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World's Largest Nuclear Fusion Experiment Clears Milestone
- erobbins 7y agoFusion as a power source is only 30 years away now :)
- drallison 7y agoand, if past experience is correct, it will be 30 years away for the next two or three decades.
- walshemj 7y agoI believe that was what they said at the festival of Britain in 1951. "Zeta Hotter Than the Stars" "To Cheap to Meter " :-)
- Iv 7y agoActually with the level of funding it got, that was predicted: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-762f32a6dbfbecc4ec824b604c0571f0.webp https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-762f32a6dbfbecc4ec824b... What the hell happened to optimism and trust in science? We used to be able to say "In 10 years there'll be a man on the moon" without having ever launched anyone in space. Now people doubt that in 50 years we will have a marginally better battery technology... Fusion would be there already if only we had believed in it.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoFunding. Approx five yrs ago I was told by a "big name" in fusion research "It can be done. But the effort needs more money." In comparison, the most recent DoD budget (in the USA) has ballooned to three-quarters of a trillion. It's clear we're not interested in the future.
- flagfeedingusa1 7y agoIt's strange, you have to be educated somewhat to make a comment this ignorant. Where exactly do you think the internet came from that you are using right now at this moment? Where do you think a multitude of inventions and technologies came from? A huge chunk of that DoD budget is specifically for research and development. It's bizarre it's like people learn just enough to solidify their world views then turn off.
- jcranmer 7y agoJust so you realize, the DoD budget does pay for a lot of research. About 15% is directly going into research, and there's about another 10%-ish that's research disguised as procurement. And that research isn't all weapons system--I've been funded by the DoD to do compiler research.
- Retric 7y agoFar less than 25% of the DoD budget is research. Quite a bit could charitably be called R&D with a heavy emphasis on development, but even then it’s not 25%. That said, they do a lot of great research and some of it even stays unclassified.
- jcranmer 7y agoMy source is the DoD's budget itself: https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2020/fy2020_Financial_Summary_Tables.pdf https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudg..., although I am guesstimating at the fraction of procurement put into indirect research.
- Retric 7y agoI assume your referring to: “RESEARCH, DEV, TEST & EVAL“ which yes includes the word research, but that’s far from the only thing involved. Which is why it sticks on Dev Test and Eval. Some of that money involves setting up assembly lines.
- 7y ago
- nine_k 7y agoIf we only believed more in the philosopher's stone! There are fundamental problems in achieving economically viable fusion. Nice and clean reactions that power the sun are way too slow, and need immense volume. Faster reactions produce neutrons and still require temperatures several times higher than inside Sun. Where economy and safety are not the primary concerns, fusion has long been achieved: in bombs.
- Iv 7y agoIt is because we believed in it that chemistry was invented! The worst case by pursuing an impossible thing is that you acquire a ton of knowledge in the process. If ITER fails, what we will have learned about superconducting magnets manufacturing and high-temperature plasma will surely be useful.
- geedy 7y agoOptimism is really, really hard. It requires you to risk looking foolish. Our emotional needs to feel connected work against us staking a position too far away from the norm. But few great things have been accomplished without the risk of looking foolish, at least at the outset.
- pfdietz 7y agoWhat? I constantly see people being optimistic based on nothing more than misplaced wishful thinking. Optimism is the default, officially approved thing you're supposed think about fusion. It's being skeptical that requires effort, since it requires doubting what the media and authority figures tell you.
- solveit 7y agoThat's one of the most depressing pictures I've ever seen.
- BurningFrog 7y agoIn 20 years we will have less pessimism!
- electrograv 7y agoI’m still optimistic about science in general, but sometimes I question the wisdom of our resource allocation: Tech companies making selfie sharing apps make enough money to fund an entire space program several times over, but instead reinvest it in making the next generation of selfie sharing apps. And because all the money is in selfie sharing apps, that’s where a large percentage of the brightest minds go to spend their career (as opposed to something less financially responsible, like nuclear fusion engineering, astronomy, or space flight)
- hueving 7y agoThat's because that's what society wants. People pay for apps or watch ads to get their selfie app. SpaceX lands 3 boosters back on earth and fewer people watch than daily active Snapchat users.
