12 ms·

FWIW, I consider fusion power to be one of two possible black swan events that will change the the future from what we consider 'gloom and doom' into something

FWIW, I consider fusion power to be one of two possible black swan events that will change the the future from what we consider 'gloom and doom' into something much more fun to live in. The other, if you're wondering, is fully decoded cell biology[1]. So if we have enough energy to operate at a high standard of living without any imported raw material, it enables countries to switch from energy negative economies to energy positive economies. For example African countries that smelt the iron and aluminum that is being mined and exporting finished goods rather than raw materials can capture more of the economic value of those resources and keep it local. Building transport systems based on indigenous electricity generation, removing dependency on pipelines and other fossil fuel taxes. At a low enough cost, excess energy allows for the production of fresh water from seawater, nitrogen from the atmosphere (for fertilizer and farming), and long chain hydrocarbons (gas, oil, plastics, etc) using the Fischer-Tropsch cycle. [1] Basically we know a lot about how cells work and I expect at some point we will know exactly how they work, allowing us a genetically remove errors that result in disease, regenerate and replace any component of the body, and fix any side effects from material exposure (like cancer).

epistasis 8y ago
I don't understand your enthusiasm here, what are the potential wins of fusion energy over any other energy source that we currently have? Do you expect it to be super cheap, i.e. more than an order of magnitude cheaper than solar? If so, how do you justify that belief? I ask this of everyone that's enthusiastic about fusion, but I've never heard a reason why fusion is such a desirable energy source.
- fromthestart 8y ago
  Fusion is safe, clean, produces no waste, runs 24/7 on demand, and after startup costs should be cheap, assuming repairs and maintenance aren't enormously costly. Not to mention, more space efficient than wind or solar. You don't need a particular environemt for it like hydro. No more minig/drilling for energy. No more emissions. No toxic waste. No hourly power variability. No need for batteries. Fusion is the perfect energy source on paper, if it ever becomes a reality.
  - popotamonga 8y ago
    I wonder about politics. No country needs another country for energy anymore. Hum...
  - ben_w 8y ago
    D+D => 2% He4, 49% T (radioactive) + proton, 49% He3 + neutron (to a first approximation, the only radiation which makes almost everything else radioactive). All tritium-based reactions require a steady manufacture of tritium because the half life is too short. All He3-based reactions either require it to be manufactured (conveniently it’s the decay product of tritium, unfortunately see the earlier paragraph for side effects), or mined — from a gas giant, because despite the meme, concentrations on the moon are so low that it makes more sense to turn moon rock into plasma, separate by isotope in a cyclotron, condense the metal into cylinders, catapult the cylinders to earth, and the burn the cylinders in a repurposed coal plant. Even if you want to call fusion “clean” because you can design it so the radioisotopes the neutron activation gives you are mostly benign, or because you’re hoping for an aneutronic reaction like P-B11, it’s still a proliferation hazard. On the other hand, I’d love to see a rocket made from an open-ended fusion reactor.
    - aaron_m04 8y ago
      Can't tritium be bred in the reactor walls from lithium?
      - ben_w 8y ago
        Yes, by absorbing neutrons. It’s a good use for the neutrons, but neutrons (and any source of them) are both a hazard in themselves and a proliferation risk.
    - candiodari 8y ago
      Fusion is an energy source. Like any other energy source it's automatically also a weapon. All energy sources have historically saved many more lives than they ever cost, including nuclear power. And even solar power is a weapon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#Heat_ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#Heat_ray
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- millstone 8y ago
  Fusion potentially solve a lot of the problems of renewables: 1. Can be built anywhere, not just where there's wind/sun/hydro. 2. Can provide baseload power because the output can be controlled. Renewables (excepting hydro) require storage for baseload power. 3. Can be centralized which makes it more compatible with existing electrical grids.
  - epistasis 8y ago
    So if we take existing natural gas plants, and ignore the emissions, they are identical. We've been ignoring emissions forever. So I don't see what is a "black swan" event at all about fusion. At best it's a drop in replacement for what we have now. But it looks to be immensely expensive, far more expensive than renewables plus batteries.
    - mtgx 8y ago
      I tend to agree. What if solar plus batteries are actually another one of those black swans but one with a (very) slow fuse rather than a big bang breakthrough?!
      - candiodari 8y ago
