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Will we ever get fusion power?

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Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#261

Post by grecy »

cubefox wrote: post #254
grecy wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using solar+batteries to replace coal, gas and fission power plants will probably not happen That ship already sailed, many countries are already doing it.

No, no country is doing it because batteries are far too expensive to replace stable energy sources.

The UK has been burning coal since 1882, and their last coal fired power plant just got it's last delivery of coal [1]

Germany is shutting down it's nukes [2]

Actually, lots of countries are very quickly increasing how much of their energy needs come from green sources [3]

You can't deny reality

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckkg0wl7dkro

[2] https://www.base.bund.de/EN/ns/nuclear-phase-out/nuclear-pha...

[3] https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/11-countries-leading-the-c...

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#262

Post by FrojoS »

immibis wrote: post #47
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the power to everything from small remote weather stations through houses to large islands Not without very large capacity gas/etc. plants available on standby (unless you’re fine with will below 99% availability)

We have to get fine with below 99% availability.

Go to a country with just that and witness how stupidly wasteful it is to have an energy grid with regular outages. Everyone who can afford it has an expensive backup generator, batteries, etc. For industry, it's a disaster.

I live off-grid, with solar and LifePo4, but I'm not naive enough to think that would scale to an economy any time soon. And for the record, no below 99% availability should be seen as unacceptable.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#263

Post by cubefox »

grecy wrote: post #261
cubefox wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no country is doing it because batteries are far too expensive to replace stable energy sources.

The UK has been burning coal since 1882, and their last coal fired power plant just got it's last delivery of coal [1] Germany is shutting down it's nukes [2] Actually, lots of countries are very quickly increasing how much of their energy needs come from green sources [3] You can't deny reality [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckkg0wl7dkro [2] https://www.base.bund.de/EN/ns/nuclear-phase-out/nuclear-pha... [3]…

Solar and wind energy are impossible without stable energy sources like coal or fission. Solar and wind energy are highly volatile, and battery energy storage is far too expensive.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#264

Post by nicoburns »

tsimionescu wrote: post #172
nicoburns wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or an expensive battery bank Expensive for now. I'd expect that to be a cheap battery bank in <10 years.

Based on what?

The historical trend line https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline, that those involved in this business seem optimistic that this will continue into the future, and that I am not aware of any technical barriers preventing that (even with no technological breakthroughs it seems likely that we would continue to see declining costs for some time even just due to economies of scale).

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#265

Post by dave333 »

lambdaone wrote: post #195
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.

Well, solar concentrators can in (traditional physics-based) theory increase solar cell efficiency substantially: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/13/5/01... . Whether that's cost-effective is a different matter. But that's not got anything to do with Brilliant Light's claims, which so far do not stand up to scrutiny.

They are using concentrator photovoltaics than can handle light 1000 times more intense than normal sunlight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrator_photovoltaics and the actual suncell lightsource in operation without photovoltaics video from Feb 2023 is at https://brilliantlightpower.com/commercial-suncell-initial-s...

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#266

Post by tuatoru »

7thaccount wrote: post #219
audunw wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gas will be part of the solution for many years to come. True. But if we’re talking about rare - maybe once a year or two - dunkelflaute, then the gas power plants aren’t actually going to consume much gas at all. And thus the CO2 emissions will become negligible. Those gas power plants already exist in most industrial countries. They’ll have made their return on investment so using them for backup will be fairly c…

The industry is starting to say that hydrogen is not going to happen. It's expensive to make even with hydrolysis, explosive, and extremely leaky. That makes transportation and storage really difficult. Also, I think it contributes to warming when enough leaks.

Hydrogen as fuel won't work, yes; but generating it and immediately making hydrocarbons or ammonia or other chemical feedstocks with it is perfectly feasible. It's already being done. Just not with electrolysis.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#267

Post by dave333 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #260
dave333 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Videos are evidence of the many problems they have run into getting it to work reliably. One good reason to hold back would be intellectual property/stealth mode development. They have many patents but have had some patents rescinded after skeptics objections about "breaking known laws of physics" as if there is ever a final unimpeachable unimprovable laws of physics. Even so the theory is openly published and sample…

> the many problems they have run into getting it to work reliably That's the thing, they don't need to get the system working reliably, they just need one little part to show off. > They have many patents but have had some patents rescinded after skeptics objections about "breaking known laws of physics" There's a good way to get those patents not rescinded... > available to qualified parties The only reason to play…

Yes everyone, especially including all the believers, is waiting for the definitive demonstration that makes everyone stop and say whoa, WTF is going on. I envisage something like putting a suncell on top of a mountain and illuminating the whole county at night, but the FAA might not like that.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#268

Post by tuatoru »

vincvinc wrote: post #203
derriz wrote: post #193

I think a line from the end of the article - part of the bear case - "fusion is just another in a long line of energy technologies that boil water to drive a turbine" - should be at the start. The entire premise of fusion generation is based on world view where the limiting factor for generating electricity was the cost of providing fuel for combustion to generate heat. This thinking was pretty natural if you looked…

Would be relevant criticism but here’s fusion startups skipping the “boiling water” step - see Helion Energy (Sam Altman funded)

On paper.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#269

Post by dave333 »

lambdaone wrote: post #195
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.

Well, solar concentrators can in (traditional physics-based) theory increase solar cell efficiency substantially: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/13/5/01... . Whether that's cost-effective is a different matter. But that's not got anything to do with Brilliant Light's claims, which so far do not stand up to scrutiny.

It's interesting that skeptics are always vague and dismissive - I think very few have actually studied the theory - I'm not aware of any specific rebuttal other than the infamous Rathke paper that initially had a sign error in the main equation and had 5 other significant errors as stated by Mills. In any case all it was saying was logically equivalent to this apple cannot be an orange.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#270

Post by grecy »

cubefox wrote: post #263
grecy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has been burning coal since 1882, and their last coal fired power plant just got it's last delivery of coal [1] Germany is shutting down it's nukes [2] Actually, lots of countries are very quickly increasing how much of their energy needs come from green sources [3] You can't deny reality [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckkg0wl7dkro [2] https://www.base.bund.de/EN/ns/nuclear-phase-out/nuclear-pha... [3]…

Solar and wind energy are impossible without stable energy sources like coal or fission. Solar and wind energy are highly volatile, and battery energy storage is far too expensive.

You already said that, and you're ignoring the fact that many countries are switching from coal and nuclear to renewables, thanks in part to the rapidly falling prices.
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