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Nuclear fusion is on the brink of a milestone, but faces lack of funding [audio]
- jlebrech 9y agonuclear fusion is always 10 years away.
- cs702 9y ago...just like AGI
- Retric 9y agoI thought it was nuclear fusion was always 50 years away that sounds like a lot of progress. PS: Considering it was 50 years away in 1980 we seem to be on track. Mostly though it just does not get much funding.
- visarga 9y agoI watched a video about fusion where they say we have better superconductors now - the so called REBCO tape, that are cheap and most importantly - can generate stronger magnetic fields. So they can shrink the reactor 10x and make it cheaper and faster than the ITER project. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
- Retric 9y agoSounds like they are ignoring a huge swath of problems. So yes, with a lot of effort you could design a smaller and less expensive to construct structure assuming higher field strengths, but it would take massive amounts of time and R&D to get to that point. IMO, we really just need to bite the bullet and build something at scale. Version 1 needs not be efficient, but it's going to teach us a lot more about operations than simulations can.
- DennisP 9y agoReactors similar to MIT's ARC proposal have been built in about four years. You can do more experiments, do them faster, and since it's so much cheaper you can do more of them and take more risks. Speeding up progress is one of MIT's main objectives.
- wcarss 9y agobuilding something _at scale_ is basically the approach ITER has taken, and there is a different kind of problem in it: people & project management at that scale are very tough. Maybe tougher than the engineering even is. When you need many countries to smoothly co-operate on a many-billion-dollar decades-long project that's hard to swiftly articulate or grasp, let alone pivot, while technology and geopolitics swiftly shifts around you, you're going to have a bad time. ARC with modern superconductors is in many ways ITER but capable of being built on a multi-university budget, by virtue of those superconductors being much more powerful while being much smaller and lightweight and operating closer to room-temperature. The whole reactor needed for the same energy scale a ITER is physically much smaller. The PSFC at MIT (who is proposing this plan) built the last great tokamak that got us closest to real fusion back in the 90s and that inspired ITER. ITER was the best plan available after that: the project size was necessary given conditions at the outset. Now many people are committed to it, and we're many billions in, so it likely isn't going away. But ARC is probably a better version of basically the same plan given today's outlook: a scaled up tokamak, doable at university, national-lab, or skunkworks-level project sizes. So I believe we could see huge progress from this in the next 5 years. The only thing I have not seen articulated in Zach Hartwig or Dennis Whyte's otherwise fantastic talks in the past year is: what's next? What are the concrete steps between today and some version of ARC? They don't seem to be raising money yet, so it is clear there are some open questions about the other innovations in the ARC design, and I want to hear how/when we expect those to be solved or at least well-defined.
- Retric 9y agoThe problem in my mind is ITER is not really viable to produce power at reasonable costs. To be useful it would need to produce something like 5GW of heat for similar costs. Thus, ARC needs to be more than 10X as good to avoid hitting ITER scale in production.
- roceasta 9y agoFusion progress chart: http://imgur.com/BN0pz http://imgur.com/BN0pz
- WalterSear 9y agoI'm building one with '80s technology. That way, not only will I complete it, but I'll be able to include 20 years or so of improvements before I even turn it on.
- jamesrcole 9y agoThere's an implicit claim there that the future will be like the past. Ie it has always been like this, thus it will continue to be so. What's your argument for that? (I'm not making any claim about whether it will be it not)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hwillis 9y agoThis is a low-impact segment. I skipped around a lot but it's incredibly light on information. Like 20% is spent on explaining what fusion is, which is just wasted air. The only substance is a super-light overview of ITER. No mention of the couple dozen fusion startups. >Nuclear fusion is on the brink of a major milestone ITER is supposed to ignite in 2025 if it stays on schedule. The project is in continual jeopardy from people pulling out. Fusion is bleak despite large variety in research[1]. This whole thing could be reduced to a 30 second endorsement soundbyte. Instead it's a longform that gives no actual idea of the state of fusion. [1]: http://fusion4freedom.us/intensive-analysis-lockheed-martins-fusion-effort/ http://fusion4freedom.us/intensive-analysis-lockheed-martins...
