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Let’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 thi

Let’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 ago
Far 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 ago
  Although 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 ago
    So is this novel climate change denial argument, or some old debunked idea reheated in Turku?
    - neuronexmachina 7y ago
      This 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...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- hueving 7y ago
  There is no civilization ending climate catastrophy on the horizon. Wipe out 90% of the population and we're back to what, the 1800s? That level of death requires most people to just let the rising ocean drown them as they stand there plus a bunch more inland to walk in and drown themselves as well. Massively distruption to the status quo is what climate change will bring. Civilization ending? Not even close.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    One million refugees caused political crisis in Europe. What do you think will happen if half of Africa starts moving north because agriculture becomes impossible? And that's just the easy part. What happens when important ecological systems collapse? For example if phytoplankton dies off at a massive scale?
  - socialdemocrat 7y ago
    I upvoted you for adding some perspective often lacking. However you are still kind of wrong. You are right that humans will continue to live and survive. But our civilization as we know it may very well collapse. Yes some sort of civilization will continue to exist. But this will be on par with the dark ages: not a complete destruction of human civilization but an enormous regression. We will most likely loose a lot of our technological know-how and abilities. Events like this don't simply cause a gradual decline in standards of living. Rather they tend to cause massive outbreaks of wars, unrest, migrations, refugees, destruction etc. Climate change in the bronze age caused nearly all major bronze age civilizations to collapse. But with this collapse we had major migration of people, wars, invasions, collapse of trade and many more things. What followed was large population declines as well as losing the ability to write and maintain organized rule, construct buildings etc. Did all humans disappear? Of course not, that is why civilization reappeared again eventually at a later time. The same will likely happen with us. But how long will the dark ages last? In many ways our resilience is weaker than theirs. Our trade networks are far more extensive and important than the ancient ones. What happens e.g. if the middle east, Africa and South America are turned into turmoil and we can no longer get resources extracted from either of those places? Our economies may suffer a lot too, causing the breakout of widespread riots and unrest, overthrow of governments. If modern trade breaks down, there will be widespread famines even in the west, because many countries simply are not self sufficient. And if they are, their food production depends on a large number of imports. If they don't get hold of artificial fertilizer, fuel etc food production will collapse. This is what we saw after the fall or Rome. Economies became far more regionalized/local. In a collapsing world economy, countries will become significantly poorer if forced to rely exclusively on local production of most essential things.
- Retric 7y ago
  Fusion is not about climate change. It’s one of those things that enable sending spacecraft to other stars. D-T fusion is still baby steps on that path, but worthwhile none the less.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    Great, so we send our greatest energy generation tech out for some crazy alien teenager out for a joy ride bump into it rather than using at home?
  - Ygg2 7y ago
    I don't think it's just about space travel. Unlocking fusion, allows us to tap into a near infinite source of fuel. On a planetary scale.
  - vkou 7y ago
    I don't care one whit about travel to other stars, when we are facing an existential crisis with sustainably maintaining our ecosystem on Earth.
    - de_watcher 7y ago
      Or maybe you're facing an existential crisis here because you don't care about travel to other stars.
      - youareostriches 7y ago
        This fantasy is almost more intellectually insulting than straight up climate denial. What kind of dream world do you inhabit where you think it’s easier to travel to other stars or terraform planets than simply not “shit where you eat” on this planet? Slow down our economic growth? Stop dumping trash? Nah, that’s too hard. Let’s build fucking rockets to other solar systems instead and invent entirely new life support systems to survive in places without any food, water, or air at all. Sure, that’s way easier than planting a garden. Even if this were possible, the technology almost certainly wouldn’t be ready by the time civilization fully collapsed at the end of the century.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
DEMO (first plant that produces power) in the 2030s and first commercial plant around 2050?
- pfdietz 7y ago
  ITER won't even burn DT until 2035, and that's if things go as expected. DEMO won't be designed without that data, if it's ever designed at all.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    According to Wikipedia operation is supposed to start in 2033 with input from ITER design. No idea what’s right but I believe they want to build it in parallel with ITER, not after. Not sure how realistic this is.
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      That's completely unrealistic. The location and schedule of DEMO have not yet been agreed on. For that matter, whether DEMO will be the next major fusion reactor built has not been decided. The US position is that an intermediate facility, the Fusion Nuclear Science Facility, should be built and operated first, to develop and mature systems that DEMO would need (for example, fusion blankets cannot be developed without a strong source of fusion neutrons). One cloud hanging over all this is that ITER is going to use up most of the world's tritium. With fission in trouble, especially heavy water moderated fission, there will likely not be a continued source of this isotope, and making it intentionally would be extremely expensive ($100M/kg and up.)
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        Did some more reading and it seems you are right.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pfdietz 7y ago
ITER is a dead end. Any reactor based on it would be absurdly uneconomical.
- dumbfoundded 7y ago
  Could you explain why or link a relevant source?
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    ITER has a design gross fusion power of about 400 MW. If you compute the thermal power/volume ratio of the reactor, it's about 50 kW/m^3. In comparison, the thermal power/volume ratio of a commercial PWR fission reactor is about 20 MW/m^3 -- 400 times higher. A commercial tokamak would have a somewhat higher power, but not enormously higher. If based on ITER, the power density would be two orders of magnitude worse than a fission reactor. And since the complexity of a fusion reactor is far higher than a fission reactor core, the cost ratio of the reactors (for a given power output) would be even larger. Since fission reactors are having desperate trouble being competitive today, how is making the reactor core orders of magnitude more expensive going to lead anywhere useful?
    - Ygg2 7y ago
      I believe your assumptions are faulty. Nothing about ITER suggest that it's volume or performance is indicative of what future reactor design will look like. Stronger super-magnets, different designs could lead to smaller reactors. As to why is it useful? A zero emissions powerplant, with minimal environment impact that is immune to core meltdown. Sure we don't have the tech to build it profitabily. Yet. But doesn't mean we never will.
      - socialdemocrat 7y ago
        I support the effort, but in terms of solving global warming problems this is IMHO a total dead end. The progress is far too slow. It takes far too long time to build these reactors. They are expensive and complicated. Say we get commercial reactors in 2050. If these are anything like building fission reactors, we will start getting these commercial reactors online in 2060. That is very late. Within that time we can massively expand solar power and wind power. As renewable energy start dominating the grid, ultra low spot prices on power will spur a huge cottage industry of businesses relying on buying this power cheap, storing it and selling it later. Alternatively factories will be built to take advantage of it. E.g. only running power hungry processes in periods of low power prices.

