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The Road Less Traveled to Fusion Energy?
- ikeyany 6y agoI was hoping the article would go into the current state of boron reactors out there such as [0], but it kept reiterating the disadvantages of D-T reactiors. Also interesting is using AI for plasma control. It didn't exactly say how they're using AI, which is nice to know when talking about real-time code that handles temperatures in the millions of degrees. [0] - https://www.hb11.energy/our-story https://www.hb11.energy/our-story
- oddthink 6y agoCalling it "AI" is a stretch, it's more like using the TensorFlow infrastructure to do Bayesian inference. Here's a presentation on the process: http://hyperion.usc.edu/UQ-SummerSchool/pres/Langmore.pdf http://hyperion.usc.edu/UQ-SummerSchool/pres/Langmore.pdf
- ikeyany 6y agoSo their only paragraph on it, > Artificial intelligence software, recently developed by TAE with help from Google, should keep the fusion fuel stable even at the 3-billion-degree temperatures needed in a commercial-scale power plant. “A year ago I was concerned about the ability to control the machine,” Binderbauer says, “but no longer.”Courtesy of TAE Technologies which implies that it's being used for plasma control, is a lie.
- oddthink 6y agoNo, it's used for control. But you should be thinking more like "process control" than "intelligent" control. Or to be more specific, deriving an optimal process control model via pretty hard-core plasma density reconstructions; my understanding is that they track plasma density fluctuations and tweak parameters in real-time, but I would be surprised if the TF model is in the control path. It seems a bit overly-aggressive to accuse them of lying because some pop-sci journalist heard tensorflow and went straight to "artificial intelligence." And even there, it's an understandable and common hype. It doesn't take away from the point that they're doing some really interesting and novel computational physics to make this thing work.
- melling 6y ago“Relying solely on solar and wind is a fool’s hope, I think,” Binderbauer says. We’ve had this discussion many times on HN.
- rob74 6y agoI agree that solar and wind have disadvantages, and they can't be used to cover 100% of the energy demand, but they are available right now, whereas controlled fusion has been "10-30 years away" for the last 60 (?) years.
- melling 6y agoNo one said we should wait for fusion. That’s not what that statement means. “Relying solely on solar and wind is a fool’s hope, I think,”
- cygx 6y agowhereas controlled fusion has been "10-30 years away" for the last 60 (?) years One standard internet response to that is this graph[1]. No funding, no results. The international community decided to pool ressources with ITER. The founding members? The US, EU, Japan and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union collapsed, the US pulled out for a couple of years, other countries (eg Canada) joined and left gain, Brexit has put the future of JET (where some relevant preparatory experimentation is done) in doubt, etc. [1] https://i.imgur.com/3vYLQmm.png https://i.imgur.com/3vYLQmm.png
- pfdietz 6y agoWhy can't solar and wind cover 100% of energy demand? Please explain just where the showstopper is, in your view.
- qayxc 6y agoHm. Personally I wonder who those people are, who allegedly insist on relying solely on wind and solar. TBH, this sounds like a classical straw man to me. Who'd want to actively dismantle existing hydro power, geothermal-, waste-to-energy, biomass power stations, etc.?
- zelienople 6y agoThis is the worst of science writing. I have zero interest in the man's childhood or what he or his desk looks like; just tell me about the science. Articles like this are pandering to the lowest intelligence that purports to be able to read.
- danharaj 6y agoHow do you go from "this article has too much human interest and not enough details for my taste" to "this article is for stupid people"?
- jahnu 6y agoI replied above but it was meant for you. I'll leave it, perhaps it might help the parent understand why there is much value in knowing about the people behind the science.
- naasking 6y ago> I have zero interest in the man's childhood or what he or his desk looks like; just tell me about the science. I find this trend has been true of most journalism. Every story has an elaborate narrative built around it to provide "context", most of which has little bearing on the facts. Someone should create some article writing software that lets you distinguish narrative parts of an article from the factual parts, so readers can selectively show/hide each one.
