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Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

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Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#81

Post by me_me_me »

lm28469 wrote: post #59

"Can _insert technology we don't have yet and that requires breakthrough_ save use" Yeah sure, why not Nuclear is already the answer but people are afraid and even countries lead by "smart people" such as Germany are slowly decommissioning their nuclear power plants... In the meantime we're using more and more energy while putting all our eggs in the "intermittent energy sources" basket. It might have been fine if we…

Germany is slowly decommissioning their nuclear power plants because of Nord Stream 2. Gerhard schroeder almost immidietly becomes head of NS2 after he steps down as chancellor.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27202794

There are no accidents when it comes to big things like that

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#82

Post by orwin »

goodpoint wrote: post #55
d_theorist wrote: post #8

I used to be so excited about fusion, but then I actually learned more about it. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the benefits over fission seem underwhelming. It's about the same cost on a per-megawatt basis. Modern fission plants are totally safe. Nuclear waste is basically a non-problem, especially with the most recent technology. And fission has the huge benefit of being a mature, proven technology. What's the…

> Modern fission plants are totally safe Unless there's a war. Unless corruption leads to poor management of the plants. Unless nuclear waste is mismanaged. Unless there is an earthquake or tsunami of completely unexpected intensity.

> Unless there's a war. Unless corruption leads to poor management of the plants. Unless nuclear waste is mismanaged. Unless there is an earthquake or tsunami of completely unexpected intensity.

No for mismanagement, earthquake or tsunami, the gen3 are completely safe, all security mesures are passives, unless the fault is directly on the core, it will fail gracefully. Irradiated water might leak, but to be fair, underground water in granitic areas are more irradiated than the fission product pool.

Issues are war (and in this case, direct sabotage from an actor with actual knowledge, or a direct hit into a functioning reactor, so pretty much on purpose strike. I wouldn't be afraid of terrorism) and waste.

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#83

Post by me_me_me »

leephillips wrote: post #31
skywal_l wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think that the fact that you can use sea water as input and you get hydrogen as output is a huge advantage over fission? Add to that the fact that there is no fukushima style meltdown in a fusion power plant. If something goes wrong, it just stops. Finally, contrary to fission, fusion power plants will be able to adjust their power output as fast as gaz power plants. It takes months to turn on or off a fiss…

> there is definitely a few benefits to fusion. Absolutely. But these benefits are vastly outweighed by one benefit shared by fission, solar cells, and wind turbines: those things are real.

Thats the argument of coal plants for solar and at el sources of energy.

Not feasible, too expensive, doesnt work.

And yet here we are.

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#84

Post by bell-cot »

HPsquared wrote: post #44
bell-cot wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, nuclear fission power that works at scale - both on the technology and social sides - seems to be mostly beyond the capabilities of current human societies.

If even fission is too hard, wouldn't fusion have just the same problem but 10x harder?

Fusion's problems are very different from fission's problems.

Fission arguably went from the first serious attempt at a reactor (U of Chicago, Dec. 1942, successful self-sustaining reaction) to powering a large, high-performance naval vessel (USS Nautilus, Jan. 1955, in service for ~25 years) in 12 years. Its technological and social problems are very complex, but pretty well-known.

Fusion experts have yet to achieve any self-sustaining reaction - in spite of numerous, well-funded attempts going back ~60 years. Roughly speaking, there seems to be no plausible prospect for fusion being a viable power source for anything outside of a lab. So its technological problems amount to "not actually possible", and its social problems amount to "very cool waste of money".

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#85

Post by zohch »

bell-cot wrote: post #69
zohch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly, nuclear fission power that works at scale - both on the technology and social sides - seems to be mostly beyond the capabilities of current human societies. Well yes, because people who benefit from climate change do their utmost to ensure this is the case.

Which explains why grid-scale hydropower, solar power, wind power, etc. have all failed, new construction has all but ceased, and existing installations are being closed down...?

> Which explains why grid-scale hydropower, solar power, wind power, etc. have all failed, new construction has all but ceased, and existing installations are being closed down...?

This is news to me, this is not the case where I am, but sucks for you, just goes to show that people don't want to solve the problem. Where I am hydro power works well and most of our power comes from that, but that does not change the fact that many people fight as hard as they can to stop new hydro from being constructed.