- jessriedel 9y agoReally appreciate a summary like this, even when brief. I wish people would take a cue from academia and post more abstracts/tldr's. The 80k Hours podcast does a fantastic job at this, providing a full transcript, a summary of the key points, and a time-indexed table of contents. https://80000hours.org/2017/08/podcast-we-are-not-worried-enough-about-the-next-pandemic/ https://80000hours.org/2017/08/podcast-we-are-not-worried-en...
- msla 9y ago> I wish people would take a cue from academia and post more abstracts/tldr's. Then they get downvoted by people who think "TL;DR READ IT" is a masterful blow against everything wrong with Kids Today. To be more serious, there's enough people who apparently regard summaries as lazy that it's hard to predict whether they'll be welcome in any given forum. Caring or not caring about downvotes aside, posting stuff that's unwelcome isn't very sociable.
- tj-teej 9y agoIt is lazy, but only if the summaries are replacing actually reading the content. Also a summary is only as good as it is accurate. If the piece being summarized has sufficient nuance it can't be summarized well, or is at a higher risk of being summarized incorrectly. There's a joke here somewhere about judging a book by its cover.
- zimablue 9y agoI think the point of oil is more that it's portable than that it's great for burning in power plants, we already have renewables, coal and gas and only burn oil to fill any remaining deficit. Electric cars will kill oil more than fusion would, I think.
- sandworm101 9y agoPlastics. Lubricants. We will still be using oil long after we stop burning it.
- mikeash 9y agoI suspect they're using "oil" as shorthand for "fossil fuels."
- sremani 9y agoThe cheaper oil is the more reliant the market gets on Oil. There are billions of dollars of investments going into plastics in US and abroad. The conventional wells are profitable at $15 per barrel. The only way to exit oil is either is too cheap for mass production or its to expensive for mass consumption. Currently, I do not see either scenario happening.
- ageofwant 9y agoI suspect that if viable fusion power plants become a reality today we will be burning synthesized hydrocarbon fuel for centuries to come. There is vast hydrocarbon fuel infrastructure in place already. If it costs a few cents to synthesise oil from air because you have hyper abundant fusion energy on hand then it would be silly to throw away the infrastructure we have.
- johnchristopher 9y agoNuclear tech breakthrough or not, oil as fuel is sooner than later going to be obsolete.
- MBCook 9y agoCan we mark this [podcast] or something like that? It's not an article that can be read.
- dang 9y agoYes. We use [audio] for that by analogy with [video]. Added.
- bhhaskin 9y agoOil isn't going anywhere any time soon. We might not use it for energy production, but it is a key ingredient in pretty much any modern technology. From plastics to asphalt. Until we can find away to synthesis or substitute it, it will be around for the foreseeable future.
- the8472 9y agoSynthesizing it from organic waste is possible today. It is mostly a question of efficiency.
- astrodust 9y agoWith really inexpensive electricity it would be trivial to manufacture synthetic hydrocarbons, or even reprocess existing stock into new forms. The biggest barrier today is that it's more energy efficient to dig up new oil than to make it.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoBill Nye lamented in his book "Unstoppable" that while he invested in a company that created synthetic hydrocarbons from algae, the company found the margins to be too thin for typical fuels like methane or gasoline, but were highly profitable for long chain hydrocarbons used in applications such as makeup.
- csomar 9y agoFree energy will make the world a better place in unimaginable way.
- giardini 9y agoIts always the same story: "We're on the brink of X, but we need more money." where X is: - a cure for cancer (one of the oldest and still working), a testable string theory, nuclear fusion, genetic engineering, flying cars, a cure for AIDS, for addiction, for cellulite, or for that fungus that's been festering in your crotch for 10 years now, [insert your favorite here], ..., etc. Never, never, never will you hear: "We've got enough money, please don't send more!" or "We have the solution, it has been validated by an independent group and it works! You can get it today!" Which reminds me of an old joke: Bob: "Hey, didja hear? They finally found a cure for marital infidelity!" Fred: "You don't say? What is it?" Bob: "Nudity!"
- Retric 9y agoA hell of a lot more people survive cancer now than 50 years ago. Make the same list 100 years ago or 100 years from now and it's a different list... Because progress happens, some things are just more complex than SV style innovation and this weeks next big thing.
