17 ms·

This might sound a bit like a buzz-kill, but I don't think fusion power is necessarily competitively cheap. I think it will be comparable to nuclear power with

by sonium 10y ago

This might sound a bit like a buzz-kill, but I don't think fusion power is necessarily competitively cheap. I think it will be comparable to nuclear power with a ~ 10 times higher capital investment to build a fusion-plant. Already now solar is said to be cheaper then nuclear. But nevertheless humanity should explore fusion since it is more or less the only significant power source not (indrectly) depending on the sun. As far as I can see the funding of fusion research is at about the same level as particle physics which definilty does not provide any other than philosophical progress.

mSparks 10y ago
This is the one thing I wholly side with the conspiracy crew on. Energy is one big scam, all energy sources are artificially suppressed and sold at grossely inflated prices.
arethuza 10y ago
I agree - always been a bit mystified when fusion power is described as "cheap", fuel isn't a big component of the cost of fission power plants so even if the fuel is low cost it won't save you that much money. [I guess decommissioning costs might be lower but are they actually included in the costs of operating normal nuclear plants?]
- adrianN 10y ago
  I bet regulatory compliance is a big chunk of the costs. Those regulations are bound to be much more strict for a fission plant that can potentially blow up and contaminate a large area compared to a fusion plant with a safe failure mode by default (the plasma just shuts down).
- Symmetry 10y ago
  The worst case scenarios for an accident at a fusion plant aren't nearly as bad as those at a fission plant so you should be able to get by with somewhat less in terms of paranoid safety measures and overbuilding.
- Ygg2 10y ago
  Aren't large part of that actually the waste disposal costs? With Fusion you in theory, avoid radioactive waste.
andygates 10y ago
The very high cost of fission has a lot to do with how nasty, awkward, long-lasting and expensive the fuel and waste are. We really won't know until we try building a power plant.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  Fusion produces energetic neutrons, and energetic neutrons are a very good way to make things radioactive. So all the popular approaches create waste that is more radioactive than fission waste, and probably comparable in volume. The only up side is that the decay products have a shorter half life. So the waste will only be a problem for a century or so, instead of for millennia. This may be better than fission, but it's definitely not clean by any realistic definition of the word.
  - Baeocystin 10y ago
    Uranium mining is a nasty business. Deuterium concentration is, by comparison, just a bunch of water-filled centrifuges. Surly that would make a large difference all on its own, no?
  - Jedd 10y ago
    > The only up side is that the decay products have a shorter half life. So the waste will only be a problem for a century or so, instead of for millennia. This sounds like a tremendous underestimation of the problem - handling waste. We have people who live 'for a century or so' but we don't even have languages (now!) that have lasted a millenia.
    - chadgeidel 10y ago
      Our current "decay product" of energy generation (carbon) is going to impact our world for a lot longer than a century. I'll take known-quantity, manageable century-long decay products over unknown-quantity, nearly unmanageable (large-scale carbon sequestration is hard) any day.
    - kmicklas 10y ago
mtgx 10y ago
I don't think fusion power will be "too cheap to meter" just like fission wasn't anywhere near that. However, I do think we'll be able to make fusion reactors that are much more compact, like what Lockheed Martin is trying to build. I also think we'll achieve significantly more power/volume, which will be very useful for space ships in the future.
Jedd 10y ago
> This might sound a bit like a buzz-kill, but I don't think fusion power is necessarily competitively cheap. Buzz kill on hn is fine so long as you back up your opinions with rational arguments and / or citations rather than simply sharing more of your opinions as ersatz supporting evidence. > I think it will be comparable to nuclear power with a ~ 10 times higher capital investment to build a fusion-plant. This is my biggest problem when talking with people about nuclear -- the conflation of fission and fusion. Saying fusion compared to nuclear is like saying diesel compared to internal combustion engine. > Already now solar is said to be cheaper then nuclear. And solar means multiple things too - PVC and thermal, for starters. But who says this, and why, and [!?] where? > But nevertheless humanity should explore fusion since it is more or less the only significant power source not (indrectly) depending on the sun. Fission fits this bill too, but obviously is less desirable. > As far as I can see the funding of fusion research is at about the same level as particle physics which definilty does not provide any other than philosophical progress. There's no benefit from particle physics other than philosophical? Goodness.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  To be fair, "nuclear power" has been used for decades as a shorter way of saying "nuclear fission power". I don't think any confusion arises when saying things like "nuclear compared to fusion".
nnq 10y ago
NO... humanity should explore fusion because we might desperately need it to survive. To what amount can you scale up solar in a particular region?! Yeah, I know, we're into low-power everything nowadays... but let's say that you end up with a desperate need for smth like 1 TW of power for something like a sea-water desalination plant, massive irrigation needs because climate change fucked you up, or building a huge set of flood barriers (think what Nederlands has now, but you need them 100x larger, 5x cheaper and done FAST) because sea levels rose and people will die if you don't get the massive cheap energy needs for these projects ASAP. Or maybe a huge TW power laser for some space-dev project if you don't want to think of disasters. Or maybe to decontaminate large amounts of water/soil/air after the first large-ish nuclear/bio/chemical war that will take place on Earth. If you're betting on solar and wind and you end up suddenly needing high levels of cheap (it can be "long-term like 100 years on cheap" if you're a country with a good credit score) power, you're.... fucked! Yeah, fusion won't be scalable to massive energy needs "out of the lab", but in 100 years from now when your grandchildren will need it to save their lives from the consequences of our planetary fuck-ups, it will be! (And yeah, short term you can scale fission better probably. So investment into "dirt-cheap fission power that anyone can have" is also crucial. But longer term it hits other scalability bounds.). In a perfect world where we don't totally fuck-up the planet, solar and hydro and geotermal and wind and waves would be enough. In the real world, where we will fuck-up the planet, things like fusion are desperately needed to un-fuck regions of it and re-terraform them (and also to get into space exploration fast and big, not "snail-paced solar-powered").
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  There's other reasons you might want fusion power: any place you need a large source of power, but siphoning off ambient energy (i.e. wind, solar) isn't feasible or sufficient, fusion is the way to go or else you have to use fission or fossil fuels. This applies to things like ships and submarines, and to spacecraft. So yeah, solar/etc. sounds great in an ideal scenario in a perfect world, but what if you're not on this world? Solar power isn't sufficient to do serious mining operations in the asteroid belt or to redirect a large asteroid threatening to impact the Earth. It also won't power your aircraft carrier or cruise ship. A clean source of nuclear power would be ideal for all these things, if we can figure out how to make such a thing work.

