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I am getting to feel that fusion runs out of time. They already barely have enough time for large-scale rollout before renewables overtake everything. In 10 yea

I am getting to feel that fusion runs out of time. They already barely have enough time for large-scale rollout before renewables overtake everything. In 10 years from now, if someone achieves net energy positive fusion, it will be solution in search of a problem - cheap and abundant electricity will be a reality.

kwhitefoot 10y ago
A large amount of very cheap energy could have uses that we haven't thought of yet. Sometimes you need a supply of ingredients before inspiration strikes. Just think what could have happened if the British government had not been so short sighted and if Babbage had not been so difficult to deal with. But then although Ada Lovelace did make some remarkably prescient suggestions no one had any real idea what really cheap computing could do. Remember "Quantity has a quality all its own", but what that quality is isn't always easy to tell before you have it.
tedsanders 10y ago
That is a bizarre claim to make. Energy will not be far cheaper and more abundant in 10 years. Trillions of dollars are invested in infrastructure that has lifetimes of 50+ years. It is not economically or technologically feasible to undergo an energy revolution that quickly. Even if we gathered the political and financial will, our production facilities and supply chains could not feasibly handle the load of rebuilding the world's energy infrastructure in a single decade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5guXaWwQpe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5guXaWwQpe4
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  Infrastructure becomes obsolete and is scrapped all the time, disappointing investors. Newcomen steam engines didn't get to their end of life or anywhere near it, they were mostly scrapped when Watt's revolution happened no matter how new they were. You're saying that investors have been caught short by present trends. I think that's true.
  - tedsanders 10y ago
    That's not what I am saying. I am saying that if you are competing against something that has already been built and has 50 years of fixed costs already sunk, the hurdle to surpass it is enormous, far more enormous than competing against new marginal construction. I am also saying that energy infrastructure is a thing that costs trillions. We literally do not have the capacity to replace it in a mere 10 years, even if we built 10x the solar and battery factories and ran them 24/7. Current trends extrapolated forward have no indication that this will happen. (For the record, I am very bullish on solar power, having worked and consulted in the industry. But I am also grounded enough to realize that the revolution will be gradual, not done in 10 years. 10 years is not much time for something so capital-intensive. It's not like phones or computers.) I regret even commenting in the first place, because I hate feeding the dynamic of giving attention to poor quality and ill-founded comments. I wish I was discussing something constructive instead.
    - Nomentatus 10y ago
      Maybe what you want to say is that obsolete tech and plant has the "advantage" that it can now operate on marginal costs and ignore replacement costs since that won't be happening, making many previous "fixed costs" suddenly free and therefore not costs at all - something I well remember being taught in economics classes at university. This is true as far as it goes, but that path assumes relatively low marginal costs - not the case for energy. Coal isn't that economical - as for fracking, that's new tech not old; it may be a big part of the picture for a long while, and save some but not most of the old plant (large numbers of gas generators are a fairly recent phenomenon themselves.) From your selective choice of terminology, I don't think you've looked at economic theory in depth, here. In any case, all of this is perfectly consistent with what I said earlier. When the transistor arrives, vacuum tubes are just swept aside despite the fixed costs. Ten years did that, less in fact, I was there. There's a rather extreme threshold effect, once the right price point is passed, the old tech just falls off a cliff. There's a great chart of that happening to Kodak due to digital photography, extremely suddenly, despite all the fixed costs. They were making their best profits one year, staring at death the next. This link is close to the chart I remember seeing. Note the extraordinary difference one year makes! Every mall had a very expensive photo developing plant, then not. Scrap value only. https://macromon.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/creative-destruction-2-0/ https://macromon.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/creative-destructi... Because solar power effectiveness varies geographically the cliff will be a bit smoother, of course. Only in a real banana republic could you hold new tech off for a half-century, and you'd need to halt trade to do it. I'm old, I've seen a lot of change, and tons of valuable things - including large amounts of infrastructure, become valueless very suddenly, not to mention my collection of VCR tapes. There is such a thing as first-mover advantage, but that applies to new tech not old, so I'm assuming you don't mean to refer to that. I regret your stooping to vituperation. It wasn't necessary, or accurate.
- anovikov 10y ago
  But fusion won't be available in 10 years either. There is a long, long way from net energy positive to mass rollout. Fusion is going to be harder than fission, and fission took 30 years from first controlled fission to 1% of electricity supply, which is the lowest which i could call 'mass rollout'. In 10 years though, renewables will be definitely making it - becoming cheaper than any new type of generation , probably almost stopping construction of any new non-relewable generation. Peak use of fossil fuels for electricity generation is now projected to happen in 2025. Trillions of dollars are being invested in infrastructure now - and yes, it is mostly investment into renewables already.
adrianN 10y ago
Cheap and abundant energy was already promised with nuclear and didn't happen. What makes you think that renewables will become "too cheap to meter"?
eviltandem 10y ago
Until someone figures out how to miniaturize it into something to fit in his chest to stop shrapnel from entering his heart... then realizes he has way more than enough power to run a super suit. He'll do this all in a cave of course.