- giardini 9y agoWhat do you mean by "survive"? My experience is that no one survives a confirmed diagnosis of cancer. By "survive" _I_ mean that their life is unaffected and they die of something else and that their death is not sped by cancer. Oh, there's the occasional "miracle" out there, but no one's paying attention to potential false positive diagnoses (i.e., person was diagnosed with cancer, is treated, later turns out to not be cancer at all, he's a "miracle", thank you Jesus, thank you Lord!)
- Retric 9y agoYour redefining the term. If someone survives a car crash they may have suffered massive trauma they are just not dead. The odds of being alive 20 years after a cancer diagnosis are not nearly as bad is you might think. Around 2x as many people are diagnosed with cancer every year as die from it.
- nickik 9y agoWe don't need new innovation. Nuclear fission is already here, we don't even need fusion to make oil, coal and gas obsolte. We could mass produce Liquid Molten Salt Reactors or many other reactors with current technology, current manufacturing processes and replace all carbon we use now and fulfil the growing demand. I simply dont understand why people continue to hope for fusion when they refuse fission.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoWeapons-grade byproducts, radiation leaks, Homer Simpson, Chernobyl, Fukushima...list goes on. People have all sorts of deep seated fears about fission. They don't have to be accurate to be afraid. Knowledgeable people are aware that more people have died falling off of roofs trying to install solar panels than have ever died from a nuclear power plant. The problem is insufficient propaganda from the nuclear fission industry. The tech works fine, but people don't believe it.
- icebraining 9y agoIt doesn't help that governments seem hellbent into destroying its credibility. When the Health Ministry starts distributing iodine tablets "just in case"[1], is it any wonder that people get scared? [1] http://www.dw.com/en/belgium-says-its-nuclear-plants-are-safe-but-here-are-some-iodine-pills-just-in-case/a-19223966 http://www.dw.com/en/belgium-says-its-nuclear-plants-are-saf...
- altrus 9y agoThe contingency plans in place to respond to radiation hazards generally focus on the sheltering and evacuation of affected people. Depending on the local geography, population distribution, and infrastructure, it might take several days to evacuate the impacted population, or it might be challenging to ensure comprehensive and uniform resource distribution. Because of the time required to evacuate people from the impacted areas, one of the objectives of a response plan would be to minimize radiation exposure due to contaminated food and water. Providing iodine tablets before an accident is intended to minimize radioactive exposure due to contaminated food and water sources from the time the hazard is discovered to the time you are evacuated, and allows planners to apply those resources that would otherwise be spent distributing those supplies to helping evacuate more people, or responding to the incident.
- inestyne 9y agoThere's portability+density issue with renewable or even free electric. You cant run planes, trains, ships, heavy industry, heavy haulers, etc om battery. And thats where the lions share of fossil is burnt.
- mavhc 9y agoTrains are easy to run on electricity. Heavy industry? Surely that's mostly static. Transport is 26% of world energy usage, oil is 31% of world energy source. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=23832 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=23832 says that 12% of energy use for transport is air, 12% ships. So probably 75% of transport energy usage could be replaced by electricity. So about 75% of oil usage could be replaced easily.
- FooBarWidget 9y agoUh, 100% of the trains in the Netherlands run on electricity. Renewable electricity even. Our tracks are one of the busiest in the world. They just installed electric lines on all rails.
- throwawayaway12 9y agoAre they talking about inertially confined fusion or magnetically confined fusion (OR something else)? Cant listen to the podcast at the moment.