by sonium 10y ago

mSparks 10y ago

This is the one thing I wholly side with the conspiracy crew on. Energy is one big scam, all energy sources are artificially suppressed and sold at grossely inflated prices.

arethuza 10y ago

I agree - always been a bit mystified when fusion power is described as "cheap", fuel isn't a big component of the cost of fission power plants so even if the fuel is low cost it won't save you that much money. [I guess decommissioning costs might be lower but are they actually included in the costs of operating normal nuclear plants?]

adrianN 10y ago
I bet regulatory compliance is a big chunk of the costs. Those regulations are bound to be much more strict for a fission plant that can potentially blow up and contaminate a large area compared to a fusion plant with a safe failure mode by default (the plasma just shuts down).
Symmetry 10y ago
The worst case scenarios for an accident at a fusion plant aren't nearly as bad as those at a fission plant so you should be able to get by with somewhat less in terms of paranoid safety measures and overbuilding.
Ygg2 10y ago
Aren't large part of that actually the waste disposal costs? With Fusion you in theory, avoid radioactive waste.

andygates 10y ago

The very high cost of fission has a lot to do with how nasty, awkward, long-lasting and expensive the fuel and waste are. We really won't know until we try building a power plant.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
Fusion produces energetic neutrons, and energetic neutrons are a very good way to make things radioactive. So all the popular approaches create waste that is more radioactive than fission waste, and probably comparable in volume. The only up side is that the decay products have a shorter half life. So the waste will only be a problem for a century or so, instead of for millennia. This may be better than fission, but it's definitely not clean by any realistic definition of the word.
- Baeocystin 10y ago
  Uranium mining is a nasty business. Deuterium concentration is, by comparison, just a bunch of water-filled centrifuges. Surly that would make a large difference all on its own, no?
- Jedd 10y ago
  > The only up side is that the decay products have a shorter half life. So the waste will only be a problem for a century or so, instead of for millennia. This sounds like a tremendous underestimation of the problem - handling waste. We have people who live 'for a century or so' but we don't even have languages (now!) that have lasted a millenia.
  - chadgeidel 10y ago
    Our current "decay product" of energy generation (carbon) is going to impact our world for a lot longer than a century. I'll take known-quantity, manageable century-long decay products over unknown-quantity, nearly unmanageable (large-scale carbon sequestration is hard) any day.
  - kmicklas 10y ago

