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Will we ever get fusion power?

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Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#231

Post by numpad0 »

choilive wrote: post #53
numpad0 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think claiming that it is an ecological disaster is catastrophizing at best and certainly subjective. The ecological impacts involved in coal mining, oil drilling et al., are much worse than installing some solar panels that can easily be ripped out and let nature recover the land if we so wanted. Humanity will get the energy in one form or another, solar panels certainly seems less damaging than fossil fuels. The…

  The ecological impacts involved in coal mining, oil drilling et al.,
Those aren't fusion powers. The context is nuke vs solar.

  The vast majority of solar panel installations last longer than a year. Is your point that nature will find a way to destroy a man made creation therefore it is a poor choice? Sorry to say that NOTHING is immune to the whims of the environment.
  I would not say Mars has an "extremely mild climate". I certainly would not go outside in my beach outfit. Solar cells work basically anywhere where the sun shines.
We're getting news stories of solar cell installation ripped out nearly every year and environmental issues in-between, in Japan. Every year we get typhoons or earthquakes or severe rainstorms, and every time it wipes out a mass solar installation or two. "Solar cells work basically anywhere" is just so plainly false unless your definition of `anywhere` is confined to continental US.

The reason why it works on Mars and the reason why I said it has "extremely mild climate" is simple; there's no routine earthquakes, surface water, seasonal rainstorms, or atmosphere for that matter. That makes it mild for machines like solar cells, just not for humans.

But in ways I define "weather" and "land", solar cells don't seem to work with any level of those whatsoever.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#232

Post by howerj »

sparks1970 wrote: post #227
diordiderot wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK imports 5 Twh of electricity from France as it is so I guess you should start up the auctions. After failing to successfully launch a Trident missile for 8 years it probably wouldn't change much. You've only managed to send to Ukraine what the US spends on parks. Honestly at some point you all need to accept that you really aren't a meaningful player in geopolitics anymore and focus on getting GDP per capital…

Harsh, but fair.

The comment is harsh, but it is not fair. Nor is (most of it) relevant and it even contradicts itself in places. It is a list of hot takes designed to anger and provoke instead of elucidate anything as I have said something they do not like.

Energy security is something every country should aim for, regardless of the size or perceived importance of the country.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#233

Post by diordiderot »

howerj wrote: post #232
sparks1970 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harsh, but fair.

The comment is harsh, but it is not fair. Nor is (most of it) relevant and it even contradicts itself in places. It is a list of hot takes designed to anger and provoke instead of elucidate anything as I have said something they do not like. Energy security is something every country should aim for, regardless of the size or perceived importance of the country.

My point was that long distance power transmission is a economically viable means of tackling the "renewable intermittency" problem.

> I find that fact that the UK would depend on another country for power generation in a serious way really really dumb.

Very erudite, but the UK imports 40% of its energy. It is already heavily dependent on other countries.

Building out more renewables and importing the extra 20% whenever the wind isn't blowing so hard isn't a risk to national security.

If the lines were cut you would be in a total war situation where

1. power would be rationed anyways

2. The wide distribution of renewables would be much harder to destroy than a handful of oil terminals, rigs, and ports.

> We might as well sell off our armed forces.

I don't see how this is relevant outside of the UK's desire to defend its foreign energy interests / trade, which it very obviously cant do anyways.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#234

Post by diordiderot »

lazide wrote: post #206
diordiderot wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmission loses are 3% per 1000km so moving electricity from morroco to the UK would result in ~6% loss in electricity. Saying > There will be times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine Is just FUD. The wind is blowing and the sun is shining in many places within 2000km no matter where you live

Plenty of wars have been fought already over oil and gas, and it’s waay easier to redirect tankers when a geopolitical player starts trying to squeeze someone hard. Note however that pipelines already have been caught in the middle of geopolitical drama. And oil and gas are energy dense enough (and storing it is cheap/easy enough), it’s possible and common to stockpile months to years worth of supplies. All it takes…

It takes a decade plus to build a HVDC line because of western political incompetence.

I'd bet the chinese could run a line from Bejing to Lhasa in 6 months.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#235

Post by Dylan16807 »

dave333 wrote: post #143
Dylan16807 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not rewriting physics. Whatever's going on over there, it's fake. Though the main suncell page mostly just claims to be a solar concentrator? Like, okay, you can do that, but carefully aimed mirrors don't really save you any money over the same surface area of solar cells. Or twice the area of solar cells, looking at the efficiency claim on that page.

They have a new (since 1990s) classical model of atomic structure that is superior to the electron probability cloud model. It models the electron as a thin fluid shell that spins around the nucleus along all great circle paths. It allows calculations of molecular structure in closed form equations. You misunderstand the suncell - the source of UV light is a hydrogen reaction when it bumps into a catalyst able to acc…

If they had a real UV thingy that acts as proof for a new atomic model they would send samples to major labs and become famous.

