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It sounds like you think fusion would be a great alternative source of energy since you're comparing it to fossil fuel exploration. However, this is not necess
by olau 8y ago
It sounds like you think fusion would be a great alternative source of energy since you're comparing it to fossil fuel exploration.
However, this is not necessarily true. It not only has to work, it also has to be economical and not have significant drawbacks.
I think that's very much up in the air. Compare it to fission - we know how to build those power plants, but it's just so damn hard that it's too expensive, compared to alternatives like photovoltaics and wind turbines.
And those are getting cheaper and cheaper at an incredible rate at the moment. So it's a moving target.
And yes, solar and wind rely on intermittent sources of energy, so you need to combine them with some kind of dispatchable source/storage to match the demand curve, but you have that too with a fission plant because of the high capital cost, and I don't see why it wouldn't be true for fusion too, unless somebody comes up with a way of building a really cheap fusion plant.
- wuliwong 8y agoI agree. I hear the comments about a lack of funding but to me it isn't necessarily a lack of vision from politicians and businessmen. I have a Ph.D. in physics and even worked for 6 months full-time in the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab as an undergraduate and I still hav mixed feelings about fusion power, particular vs other non-fossil fuel options.
- ghaff 8y agoAmong other things, there's a perception of fusion as this clean, infinite energy source. I haven't followed fusion carefully for a good many years but back when I was studying material science, radiation embrittlement of fusion reactor shielding was an area of active research. It wasn't clear that you didn't end up with just as much radioactive waste from fusion as you did with fission. Don't know what the current thinking on that is but it was one practical challenge in the past.
- dodobirdlord 8y agoSure, we might, but the "issue" of management of macro-scale solid radioactive waste has never been anything but nonsense. It is a completely manufactured "problem." Mix it with concrete and cast it into large bricks so that it's hard to lose and infeasible to steal, vacuum seal it in plastic wrap as a precaution against outgassing, drive it to the seaside in lead lined semi trucks and toss it off the continental shelf.
- olau 8y agoThat kind of thinking in the past has lead to toxic consumer fish close to where I live - can't remember if it's mercury or dioxin. It is actually pretty hard to come up with a solution that's going to be safe for 1000 of years. I might be wrong but I think all countries so far has opted for the solution of putting the stuff somewhere they can keep an eye on it, and possibly get it up again in case somebody figures out a use for it.
- drjesusphd 8y agoYes, neutron activation is an issue that needs to be handled safely. But the isotopes produced this way tend to be short-lived, with half lives around a decade. Not the same challenge of storing radioactive waste on geological timescales.