mtgx 10y ago

I don't think fusion power will be "too cheap to meter" just like fission wasn't anywhere near that. However, I do think we'll be able to make fusion reactors that are much more compact, like what Lockheed Martin is trying to build. I also think we'll achieve significantly more power/volume, which will be very useful for space ships in the future.

Jedd 10y ago

> This might sound a bit like a buzz-kill, but I don't think fusion power is necessarily competitively cheap. Buzz kill on hn is fine so long as you back up your opinions with rational arguments and / or citations rather than simply sharing more of your opinions as ersatz supporting evidence. > I think it will be comparable to nuclear power with a ~ 10 times higher capital investment to build a fusion-plant. This is my biggest problem when talking with people about nuclear -- the conflation of fission and fusion. Saying fusion compared to nuclear is like saying diesel compared to internal combustion engine. > Already now solar is said to be cheaper then nuclear. And solar means multiple things too - PVC and thermal, for starters. But who says this, and why, and [!?] where? > But nevertheless humanity should explore fusion since it is more or less the only significant power source not (indrectly) depending on the sun. Fission fits this bill too, but obviously is less desirable. > As far as I can see the funding of fusion research is at about the same level as particle physics which definilty does not provide any other than philosophical progress. There's no benefit from particle physics other than philosophical? Goodness.

alkonaut 10y ago
To be fair, "nuclear power" has been used for decades as a shorter way of saying "nuclear fission power". I don't think any confusion arises when saying things like "nuclear compared to fusion".

nnq 10y ago

NO... humanity should explore fusion because we might desperately need it to survive. To what amount can you scale up solar in a particular region?! Yeah, I know, we're into low-power everything nowadays... but let's say that you end up with a desperate need for smth like 1 TW of power for something like a sea-water desalination plant, massive irrigation needs because climate change fucked you up, or building a huge set of flood barriers (think what Nederlands has now, but you need them 100x larger, 5x cheaper and done FAST) because sea levels rose and people will die if you don't get the massive cheap energy needs for these projects ASAP. Or maybe a huge TW power laser for some space-dev project if you don't want to think of disasters. Or maybe to decontaminate large amounts of water/soil/air after the first large-ish nuclear/bio/chemical war that will take place on Earth. If you're betting on solar and wind and you end up suddenly needing high levels of cheap (it can be "long-term like 100 years on cheap" if you're a country with a good credit score) power, you're.... fucked! Yeah, fusion won't be scalable to massive energy needs "out of the lab", but in 100 years from now when your grandchildren will need it to save their lives from the consequences of our planetary fuck-ups, it will be! (And yeah, short term you can scale fission better probably. So investment into "dirt-cheap fission power that anyone can have" is also crucial. But longer term it hits other scalability bounds.). In a perfect world where we don't totally fuck-up the planet, solar and hydro and geotermal and wind and waves would be enough. In the real world, where we will fuck-up the planet, things like fusion are desperately needed to un-fuck regions of it and re-terraform them (and also to get into space exploration fast and big, not "snail-paced solar-powered").

Grishnakh 10y ago
There's other reasons you might want fusion power: any place you need a large source of power, but siphoning off ambient energy (i.e. wind, solar) isn't feasible or sufficient, fusion is the way to go or else you have to use fission or fossil fuels. This applies to things like ships and submarines, and to spacecraft. So yeah, solar/etc. sounds great in an ideal scenario in a perfect world, but what if you're not on this world? Solar power isn't sufficient to do serious mining operations in the asteroid belt or to redirect a large asteroid threatening to impact the Earth. It also won't power your aircraft carrier or cruise ship. A clean source of nuclear power would be ideal for all these things, if we can figure out how to make such a thing work.