- ikeyany 7y agoIt turns out bright minds love science, but they also love a decent standard of living and not having their career jeopardized be every time Congress tries to pass a budget. And isn't that a bit of a dig at our astronomers and fusion engineers?
- rgbrenner 7y agoThis chart always gets trotted out whenever this comes up. You cannot know what it will cost to invent something before it is invented. You cannot know how many deadends you will have to go down before you find one that works. In fact, it may be that the invention depends on knowledge or technology that we don't have, and maybe won't have for many many years. For example, today fusion researchers are using computers to simulate plasma flows, gain a better understanding of plasma, and design better reactors... something that was not possible in the mid-70s when that chart was created.. and would not be possible to do by hand (as was done in the 70s). Hundreds of billions of dollars have gone into creating computers capable of doing that... where is that in your chart? And to preempt this line: saying they could buy a supercomputer is not a rebuttal. A Cray-2 was the 2nd fastest computer in the world from 1985-1990 (10-15 years after your chart). It's the equivalent to an ipad 2 (a 2011 32-bit mobile low-power processor). I'm using a computer many times faster than that just to type this post.
- jessriedel 7y agoThe chart refutes the idea that experts promised fusion power on a certain timespan, got the resources they requested as necessary, and then failed to deliver. That false narrative is the basis of the incorrect aphorism "fusion is 30 years away and always will be". The chart is not intended to be definitive proof that we would have had fusion power if we had spent the money (lv's last throwaway line notwithstanding.) No one knows what would have happened. To estimate that, we must use our prior based on how long/expensive other major tech developments have been. That's very different than pretending we know fusion's track record. Incidentally, NASA is currently spending huge amounts of money on computer simulations for the equipment that will return humans to the moon half a century after they were last there. That doesn't mean those simulations are necessary to get to the Moon, as indeed they weren't possible in 1969.
- credit_guy 7y agoIn addition to what you said, I think our perception of the Manhattan and Apollo projects is skewed by survivorship bias [1]. These projects kept hitting milestones, so they kept getting additional funding, until their successful final delivery. It's quite likely that many, many more projects (laser weapons, scramjets, ekranoplanes) experienced a funding flatline like the fusion famous graph, simply because their milestones proved elusive. It's better to deliver results than excuses and delays. [1] https://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/
- antonvs 7y agoIt's not about belief. The change you're observing is a response to the fact that we've implemented most of the low-hanging fruit. What we're left with are much more difficult problems.
- dylan604 7y agoMaybe Linux as a desktop will be a thing by then as well?
- pontifier 7y agoI was just awarded a patent on my fusion reactor design, so I sure hope I can get it working in less than that! http://www.ddprofusion.com/US10354761.pdf http://www.ddprofusion.com/US10354761.pdf
- frankbreetz 7y agoDoes anyone know the risk of meltdowns for fusion? I know the energy released is several orders of magnitude larger then that of fission(what nuclear power plants do now), so I would assume a meltdown would be several orders of magnitude worse. If we can create energy through fusion safely it really is unlimited carbon neutral energy. There is a limit, but the natural end of the planet will happen first. This is great news! I had no idea we were this close to fusion.
- TallGuyShort 7y agoIt depends on what you mean by worse - as I understand it, a fusion-induced meltdown at least wouldn't release massive amounts of radiation. Massive amounts of heat and destruction to the immediately-surrounding infrastructure? Could be. But not fallout, like caused all the really big problems post-Chernobyl.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoAs far as I know there is no risk for a meltdown. The amount of energy/fuel in the reactor at any given moment is pretty low. Unlike with a fission reactor they have to keep feeding the reactor constantly or it will stop.
- TallGuyShort 7y agoI could imagine that the fuel supply getting jammed on is not so dissimilar from the control rods being jammed out.
- altec3 7y agoArmchair opinion: I believe the fuel isn't radioactive, and neither is the reaction. So while it could blow up, it's not going to have a ton of radioactive fallout. Sort of like a fusion bomb, the fusion bomb doesn't produce radioactive fallout, but the fission bomb necessary to start the fusion bomb does.
