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I don't really think it's funding. There has - over the last 50 years - been considerable funding from all industrialized countries. The physics of containing a

by iSnow 10y ago

I don't really think it's funding. There has - over the last 50 years - been considerable funding from all industrialized countries. The physics of containing a large volume of plasma and injecting cryogenic fuel and turning the resulting energy into something usable (eg. steam) all next to each other is simply not trivial. Let's see how Wendelstein 7x or the announced micro-fusion devices turn out in operation - maybe they are finally the breakthrough. I am not holding my breath for ITER, though.

drjesusphd 10y ago
Funding: http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg Wendelstein 7X is impressive, but it doesn't have the facilities for actual fusion. The best they can do is "theoretical breakeven", which has already been achieved with tokamaks (JT-60 in Japan). As for "micro-fusion" devices: if you're thinking of Lockheed, as far as I can tell they're full of shit. It's an approach that was tried 50 years ago and failed.
- andrewflnr 10y ago
  You seem to imply that failure 50 years ago implies failure 10 years from now, which, with all the advances in supporting technologies, is nonsensical. Do you have any solid evidence that Lockheed is full of shit?
  - drjesusphd 10y ago
    No I don't, which is why it was a qualified statement. They've released very little information about their design, and it's up to them to convince the taxpaying public it's anything more than a mirror machine. How do they keep the plasma from squirting out of the sides? That'd be the real innovation, but they're silent on this point. Almost as if they're not worried about it. Oh, and now it's 10 years from now? I thought they said it'd be ready in five? Wait, three, because they said that two years ago.
    - andrewflnr 10y ago
      The other reason to keep quiet about confinement is that it's their secret sauce. The 10 year number is a deliberately pessimistic one I pulled out of my hat, not meant to be precise. I'm just saying, it's possible that things have changed enough to make possible in the near future what was impossible/impractical in the past.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
jfoutz 10y ago
> [...] simply not trivial Well, yeah. It's not clear how hard it is. It seems unlikely a high school kid will get power from their farnsworth fusor in their garage. It's not something you can cobble together in your back yard. In the absence of corruption, will a billion dollars do it? Will 100 billion? 10 trillion? It's not a question we can answer. The answer may be no at any price. I do think a serious effort would have some pretty cool side effects. Perhaps some advances in material science, higher precision in process control, fast dynamic control of magnetic fields. That said, at what cost? Infrastructure, health care, the F-35, whatever war we want to have next. Dumping a lot of money into fusion power is probably not the optimal answer. But i don't think it's the flat out wrong answer. We don't know what's behind door number 2, It's probably not infinite free power. But there's probably good stuff there, and worth exploring eventually. Anyway, it's clearly too risky for private enterprise. It seems like one of those questions that federal funding could answer. Again, the answer might be no, it's to hard to do at a reasonable price. Right now, we just have a bunch of questions. As things are, we're going to have a bunch of questions for quite some time.

by iSnow 10y ago

drjesusphd 10y ago

Funding: http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg Wendelstein 7X is impressive, but it doesn't have the facilities for actual fusion. The best they can do is "theoretical breakeven", which has already been achieved with tokamaks (JT-60 in Japan). As for "micro-fusion" devices: if you're thinking of Lockheed, as far as I can tell they're full of shit. It's an approach that was tried 50 years ago and failed.

andrewflnr 10y ago
You seem to imply that failure 50 years ago implies failure 10 years from now, which, with all the advances in supporting technologies, is nonsensical. Do you have any solid evidence that Lockheed is full of shit?
- drjesusphd 10y ago
  No I don't, which is why it was a qualified statement. They've released very little information about their design, and it's up to them to convince the taxpaying public it's anything more than a mirror machine. How do they keep the plasma from squirting out of the sides? That'd be the real innovation, but they're silent on this point. Almost as if they're not worried about it. Oh, and now it's 10 years from now? I thought they said it'd be ready in five? Wait, three, because they said that two years ago.
  - andrewflnr 10y ago
    The other reason to keep quiet about confinement is that it's their secret sauce. The 10 year number is a deliberately pessimistic one I pulled out of my hat, not meant to be precise. I'm just saying, it's possible that things have changed enough to make possible in the near future what was impossible/impractical in the past.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

jfoutz 10y ago

> [...] simply not trivial Well, yeah. It's not clear how hard it is. It seems unlikely a high school kid will get power from their farnsworth fusor in their garage. It's not something you can cobble together in your back yard. In the absence of corruption, will a billion dollars do it? Will 100 billion? 10 trillion? It's not a question we can answer. The answer may be no at any price. I do think a serious effort would have some pretty cool side effects. Perhaps some advances in material science, higher precision in process control, fast dynamic control of magnetic fields. That said, at what cost? Infrastructure, health care, the F-35, whatever war we want to have next. Dumping a lot of money into fusion power is probably not the optimal answer. But i don't think it's the flat out wrong answer. We don't know what's behind door number 2, It's probably not infinite free power. But there's probably good stuff there, and worth exploring eventually. Anyway, it's clearly too risky for private enterprise. It seems like one of those questions that federal funding could answer. Again, the answer might be no, it's to hard to do at a reasonable price. Right now, we just have a bunch of questions. As things are, we're going to have a bunch of questions for quite some time.