5 ms·

Has anyone since reasonable explanation of what the future would look like with fusion? To me, there will never be enough energy, this effort is about control,

by nxzero 10y ago

Has anyone since reasonable explanation of what the future would look like with fusion? To me, there will never be enough energy, this effort is about control, not power; even if there was (relatively speaking) an unlimited source of energy, the bounds of it's use would quickly be found, and as such, would not be "universally" available.

darawk 10y ago
While I think that is true in general, and we will eventually saturate whatever fusion may provide - it will take a good while to do that. And in the mean time, we'll have a near perfect source of energy, that's cheap, plentiful and clean. Fusion is truly a pretty revolutionary thing if we can make it work.
- paulydavis 10y ago
  Why is it cheaper than now? I mean coal is really cheap. You still have to pay people to operate these reactors. It is not like we have a scarcity of coal. I get clean I do not get cheap. Yes the fuel will be water but these things must have large overhead to maintain and run and build.
  - icehawk219 10y ago
    For things like coal and oil the cost is in acquisition, transportation, and storage of the fuel and the infrastructure that goes with that. You can't just go out and find coal lying around. You need to hallow out or level an entire mountain to get it. That requires a lot of people and equipment. And you need to transport large quantities of it around to where it's needed which requires special infrastructure dedicated to that task. The same goes for oil/natural gas.
benevol 10y ago
Capitalism is always about control. At the center of our society/culture is the human being's desire to dominate others. We use capitalism/money as a means to achieve that. Money/power always has a systemic property to create monopolies and reinforce them. That being said, technological advance usually benefits more than just the owners of capital. But the balance usually is tipped in their favor. In short: There's enough food for everybody on this planet, but we currently prefer to have more of it for ourselves and let others starve. If we don't like this system, then we need to move away from capitalism (as we know it) and put different values than domination/power/money at the center of our culture.
daviddumenil 10y ago
My first thought was that an electricity cost at maybe 20% of what it is now would be result in a good economic uplift but not a seismic change. But the interesting cases are those where much cheaper electricity unlocks new opportunities. Imagine the coast of sub-Saharan Africa transformed by the agriculture enabled by cheap desalinated water.
- daveguy 10y ago
  Is it really just a 5x reduction in power cost that would allow "cheap" desalination? Would it require a 50x reduction in cost? I wonder if cheap desalination and cheap desalination are on the same order of magnitude. Do you know the current cost of desalination? Is there any sort of accurate estimate of how cheap power would be? (I guess not since everything is a prototype and nothing has been able to produce excess power from fuel).
- mattgrice 10y ago
  Electricity already makes up around half or less of the cost of desalination. Even free electricity would at best halve the cost.
  - gizmo686 10y ago
    Assuming current designs. There may be less energy efficient designs that are, ignoring the cost of energy, cheaper to builder and operate.
ridgeguy 10y ago
I think the first world would look much like it does now, except that fusion would replace most current nuclear, coal, and oil-fired plants - the technologies that supply base load. Natural gas plants will continue in service as fast response peaking plants. Renewable energy sources will continue to replace older generation technologies so long as they continue to get cheaper and grid modernization keeps pace with the special requirements of renewables wrt variability. All that depends on whatever fusion tech proves to be both technically feasible and cost competitive. If that doesn't happen, or is really delayed, then grid storage technology may win out as a cost-effective energy "source". If storage becomes cheap and effective I'd expect to see renewables + storage expand to serve base load. Also, we'd see faster electrification of areas that currently can't afford classic distribution grids. This might accelerate significant changes in the developing world. But whatever the generation technology, energy won't be "unlimited". There will always be cost limits.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  There are also fundamental thermodynamic limits that you hit at some point. All production and usage of electricity produces waste heat, it's unavoidable (see Carnot). Even neglecting global warming, you can't keep 20th century energy growth going for much more than another century or two before waste heat alone causes catastrophic climate change.
  - refurb 10y ago
    you can't keep 20th century energy growth going for much more than another century or two before waste heat alone causes catastrophic climate change. That seems unlikely to me, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong. I would imagine that all of the waste heat produced through the world's economy is several orders of magnitude lower than the sun. Like less than 0.0001%.
    - DennisP 10y ago
      True, and waste heat is a far smaller contribution to warming than greenhouse gases. But exponential growth gets impressive after a while. At 2.3% growth per year, we boil the oceans in about 400 years: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e... Whether this is physically or economically realistic is another matter. I tend to think that long before waste heat is an actual problem, we'll either transition to a stable state or move the growth off planet. (Conveniently, fusion is also great for rockets.)