Let’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 ago

Far 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 ago
Although 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 ago
  So is this novel climate change denial argument, or some old debunked idea reheated in Turku?
  - neuronexmachina 7y ago
    This 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...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
hueving 7y ago
There is no civilization ending climate catastrophy on the horizon. Wipe out 90% of the population and we're back to what, the 1800s? That level of death requires most people to just let the rising ocean drown them as they stand there plus a bunch more inland to walk in and drown themselves as well. Massively distruption to the status quo is what climate change will bring. Civilization ending? Not even close.
- adrianN 7y ago
  One million refugees caused political crisis in Europe. What do you think will happen if half of Africa starts moving north because agriculture becomes impossible? And that's just the easy part. What happens when important ecological systems collapse? For example if phytoplankton dies off at a massive scale?
- socialdemocrat 7y ago
  I upvoted you for adding some perspective often lacking. However you are still kind of wrong. You are right that humans will continue to live and survive. But our civilization as we know it may very well collapse. Yes some sort of civilization will continue to exist. But this will be on par with the dark ages: not a complete destruction of human civilization but an enormous regression. We will most likely loose a lot of our technological know-how and abilities. Events like this don't simply cause a gradual decline in standards of living. Rather they tend to cause massive outbreaks of wars, unrest, migrations, refugees, destruction etc. Climate change in the bronze age caused nearly all major bronze age civilizations to collapse. But with this collapse we had major migration of people, wars, invasions, collapse of trade and many more things. What followed was large population declines as well as losing the ability to write and maintain organized rule, construct buildings etc. Did all humans disappear? Of course not, that is why civilization reappeared again eventually at a later time. The same will likely happen with us. But how long will the dark ages last? In many ways our resilience is weaker than theirs. Our trade networks are far more extensive and important than the ancient ones. What happens e.g. if the middle east, Africa and South America are turned into turmoil and we can no longer get resources extracted from either of those places? Our economies may suffer a lot too, causing the breakout of widespread riots and unrest, overthrow of governments. If modern trade breaks down, there will be widespread famines even in the west, because many countries simply are not self sufficient. And if they are, their food production depends on a large number of imports. If they don't get hold of artificial fertilizer, fuel etc food production will collapse. This is what we saw after the fall or Rome. Economies became far more regionalized/local. In a collapsing world economy, countries will become significantly poorer if forced to rely exclusively on local production of most essential things.
Retric 7y ago
Fusion is not about climate change. It’s one of those things that enable sending spacecraft to other stars. D-T fusion is still baby steps on that path, but worthwhile none the less.
- dylan604 7y ago
  Great, so we send our greatest energy generation tech out for some crazy alien teenager out for a joy ride bump into it rather than using at home?
- Ygg2 7y ago
  I don't think it's just about space travel. Unlocking fusion, allows us to tap into a near infinite source of fuel. On a planetary scale.
- vkou 7y ago
  I don't care one whit about travel to other stars, when we are facing an existential crisis with sustainably maintaining our ecosystem on Earth.
  - de_watcher 7y ago
    Or maybe you're facing an existential crisis here because you don't care about travel to other stars.
    - youareostriches 7y ago
      This fantasy is almost more intellectually insulting than straight up climate denial. What kind of dream world do you inhabit where you think it’s easier to travel to other stars or terraform planets than simply not “shit where you eat” on this planet? Slow down our economic growth? Stop dumping trash? Nah, that’s too hard. Let’s build fucking rockets to other solar systems instead and invent entirely new life support systems to survive in places without any food, water, or air at all. Sure, that’s way easier than planting a garden. Even if this were possible, the technology almost certainly wouldn’t be ready by the time civilization fully collapsed at the end of the century.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