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#86

Post by lm28469 »

me_me_me wrote: post #81
lm28469 wrote: post #59

"Can _insert technology we don't have yet and that requires breakthrough_ save use" Yeah sure, why not Nuclear is already the answer but people are afraid and even countries lead by "smart people" such as Germany are slowly decommissioning their nuclear power plants... In the meantime we're using more and more energy while putting all our eggs in the "intermittent energy sources" basket. It might have been fine if we…

Germany is slowly decommissioning their nuclear power plants because of Nord Stream 2. Gerhard schroeder almost immidietly becomes head of NS2 after he steps down as chancellor. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27202794 There are no accidents when it comes to big things like that

For sure it's not an accident, they also have a big anti nuclear movement since the 70s.

I live in Berlin and I don't know any German who is for nuclear power

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#87

Post by loufe »

neutronicus wrote: post #57
skywal_l wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think that the fact that you can use sea water as input and you get hydrogen as output is a huge advantage over fission? Add to that the fact that there is no fukushima style meltdown in a fusion power plant. If something goes wrong, it just stops. Finally, contrary to fission, fusion power plants will be able to adjust their power output as fast as gaz power plants. It takes months to turn on or off a fiss…

Fission already lets you generate zero-Carbon power from cheap fuel, at the cost of constructing a monumentally expensive plant. Fusion sort of looks like it will give you that dynamic, only more extreme. Fuel even cheaper, plants even more expensive and time-consuming (and risky, given lack of track-record) Solving the waste problem is nice, but not climate-relevant (and you will still be generating a bunch of activ…

Prototypes and early models are extremely expensive but there are encouraging signs that fusion plants could be cheaper. The technology is inherently safer so site-preparation would be cheaper (can be a massive bill for fission), the same consideration could lead to factory-style production of magnets and other similar components, more interest from the public (safe, climate-friendly) and any sea-touching countries (energy-security) would mean more demand pushing economies of scale further, safer means less time passing certification, etc.

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#88

Post by gmuslera »

No. The car will still be running even if we fully stop right now. There is an excess of carbon in the atmosphere, there are feedback loops that are emitting carbon due to the already existing warming, you don't shutdown the greenhouse effect with just a halt or slowdown of emissions because what is already there will keep doing its job.

What you can do switching to nuclear (in some industries, at least) is to not increase as much as previous years what we add to the problem.

It's not stopping, nor slowing down or keeping the current speed, but just accelerating a bit less than before.

Massive carbon capture is needed (orders above the gigantic amount that is added each year, because you need to take out the carbon emitted in the previous years too, and there is the feedback loops playing too), along with bringing new emissions sharply down. And all of that at least for many years after reaching below preindustrial carbon levels (global temperature should drop enough to turn off the positive feedback loops).

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#89

Post by arcanon »

No, Fusion can not put the brakes on climate change. It is the best long term option for generating heat, but the problem is not about what we add, but instead about what we remove.

Carbon Capture is what will matter. Carbon taxes are an interesting attempt at political solutions, but this requires coordination between Russia, CCP, and the USA. We need something that can be done despite what other foreign powers can be made to do, lest we want to wage WW3 over this.

Carbon Capture is also proportionately underfunded compared to renewables. Global warming is not something that will stop when we stop being bad; it has momentum. Greenhouse gases are like a blanket we’ve been wrapping around ourselves. We have to unwrap to get back to normal: carbon capture.

Re: Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

#90

Post by arcanon »

simiones wrote: post #79
civilized wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, a lot of the same environmental interest groups that halted the scaling up of fission also hate fusion. It's best to think of fusion as a way to generate effectively unlimited amounts of energy, kicking in 50-100 years from today. This could be super useful for the long-term ambitions of human civilization - energy has been such a hard constraint for so long that people have barely thought about the am…

> generate effectively unlimited amounts of energy I don't understand where this concept is coming from. The best ever fusion power experiments so far have not even produced 1 miliwatt net electrical power. ITER, if it succeeds in its 30 year timeline, will not be even close to engineering breakeven (net power generation) - they estimate 0.57 output power/input power ratio - with DEMO hoping to break even 20 years la…

It’s not unlimited power, it’s unlimited fuel.

The hype is coming from REBCO tape magnets which aren’t in ITER. Many consider ITER to already be obsolete.

This is like how computers used to take up whole rooms in the 50s but later could sit in the corner. Fusion takes up whole buildings (ITER) but the MIT ppl proved a magnet so that it can fit in just a room.

As our magnets get stronger the tokamaks can get smaller. Room sized tokamak is manageable for commercialization. Commonwealth Fusion Systems has a pretty clear path it seems.

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