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Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

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Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#41

Post by orwin »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #37
leephillips wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is definitely a few benefits to fusion. Absolutely. But these benefits are vastly outweighed by one benefit shared by fission, solar cells, and wind turbines: those things are real.

Fusion isn’t real yet - every technology you listed wasn’t real at some point relatively recently.

The first fission reactor was in activity 10 000 years ago. Well, probably not even the first.

Wind power was exploited since the 11th century? Or is it 13th? I'm not that clear on that. Solar cell appeared somewhat late in the 19th century.

Fusion is real too, and older than all of those. The issue is the scale.

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#42

Post by c7DJTLrn »

d_theorist wrote: post #8

I used to be so excited about fusion, but then I actually learned more about it. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the benefits over fission seem underwhelming. It's about the same cost on a per-megawatt basis. Modern fission plants are totally safe. Nuclear waste is basically a non-problem, especially with the most recent technology. And fission has the huge benefit of being a mature, proven technology. What's the…

>Modern fission plants are totally safe

Ha what? The number of flaws in any system is unknowable. We thought the Fukushima Daiichi reactors were safe and then what happened? Meltdown because the backup generators were flooded.

That statement transposed to software engineering is like saying "we use Kubernetes so we have 24/7 uptime".

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#43

Post by nobody9999 »

d_theorist wrote: post #8

I used to be so excited about fusion, but then I actually learned more about it. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the benefits over fission seem underwhelming. It's about the same cost on a per-megawatt basis. Modern fission plants are totally safe. Nuclear waste is basically a non-problem, especially with the most recent technology. And fission has the huge benefit of being a mature, proven technology. What's the…

>What's the big benefit of fusion that makes it worth investing so much money?

4-20 times the energy density of fissionable materials[0] and fuel that's the most common element in the universe.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_nuclear_reac...

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#44

Post by HPsquared »

bell-cot wrote: post #19
loourr wrote: post #3

Nuclear fission can

Sadly, nuclear fission power that works at scale - both on the technology and social sides - seems to be mostly beyond the capabilities of current human societies.

If even fission is too hard, wouldn't fusion have just the same problem but 10x harder?

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#45

Post by soperj »

skywal_l wrote: post #17
d_theorist wrote: post #8

I used to be so excited about fusion, but then I actually learned more about it. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the benefits over fission seem underwhelming. It's about the same cost on a per-megawatt basis. Modern fission plants are totally safe. Nuclear waste is basically a non-problem, especially with the most recent technology. And fission has the huge benefit of being a mature, proven technology. What's the…

Don't you think that the fact that you can use sea water as input and you get hydrogen as output is a huge advantage over fission? Add to that the fact that there is no fukushima style meltdown in a fusion power plant. If something goes wrong, it just stops. Finally, contrary to fission, fusion power plants will be able to adjust their power output as fast as gaz power plants. It takes months to turn on or off a fiss…

>Add to that the fact that there is no fukushima style meltdown in a fusion power plant. If something goes wrong, it just stops.

That's already the case with the CANDU reactors. They also don't need upgraded uranium, and can use uranium from decommissioned nuclear weapons.

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#46

Post by flavius29663 »

d_theorist wrote: post #26
skywal_l wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think that the fact that you can use sea water as input and you get hydrogen as output is a huge advantage over fission? Add to that the fact that there is no fukushima style meltdown in a fusion power plant. If something goes wrong, it just stops. Finally, contrary to fission, fusion power plants will be able to adjust their power output as fast as gaz power plants. It takes months to turn on or off a fiss…

>Don't you think that the fact that you can use sea water as input and you get hydrogen as output is a huge advantage over fission? If it reduces the cost. But it doesn't seem to. >Add to that the fact that there is no fukushima style meltdown in a fusion power plant. If something goes wrong, it just stops. Same as the most recent fission plants.

> Same as the most recent fission plants.

How are these 2 things the same?

On one hand, you rely on a good design and execution to achieve an automatic stop. History has shown time and again that there will always be something that goes wrong: from the cracking rods of Chernobyl to the backup power at Fukushima.

On the other, if you don't design and execute perfectly, nothing works, so there is nothing to shut down. This is the definition of "fail safe".

It's like saying both a meteorite and a rocket will reach 500km/h in the atmosphere, but me it's pretty obvious one is much more likely to do so.

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#47

Post by ip26 »

leephillips wrote: post #15
d_theorist wrote: post #8

I used to be so excited about fusion, but then I actually learned more about it. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the benefits over fission seem underwhelming. It's about the same cost on a per-megawatt basis. Modern fission plants are totally safe. Nuclear waste is basically a non-problem, especially with the most recent technology. And fission has the huge benefit of being a mature, proven technology. What's the…

It is not worth investing money in, because it will never supply grid power: http://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-fusion-e... Here is another physicist warning about the hype just a few days ago: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nuclea...

It receives a pretty small level of funding, so I'm not quite sure there are many losses to cut.

$2.2bn over 5 years is about $1.50 per person per year. It's comparable to the funding for the CPB.

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#48

Post by [deleted] »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #37
leephillips wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is definitely a few benefits to fusion. Absolutely. But these benefits are vastly outweighed by one benefit shared by fission, solar cells, and wind turbines: those things are real.

Fusion isn’t real yet - every technology you listed wasn’t real at some point relatively recently.

[deleted]

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#49

Post by darkmarmot »

Pxtl wrote: post #21

I hate things like this. Climate change is an emergency, one that we're far behind on tackling. Talking about future technologies that are many decades away (if ever) is the opposite of helpful. Imagine in 1943 the headline: "Can hypersonic missiles put the brakes on Hitler's Army?"

Well, nukes (which didn't exist then) sure put the brakes on Japan's military.

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#50

Post by ashtonkem »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #37
leephillips wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is definitely a few benefits to fusion. Absolutely. But these benefits are vastly outweighed by one benefit shared by fission, solar cells, and wind turbines: those things are real.

Fusion isn’t real yet - every technology you listed wasn’t real at some point relatively recently.

The problem with “not real yet” is that it applies equally to things that eventually became real, and to things that never came to pass. We once said the same about both fission power and flying cars, and yet I still drive on the ground to get my groceries.

There does seem to be some movement in fusion technology, but it has also been in the “soon” state for decades now. There is no obvious way to balance these two contending data points

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