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Will we ever get fusion power?

construction-physics.com

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Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#41

Post by avidiax »

JohnFen wrote: post #24

"Ever" is a very long time. Will we get fusion power in the next few decades? I wouldn't bet on it, but I also wouldn't bet against it.

I would bet against it. We haven't even built one of the key facilities to test the materials that we would hope to make a fusion reactor from. Once built, it will still take 20 years or so (as I recall) to come to some conclusions about suitable materials.

The sun is able to use gravity containment. Terrestrial fusion has to use magnetic and physical containment. The extremely high energy neutrons produced rapidly deteriorate common engineering materials. A replacement schedule is very difficult because of induced radioactivity, which means that the reactor cladding would need to be replaced by robots most likely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fusion_Materials...

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#42

Post by ffgjgf1 »

burnished wrote: post #22
rowanG077 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar panels clearly don't work wel enough to be able to solve our energy demands. A very significant portion of the day they don't work at all.

We call that the 'night' and our battery tech is improving enormously. Personally I hope solar becomes so cheap that mechanical batteries become popular - pumped resevoirs, inexplicable wood flywheel

> We call that the 'night

Or winter sufficiently close to the north pole (i.e. significant proportion of Europe). Days get short and it’s usually cloudy so solar becomes extremely inefficient.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#43

Post by ffgjgf1 »

audunw wrote: post #30
fragmede wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvesting energy from this "sky fusion reactor" (if it really exists) has this small pesky problem of being unavailable if you can't see the fusion reactor, in a daily phenomena known to scientific experts as "night", as well as this other intermittent problem dubbed "clouds" by scientific experts in weather and weather-related fields, so I can think of at least two places to improve upon sky-fusion-energy-harvestin…

Just by buying an electric vehicle I already have more than enough batteries to solve these problems for my household. The transition to EVs - which is a hard necessity to solve climate change, and well on the way - implies battery production that’s already within an order of magnitude of storing enough solar to supply power year round. As long as you’re not too close to the poles, but most people don’t live there an…

> Just by buying an electric vehicle I already have more than enough batteries to solve these problems for my household.

Not if you live in Northern Europe. Solar is basically worthless there during winter. I’m not even talking about polar nights, just places like Denmark where the difference in production between January and June is 20x. No batteries (that we know of) would solve that.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#44

Post by numpad0 »

choilive wrote: post #11

We already have a zero maintenance fusion power plant that will last billions of years and that outputs millions of times more energy per second than humanity uses in a year. We already have technology that can take the electromagnetic waves this fusion power plant produces and directly convert it into electricity without needing pesky intermediaries like boiling water to turn a turbine. This technology is relatively…

[flagged]

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#45

Post by sien »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #31

Would love to see comments that actually respond to the article! Everyone here seems to be sharing their general opinions on fusion or a reaction to the article title. The article is actually very detailed!

Yep.

It's a well done article that had a lot of research behind it.

FWIW if you're interested in Fusion the book 'The Future of Fusion Energy' is very good.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43700662-the-future-of-f...

Also Commonwealth Fusion Systems put out a lot of interesting stuff about how they are going. Even having a look at their YouTube channel is worthwhile.

Metaculus has a lot of stuff on predictions about when fusion will be made viable :

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=fusion

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#46

Post by immibis »

I hope not. If we find a way to convert water into bitcoins cheaply, we will rapidly boil the oceans. This will be worse than global warming. The biosphere can re-evolve after a CO2 and temperature spike, but all known forms of life require water.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#47

Post by immibis »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #40
audunw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it’s clear that solar panels are absolutely working extremely well today, at least as long as you don’t live too close to the poles. Renewables all together is growing faster than nuclear ever did. And solar is now a huge part of that. We have models where solar or solar+wind is providing all the power to everything from small remote weather stations through houses to large islands. Some small countries a…

> 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.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#48

Post by immibis »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #42
burnished wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We call that the 'night' and our battery tech is improving enormously. Personally I hope solar becomes so cheap that mechanical batteries become popular - pumped resevoirs, inexplicable wood flywheel

> We call that the 'night Or winter sufficiently close to the north pole (i.e. significant proportion of Europe). Days get short and it’s usually cloudy so solar becomes extremely inefficient.

Luckily, most people don't live there and they are well connected to a big grid that isn't like that.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#49

Post by ffgjgf1 »

immibis wrote: post #48
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We call that the 'night Or winter sufficiently close to the north pole (i.e. significant proportion of Europe). Days get short and it’s usually cloudy so solar becomes extremely inefficient.

Luckily, most people don't live there and they are well connected to a big grid that isn't like that.

Well… over 80 million of people live in Germany: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/monthly-gener...

Over-provisioning by 7x might not be extremely practical.

I guess there is a lot of space in Spain that could be filled with solar panels (production only falls by ~50% there in winter so it’s not to bad) but there is certainly not enough grid capacity to transfer all of that north (and building new infrastructure is painfully slow and expensive in Europe so it will take a few decades to solve that)

My point is that solar is only a part of the solution and wind/etc. is probably more practical and more important in much of Europe.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#50

Post by ffgjgf1 »

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.

Why? I don’t agree that wouldn’t be at all acceptable.

And even > 90% would be very expensive to achieve in winter in much of Europe (of course there are alternatives to solar so it’s not such a huge issue)

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