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Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming

bloomberg.com

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Re: Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming

#71

Post by dang »

Shadonototra wrote: post #58
dang wrote: post #52

Recent and related: Helion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29119180 - Nov 2021 (249 comments)

Just for general information, YCombinator is an investor of that particular "new" company. Nuclear fusion isn't a new thing, many already established companies are working on it, making the headline and focus on this particular one is disingenuous, to say the least https://www.helionenergy.com/who-we-are/

The OP specifically mentions Helion, so it made sense to link to a recent thread about Helion. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered, because there are too many past threads about fusion in general: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

I had never heard of Helion and had no idea it was a YC startup until I saw Sam's article (i.e. the thread I just linked to) on the front page like any other user. YC has invested in thousands of startups. Many get discussed on HN. The community has a close relationship with YC and with prominent ex-YC figures like PG and Sam. Nothing about this is hidden or unusual; it's how HN has been ever since its origins 15 years ago.

If you'd like to post an interesting article about a different nuclear fusion startup, project, or development, that would be great. They're just as welcome.

Re: Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming

#72

Post by marak830 »

mandelken wrote: post #10
platz wrote: post #3

> The nuclear fusion startup Helion, which announced last week that it has raised $500 million, says it has developed new technologies that may make nuclear fusion viable — practically, economically and environmentally. This is the only actual news in the article. The rest is bog-standard speculation.

Thanks. Note it’s an opinion piece published on bloomberg, not an actual bloomberg article.

I don't get the reason for saying this. They published it, without rebuttal, they must support it.

Re: Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming

#74

Post by blendergeek »

marak830 wrote: post #72
mandelken wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Note it’s an opinion piece published on bloomberg, not an actual bloomberg article.

I don't get the reason for saying this. They published it, without rebuttal, they must support it.

Some newspapers (I don't know if Bloomberg is included) will publish opinion pieces from multiple sides (not necessarily at the same time). If in a few months, Bloomberg publishes a "no fusion" opinion piece, this will not mean Bloomberg is "now opposed to fusion". Rather, Bloomberg publishes a wide range of opinion pieces as they should.

Re: Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming

#75

Post by ncmncm »

aetherson wrote: post #41
platz wrote: post #3

> The nuclear fusion startup Helion, which announced last week that it has raised $500 million, says it has developed new technologies that may make nuclear fusion viable — practically, economically and environmentally. This is the only actual news in the article. The rest is bog-standard speculation.

Note that seven years ago, Helion said they were three years away from energy positive fusion. Today, they say they're... Three years away from energy positive fusion.

They said they were three years away given investment, which they did not get. Now they have the investment they said, then, such progress would depend upon.

Tokamak eating all the fusion research capital has much to answer for. The only sense I can find in Tokamak exclusivity is that aneutronic fusion research does not maintain employment of a population of hot-neutron physicists that weapons work would need to draw on.

Re: Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming

#76

Post by ncmncm »

wiz21c wrote: post #34
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In magnetic confinement fusion, power density scales to the fourth power of the magnetic field strength. The only way to reasonably achieve the kind of magnetic fields needed without massive constant power draw is superconducting magnets. For a very long time, the best superconductors available limited the maximum field strength to ~ 5-6T. This limited the space of possible magnetic confinement reactors into basicall…

Do you mean that ITER could be obsolete before even reaching a production phase ?

ITER is absolutely obsolete, in any sense requiring it to be a stop on the way to production. But it was never intended for that. ITER could, if ever completed, provide a wealth of research results on plasma confinement. But only that. And, it is likely to be too late to the party.

Re: Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming

#78

Post by simonblack »

platz wrote: post #3

> The nuclear fusion startup Helion, which announced last week that it has raised $500 million, says it has developed new technologies that may make nuclear fusion viable — practically, economically and environmentally. This is the only actual news in the article. The rest is bog-standard speculation.

To us older and more cynical old farts, the story has been: "Fusion power is twenty years away". It's been that for nearly 70 years. I don't see anything changing that elderly estimate for at least another 50 years. (And that's being optimistic.)

Re: Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming

#79

Post by Animats »

tzs wrote: post #61
Animats wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What to do with spent fuel rods is more of a political problem than a technical one. Read up on Yucca Mountain. Current thinking is that the best approach to long term disposal is to find a cold hard-rock mountain where nothing has changed much in millions of years. Dig tunnels that are far above any possible flooding. Drill vertical holes in the tunnels. Package the nuclear waste in stainless steel thimbles, with th…

Why do the tunnels need to be above any possible flooding? With the waste contain the way you described it being submerged in a flood doesn’t seem like it would cause problems.

Stainless steel is not forever in the presence of salt water.

Ceramics, though, hold up well over millenia. The oldest ceramic pot known is 16,500 years old.

Re: Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming

#80

Post by maney5097 »

Renewables are already there.

In their "World Energy Outlook 2020" report the International Energy Agency reported that the world's best solar power schemes now offer the cheapest electricity in history, and solar is still getting cheaper at around 15% per year. Wind is not far behind, and large scale battery prices are dropping at around 20% per year. These price curves have been pretty consistently dropping for nearly 40 years.

With solar already the cheapest electricity ever known, just project one more halving, 5 years, and think what you could do with that.

Solar is acknowledged to be intermittent, but that's the sort of problem that power engineers love. The cheapest electricity ever, but only during daytime, with wind in strength available intermittently throughout the day.

How would you use that? Batteries obviously, to load shift. Move heavy industry and heating and cooling loads to the daytime peak. Tune aluminium smelters to run flat out during the day, and on low load with insulation overnight so the pots don't freeze up. Water desalination during daytime, storing the water produced. Link electricity grids east-west to prolong the hours of sun light for the overall grid. Produce hydrogen during daytime.

None of that requires any technology breakthroughs, they're just another day's work.

Do all that and coal power consumption will drop drastically, while using the world's cheapest electricity. Making these changes can just be background tasks, and will get us to 80% replacement of fossil fuels without any heartache. Recent modelling shows the sweet spot for renewables is actually around 400% replacement of the current grid, with that solving a lot of problems that were expected with the old thinking that we needed to replace coal with 100% renewables.

And then, if fusion comes along, great. We can close off the remaining 20%.

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