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More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

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Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#291

Post by JohnBooty »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #219
iambateman wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a great comment and very helpful. I think it’s all a PR issue. The public doesn’t really understand and there are a lot of lobbyists pushing every other kind of energy.

Agreed. The excitement in fusion indicates a total failure of fission people to effectively explain what they are capable of.

Yeah. The opposition and scaremongering from the fossil fuel industry and scaremongering science-deniers has been utterly effective. No surprise there.

What's dismaying and frankly shocking is the utter failure of the nuclear industry to mount even a feeble defense in the public eye.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#292

Post by cypress66 »

Terr_ wrote: post #117
acchow wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private Investments usually need returns within a 10-15 year time scale. Once practical fusion gets to that point, we should expect money to come pouring in which will help make it a reality. We’re seeing something similar happening in self driving cars

My pet theory is that it's no coincidence the self-driving-car investment craze started the same time the baby-boom generation started to enter "grandpa can't drive himself anymore" territory. In other words, I suspect it's not fueled by a technology trend, but by trying to capture a potential customer trend.

It seems like a stretch. Self driving car investments mostly coincide with AI getting to a good enough level that it seem feasible.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#293

Post by AughFuckFusion »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

> I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors.

Well, a comment posting without financials pretty much underlines why more fission reactors don't get built: the nuclear community is insanely bad at pitching to investors without magic on the line. Unfortunately, investors in our society are the closest things we get to planners so we're pretty fucked.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#294

Post by AughFuckFusion »

iambateman wrote: post #204
acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

This was a great comment and very helpful. I think it’s all a PR issue. The public doesn’t really understand and there are a lot of lobbyists pushing every other kind of energy.

Tf say does the public have? This is a terrible excuse. The public doesn't have any say in the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of decision making that happens in this country.... blame politicians ffs, not people who don't matter.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#295

Post by unchocked »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

Fuckin’ A… I don’t have a charitable explanation for why folks are holding their breath for another neutron source, while the world burns.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#296

Post by JohnBooty »

AughFuckFusion wrote: post #294
iambateman wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a great comment and very helpful. I think it’s all a PR issue. The public doesn’t really understand and there are a lot of lobbyists pushing every other kind of energy.

Tf say does the public have? This is a terrible excuse. The public doesn't have any say in the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of decision making that happens in this country.... blame politicians ffs, not people who don't matter.

    blame politicians ffs, not people who don't matter.
Politicians and parties base their platforms on polling data and voting patterns.

Sure -- it's a highly inefficient system, and there are plenty other inputs into their behavior.

But at the end of the day, they still have to actually win elections. It's a crap system in many ways but public opinion definitely matters.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#297

Post by jmyeet »

indymike wrote: post #254
jmyeet wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Groan here we go again. Yeah, we do with more pro-nuclear propaganda and outright falsehoods (again). > Now show me list of the 8 million people who die per year from air pollution. No, it doesn't. Here's the exact quote from your source: > The combined effects of ambient air pollution and household air pollution is associated with 7 million premature deaths annually. Not "die from" but "is associated with". What d…

> I swear nuclear fan boys are just as delusional as climate deniers. No, some of us actually have operated a reactor for a living, and have first hand experience with the technology, and most of the issues people like to discuss. In my case, I served in the US Navy in nuclear propulsion. This whole debate seems crazy. Truth is the tech works, and it should be inexpensive compared to burning fossil fuels. Then there…

> In my case, I served in the US Navy in nuclear propulsion.

Ah, the US military, famous for building and operating things at low cost.

> Truth is the tech works

Nuclear propulsion works because it has the US military to secure it but more importantly, a carrier or a submarine benefits from not carrying fuel in a way that has nothing to do with economics. You power a submarine with nuclear simply because there's no other way for such a submarine to spend months at sea without refueling.

You say the tech works. OK, but so what? That has almost nothing to do with anything. In fact you're extrapolating the military use case for using nuclear energy for propulsion and saying we should extend that to civilian commercial power generation.

As for the rest about over-regulation, the first point is that you have to deal with the political and legal reality. But really it's a smoke screen because proponents of nuclear power like to talk about operating costs while ignoring capital expenditure (which is massive). From a total cost per kWh over the lifetime of a nuclear power plant, it's not really that cheap.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#298

Post by paulcole »

unchocked wrote: post #295
acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

Fuckin’ A… I don’t have a charitable explanation for why folks are holding their breath for another neutron source, while the world burns.

The reality is that there is no charitable explanation. On a global scale, society doesn’t care about what the world is like and what humanity will have to deal with 100, 200, or 500 years from now. We care about things like finding our next meal or finding our next Amazon package on our doorstep.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#300

Post by jmyeet »

mathlover2 wrote: post #206
jmyeet wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Groan here we go again. Yeah, we do with more pro-nuclear propaganda and outright falsehoods (again). > Now show me list of the 8 million people who die per year from air pollution. No, it doesn't. Here's the exact quote from your source: > The combined effects of ambient air pollution and household air pollution is associated with 7 million premature deaths annually. Not "die from" but "is associated with". What d…

> One study estimates 100,000 Americans die every year from air pollution That's still a lot more deaths than commercial nuclear fusion has been associated with in the US. It's also, incidentally, a lot of deaths. > 1. Not a single nuclear power plant has been built without significant government subsidies. This is a non-sequitur. Just because something needs government subsidies doesn't make it bad. Things like the…

> That's still a lot more deaths than commercial nuclear fusion

You missed the point about how this is a completley made up number and even if it wasn't, nuclear power plants (vs emissions from burning fossil fuels) would only address a small portion of deaths anyway.

> Just because something needs government subsidies doesn't make it bad.

No one said bad. Try "uneconomical".

> Also, comparing a shoddily built and designed Soviet plant to modern Western ones isn't a good comparison.

Ah yes, nuclear proponents love to exclude Chernobyl as an outlier because they have no answer for it. In this case, it was a "shoddily built and designed Soviet plant".

So anyone who pays attention to regulation in the United States (and elsewhere) should be aware of the "revoling door", which is also called "regulatory capture". This is where in a given regulated industry (eg oil and gas, pharmaceuticals) people will work for the regulator then private industry then the regulator and so on to the point where that regulation becomes ineffective.

We see another clear example of the Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit being staffed by all ex-patent lawyers who weirdly pretty much side with patent holders every time.

Part of the problem with nuclear is the human component. It's easy to ignore maintenance in the interests of profit. The natural tendency will be for the revolving door to weaken regulation.

So you want to dismiss Chernobyl as being "shoddily built" (and likely poorly maintained) but that's exactly what would happen with nuclear power regulation.

How about a non-Soviet disaster: Fukushima. What will be the reason to dismiss that one? Earthquakes? One in a million natural disaster? Some other reason to exclude another inconvenience?

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