capital invested in fusion is needed somewhere else.

Sorry if it sounded flippant. The point I wanted to make, and which was not clear from the comment above without opening the link, was that this statement comes from someone with a clear conflict of interest.

I think the burden of proof should be on the scientist, it just doesn't seem plausible to me that fusion progress is so fungible, especially not at timescales less than what it takes to train a fusion researcher.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#28

Post by VBprogrammer »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #13
epistasis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fusion will not solve any energy problems we have today, and is unconnected to them. Fusion will have to, maybe, compete with solar/wind/storage in 20-30 years, and beat the prices for that 20-30 years from now. With solar+storage being cheaper than many fossil fuels today, fusion is going to have to be extremely cheap to be able to be a competitive terrestrial energy source with 20-30 years more of solar and storage…

I agree that solar/wind price points have massively gone down but how is storage a solved problem? I have only seen research projects in this field, is there anyone who has commercially deployed an energy storage solution? (other than hydro projects)

I don't think it is correct. Offshore wind is cost competitive with fossil fuels in the UK. However, if you include storage I believe this cost balloons significantly.

That said, there are significant grid scale batteries coming online. The largest of these in California is 1.2GWh. By comparison the UK has about 30GWh of pumped storage.

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#29

Post by andbberger »

pixelpoet wrote: post #2

Excellent news, we need this so badly, especially now in Europe with Germany shutting down its nuclear (fission) plants and NS2 being cancelled. It's astonishing to me that the world isn't pulling out all the stops on fusion development, something like the space race or Manhattan project. Unfortunately, last I heard ITER building has halted: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-h...

we could just pull all the stops to turn the fission reactors back on. we already found a magical solution to our energy problems, like 80 years ago. how can you expect it would turn out any different for fusion?

Re: Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

#30

Post by TaylorAlexander »

jetru wrote: post #3

Skeptical. This video by Sabine clearly explains why a lot of these fusion research claims are dubious with a focus on ITER and JET: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY

I would really like to see her discuss the MIT SPARC reactor.
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