by nxzero 10y ago

darawk 10y ago

While I think that is true in general, and we will eventually saturate whatever fusion may provide - it will take a good while to do that. And in the mean time, we'll have a near perfect source of energy, that's cheap, plentiful and clean. Fusion is truly a pretty revolutionary thing if we can make it work.

paulydavis 10y ago
Why is it cheaper than now? I mean coal is really cheap. You still have to pay people to operate these reactors. It is not like we have a scarcity of coal. I get clean I do not get cheap. Yes the fuel will be water but these things must have large overhead to maintain and run and build.
- icehawk219 10y ago
  For things like coal and oil the cost is in acquisition, transportation, and storage of the fuel and the infrastructure that goes with that. You can't just go out and find coal lying around. You need to hallow out or level an entire mountain to get it. That requires a lot of people and equipment. And you need to transport large quantities of it around to where it's needed which requires special infrastructure dedicated to that task. The same goes for oil/natural gas.

benevol 10y ago

Capitalism is always about control. At the center of our society/culture is the human being's desire to dominate others. We use capitalism/money as a means to achieve that. Money/power always has a systemic property to create monopolies and reinforce them. That being said, technological advance usually benefits more than just the owners of capital. But the balance usually is tipped in their favor. In short: There's enough food for everybody on this planet, but we currently prefer to have more of it for ourselves and let others starve. If we don't like this system, then we need to move away from capitalism (as we know it) and put different values than domination/power/money at the center of our culture.

daviddumenil 10y ago

My first thought was that an electricity cost at maybe 20% of what it is now would be result in a good economic uplift but not a seismic change. But the interesting cases are those where much cheaper electricity unlocks new opportunities. Imagine the coast of sub-Saharan Africa transformed by the agriculture enabled by cheap desalinated water.

daveguy 10y ago
Is it really just a 5x reduction in power cost that would allow "cheap" desalination? Would it require a 50x reduction in cost? I wonder if cheap desalination and cheap desalination are on the same order of magnitude. Do you know the current cost of desalination? Is there any sort of accurate estimate of how cheap power would be? (I guess not since everything is a prototype and nothing has been able to produce excess power from fuel).
mattgrice 10y ago
Electricity already makes up around half or less of the cost of desalination. Even free electricity would at best halve the cost.
- gizmo686 10y ago
  Assuming current designs. There may be less energy efficient designs that are, ignoring the cost of energy, cheaper to builder and operate.

ridgeguy 10y ago

I think the first world would look much like it does now, except that fusion would replace most current nuclear, coal, and oil-fired plants - the technologies that supply base load. Natural gas plants will continue in service as fast response peaking plants. Renewable energy sources will continue to replace older generation technologies so long as they continue to get cheaper and grid modernization keeps pace with the special requirements of renewables wrt variability. All that depends on whatever fusion tech proves to be both technically feasible and cost competitive. If that doesn't happen, or is really delayed, then grid storage technology may win out as a cost-effective energy "source". If storage becomes cheap and effective I'd expect to see renewables + storage expand to serve base load. Also, we'd see faster electrification of areas that currently can't afford classic distribution grids. This might accelerate significant changes in the developing world. But whatever the generation technology, energy won't be "unlimited". There will always be cost limits.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
There are also fundamental thermodynamic limits that you hit at some point. All production and usage of electricity produces waste heat, it's unavoidable (see Carnot). Even neglecting global warming, you can't keep 20th century energy growth going for much more than another century or two before waste heat alone causes catastrophic climate change.
- refurb 10y ago
  you can't keep 20th century energy growth going for much more than another century or two before waste heat alone causes catastrophic climate change. That seems unlikely to me, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong. I would imagine that all of the waste heat produced through the world's economy is several orders of magnitude lower than the sun. Like less than 0.0001%.
  - DennisP 10y ago
    True, and waste heat is a far smaller contribution to warming than greenhouse gases. But exponential growth gets impressive after a while. At 2.3% growth per year, we boil the oceans in about 400 years: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e... Whether this is physically or economically realistic is another matter. I tend to think that long before waste heat is an actual problem, we'll either transition to a stable state or move the growth off planet. (Conveniently, fusion is also great for rockets.)