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MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

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Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#61

Post by Lev1a »

markvdb wrote: post #9

Cheap nuclear fusion energy would be a great human achievement. I do wonder about its effects on society though. Any reading containing well reasoned speculation on that? Here's what I can think of myself. * A cheaper, cleaner energy source might outcompete fossil fuel. Less air polution, yay! * Cheaper energy would significantly increase energy consumption. Think Jevons paradox[0]. The effect of that increased heat…

There is also the problem of the fossil-fuel lobby that just can't accept their source of income is going to become less relevant by the year and hopefully fades into the pages of history within the century.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#62

Post by Erlangolem »

MayeulC wrote: post #58
Erlangolem wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ITER is a political tool, not a scientific one. The real cutting edge fusion research is being done at some small private companies trying to make aneutronic fusion work, and from places like MIT. If we’re ever going to break the endless cycle of “in 50 years” it will not be a result of ITER.

ITER has some real engineering value, though. A lot of it is figuring out the missing pieces about logistics, control apparatus, material behaviour, the technologies that are actually practical to implement, and various requirements that have not necessarily been foreseen before construction. A lot of that can probably explain the various construction delays that happened over the course of its construction, and it p…

ITER isn’t really a source of breakthroughs in necessary materials; it didn’t develop new superconductors, hasn’t solved the fusion blanket problem, it won’t be breakeven, Stellerators already are superior in terms of containment, and ITER’a fusion vessel is still intolerant of sputtering. The delays are famously a result of so many countries vying for contracts, and the result is a high performance machine built by committee.

It doesn’t even attempt to generate “new insights” it’s just a bad, old idea at scale.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#63

Post by tinco »

epistasis wrote: post #45
tinco wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind will never be enough to cover all energy demand. It is a common misconception, it is not even possible to reduce energy consumption to low enough that solar and wind would be sufficient. If we want to stop burning fuel, we must research nuclear. Of course it is unlikely that we would stop burning fuel any time soon, and that's why 15 years is unfortunately not an inconvenient timeline. If you're intere…

>If you're interested in the numbers behind this argument I highly recommend the book "Sustainable energy without the hot air". The numbers in that book do not support your case. And that's for a small island nation without many renewable resources, trying to be energy independent, written at a time when renewable cost many multiples of what they cost now. Wind and solar can easily provide many multiples of our total…

Thanks, I agree that the nuclear industry has been letting the world down. I don't know why it's so hard for the nuclear industry to get a grip on itself, but it clearly hasn't.

I've always felt that nuclear energy is more promising because of the significantly lower resource intensity. If at some point some company manages to reliably produce nuclear power plants at a predictable and reasonable cost, then just by sheer economics it should outperform crazy ideas like building hundreds of thousands of windmills. Not to mention the unforeseen consequences building that many windmills could have on the environment.

But in practice, if it's safe and easy to invest in wind energy, and even marginally cost effective, then it will become reality.

From what I remember of the book, all the numbers were order of magnitude estimates, and things like solar panels being a few factors cheaper doesn't really change the idea that they're expensive and have to cover a lot of land. That said, it might have underestimated wind, especially for a large country like the US.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#64

Post by thinkcontext »

Faaak wrote: post #17
markvdb wrote: post #9

Cheap nuclear fusion energy would be a great human achievement. I do wonder about its effects on society though. Any reading containing well reasoned speculation on that? Here's what I can think of myself. * A cheaper, cleaner energy source might outcompete fossil fuel. Less air polution, yay! * Cheaper energy would significantly increase energy consumption. Think Jevons paradox[0]. The effect of that increased heat…

I'm dreaming here, but could we with "unlimited" power radiate this power into space ? I'm thinking about a heat pump which would make the Earth colder, and radiate the heat to space, effectively cooling Earth (that's how indians made ice in the past) ?

A Material That Throws Heat into Space Could Soon Reinvent Air-Conditioning

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608840/a-material-that-th...

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#65

Post by Yetanfou »

jdhn wrote: post #40
Yetanfou wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one effect you're missing, the part where those countries which were dependent on income from fossil fuels won't just quietly subside back into their previous state of being. While Venezuela has already dealt with the problem by self-immolation the same can not be said about two other big oil and gas exporters: the middle eastern countries and Russia. To start with the latter, Russia stands to lose not only…

The demand for Russian natural gas will only plummet if there's a huge shift from natgas heating to electric heat, and that would take hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of Euros to accomplish.

There will be, whatever way the wind blows. The Netherlands is a good example here, a country which produces natural gas itself and moved from coal and oil to natural gas heating (and cooking) after natural gas was found in Slochteren in the province of Groningen in 1959 [1]. Back then all houses (with few exceptions) were connected to the natural gas distribution network. Natural gas was the mainstay of both the Dutch economy for decades to come. This is changing, rapidly. All new houses will be fossil-free in 2050, many houses already are. I bought a new house in 1995 which was not connected to the gas pipes, heating was done through surplus heat from a nearby power plant.

