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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

#511

Post by pfdietz »

tremon wrote: post #101
sacrosancty wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fusion isn't a silver bullet even if it works. If it costs more than solar+battery then it's worthless.

No, this is way too shortsighted. Fusion allows us to use other energy sources than our own sun, which means it's essential for viable space missions, and we won't need to compete with the rest of nature (including agriculture!) for our energy needs. Hydroponics with fusion technology allows us to produce food without relying on the sun at all. I'd say that alone is worth the investment.

DT fusion, which most of these efforts are focusing on, utterly sucks for use in space. It produces heat in materials, just like fission, except at far lower power/mass and with way more complexity.

As for the future, beamed power will work out to interstellar distances, so energy sources other than our Sun (and other stars) aren't necessarily required.

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

#512

Post by snovv_crash »

ncmncm wrote: post #436
toxik wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a myth doesn’t make it a myth. Power companies have been saying exactly this for years: they need PLANNABLE power generation. Building 3x solar or wind plants means 3x volatility.

Building 3x renewables in widely distributed places radically reduces volatility. Wind is always blowing somewhere. Sun is always out somewhere. Storage is transportable.

It reduces volatility, it doesn't eliminate it. There will still be days when the sun and wind aren't out in a large enough fraction of places that there will be a shortage. It is less likely, but it will still happen. Factories can't just shut down, people can't just choose not to charge their cars or boil their kettles if there's a shortage.

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

#513

Post by pfdietz »

manholio wrote: post #189

You could say the same thing about Bitcoin. Fusion is in the VC hype cycle but there are no new developments that suggest it can become cheaper and more predictable than fission, which itself is dying, primarily because of financial uncertainties and risks. On the contrary, physics suggest that performance scales with size, so even the extraordinary expensive ITER project is way too small to achieve engineering break…

Fusion reactors (after they're big enough to have ignited) have diseconomy of scale, due to the square-cube law. Cost scales (at least) as reactor volume, while power is limited by power/area through the surface of the reactor vessel.

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

#514

Post by ncmncm »

tuatoru wrote: post #499
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is storage really transportable ? Like how much energy in any form could you realistically transport for any meaningful distance without using too much of the energy that you are transporting ? Since you made the claim I'd like you to paint any kind of realistic scenario.

Hydrocarbons, especially medium-chain liquid hydrocarbons, can easily and safely be transported 10_000 kilometres and further. Doing exactly that is presently about a quarter of total global international trade by value. Their advantages of high energy density, safety, and undemanding environmental and handling requirements (distribution can be performed in temperatures from -40 to +40 celsius by almost untrained tee…

TFA is entirely about synthesizing transportable hydrocarbon energy storage.

But making methane is inferior to making ammonia, because extracting the diffuse carbon you need from air takes up energy. It does not displace any more CO2 emission, because somebody will burn it and dump the CO2 back into the atmosphere again.

So, the only reason to make hydrocarbons is for things like your chainsaw or A320 that are not worth replacing immediately.

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

#515

Post by delroth »

joak wrote: post #363
JohnBooty wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think it is more on the climate scientists at this point to be vocal about it. I think you hit the nail on the head here. It's understandable that science-illiterate, climate change-denier types fear fission. The fossil fuel industry has done an excellent job percolating their pro fossil-fuel agenda and fomenting fear of the unknown. This is the unavoidable enemy. The only way to counter this would be for…

This conversation seems to me a bit outdated: building a fission reactor takes one or two decades and its kWh is costlier than alternatives. To get something cheaper, we need to wait for the next gen of technology, in one or two decades. Lucky if we can compete with the costs of solar, wind and batteries in a decade. Even with the support of greens, government, scientists, etc this is going no where. Nuclear fission…

> building a fission reactor takes one or two decades

This is not universally true. Looking at South Korea's construction times for example[1], you'll see that it's averaging between 5-7 years per reactor, all the way into the 2000s and 2010s. Japan shows similar numbers[2], and they're currently in the process of restarting their nuclear investments following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. Same story for China[3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea#B...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

