Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

fusionenergybase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 148 posts

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#71

Post by satellite2 »

sam wrote: post #9
actinium226 wrote: post #2

Why is the last plot basically empty between 2000 and 2020? I understand that NIF was probably being built during that time, but were there no significant tokamak experiments in that time?

Author here - some other posters have touched on the reasons. Much of the focus on high performing tokamaks shifted to ITER in recent decades, though this is now changing as fusion companies are utilizing new enabling technologies like high-temperature superconductors. Additionally the final plot of scientific gain (Qsci) vs time effectively requires the use of deuterium-tritium fuel to generate the amounts of fusion…

Thanks a lot for this research. Seing the comments here I think it's really important to make breakthroughs and progress more visible to the public. Otherwise the impression that "we're always 50 years away" stays strong.

Here was my completely layman attempt to forecast fusion viability a few months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42791997 (in short: 2037)

Is there some semblance of realism there you think?

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#72

Post by DennisP »

trhway wrote: post #54
hinkley wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to work out a joke about buying better lasers off of alibaba but it seems that despite being 30 years old they're still orders of magnitude beyond off the shelf options.

partially. The very efficient lasers from alibaba don't have short pulse/high power, so they can potentially be used only as the part of the system - the pumping lasers. The final nanosecond-laser is still a one-off build which though seems to be pretty doable even by a small company if they set their mind to it. Btw, NIF achieved those recent results by adding strong magnetic field around the target (penny-shrinkers…

Lots of people do have money and interest: https://archive.is/BCsf5

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#73

Post by cyberax »

pfdietz wrote: post #68
cyberax wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ITER doesn't use high temperature superconductors. It does, for high-current buses that interface with regular resistive power distribution. They are also planned for some auxiliary components (like the neutral beam injectors). > ITER has been criticized since early days as a dead end, for example because of its enormous size relative to the power produced. ITER is NOT designed for power generation. It's essentiall…

> ITER is NOT designed for power generation. It's essentially a lab experiment to see how plasma behaves in magnetic confinement and test various technologies. That's the go-to excuse. But if you look at DEMO, it's power density is not enormously greater. ITER is so far out of the running that DEMO (or PROTO, etc.) will be too. We're learning a great deal about something that's largely irrelevant.

DEMO concept sketches are completely obsolete at this point. It's not going to look anything like this.

They're based on the state-of-the art from about 2005. Since then, a lot of improvements happened. A more realistic power plant design is going to use a thinner center column (because of better superconducting magnets), resulting in a smaller cryostat volume. Possibly high-TC magnets.

It can also be made more compact, if neutral beams can be used to suppress some plasma instabilities.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#74

Post by mchusma »

satellite2 wrote: post #71
sam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here - some other posters have touched on the reasons. Much of the focus on high performing tokamaks shifted to ITER in recent decades, though this is now changing as fusion companies are utilizing new enabling technologies like high-temperature superconductors. Additionally the final plot of scientific gain (Qsci) vs time effectively requires the use of deuterium-tritium fuel to generate the amounts of fusion…

Thanks a lot for this research. Seing the comments here I think it's really important to make breakthroughs and progress more visible to the public. Otherwise the impression that "we're always 50 years away" stays strong. Here was my completely layman attempt to forecast fusion viability a few months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42791997 (in short: 2037) Is there some semblance of realism there you think…

In the 2037 timeframe, modeling trends doesn’t matter as much as looking at the actual players. I think odds are good because you have at least 4 very well funded groups shooting to have something before 2035: commercial groups including CFS, Helios, TAE, also the efforts by ITER. Maybe more. Each with generally independent approaches. I think scientific viability will be proven by 2035, but getting economic viability could take much longer.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#75

Post by actinium226 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #64
Calwestjobs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is not in most us areas. only problem is area covered, NOT price of technology. solar with 12 hour of storage was lower price than fission before covid hit. TCO, not one time nonsense. fission has relatively low temperature heat, i.e. no metal reduction, no "concrete" production. you can cook hot dogs with it. also electrification of heat can provide lower losses stemming from regulation or lack thereof. with elec…

I am no fan of fission (I strongly oppose new fission plants). But one problem with solar+storage is that the cost of the storage component increases roughly linearly with the desired storage duration. That's not true of a fueled power plant (fission or fossil).

Just curious, what makes you oppose new fission plants? Do you think existing ones should be closed before their scheduled end-of-life?

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#77

Post by worik »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #64
Calwestjobs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is not in most us areas. only problem is area covered, NOT price of technology. solar with 12 hour of storage was lower price than fission before covid hit. TCO, not one time nonsense. fission has relatively low temperature heat, i.e. no metal reduction, no "concrete" production. you can cook hot dogs with it. also electrification of heat can provide lower losses stemming from regulation or lack thereof. with elec…

I am no fan of fission (I strongly oppose new fission plants). But one problem with solar+storage is that the cost of the storage component increases roughly linearly with the desired storage duration. That's not true of a fueled power plant (fission or fossil).

Where are the flow batteries? (fuel cells)

Lithium ion batteries are light with a high energy density, so are great for cars.

Flow batteries have a low energy density, but increasing the duration means a bigger tank, and the cost of bigger tanks increases as a function of the cube root (?) of their volume Flow batteries are well over a century old, but I have been reading about improvements over the last two decades. Where are they?

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#78

Post by sien »

londons_explore wrote: post #76

Are there any betting odds on "On-Earth Fusion makes up more than 1% of the world energy supply by 2100?"

Metaculus sort of does this. The mean prediction is 2046.

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/9464/nuclear-fusion-powe...

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#79

Post by worik »

actinium226 wrote: post #75
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am no fan of fission (I strongly oppose new fission plants). But one problem with solar+storage is that the cost of the storage component increases roughly linearly with the desired storage duration. That's not true of a fueled power plant (fission or fossil).

Just curious, what makes you oppose new fission plants? Do you think existing ones should be closed before their scheduled end-of-life?

I will bite.

There are any problems with fission that are all related to the extraordinary danger of handling the fuel, byproducts, and the sites themselves.

The cost of them is huge, some people are hoping that modularity will help with construction, but it is still astonishingly expensive.

The problems of handling the fuel has been solved, in theory and practise. Except when commerce is involved. When the money people get involved corners will get cut, and we are back to incredible danger. Technically solvable, but I would not go near it. I have known too many business people.

The problem of the long-term waste is entirely beyond us. There has been no practical progress on this front. Long term waste (including some parts of the assemblies themselves) are very dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.

This is, with current technology that can be bought to bear, unsolvable.

The only thing we can do is put it in a stable site, be ready to move it when the site becomes unstable (nowhere on Earth is known to be stable on such time scales), and find a way of communication, across thousands of generations, just how poisonous this stuff is.

Maybe our ancestors will get lucky and find a way to safely dispose of it....

So fission power is making future generations pay for today's consumption.

Fortunately for us it is moot. The costs of renewables is dropped to the point that the only reason for fission is to build the capacity for nuclear weapons.

Post reply on HN