Microsoft Bets That Fusion Power Is Closer Than Many Think

Post by htag » Wed, May 10, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #61

htag wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* The safety is massively different than fission because there is no 'run away' reaction. If you turn off the power, fusion will stop. Fission will keep going once started, and can be very dangerous if the cooling system fails. * I do believe the fusion paths Helios is using emit neutrons, which is a big safety concern. Not only is neutron radiation directly deadly to humans, it's also a challenge to maintain contain…

Their combined D-D/D-He3 reaction will emit 6% of its energy as neutron radiation, compared to 80% for D-T. Mostly they'll be lower-energy neutrons, and it's only a 50MW reactor. They don't plan to make it bigger, just to make lots of them. They're considering doing the D-D reaction in a separate reactor to produce the He3. The D-He3 reaction is purely aneutronic, and while some D-D will still happen, they can tune i…

Post by BlueTemplar » Wed, May 10, 2023, 5:40 PM UTC

throwuwu wrote: post #39

markus_zhang wrote: post #16

If we get fusion power and ai and longevity up in next 10-20 years it's going to be nightmare for ordinary people. Yeah, nightmare, not paradise.

Wide adoption of longevity tech is necessary to prevent population collapse. AI also doesn’t seem like it’s going to stay cooped up for long, there’s a solid chance that open source projects beat OpenAI to the punch as well if scaling is no longer productive beyond this point

Post by rcpt » Wed, May 10, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #65

rcpt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it becomes clear that fusion can displace coal those safety, activist and political concerns will immediately pop up again

And any country that chooses to keep using a dirty, unhealthy, more expensive, 250-year-old energy supply over helium-3 fusion will rapidly fall behind.

Post by ThomPete » Wed, May 10, 2023, 6:40 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #67

ThomPete wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not talking about tomorrow. I am talking about the potential of what you can do with the energy density.

Regardless of energy density, creating gold in a fusion reactor will still be more expensive than digging it out of the ground. We are far from exhausting that natural resource.

Post by WorldMaker » Wed, May 10, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

pantalaimon wrote: post #56

netsharc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's already a paper, or a fictional book, about what happens if someone invents something that makes fossil fuels obsolete within, say, a year. The OPEC countries would suddenly be faced with losing one of their biggest income streams. It would be interesting to speculate... Of course there are different levels of obsolence, all the petrol cars won't disappear, unless someone invents a magic liquid to…

You still need fossil fuels for the chemical industry, transportation, etc. Even if electricity becomes cheap (we can already do that with wind and solar) changing everything else is a huge task.