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That line of reasoning sounds backwards. The benefits would be clean, limitless energy and why is it likely that it will have a high capital cost and why would

That line of reasoning sounds backwards. The benefits would be clean, limitless energy and why is it likely that it will have a high capital cost and why wouldn't that be dwarfed by the availability of clean, limitless energy? Claiming that somehow storage for renewables is a much more useful goal sounds more like ideology than anything. Take the money currently going into solar and wind and put it to use there instead. Solar and wind will never provide anything even close to what is needed for the energy needs of future generations or for any kind of progress in ex space exploration.

pfdietz 8y ago
The high capital cost of fusion follows from some fundamental aspects of fusion reactor engineering. http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trouble-With-Fusion_MIT_Tech_Review_1983.pdf http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trou...
- ThomPete 8y ago
  “Long touted as an inexhaustible energy source for the next century, fusion as it is now being developed will almost certainly be too expensive and unreliable for commercial use.” "As it is now being developed"
  - pfdietz 8y ago
    Lidsky was advocating movement to advanced fuels. Unfortunately, his PhD student Todd Rider shot down most of those schemes (the ones using non-Maxwellian plasmas). After that, Lidsky transitioned to fission and spent the rest of his career working on that. If fusion is to have a glimmer of hope, it's D-3He (which produces maybe 5% of the neutrons of DT). But 3He is very difficult to get. Mining the moon for it is probably impractical, because the concentration of 3He in the regolith is too low (and the moon could only power Earth for about 1000 years even if it could be mined).
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      The future is a long time. Most breakthrough technologies are based on often decades or even centuries of research.
      - pfdietz 8y ago
        Perhaps. On the other hand, there are many more technologies than there are market niches for them to fill, so most technologies will be losers. I see nothing that tells me fusion won't be a loser. The attachment some people have to it is bizarre. It's like they were told when they were young and naive that fusion was going to be the future, and are unable to revise their programmed opinions in light of contrary evidence.
        ThomPete 8y ago
        Well I can tell you for sure that wind and solar are loosers. So unless you have a better idea I have a hard time understanding what your point is.
        pfdietz 8y ago
        How can you tell that wind and solar are losers? Their market shares are expanding rapidly across the world. They seem to be winning in the marketplace, not losing.
        ThomPete 8y ago
        They provide less than 1% of the worlds energy needs and even if you project up to 2040 they are still only going to be providing around 3% of the worlds energy needs. How is that winning? So perhaps you are the one who's been too tied to one specific narrative that's not holding up to reality.
        pfdietz 8y ago
        In the magical world in which your argument there would be correct, technologies jump from 0 to dominant market share in a single discontinuous leap. But we do not live in that cartoon universe. Here in real world, market share increases nearly continuously. On the way from 0 to 100, it passes near all the intermediate points. What distinguishes a losing technology is not that it ever had a low market share -- all winning technologies did at some point -- but that they stop growing, and start losing market share. That describes nuclear, not renewables.

pfdietz 8y ago

The high capital cost of fusion follows from some fundamental aspects of fusion reactor engineering. http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trouble-With-Fusion_MIT_Tech_Review_1983.pdf http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trou...

ThomPete 8y ago
“Long touted as an inexhaustible energy source for the next century, fusion as it is now being developed will almost certainly be too expensive and unreliable for commercial use.” "As it is now being developed"
- pfdietz 8y ago
  Lidsky was advocating movement to advanced fuels. Unfortunately, his PhD student Todd Rider shot down most of those schemes (the ones using non-Maxwellian plasmas). After that, Lidsky transitioned to fission and spent the rest of his career working on that. If fusion is to have a glimmer of hope, it's D-3He (which produces maybe 5% of the neutrons of DT). But 3He is very difficult to get. Mining the moon for it is probably impractical, because the concentration of 3He in the regolith is too low (and the moon could only power Earth for about 1000 years even if it could be mined).
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    The future is a long time. Most breakthrough technologies are based on often decades or even centuries of research.
    - pfdietz 8y ago
      Perhaps. On the other hand, there are many more technologies than there are market niches for them to fill, so most technologies will be losers. I see nothing that tells me fusion won't be a loser. The attachment some people have to it is bizarre. It's like they were told when they were young and naive that fusion was going to be the future, and are unable to revise their programmed opinions in light of contrary evidence.
      - ThomPete 8y ago
        Well I can tell you for sure that wind and solar are loosers. So unless you have a better idea I have a hard time understanding what your point is.
        pfdietz 8y ago
        How can you tell that wind and solar are losers? Their market shares are expanding rapidly across the world. They seem to be winning in the marketplace, not losing.
        ThomPete 8y ago
        They provide less than 1% of the worlds energy needs and even if you project up to 2040 they are still only going to be providing around 3% of the worlds energy needs. How is that winning? So perhaps you are the one who's been too tied to one specific narrative that's not holding up to reality.
        pfdietz 8y ago
        In the magical world in which your argument there would be correct, technologies jump from 0 to dominant market share in a single discontinuous leap. But we do not live in that cartoon universe. Here in real world, market share increases nearly continuously. On the way from 0 to 100, it passes near all the intermediate points. What distinguishes a losing technology is not that it ever had a low market share -- all winning technologies did at some point -- but that they stop growing, and start losing market share. That describes nuclear, not renewables.