DEMO (first plant that produces power) in the 2030s and first commercial plant around 2050?

pfdietz 7y ago
ITER won't even burn DT until 2035, and that's if things go as expected. DEMO won't be designed without that data, if it's ever designed at all.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  According to Wikipedia operation is supposed to start in 2033 with input from ITER design. No idea what’s right but I believe they want to build it in parallel with ITER, not after. Not sure how realistic this is.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    That's completely unrealistic. The location and schedule of DEMO have not yet been agreed on. For that matter, whether DEMO will be the next major fusion reactor built has not been decided. The US position is that an intermediate facility, the Fusion Nuclear Science Facility, should be built and operated first, to develop and mature systems that DEMO would need (for example, fusion blankets cannot be developed without a strong source of fusion neutrons). One cloud hanging over all this is that ITER is going to use up most of the world's tritium. With fission in trouble, especially heavy water moderated fission, there will likely not be a continued source of this isotope, and making it intentionally would be extremely expensive ($100M/kg and up.)
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      Did some more reading and it seems you are right.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pfdietz 7y ago

ITER is a dead end. Any reactor based on it would be absurdly uneconomical.

dumbfoundded 7y ago
Could you explain why or link a relevant source?
- pfdietz 7y ago
  ITER has a design gross fusion power of about 400 MW. If you compute the thermal power/volume ratio of the reactor, it's about 50 kW/m^3. In comparison, the thermal power/volume ratio of a commercial PWR fission reactor is about 20 MW/m^3 -- 400 times higher. A commercial tokamak would have a somewhat higher power, but not enormously higher. If based on ITER, the power density would be two orders of magnitude worse than a fission reactor. And since the complexity of a fusion reactor is far higher than a fission reactor core, the cost ratio of the reactors (for a given power output) would be even larger. Since fission reactors are having desperate trouble being competitive today, how is making the reactor core orders of magnitude more expensive going to lead anywhere useful?
  - Ygg2 7y ago
    I believe your assumptions are faulty. Nothing about ITER suggest that it's volume or performance is indicative of what future reactor design will look like. Stronger super-magnets, different designs could lead to smaller reactors. As to why is it useful? A zero emissions powerplant, with minimal environment impact that is immune to core meltdown. Sure we don't have the tech to build it profitabily. Yet. But doesn't mean we never will.
    - socialdemocrat 7y ago
      I support the effort, but in terms of solving global warming problems this is IMHO a total dead end. The progress is far too slow. It takes far too long time to build these reactors. They are expensive and complicated. Say we get commercial reactors in 2050. If these are anything like building fission reactors, we will start getting these commercial reactors online in 2060. That is very late. Within that time we can massively expand solar power and wind power. As renewable energy start dominating the grid, ultra low spot prices on power will spur a huge cottage industry of businesses relying on buying this power cheap, storing it and selling it later. Alternatively factories will be built to take advantage of it. E.g. only running power hungry processes in periods of low power prices.