        Solar plus batteries comes with 1) massive investment (at the moment at least) 2) enormous physical footprint, which needs to be solved either through reserving large amounts of space for it, or by having a large transmission grid and all the services required around that 3) lots of greenhouse emissions to produce 1 and 2 in the first place
        epistasis 8y ago
        Neither of these are difficult to deal with. For battery costs, I posted this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18808842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18808842 Batteries are dropping in cost far faster than nearly anybody realizes, and people seem to think we're paying 8088 costs when we're up to pentium costs for computing. Space concerns are pretty minor, it really doesn't take much compared to current human land use. In addition to covering land that's already used by humans for parking or building, we will likely see more farm land that's currently producing things like soybeans or field corn converted to solar farms, and solar is more environmentally friendly to those ecosystems than the current farming practice. Neither of these have significant greenhouse emissions, and as the energy supply chain lessens its carbon use so will all the manufacturing and recycling.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  Fusion power is 24x7 (unlike solar) and can provide base load. Fuel transportation costs are minimal as there is enough D2 in pretty much any source of water (even rainwater) to provide all the deuterium you need. You need a bit of lithium to make tritium but on the order of a few hundred kilograms, not tonnes. So a water truck and maybe a dump truck can transport the raw material you need for power generation to a local power plant. That means no oil or gas pipeline, no train loads of coal. Just a couple of easy to acquire vehicles on a trip that they do, perhaps every couple of YEARs. And this power plant isn't your typical 10MW peaker plant that runs on Natural gas, no a fusion plant of the type being discussed in the article and elsewhere are multi-gigawatt plants. So imagine the entire energy budget for California provided by a dozen power plants[1] that are fueled up once a year by a couple of trucks. So it is easier on infrastructure because you can distribute plants around, it makes the fuel issue a non-problem since there is so much energy available to the process. So think about the externalities that eliminates. No coal fumes, no CO2 generation, no tank cars of oil or coal, no pipelines for natural gas, no risk of contamination, and no long term waste that escapes the plant. Those advantages are especially powerful in a country like Japan which imports fossil fuels for their energy production, or Somalia which is economically constrained by an inability to protect pipelines that might otherwise operate a fossil fuel power plant. Or Israel which is using power to desalinate water. Having the ability to generate the entire economy's domestic requirement for energy with a fuel that is both locally accessible and easily transported, means that you stabilize geo-political issues like the Russian gas pipelines going into the European Union[2]. The availability of energy, in quantity, reliably, also jump starts investment in manufacturing, refining, and other energy intensive endeavors. [1] https://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html https://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_sys... [2] https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/why-russian-natural-gas-will-dominate-european-markets/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/why-russian-natural-gas-w...
  - ksec 8y ago
    I assume Fusion can't be used for scaling up and down energy output ( So even if it is baseload it is a constant value ), so we will need some form of Energy Storage to make full use of it? I imagine with AI, Data Science, Robotics, means Manufacturing will move from overseas to local? We can already 3D Print most parts. We cant already do Multi Floor Plant Farming, Currently it is mostly an electricity issues, if that becomes cheap enough we could do Plant based meat based on it. So every nation on earth will become self sustainable by default? How is Economy going to change with much less trading?
- eptcyka 8y ago
  If fusion ever becomes practical, this could be a game changer for a lot of countries which rely on other countries to provide them with power (e.g. the Baltics rely on Russia for gas).
j16sdiz 8y ago
Otoh, many petroleum exporting country will become worthless because their land is incapable for other users...
ksec 8y ago
>fully decoded cell biology Am I the only one thinking we are stepping into an area which is an act of God. And needs to be 1000000x careful with what we do. ( We already mess about with Food...... )
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  Depends on your theology. Is a car running over a deer the act of the entity who made the car? Or is it an act of the entity that is controlling the car? Upon such questions many a thesis has been written.
- jazzyjackson 8y ago
  you'll get downvoted for bringing God into it but humans do have a bad habit of arrogance
agumonkey 8y ago
ITER project manager said 1gr of H nuclear power is 8Tons of fossil fuel. That's a game changer of cosmic (literally) proportions.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pfdietz 8y ago
  Except it's not, if the reactor is too expensive. It just becomes a very complicated way of burning money.

