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Fusion News Ignites Optimism

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Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#31

Post by simonh »

myrmidon wrote: post #24
danpalmer wrote: post #4

While I'm excited for this, I'm also cynical about the public reaction to fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability. These past 2 years have highlighted to many how a combination of poor critical thinking and politicisation of so many aspects of our lives can lead to literal catastrophes. Will the public see Fusion as the wonderful advancement for humanity that it will likely be, or…

> fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability IMO it is not clear that fusion will ever be useable for power plants: Depending on costs (construction/maintenance/decomissioning), it might never be competitive with (battery backed) photovoltaics (or wind), no matter how much progress we make. Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a…

A lot of the recent Fusion startups seem to be making worryingly unrealistic claims that make me somewhat skeptical.

Whenever they talk about putting a fusion reactor in a shipping container, or on the back of a truck that's a red flag. Any fusion plant capable of useful power output is going to have to kick out enough neutron radiation to need some pretty serious shielding that just makes that impossible.

Another problem is the way they often pitch the energy gain numbers. Q=1 sounds great, the output energy equals the input energy, but that's only the input energy required to maintain the plasma. The actual energy to power the plant and run the heat exchange system and such as a whole (Engineering Gain = 1) is likely to be about 22x that. Then to be economically viable in practice the gain might need to be an order of magnitude or more again.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#32

Post by myrmidon »

tsimionescu wrote: post #28
myrmidon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability IMO it is not clear that fusion will ever be useable for power plants: Depending on costs (construction/maintenance/decomissioning), it might never be competitive with (battery backed) photovoltaics (or wind), no matter how much progress we make. Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a…

> Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are). One thing to remember is that a major goal of fusion research is also weapons applications, those that i…

Not sure I agree with this; I just don't see the weapon applications of fusion power... Also most participants are either already nuclear powers (US, EU, Russia, China, India) or could just build thermonuclear weapons already if they wanted to (Korea, Japan, etc.)

Or maybe you had completely different weapon applications in mind?

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#33

Post by maxerickson »

danpalmer wrote: post #30
tsimionescu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are). One thing to remember is that a major goal of fusion research is also weapons applications, those that i…

I have never heard of fusion weapons research, or what they would even be. My understanding is limited but where I can see fission leading to weapons, I can't see the same for fusion. Could you give some more detail? What form would a fusion weapon take? Is it about the laser technology?

Thermonuclear bombs are fusion weapons (with a fission trigger).

Having relatively easily handled, high density energy sources would also probably lead to deployment of energy weapons.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#34

Post by jeffparsons »

wnkrshm wrote: post #22
danpalmer wrote: post #4

While I'm excited for this, I'm also cynical about the public reaction to fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability. These past 2 years have highlighted to many how a combination of poor critical thinking and politicisation of so many aspects of our lives can lead to literal catastrophes. Will the public see Fusion as the wonderful advancement for humanity that it will likely be, or…

Use of fusion as an energy source removes a lot of threats our civilizations are facing but it also comes with some caveats rooted in human behavior. Human energy consumption has always gone up when the supply got more efficient, from coal to oil to fission. While here, the power generation itself won't have such a drastic impact (unless humanity overdoes it, though, we seem to always do that) but maybe more power me…

> Lots of processes that were considered too wasteful suddenly become feasible.

I worry about this, too, but couldn't there be some positive effects here, too? E.g. what if it made desalination a lot cheaper?

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#35

Post by arethuza »

maxerickson wrote: post #33
danpalmer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of fusion weapons research, or what they would even be. My understanding is limited but where I can see fission leading to weapons, I can't see the same for fusion. Could you give some more detail? What form would a fusion weapon take? Is it about the laser technology?

Thermonuclear bombs are fusion weapons (with a fission trigger). Having relatively easily handled, high density energy sources would also probably lead to deployment of energy weapons.

Most modern weapon designs are actually fission-fusion-fission designs with most of the energy actually coming from the final fission step - the latter being driven by neutrons from the fusion step. Things get even more complicated with the fact that primaries are fusion boosted fission and the fusion step contains a fission "sparkplug".

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#36

Post by pfdietz »

pasabagi wrote: post #18
danpalmer wrote: post #4

While I'm excited for this, I'm also cynical about the public reaction to fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability. These past 2 years have highlighted to many how a combination of poor critical thinking and politicisation of so many aspects of our lives can lead to literal catastrophes. Will the public see Fusion as the wonderful advancement for humanity that it will likely be, or…

> another dangerous nuclear thing I think this really understates the case against nuclear power. The problem with nuclear power stations is they are prone to the same kind of industrial accidents all large plants are prone to, and they are on the more dangerous end of the scale when it comes to what can happen if there is an industrial accident. You can say that people aren't accurately weighing the risks, but you c…

No, the problem with nuclear power stations is they are way too expensive.

Fusion promises to make this main problem worse, not better.

Fusion is a great example of solving the wrong problem.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#38

Post by pfdietz »

xupybd wrote: post #7
danpalmer wrote: post #4

While I'm excited for this, I'm also cynical about the public reaction to fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability. These past 2 years have highlighted to many how a combination of poor critical thinking and politicisation of so many aspects of our lives can lead to literal catastrophes. Will the public see Fusion as the wonderful advancement for humanity that it will likely be, or…

I don't think it will as it should be radically cheaper. It should come with an economic improvement.

Why should fusion be radically cheaper? It's very complex, has much lower power density than fission, and pushes materials and systems more strongly (power/area through surfaces, for example; neutron flux as well) than fission.

If you claim either fuel cost or waste handling cost, neither of those is a major part of the cost of fission power. Capital cost is, and fusion moves that in the wrong direction.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#39

Post by tsimionescu »

myrmidon wrote: post #32
tsimionescu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are). One thing to remember is that a major goal of fusion research is also weapons applications, those that i…

Not sure I agree with this; I just don't see the weapon applications of fusion power... Also most participants are either already nuclear powers (US, EU, Russia, China, India) or could just build thermonuclear weapons already if they wanted to (Korea, Japan, etc.) Or maybe you had completely different weapon applications in mind?

No country in the world that doesn't already have them can "just build nuclear weapons if it wanted", international treaties are extremely prohibitive of that. In particular, if Japan wanted to build a nuclear weapon, it would face tremendous opposition from China, while S Korea would face the same from both China and N Korea.

Also, fission weapons tests are currently banned, which also indirectly bans fusion weapons tests, as fusion weapons require a fission step. ICF experiments perfectly mirror conditions inside a fission-fusion bomb though, so are a way of furthering research into improving the yields or other characteristics of such bombs (which have existed since the early 1950s, this is not some far-fetched concept).

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#40

Post by tsimionescu »

arethuza wrote: post #35
maxerickson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thermonuclear bombs are fusion weapons (with a fission trigger). Having relatively easily handled, high density energy sources would also probably lead to deployment of energy weapons.

Most modern weapon designs are actually fission-fusion-fission designs with most of the energy actually coming from the final fission step - the latter being driven by neutrons from the fusion step. Things get even more complicated with the fact that primaries are fusion boosted fission and the fusion step contains a fission "sparkplug".

Sure, but the fusion step is still important and somewhat poorly understood, so ICF experiments which mirror the conditions inside the fission-fusion step could be valuable for increasing yields.
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