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We've been hearing this for decades.

by erfgh 9y ago

dtech 9y ago
Much like Fusion energy, AI that is able to pass the Turing test is 30 years away and has been so for 50 years.
- Retric 9y ago
  Fusion has gotten a lot closer over time, we simply don't fund it very much. ITER will have net positive fusion thermal energy production capacity in 2019. We are not going to fuel it with tritium for years after completion. It could have generated electricity and put it on the grid, but we kept scaling it back to save money in large part because that electricity would have not been worth the investment. Unfortunately, we have no path to cheap fusion power. Currently, we would be vastly better off building wind/solar/coal/nuclear etc than fusion.
  - disp1 9y ago
    "It could have generated electricity and put it on the grid" I don't think so. It may be approaching net positive energy production, but ITER was not designed to have that energy converted to electricity, it is lost. There is no way ITER was EVER going to generate electricity. (REF https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines)
    - Retric 9y ago
      Initial designs as in going back to the late 80's included much larger net energy generation and a steam loop for actually generating power. The ITER that was being conceived in 1988 was a much bigger machine than the one that is being built today and its nominal fusion power was expected at 1000 MW, as opposed to 500 today. https://www.iter.org/newsline/239/1328 https://www.iter.org/newsline/239/1328 The reason for this was you would then have a larger cushion if estimates for power generation where off and an actual test of extracting useful heat past the super conducting loops vs simply cooling the device.
  - Symmetry 9y ago
    We might have a path to cheap fusion power. Advances in superconductors stemming from MRI research have really shrunk the minimum size of a fusion reactor and one group at least is trying to take advantage of that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor

We've been hearing this for decades.

by erfgh 9y ago

We've been hearing this for decades.

dtech 9y ago

Much like Fusion energy, AI that is able to pass the Turing test is 30 years away and has been so for 50 years.

Retric 9y ago
Fusion has gotten a lot closer over time, we simply don't fund it very much. ITER will have net positive fusion thermal energy production capacity in 2019. We are not going to fuel it with tritium for years after completion. It could have generated electricity and put it on the grid, but we kept scaling it back to save money in large part because that electricity would have not been worth the investment. Unfortunately, we have no path to cheap fusion power. Currently, we would be vastly better off building wind/solar/coal/nuclear etc than fusion.
- disp1 9y ago
  "It could have generated electricity and put it on the grid" I don't think so. It may be approaching net positive energy production, but ITER was not designed to have that energy converted to electricity, it is lost. There is no way ITER was EVER going to generate electricity. (REF https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines)
  - Retric 9y ago
    Initial designs as in going back to the late 80's included much larger net energy generation and a steam loop for actually generating power. The ITER that was being conceived in 1988 was a much bigger machine than the one that is being built today and its nominal fusion power was expected at 1000 MW, as opposed to 500 today. https://www.iter.org/newsline/239/1328 https://www.iter.org/newsline/239/1328 The reason for this was you would then have a larger cushion if estimates for power generation where off and an actual test of extracting useful heat past the super conducting loops vs simply cooling the device.
- Symmetry 9y ago
  We might have a path to cheap fusion power. Advances in superconductors stemming from MRI research have really shrunk the minimum size of a fusion reactor and one group at least is trying to take advantage of that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_fusion_reactor