In Sweden - where I live now - geothermal heating using heat pumps is currently the biggest growing sector in a market where around 40% of houses uses some form of electric heating [2 (Swedish)] due to a push from the government in the '60s to move to (then cheap) electric heating.

Both Sweden and the Netherlands are highly developed countries which are in the forefront of developments so this does not mean all countries will immediately dump natural gas. It does give an idea of where developments are going though, especially seen in the light of rising tensions between gas-producing countries and those which are dependent on them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field

[2] http://www.varmemarknad.se/pdf/Varmemarknad_Sverige_sammanfa...

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#66

Post by LeifCarrotson »

markvdb wrote: post #9

Cheap nuclear fusion energy would be a great human achievement. I do wonder about its effects on society though. Any reading containing well reasoned speculation on that? Here's what I can think of myself. * A cheaper, cleaner energy source might outcompete fossil fuel. Less air polution, yay! * Cheaper energy would significantly increase energy consumption. Think Jevons paradox[0]. The effect of that increased heat…

> Cheaper energy would significantly increase energy consumption... The effect of that increased heat production on global warming can't be good...

Electric energy being generated and turned to heat energy is an insignificant part of the global energy budget.

Solar irradiance hits the earth with about 1000W/square meter, or a total of 1.73x10^17 W aka 173 petawatts [1], non-stop. Imagine a grid of electric space heaters, all separated by just the lengths of their cords, covering every wave of the oceans, every row of the cornfields, every inch of Antarctica. That's the effect of the sun.

Global energy production averages some 0.018 petawatts. Not quite as big a difference as I would have expected, actually.

But the point stands that using less of energy types which have a side-effect of increasing the heating effect of the Sun by a little, even if it means multiplying total energy use by a lot, has a net negative effect on global warming.

[1] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant#Solar_irradiance

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#67

Post by newnewpdro »

tinco wrote: post #7
newnewpdro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.inverse.com/article/34239-how-many-solar-panels-...

Right, as Musk said, we're going to need a mixture of nuclear and wind. If my calculations are correct you need about 500.000 windmills to cover electricity demand in the US. But electricity demand is only a small fraction of total energy use. How much energy do all cars in the US use? How much do tractors working the fields? How much do factories burning their own? How much do ships transporting goods? How much do p…

Musk refers to Nuclear as a potential part of the transitional story.

Your comment suggests Nuclear is a permanent part of the "mixture", and that there's not enough capacity for all the energy needs without it.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#68

Post by monort »

epistasis wrote: post #42
monort wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global warming will be solved, when we have a source of cheap electricity, it will be possible to just pull CO2 from the air.

I truly hope this is true, but when I think about the creation of some technology that lets us do this, I'm left with a roadblock I can't get around: Who is going to pay for this, when we can't even get the US to agree to cost-saving commitments to reduce CO2 output? If we get to a grid that's ~100% renewable, we'll likely have oversized it a massive amount, like 50%-200% more energy could be produced than is needed…

There are at least several possibilities

1) People, who don't want to be affected by global warming. Right now nobody is affected enough to pay and it is too costly (estimates are $500/metric ton, while emission per capita is around 20 tonnes/year).

2) Captured carbon can be sold commercially for use in plastics industry, at some point it will be cheaper, than oil/gas extraction.

3) Carbon emission trading already exists, some companies even doing it voluntary, like Google. Direct air capture can piggy-back that system.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#69

Post by marcosdumay »

tinco wrote: post #57
marcosdumay wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is not even possible to reduce energy consumption to low enough that solar and wind would be sufficient. What do you really mean by that? Solar has enough capacity to power some million times our energy usage, so you are clearly not talking about bare capacity.

So a panel is about 261 KWh per year per square meter. We need about 25PWh, so that is about 100.000km2 of solar panel. There's lots of desert in the U.S., so we could sacrifice one of them and cover it with solar panels, and cover all of our needs. Note that a solar farms come in at around 120 million USD per square KM, that would be about 12 trillion dollars. (And those are largely the expensive import-raw-material…

Indeed I overestimated the solar potential. It can cover many thousand times the human energy consumption, not many million. I don't know where you are placing that 260kWh/year panel, but it not top quality by any means.

About solar panels being "expensive import raw materials", they are a process literally created by the US, mostly developed there, and that you only import for political reasons. About the actual price, the theoretical limits are way too cheap to matter on our current context, it just requires engineering improvements.

Re: MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant

#70

Post by noir_lord »

Lev1a wrote: post #60
noir_lord wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point 2 is largely not an issue, solar insolation vastly outweighs human energy consumption in all forms. CO2 is bad because it increases the energy trapped from insolation, a CO2 free power source that double energy consumption as a whole would be far better than the effects of CO2 on the atmosphere, very much a nice problem to have tbh. > Global energy consumption is roughly 15 terawatts annually. The sun provides…

Problem being, AFAIK, that solar farms consume vast parts of surface area compared to other forms of power gen.

I wasn’t talking about solar as a power source, he suggested that fusion would increase power usage and there waste heat.
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