kwhitefoot 10y ago

A large amount of very cheap energy could have uses that we haven't thought of yet. Sometimes you need a supply of ingredients before inspiration strikes. Just think what could have happened if the British government had not been so short sighted and if Babbage had not been so difficult to deal with. But then although Ada Lovelace did make some remarkably prescient suggestions no one had any real idea what really cheap computing could do. Remember "Quantity has a quality all its own", but what that quality is isn't always easy to tell before you have it.

tedsanders 10y ago

That is a bizarre claim to make. Energy will not be far cheaper and more abundant in 10 years. Trillions of dollars are invested in infrastructure that has lifetimes of 50+ years. It is not economically or technologically feasible to undergo an energy revolution that quickly. Even if we gathered the political and financial will, our production facilities and supply chains could not feasibly handle the load of rebuilding the world's energy infrastructure in a single decade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5guXaWwQpe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5guXaWwQpe4

Nomentatus 10y ago
Infrastructure becomes obsolete and is scrapped all the time, disappointing investors. Newcomen steam engines didn't get to their end of life or anywhere near it, they were mostly scrapped when Watt's revolution happened no matter how new they were. You're saying that investors have been caught short by present trends. I think that's true.
- tedsanders 10y ago
  That's not what I am saying. I am saying that if you are competing against something that has already been built and has 50 years of fixed costs already sunk, the hurdle to surpass it is enormous, far more enormous than competing against new marginal construction. I am also saying that energy infrastructure is a thing that costs trillions. We literally do not have the capacity to replace it in a mere 10 years, even if we built 10x the solar and battery factories and ran them 24/7. Current trends extrapolated forward have no indication that this will happen. (For the record, I am very bullish on solar power, having worked and consulted in the industry. But I am also grounded enough to realize that the revolution will be gradual, not done in 10 years. 10 years is not much time for something so capital-intensive. It's not like phones or computers.) I regret even commenting in the first place, because I hate feeding the dynamic of giving attention to poor quality and ill-founded comments. I wish I was discussing something constructive instead.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    Maybe what you want to say is that obsolete tech and plant has the "advantage" that it can now operate on marginal costs and ignore replacement costs since that won't be happening, making many previous "fixed costs" suddenly free and therefore not costs at all - something I well remember being taught in economics classes at university. This is true as far as it goes, but that path assumes relatively low marginal costs - not the case for energy. Coal isn't that economical - as for fracking, that's new tech not old; it may be a big part of the picture for a long while, and save some but not most of the old plant (large numbers of gas generators are a fairly recent phenomenon themselves.) From your selective choice of terminology, I don't think you've looked at economic theory in depth, here. In any case, all of this is perfectly consistent with what I said earlier. When the transistor arrives, vacuum tubes are just swept aside despite the fixed costs. Ten years did that, less in fact, I was there. There's a rather extreme threshold effect, once the right price point is passed, the old tech just falls off a cliff. There's a great chart of that happening to Kodak due to digital photography, extremely suddenly, despite all the fixed costs. They were making their best profits one year, staring at death the next. This link is close to the chart I remember seeing. Note the extraordinary difference one year makes! Every mall had a very expensive photo developing plant, then not. Scrap value only. https://macromon.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/creative-destruction-2-0/ https://macromon.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/creative-destructi... Because solar power effectiveness varies geographically the cliff will be a bit smoother, of course. Only in a real banana republic could you hold new tech off for a half-century, and you'd need to halt trade to do it. I'm old, I've seen a lot of change, and tons of valuable things - including large amounts of infrastructure, become valueless very suddenly, not to mention my collection of VCR tapes. There is such a thing as first-mover advantage, but that applies to new tech not old, so I'm assuming you don't mean to refer to that. I regret your stooping to vituperation. It wasn't necessary, or accurate.
anovikov 10y ago
But fusion won't be available in 10 years either. There is a long, long way from net energy positive to mass rollout. Fusion is going to be harder than fission, and fission took 30 years from first controlled fission to 1% of electricity supply, which is the lowest which i could call 'mass rollout'. In 10 years though, renewables will be definitely making it - becoming cheaper than any new type of generation , probably almost stopping construction of any new non-relewable generation. Peak use of fossil fuels for electricity generation is now projected to happen in 2025. Trillions of dollars are being invested in infrastructure now - and yes, it is mostly investment into renewables already.

adrianN 10y ago

Cheap and abundant energy was already promised with nuclear and didn't happen. What makes you think that renewables will become "too cheap to meter"?

eviltandem 10y ago

Until someone figures out how to miniaturize it into something to fit in his chest to stop shrapnel from entering his heart... then realizes he has way more than enough power to run a super suit. He'll do this all in a cave of course.