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Will we ever get fusion power?

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Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#21

Post by rowanG077 »

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…

Solar panels clearly don't work wel enough to be able to solve our energy demands. A very significant portion of the day they don't work at all.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#22

Post by burnished »

rowanG077 wrote: post #21
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…

Solar panels clearly don't work wel enough to be able to solve our energy demands. A very significant portion of the day they don't work at all.

We call that the 'night' and our battery tech is improving enormously. Personally I hope solar becomes so cheap that mechanical batteries become popular - pumped resevoirs, inexplicable wood flywheel

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#23

Post by nullhole »

fragmede wrote: post #7
more_corn wrote: post #5

There’s a fusion reaction in the sky. All you have to do is harvest it. If you want to bring a fusion reaction home you have to deal with pesky things like INSANE AMOUNTS OF HEAT. Luckily the sky furnace is safely surrounded by 93M miles of insulting vacuum rendering the radiation harmless and even pleasant. We have a handy-dandy magnetic shield to handle surges, and atmospheric buffer for anything that sneaks throug…

Harvesting energy from this "sky fusion reactor" (if it really exists) has this small pesky problem of being unavailable if you can't see the fusion reactor, in a daily phenomena known to scientific experts as "night", as well as this other intermittent problem dubbed "clouds" by scientific experts in weather and weather-related fields, so I can think of at least two places to improve upon sky-fusion-energy-harvestin…

One of my old favouries:

"Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness"

https://www.theonion.com/rotation-of-earth-plunges-entire-no...

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#25

Post by okanat »

choilive wrote: post #18
arrowsmith wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solar panels today work But not tonight

Luckily about 50% of the Earth is lit up by the sun at any moment and energy storage capabilities are advancing much faster than fusion's capabilities are. Distribution and storage are way more tractable problems than fusion. If you want to be really ambitious you can go to space and have 100% capacity :).

Unless you colonize it, you cannot utilize 50% of the Earth's energy. If it proven anything, what the war in Ukraine showed us is how terrible of an idea to outsource energy, especially to nations who don't share interests with us.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#26

Post by janalsncm »

okanat wrote: post #25
choilive wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily about 50% of the Earth is lit up by the sun at any moment and energy storage capabilities are advancing much faster than fusion's capabilities are. Distribution and storage are way more tractable problems than fusion. If you want to be really ambitious you can go to space and have 100% capacity :).

Unless you colonize it, you cannot utilize 50% of the Earth's energy. If it proven anything, what the war in Ukraine showed us is how terrible of an idea to outsource energy, especially to nations who don't share interests with us.

It would be interesting if there was a global grid and market for (hopefully clean) energy so that a joule of energy could be sold anywhere instantaneously, just like any other commodity. This would allow countries to quickly power up without even building a power plant. It would also allow large base load power stations (like nuclear) to have permanent demand.

Of course there are technical challenges of building out UHVDC everywhere. This probably means a joule isn’t perfectly fungible.

Perhaps Europe’s problem was being overly reliant on only one supplier.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#27

Post by IMTDb »

janalsncm wrote: post #26
okanat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you colonize it, you cannot utilize 50% of the Earth's energy. If it proven anything, what the war in Ukraine showed us is how terrible of an idea to outsource energy, especially to nations who don't share interests with us.

It would be interesting if there was a global grid and market for (hopefully clean) energy so that a joule of energy could be sold anywhere instantaneously, just like any other commodity. This would allow countries to quickly power up without even building a power plant. It would also allow large base load power stations (like nuclear) to have permanent demand. Of course there are technical challenges of building out…

A global and free market for electricity means that African citizens are going to have to outbid bitcoin miners and ai trainers for electricity.

I would much rather see a world where governments are at least partially in charge of the grid to ensure that their population gets their share of the capacity.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#28

Post by bsder »

The big problem is that we have funded fusion at "Fusion Never" levels.

Had we shoved as much money at fusion as we have at, say, horizontal drilling for liquified dinosaurs, we'd have fusion right now.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#29

Post by audunw »

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…

I would say it’s clear that solar panels are absolutely working extremely well today, at least as long as you don’t live too close to the poles.

Renewables all together is growing faster than nuclear ever did. And solar is now a huge part of that.

We have models where solar or solar+wind is providing all the power to everything from small remote weather stations through houses to large islands. Some small countries and regions are getting close too.

It’s clear that we have all the technologies we need to do 100% renewables. There’s studies that indicate that the long term costs of this is lower than the traditional fossil and nuclear energy infrastructure. We just need to build the factories to continue scaling up. And of course the transition is more expensive than it’ll be when we just maintain and expand on the system.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#30

Post by audunw »

fragmede wrote: post #7
more_corn wrote: post #5

There’s a fusion reaction in the sky. All you have to do is harvest it. If you want to bring a fusion reaction home you have to deal with pesky things like INSANE AMOUNTS OF HEAT. Luckily the sky furnace is safely surrounded by 93M miles of insulting vacuum rendering the radiation harmless and even pleasant. We have a handy-dandy magnetic shield to handle surges, and atmospheric buffer for anything that sneaks throug…

Harvesting energy from this "sky fusion reactor" (if it really exists) has this small pesky problem of being unavailable if you can't see the fusion reactor, in a daily phenomena known to scientific experts as "night", as well as this other intermittent problem dubbed "clouds" by scientific experts in weather and weather-related fields, so I can think of at least two places to improve upon sky-fusion-energy-harvestin…

Just by buying an electric vehicle I already have more than enough batteries to solve these problems for my household.

The transition to EVs - which is a hard necessity to solve climate change, and well on the way - implies battery production that’s already within an order of magnitude of storing enough solar to supply power year round. As long as you’re not too close to the poles, but most people don’t live there anyway (said as someone who lives relatively close to the arctic circle.. so I don’t mean to ignore our people, there’s just not that many of us so doesn’t matter so much in terms of global warming impact)

Nuclear energy can often benefit from some energy storage too. One of the first pumped hydro plants was to balance nuclear. It’s the opposite problem: people consume most of their energy during the day (when the sun is shining!) but nuclear should ideally run 100% 24/7.

I suspect a renaissance of nuclear, whether it’s fusion or fission, will also be paired with lots of battery storage. As batteries will probably soon be a cheaper way of load balancing than having to ramp production from nuclear up and down.

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