epistasis 8y ago

I don't understand your enthusiasm here, what are the potential wins of fusion energy over any other energy source that we currently have? Do you expect it to be super cheap, i.e. more than an order of magnitude cheaper than solar? If so, how do you justify that belief? I ask this of everyone that's enthusiastic about fusion, but I've never heard a reason why fusion is such a desirable energy source.

fromthestart 8y ago
Fusion is safe, clean, produces no waste, runs 24/7 on demand, and after startup costs should be cheap, assuming repairs and maintenance aren't enormously costly. Not to mention, more space efficient than wind or solar. You don't need a particular environemt for it like hydro. No more minig/drilling for energy. No more emissions. No toxic waste. No hourly power variability. No need for batteries. Fusion is the perfect energy source on paper, if it ever becomes a reality.
- popotamonga 8y ago
  I wonder about politics. No country needs another country for energy anymore. Hum...
- ben_w 8y ago
  D+D => 2% He4, 49% T (radioactive) + proton, 49% He3 + neutron (to a first approximation, the only radiation which makes almost everything else radioactive). All tritium-based reactions require a steady manufacture of tritium because the half life is too short. All He3-based reactions either require it to be manufactured (conveniently it’s the decay product of tritium, unfortunately see the earlier paragraph for side effects), or mined — from a gas giant, because despite the meme, concentrations on the moon are so low that it makes more sense to turn moon rock into plasma, separate by isotope in a cyclotron, condense the metal into cylinders, catapult the cylinders to earth, and the burn the cylinders in a repurposed coal plant. Even if you want to call fusion “clean” because you can design it so the radioisotopes the neutron activation gives you are mostly benign, or because you’re hoping for an aneutronic reaction like P-B11, it’s still a proliferation hazard. On the other hand, I’d love to see a rocket made from an open-ended fusion reactor.
  - aaron_m04 8y ago
    Can't tritium be bred in the reactor walls from lithium?
    - ben_w 8y ago
      Yes, by absorbing neutrons. It’s a good use for the neutrons, but neutrons (and any source of them) are both a hazard in themselves and a proliferation risk.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Fusion is an energy source. Like any other energy source it's automatically also a weapon. All energy sources have historically saved many more lives than they ever cost, including nuclear power. And even solar power is a weapon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#Heat_ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#Heat_ray
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
millstone 8y ago
Fusion potentially solve a lot of the problems of renewables: 1. Can be built anywhere, not just where there's wind/sun/hydro. 2. Can provide baseload power because the output can be controlled. Renewables (excepting hydro) require storage for baseload power. 3. Can be centralized which makes it more compatible with existing electrical grids.
- epistasis 8y ago
  So if we take existing natural gas plants, and ignore the emissions, they are identical. We've been ignoring emissions forever. So I don't see what is a "black swan" event at all about fusion. At best it's a drop in replacement for what we have now. But it looks to be immensely expensive, far more expensive than renewables plus batteries.
  - mtgx 8y ago
    I tend to agree. What if solar plus batteries are actually another one of those black swans but one with a (very) slow fuse rather than a big bang breakthrough?!
    - candiodari 8y ago
      Solar plus batteries comes with 1) massive investment (at the moment at least) 2) enormous physical footprint, which needs to be solved either through reserving large amounts of space for it, or by having a large transmission grid and all the services required around that 3) lots of greenhouse emissions to produce 1 and 2 in the first place
      - epistasis 8y ago
        Neither of these are difficult to deal with. For battery costs, I posted this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18808842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18808842 Batteries are dropping in cost far faster than nearly anybody realizes, and people seem to think we're paying 8088 costs when we're up to pentium costs for computing. Space concerns are pretty minor, it really doesn't take much compared to current human land use. In addition to covering land that's already used by humans for parking or building, we will likely see more farm land that's currently producing things like soybeans or field corn converted to solar farms, and solar is more environmentally friendly to those ecosystems than the current farming practice. Neither of these have significant greenhouse emissions, and as the energy supply chain lessens its carbon use so will all the manufacturing and recycling.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