- 7y ago
- b_tterc_p 7y agoLet’s say ITER works exactly as planned at some point in the future (delayed or not). How far are we from commercial fusion power as a reasonable source for things?
- vkou 7y agoFar enough away that even if there are no issues with scaling, we're going to face a climate change catastrophe, before we can replace fossil fuels with fusion. We need to take drastic action on power generation in the next decade. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that fusion will make it in time. I can't over-emphasize how dire our current situation is - and that's with us currently living in a world where 3 cent/kwh solar power exists. If we're gambling on fusion, at this point, the best-case outcome for it would be that it could be brought online sometime between us hitting 'drastic climate catastrophe' and 'civilization ending climate catastrophe'. To me, that doesn't sound like a great situation to be in.
- epicureanideal 7y agoAlthough some research out of Finland indicates otherwise. http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/16562-finnish-scientists-effect-of-human-activity-on-climate-change-insignificant.html http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/16... https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.00165.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.00165.pdf
- SiempreViernes 7y agoSo is this novel climate change denial argument, or some old debunked idea reheated in Turku?
- neuronexmachina 7y agoThis debunks Kauppinen & Malmi's (non-peer-reviewed) paper pretty thoroughly: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/non-peer-reviewed-manuscript-falsely-claims-natural-cloud-changes-can-explain-global-warming/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/non-peer-reviewed-ma...
- ttul 7y agoWhile there are many hopeful alternatives to “big fusion” which may promise to be cheaper, is it not true that ITER is the most credible path to commercial-scale fusion power?
- ChuckMcM 7y agoI've been watching the progress of the Wendelstein 7-X (https://www.ipp.mpg.de/4550215/11_18 https://www.ipp.mpg.de/4550215/11_18) which has been making steady progress month after month, year after year. At the current pace they will demonstrate net power fusion before ITER does. Extrapolation is always risky though so it isn't something one should count on.
- Tossrock 7y agoThe Wendelstein 7-x is not designed to ever reach ignition. It's a (very large, very cool) research reactor studying stellarator geometry. Ignition will require a yet larger device, and barring any disasters, ITER should definitely get there first.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoI understand that, these are the bits that I like about the project: "Then, it will remain to be seen whether Wendelstein 7-X can also fulfil its optimisation goals during continuous operation – the essential advantage of stellarators." ... "Although Wendelstein 7-X is not designed to generate energy, the device is intended to prove that stellarators are suitable for use in power stations." And from the ITER Goals statement (https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals https://www.iter.org/sci/Goals) "ITER will not capture the power it produces as electricity, but as the first of all fusion experiments in history to produce net energy... it will prepare the way for the machine that can." My take away from that, is that if both machines fulfill their goals, then building a power station that uses the technology would be the next step. I expect two things to be true; First, the 7-x will prove out its goals before ITER does, and second given that the stellerator design is significantly less complex than the tokamak design, it will be realized as a test power plant before the tokamak power plant is.
- united893 7y agoCan someone help me understand the engineering and economics of distributing energy from a fusion plan? Let's assume that in 2035 ITER reaches its goal and can sustain fusion at a cost of ~$25B per plant w/ $1B in yearly operational costs. Now what? Do we then build a nuclear-plant-style pressurized water turbine? How many turbines can we place around a fusion plant? How far can we distribute this power? According to this[1] paper, fusion power becomes profitable at $175/Mwh. Nearly every other type of energy source, including wind and PV is cheaper[2] [1] https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544218305395 https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
- dylan604 7y agoI thought that one of the main benefits is that it is closer to zero emissions. Wind isn't always blowing, and the sun isn't always shining. Solar/wind take up a lot of surface area.
- loblollyboy 7y agospace travel
- adrianN 7y agoNo. Huge power plants are not really suited for lifting them into space.
- de_watcher 7y agoThey are suited for powering orbital rings though.
- pfdietz 7y agoSolar in space would be so much more practical.
- s9w 7y agoI don't think ITER stands for "International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor" anymore.
- s9w 7y agoTo the people that downvote me: it used to stand for that, but not anymore.