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

#516

Post by dignick »

formerly_proven wrote: post #410
dignick wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several problems with fission (probably fusion too) as I understand it: 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable. 2. Construction time - average is 10 years, we don’t have that long to wait. 3. Decommissioning is expensive and a long way in the future. Is that cost built into the cost per MW? How can we…

> 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable. You can't directly compare cost per generating capacity, because nuclear, gas, coal etc. are available according to schedule, while most renewables aren't. Adding storage around renewables to make them schedulable raises costs.

I’m a firm believer in distributed generation and storage, i.e. solar on the roof and battery on premises. This has the added benefits of reducing load on the grid and increasing resiliency. It should be required for all new buildings in regulations.

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

#517

Post by ncmncm »

snovv_crash wrote: post #512
ncmncm wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building 3x renewables in widely distributed places radically reduces volatility. Wind is always blowing somewhere. Sun is always out somewhere. Storage is transportable.

It reduces volatility, it doesn't eliminate it. There will still be days when the sun and wind aren't out in a large enough fraction of places that there will be a shortage. It is less likely, but it will still happen. Factories can't just shut down, people can't just choose not to charge their cars or boil their kettles if there's a shortage.

When generation flags and local storage looks likely to be depleted, utilities will order a shipment of ammonia from any of numerous solar farms in the tropics.

Most of the time a utility will prefer cheaper local generation, local storage, or transmission-line power before spending on shipped-in synthetic fuel.

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

#518

Post by ncmncm »

ascar wrote: post #442
ncmncm wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building 3x renewables in widely distributed places radically reduces volatility. Wind is always blowing somewhere. Sun is always out somewhere. Storage is transportable.

> Building 3x renewables in widely distributed places radically reduces volatility. Is that actually true? Serious question. That sounds like a claim that seems so obvious, but won't hold up to the degree you might think in reality. Just one scenario I'm thinking of are giant storms that have clouds spanning multiple countries. And in that storm scenario even wind power shuts down to prevent damage.

Such giant storms are rare, and short-lived. A few days' storage outlasts them.

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

#519

Post by dmitriid »

cycomanic wrote: post #419
manmal wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the sun is not always shining (and half the year not at the right angle), and wind is not always blowing. Unless a country has access to always-on sources (like sea currents), energy must be stored or things must be burned. Storage is hard and energy intensive to build, and many countries would need a few months worth of storage to never bother about burning stuff again. And that’s _a lot_, you wo…

If your grid is large enough (and that is already happening in Europe for economic reasons), you have enough geographic distribution to average out variations. There have been studies that showed you could run the US on something like 500% overcapacity with a fully integrated grid using only renewables and no storage. Moreover nuclear are slow moving, they typically don't load follow, so even with a combined nuclear/…

> Moreover nuclear are slow moving, they typically don't load follow

Which is not entirely true: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...

Even older designs could do load following.

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

#520

Post by moogly »

delroth wrote: post #515
joak wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conversation seems to me a bit outdated: building a fission reactor takes one or two decades and its kWh is costlier than alternatives. To get something cheaper, we need to wait for the next gen of technology, in one or two decades. Lucky if we can compete with the costs of solar, wind and batteries in a decade. Even with the support of greens, government, scientists, etc this is going no where. Nuclear fission…

> building a fission reactor takes one or two decades This is not universally true. Looking at South Korea's construction times for example[1], you'll see that it's averaging between 5-7 years per reactor, all the way into the 2000s and 2010s. Japan shows similar numbers[2], and they're currently in the process of restarting their nuclear investments following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. Same story for China[3…

I feel you are cherry-picking those South Korean numbers. If you look at the latest ones that started construction in 2009-2012, it's taken 10 years (and some are still not started). That's "one decade". Extrapolating the construction time inflation, you could imagine any future developments will take longer still.
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