- vortico 9y agoThere's no such thing as a single "breakthrough" in fusion, and it bugs me whenever news outlets claim it's "just around the corner" or "it just requires a genius to figure it out". Fusion is achieved by many incremental improvements on the design of the facility, the macroscopic structure of the fuel, and its material makeup. There are two ways humans can have self-sustaining fusion. See my crappy log-log plot: http://i.imgur.com/ZfCueCe.png http://i.imgur.com/ZfCueCe.png Inertial confinement fusion starts at the red point and goes straight up without heating up the plasma much. After it stagnates for ~2-5ns, the high-pressure plasma equilibrates so its temperature rises, putting it in the fusion range. The higher the pressure, the higher the final temperature, and ideally you want to get as deep into the fusion range as possible to more efficiently burn the fuel. The state of art neutron energy yield per laser capacitor yield is around 100%, but we need at least 5000% to make up the inefficiency of charging capacitors, amplifying lasers, converting neutron kinetic energy into steam, generating electricity via turbines, and still have some left over to supply a power grid. Magnetic confinement fusion starts at the red point and goes to the right over a few milliseconds. The pressure is always about 1 atmosphere, so you have to get really hot. Tokamaks can hold this position for a few seconds, which is needed for efficient fusion to account for the slow burning because of low pressures. I'm not sure exactly what the engineering challenges of magnetic confinement are, but I can say that storing anything that hot for a while is very damaging to the tokamak, while at the same time you must have strong and precise magnets placed around it. There's really no other way of getting into that "fusion" area of the plot. If you try to draw a diagonal line, you wouldn't be able to keep pressurizing because high temperature makes plasma difficult to compress. You have to choose one of the above two general methods, and the design space is pretty well explored, so there's not going to be a large breakthrough that researchers have completely missed at this point. Fusion will be achieved by a sequence of 1% improvements month by month, so law makers and tax payers must understand this when they allocate X dollars and are disappointed that their grant only gave a 10% improvement on previous methods.
- naasking 9y ago> There's no such thing as a single "breakthrough" in fusion, and it bugs me whenever news outlets claim it's "just around the corner" or "it just requires a genius to figure it out". Fusion is achieved by many incremental improvements on the design of the facility, the macroscopic structure of the fuel, and its material makeup. This would be true for an overly complicated fusion reactor design. There might be approaches that rethink basic assumptions. The remainder of your post focuses on the two main research avenues being explored with big money behind them. It's possible that smaller efforts, like Focus Fusion, or Polywell fusion might actually work though.
- kkwteh 9y agoThis talk by Zach Hartwig from IAP 2017 "MIT's Pathway to Fusion Energy" is fantastic. Hartwig is an assistant professor in the Nuclear Science & Engineering department at MIT. He presents a straightforward overview of the basic science involved as well as the most promising technologies today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk
- bsder 9y agoProbably the only tech video I have watched completely in the last 12 months (I hate video--it's such a slow way to transmit information). While it clearly is a bit of marketing for his own baby (tokamak with modern superconducting magnets), it has a lot of good technical points. The big one being that tokamak is the only fusion technology anywhere near being commercially feasible--by several orders of magnitude.
- jhallenworld 9y agoI've been watching Isaac Arthur's interesting youtube channel recently. He points out that fusion is really nice, but is not actually necessary since we have the sun. If you think "dyson swarm" big, you can capture all of the energy you could ever need from the sun, and without the need for any particularly advanced technology. https://futurism.com/could-humanity-ever-really-build-a-dyson-sphere/ https://futurism.com/could-humanity-ever-really-build-a-dyso... So what can you do with abundant energy? One thing is to make "active" structures like launch loops. This would allow you to make buildings larger than would be possible with normal materials (but your building collapses if there is a power failure). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_structure
- gozur88 9y agoYou can't build "dyson swarm big" without a whole lot of cheap energy, though. It's a chicken and egg problem.
- SoMisanthrope 9y agoLove me some fusion. Was really excited that Bussard's project was given a breath of life. Wish someone would fund the build of the full-scale wiffleball... maybe some day :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell http://www.emc2fusion.org/ http://www.emc2fusion.org/
- strictnein 9y agoI look forward to my fusion powered self driving car that uses a quantum computer to run a fully realized AI.
- jacknews 9y agoI'm not really qualified to assess this piece, which suggests the brass ring isn't what it seems in any case: http://thebulletin.org/fusion-reactors-not-what-they%E2%80%99re-cracked-be10699 http://thebulletin.org/fusion-reactors-not-what-they%E2%80%9...
- paulrpotts 9y agoNuclear fusion has been "on the brink of a milestone" for my entire lifetime. I think I can be forgiven a certain skepticism. Reading about ITER's troubles in detail over the years, I've come to believe that there is a mechanism where fusion can self-assemble, stabilize, and produce a continuous, reliable usable feed of energy at scale, only occasionally resulting in catastrophic failure. It's called a "star." Attempting to stabilize and contain the process and exploit the process at a smaller scale honestly does not seem feasible to me at this point.