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ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

bbc.co.uk

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Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#371

Post by leadingthenet »

raducu wrote: post #334
sgift wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we stopped what we worked on every time some nice theory came around which could work "better" (for whatever definition of better) we would never get anything done. Scientists/companies working in these areas are free to produce results that make ITER obsolete. After they've done that we can discuss about abandoning the - from our current understanding of science - most likely path to (more or less) unlimited ener…

But is the consensus that ITER will be self-sustaining from an engineering perspective?

It’s predicted to be able to have a Q>1.

This lecture was enlightening: https://youtu.be/L0KuAx1COEk

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#372

Post by imtringued »

nikitaga wrote: post #50
vosper wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone I assume by "energy crisis" you mean "how do we continue to generate energy while drastically decreasing climate effects"? Because if we're not worried about climate there's no looming energy crisis. There's plenty of oil, gas, and coal out there still. And…

Which fossil fuels are "less bad" for the climate? They're all very bad. Obviously old coal powerplants are the worst, but there's more evidence every year that the allegedly "clean" natural gas is nowhere as clean as advertised once you account for fugitive methane emissions that in practice are largely untracked. And flooding the market with cheap fossil fuel like methane as a "transition fuel" – another marketing…

>will only delay the transition to renewables for obvious economic reasons.

If you want more renewables then you need a more flexible grid. All that crappy coal baseload clogging the grid needs to disappear and make space for renewables. Gas plants are cheap to build but expensive to operate. They will be mostly used when there is a temporary shortfall of renewables. They are also necessary for power to gas if you actually want to reach 100% renewables.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#373

Post by lmm »

korantu wrote: post #293
lmm wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And so if we're talking about climate stuff... is nuclear really the only way? Renewables continue to get cheaper and scale up; grid storage with batteries and pumped hydro is already a thing, and plenty of other storage methods are in development, it seems unlikely not a single one of them will turn out to be useful? Maybe one of them will work out. Do you want to bet the planet on that? > Plus, carbon capture for…

To add to your list of currently available proven approaches, would an approach that decarbonized France's energy in just 10 years should also be considered? It looks like proven track record of decarbonisation if there is one.

You're talking about fission? I think we should push it as far as it will go. At the same time I think there is some legitimacy to the waste and disaster concerns (even if mostly overblown) and so fusion offers enough potential advantages to still be worth pursuing.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#374

Post by mac01021 »

nitrogen wrote: post #292
Aerroon wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a problem with ITER for PR isn't the cost. It's time. I learned about it and got excited more than a decade ago. It'll still take years of time for it to be finished. I'm not really sure how to express this, but the huge amount of time just diminishes the impact of it for me.

Think of it like the construction of a legendary cathedral. The prolonged commitment required is part of its impressiveness.

With a legendary cathedral, the layperson can walk up to it at any time and easily perceive its ever-waxing size and majesty.

This is something a fusion reactor doesn't have (I guess they could do tours or something maybe?).

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#375

Post by imtringued »

nucpal wrote: post #342
saberience wrote: post #340

Dumb question here, but how is the actual power transmitted to the grid? I get we are trying to have some sustained reaction with plasma inside a magnetic field... but that just makes heat, not electricity. Other reactor types have water to heat up and make steam but where does this happen in a Fusion reactor? It seems as though there is no obvious "place" for there to be water to turn into steam. Again, sorry for du…

It's not a dumb question. The answer is kinda dumb though, most working fusion reactors don't have a way to extract heat yet. But the plan is to use the same turbine (heat water into steam) technology from fission reactors. So you have cutting edge plasma physics in one part of the reactor and old school victorian-era steam turbines in the other.

So it all boils down to boiling water?

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#376

Post by lorenzhs »

pfdietz wrote: post #360
Certhas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You generate hydrogen using excess renewables, then turn that into methane and store it to burn in conventional gas power plants. Look up various versions of Power2Gas. It's not economical right now because we have few times when renewable production exceeds demand but is a natural component of a fully renewable power grid.

Or, just store the hydrogen.

Hydrogen is really hard to store, though.

EDIT: should have qualified my statement with "in man-made objects"

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#377

Post by mastazi »

piva00 wrote: post #295
Symbiote wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The economy" seems to favour the current generation of Einsteins working on optimizing ad impressions for Google, spreading fake news for Facebook and sucking unimaginable amounts of money into Bezos' pocket, the consequences be damned. We could use a lot less of this, and a lot more Einsteins in research laboratories and universities.

At least some of the products in tech are actual products, I'm more sad and frustrated by a generation of Einsteins working in finance...

10-ish years ago I would have agreed with you. Right now, we are at a point where most tech giants are not making the world any better IMHO.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#378

Post by pfdietz »

lorenzhs wrote: post #376
pfdietz wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, just store the hydrogen.

Hydrogen is really hard to store, though. EDIT: should have qualified my statement with "in man-made objects"

No, actually it's pretty easy, in underground caverns (cheapest is solution mined cavities in salt; cost per kWh of capacity about 1/200th the per-energy cost of batteries.)

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#379

Post by SEMW »

The_rationalist wrote: post #305
lambdatronics wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokamak-style reactors like ITER rely on a rapidly-changing magnetic field to induce an electric current in the plasma, for stability of the plasma. The magnet that provides this rapidly-changing field (the 'central solenoid') can't keep increasing in field strength indefinitely -- so there's a time limit to the life of the plasma. There are other ways to supplement the current in the plasma, which can help extend th…

But this is beyond ridiculous, so many years of R&D for 8 minutes of sustained acticivty activity? That sound like a joke

> But this is beyond ridiculous, so many years of R&D for 8 minutes of sustained acticivty activity? That sound like a joke

...You know the duration of the plasma pulse being 8 minutes doesn't mean they do it once and then the whole project is over and they need to start dismantling it, right? After a pulse, the plasma is discharged, you have a few minutes of rampdown and cooling, and then you can do it again. IIRC in the first experimental phase they expect to do ~30,000 pulses.

Re: ITER: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly

#380

Post by rimliu »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #263
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And whybdo you believe that? We will never surpass 12 billion by most estimates. Where is the sustainability point?

The sustainability point is where we can survive as a global population without destroying and depleting the resources of the planet. What point that is exactly is impossible to say because we have never done proper research (as far as I know), but what we can say for sure is that global population passed that point a long time ago. Mass extinction, overfished oceans, deforestation, saturation of the environment with…

One more time: we cannot destroy our planet, even if we wanted to. We can make it less comfortable to live in some places, though.

Also "we don't know where the point is, but we have passed it" is a very bad argument. "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence".

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