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I see you're in the coolant business
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Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
21–30 of 148 posts
Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
#22I heard that NIF was never intended to be a power plant, not even a prototype of one. It's primarily a nuclear weapon research program. For a power plant you would need much more efficient lasers, you would need a much larger gain in the capsules, you would need lasers that can do many shots per second, some automated reloading system for the capsules, and you would need a heat to electricity conversion system around…
It was never intended to be a power plant but it was hoped that it would achieve a net gain fusion reaction for the first time. This turned out to be a lot harder than expected.
Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
#23The money being spent on fusion should be being spent building next generation fission power plants and liquid salt reactors.
Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
#24The money being spent on fusion should be being spent building next generation fission power plants and liquid salt reactors.
What's the ROI on that versus current and near-term expected pricing for solar+storage? Is fission getting safer/cheaper at the same rate that solar and batteries are?
Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
#25The money being spent on fusion should be being spent building next generation fission power plants and liquid salt reactors.
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Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the alternative option is a coal power plant, sign me up!
You will not live long enough to see commercial fusion power, and your children will not live long enough to see a complete end to thermal coal.
Tossing out your opinions as fact doesn't do much to win hearts and minds, or educate us bystanders to the basis for your point of view.
Presumably your comment is either to persuade or to inform; it does neither. I'm very curious about this field and its future, do you care to try again?
Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
#27The money being spent on fusion should be being spent building next generation fission power plants and liquid salt reactors.
What's the ROI on that versus current and near-term expected pricing for solar+storage? Is fission getting safer/cheaper at the same rate that solar and batteries are?
Solar + days of storage is far more expensive than fission. Grid scale batteries like California has spent billions on only have 4 hour capacity. Fission can also supply heat that is needed for many industrial processes and chemical reactions.
Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
#28Why is the last plot basically empty between 2000 and 2020? I understand that NIF was probably being built during that time, but were there no significant tokamak experiments in that time?
The ITER is in development hell. Mind you, it's not useless! It produced a TON of very useful fusion research: neutral beam injectors, divertors, construction techniques for complex vacuum chambers, etc. At this point, I don't think it's going to be complete by the time its competitors arrive. One spinoff of this is high-temperature superconductor research that is now close to producing actually usable high-TC flexib…
ITER doesn't use high temperature superconductors. It uses niobium-tin and niobium-titanium low temperature superconductors in its magnets.
ITER has been criticized since early days as a dead end, for example because of its enormous size relative to the power produced. A commercial follow-on would not be much better by that power density metric, certainly far worse than a fission reactor.
There is basically no chance than a fusion reactor operating in a regime similar to ITER could ever become an economical energy source. And this has been known since the beginning.
I call things like ITER "Blazing Saddles" projects. "We have to protect our phony baloney jobs, gentlemen!"
Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the ROI on that versus current and near-term expected pricing for solar+storage? Is fission getting safer/cheaper at the same rate that solar and batteries are?
Solar + days of storage is far more expensive than fission. Grid scale batteries like California has spent billions on only have 4 hour capacity. Fission can also supply heat that is needed for many industrial processes and chemical reactions.
it is not in most us areas. only problem is area covered, NOT price of technology. solar with 12 hour of storage was lower price than fission before covid hit. TCO, not one time nonsense.
fission has relatively low temperature heat, i.e. no metal reduction, no "concrete" production. you can cook hot dogs with it. also electrification of heat can provide lower losses stemming from regulation or lack thereof. with electricity you can say i need 293.5 degrees C and you just type it somewhere and you get it for almost free (regulation).
Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the alternative option is a coal power plant, sign me up!
You will not live long enough to see commercial fusion power, and your children will not live long enough to see a complete end to thermal coal.
I don't see how your comment addresses what I said at all.