Fusion power is 24x7 (unlike solar) and can provide base load. Fuel transportation costs are minimal as there is enough D2 in pretty much any source of water (even rainwater) to provide all the deuterium you need. You need a bit of lithium to make tritium but on the order of a few hundred kilograms, not tonnes. So a water truck and maybe a dump truck can transport the raw material you need for power generation to a local power plant. That means no oil or gas pipeline, no train loads of coal. Just a couple of easy to acquire vehicles on a trip that they do, perhaps every couple of YEARs. And this power plant isn't your typical 10MW peaker plant that runs on Natural gas, no a fusion plant of the type being discussed in the article and elsewhere are multi-gigawatt plants. So imagine the entire energy budget for California provided by a dozen power plants[1] that are fueled up once a year by a couple of trucks. So it is easier on infrastructure because you can distribute plants around, it makes the fuel issue a non-problem since there is so much energy available to the process. So think about the externalities that eliminates. No coal fumes, no CO2 generation, no tank cars of oil or coal, no pipelines for natural gas, no risk of contamination, and no long term waste that escapes the plant. Those advantages are especially powerful in a country like Japan which imports fossil fuels for their energy production, or Somalia which is economically constrained by an inability to protect pipelines that might otherwise operate a fossil fuel power plant. Or Israel which is using power to desalinate water. Having the ability to generate the entire economy's domestic requirement for energy with a fuel that is both locally accessible and easily transported, means that you stabilize geo-political issues like the Russian gas pipelines going into the European Union[2]. The availability of energy, in quantity, reliably, also jump starts investment in manufacturing, refining, and other energy intensive endeavors. [1] https://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html https://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_sys... [2] https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/why-russian-natural-gas-will-dominate-european-markets/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/why-russian-natural-gas-w...
- ksec 8y ago
  I assume Fusion can't be used for scaling up and down energy output ( So even if it is baseload it is a constant value ), so we will need some form of Energy Storage to make full use of it? I imagine with AI, Data Science, Robotics, means Manufacturing will move from overseas to local? We can already 3D Print most parts. We cant already do Multi Floor Plant Farming, Currently it is mostly an electricity issues, if that becomes cheap enough we could do Plant based meat based on it. So every nation on earth will become self sustainable by default? How is Economy going to change with much less trading?
eptcyka 8y ago
If fusion ever becomes practical, this could be a game changer for a lot of countries which rely on other countries to provide them with power (e.g. the Baltics rely on Russia for gas).

j16sdiz 8y ago

Otoh, many petroleum exporting country will become worthless because their land is incapable for other users...

ksec 8y ago

>fully decoded cell biology Am I the only one thinking we are stepping into an area which is an act of God. And needs to be 1000000x careful with what we do. ( We already mess about with Food...... )

ChuckMcM 8y ago
Depends on your theology. Is a car running over a deer the act of the entity who made the car? Or is it an act of the entity that is controlling the car? Upon such questions many a thesis has been written.
jazzyjackson 8y ago
you'll get downvoted for bringing God into it but humans do have a bad habit of arrogance

agumonkey 8y ago

ITER project manager said 1gr of H nuclear power is 8Tons of fossil fuel. That's a game changer of cosmic (literally) proportions.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pfdietz 8y ago
Except it's not, if the reactor is too expensive. It just becomes a very complicated way of burning money.