3 ms·
That depends on how hot we're talking. I'm not up-to-date on the latest hot fusion work (so I might very well be completely wrong here) but I'd have naively ass
by cyphar 7y ago
That depends on how hot we're talking. I'm not up-to-date on the latest hot fusion work (so I might very well be completely wrong here) but I'd have naively assumed that containment would be a significant limitation of having stable hot fusion reactors. Most research fusion reactors I've seen online only run for minutes at most -- and that's with net-negative fusion.
- ben_w 7y agoFrom what I’ve been told, the runtime limit is mainly because they have a stringent and tiny limit on the lifetime radiation production of their reactors. These limits are not technological, they are because the reactors are research projects. I believe the main losses are plasma instabilities, rather than the energy cost of the containment. This is somewhat secondhand knowledge though, I merely used to hang out in a pub with someone who worked in this field.
- vlovich123 7y agohttps://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29074/skunk-works-exotic-fusion-reactor-program-moves-forward-with-larger-more-powerful-design https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29074/skunk-works-exot... Basically there's lot of research into how to do containment that's far more efficient than Tokamak reactors that suffer from the problem you mention. A 100 years is a really long time to bet against given how the pace of our innovation is constantly increasing, let alone 3000 years. Keep in mind that thorium has 3x the capacity & we don't even have reactors to process that so even "regular" has a very long shelf-life. Uranium scarcity isn't a thing when compared with global warming & meets our energy needs drastically better than solar/wind & even hydro while having a much more compact ecological foot-print.