The "Don't you want a Nobel prize?" argument is a very good way to detect pseudoscience.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#236

Post by howerj »

diordiderot wrote: post #233
howerj wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment is harsh, but it is not fair. Nor is (most of it) relevant and it even contradicts itself in places. It is a list of hot takes designed to anger and provoke instead of elucidate anything as I have said something they do not like. Energy security is something every country should aim for, regardless of the size or perceived importance of the country.

My point was that long distance power transmission is a economically viable means of tackling the "renewable intermittency" problem. > I find that fact that the UK would depend on another country for power generation in a serious way really really dumb. Very erudite, but the UK imports 40% of its energy. It is already heavily dependent on other countries. Building out more renewables and importing the extra 20% whene…

You keep deliberately conflating energy and electricity. Importing energy and electricity is not the same thing. The UK cannot source its energy requirements locally but it can source electricity by importing energy and converting it to electricity.

Where we import from matters, importing from France and the Nordic countries is far more viable and easily defensible than importing from Morocco. It is still not a great idea to rely on them.

I agree that renewable generation being more distributed is harder to destroy than oil infrastructure (not that anyone has the operational capacity to attack the UKs infrastructure barring the USA with any great success) but that is not what it is a risk - the HVDC lines are! They are much easier to take out. If renewables require a HVDCs to less stable and friendly areas of the world then they make the UK more vulnerable - it is dumb.

>> We might as well sell off our armed forces.

> I don't see how this is relevant outside of the UK's desire to defend its foreign energy interests / trade, which it very obviously cant do anyways.

That's hyperbole, selling off our armed forces is a naive move that no nation would rationally do, as is becoming so incredibly dependent on a chain of other countries for electricity generation.

I prefer a solution that does not involve rationing electricity.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#237

Post by cubefox »

grecy wrote: post #228
cubefox wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is outdated. The price has been relatively stable in the last ~4 years: https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/fig1battery.pn... Prices are decreasing much slower now. At this pace, large scale energy storage for replacing stable energy sources like coal and fission power plants is far out of reach.

> The price has been relatively stable in the last ~4 years Your linked source shows the price in the last 4 years going from cell: $128->$107 Pack: $55->$32 Real: $183->$139 So the price has dropped 25% in the last 4 years. That is NOT relatively stable by any definition.

If you look at the beginning of the chart, the price decrease (from $780 to $258 in 2017) over the same four year period was 67%. And for 2023 it was only 24%. So progress has slowed a lot. In 2022 there was even a year-over-year price increase. That's bad news when you want to build massive energy storage systems that can replace power plants.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#238

Post by grecy »

cubefox wrote: post #237
grecy wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The price has been relatively stable in the last ~4 years Your linked source shows the price in the last 4 years going from cell: $128->$107 Pack: $55->$32 Real: $183->$139 So the price has dropped 25% in the last 4 years. That is NOT relatively stable by any definition.

If you look at the beginning of the chart, the price decrease (from $780 to $258 in 2017) over the same four year period was 67%. And for 2023 it was only 24%. So progress has slowed a lot. In 2022 there was even a year-over-year price increase. That's bad news when you want to build massive energy storage systems that can replace power plants.

So what you're trying to say is - "In the past prices fell extremely fast, now they're falling just regular fast".

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#239

Post by cubefox »

grecy wrote: post #238
cubefox wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the beginning of the chart, the price decrease (from $780 to $258 in 2017) over the same four year period was 67%. And for 2023 it was only 24%. So progress has slowed a lot. In 2022 there was even a year-over-year price increase. That's bad news when you want to build massive energy storage systems that can replace power plants.

So what you're trying to say is - "In the past prices fell extremely fast, now they're falling just regular fast".

I'm saying that prices are falling increasingly more slowly and that using solar+batteries to replace coal, gas and fission power plants will probably not happen.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#240

Post by Retric »

7thaccount wrote: post #215
kelnos wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why advances in even-longer transmission lines will be necessary. Even if you your power is generated 3000km south of you and needs to be shipped up, the transmission line losses will only be, what, around 10% or so? That might mean your electricity is a little more expensive than it is for people who live farther south, but it's probably still cheaper than what we have now.

The idea of an HVDC macrogrid is possible, but will be hard to believe expensive and would be a huge vulnerability.

Sending a meaningful chunk of US electricity through HVDC lines is probably not that expensive.

A hypothetical estimate of 100% NYC’s electricity from Southern Arizona to NYC across HVDC adds up to ~1,300$/per person for infrastructure that lasts ~50 years.

East/west is even cheaper because people on both ends would want to move electricity. Florida solar kicks in early in the morning for California and California solar is still available late into the evening Florida time. You have some losses across HVDC, but you have losses and battery degradation with storage.

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