- marcus_holmes 6y agoI recommend learning to speed read. Your brain is capable of working out what the subject of a paragraph is before you've "read" it. Learning to trust that, and skip-read articles only slowing down for the interesting bits, is a great life skill :)
- jahnu 6y agoOn of my favourite radio programs is The Life Scientific from the BBC. It explores both the person and the science and leads to a wonderful insight and admiration for the people and the sciences they work within. I highly recommend it and all the episodes from the very first are relevant today so don't feel like you have to listen to only the new ones. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sqc7/episodes/guide https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sqc7/episodes/guide
- naasking 6y agoFor just the bare facts on the fusion reactor design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAE_Technologies#Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAE_Technologies#Design
- pfdietz 6y agoThese comments would also be relevant. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235032059_Comments_on_the_Colliding_Beam_Fusion_Reactor_Proposed_by_Rostoker_Binderbauer_and_Monkhorst_for_Use_with_the_p-11B_Fusion_Reaction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235032059_Comments_...
- barbegal 6y agoI have yet to read an article or paper which has convinced me that energy generating fusion is possible at low costs and with materials that we currently know of. I don't see why anyone (including governments) should invest in these types of projects. Not only is the science extremely complex, the implementation is a huge engineering challenge. We already have a huge fusion power plant at the heart of our solar system and we can harness its power with some pretty cheap solar panels. If you want to read a better article explaining the science then try http://fusionandthings.eu/2019/06/05/new-calculations-show-proton-boron-fusion-is-still-difficult/ http://fusionandthings.eu/2019/06/05/new-calculations-show-p...
- PopePompus 6y agoSadly, that huge fusion plant is offline half the time for any given location on the Earth, and is severely degraded by cloudy weather. Also using it to power the world will require large areas of land to be dedicated to collecting its output.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoSo what? I give you Space Grid ©. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power edit: I don't know why that symbol doesn't show as copyleft as intended.
- bufbupa 6y agoThat seems like it could have more difficult engineering problems than a fusion reactor! Seems like a quick way to accidentally microwave a desert into a sea of glass. Hope you don't put anything remotely near the power receiver on earth.
- DennisP 6y agoPower density on the ground would be way lower than you're thinking. The leading proposals, like SPS-Alpha, put a gigawatt-scale power station in geostationary orbit. Power is beamed to ground via microwave. The receiver station has to be kilometers wide, which puts the power density low enough so birds wouldn't be harmed; even that amount of focus is only doable by sending a pilot signal from the receiver, so the beam can't trivially be redirected to other targets. Despite its size, the receiver would be inexpensive, since it's mostly wire antennae.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoThe thing I never understand about these fusion reactors is how they plan on generating energy from them, assuming they exceed break-even. In a conventional nuclear reactor the coolant is piped to a steam generator which then drives steam turbines to generate power. This is a relatively obvious design and it was pretty well understood from the start of development how the power generation would work. Of course, there were a lot of engineering challenges to overcome to make it work in practice. While fusion itself is a harder problem (as the lack of success for decades has demonstrated), it seems like the power generation aspect has many new challenges as well.
- harshalaxman 6y agoFrom the article "The plants would convert the raw fusion energy into heat, then use the heat to boil water, spin a turbine, and ultimately to generate electricity that can light your home and charge your phone."
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoYeah, but raw fusion energy to heat is not nearly as trivial as it sounds. And given how tricky it is to sustain a fusion reaction it seems like it will be even harder to do it when you're dealing with moving heat from the source of the fusion reaction to wherever your steam generator is.
- projektfu 6y agoFrom my guess, the plasma is already quite hot, so you could do whatever you do to cool it normally, just more so because it’s self-sustaining.
- rabidrat 6y agoI believe there are two main ways of cooling: convection and radiation. Convection requires a gas or liquid carrier to be in contact with the hot substance; it seems like it would be very difficult to get water (steam) into direct contact with the plasma to transfer the heat, and then to carry the heat away without the radioactive plasma along with it. Radiation is a function of temperature (to the 4th power) and surface area. It seems even harder to channel the heat from the plasma to the engine this way. So how would you do either of these 'more so'?
- scythe 6y ago> Even if renewables come to generate the majority of our electricity, they need to be combined with so-called dispatchable power that can be switched on at any time. There is plenty of lithium in the oceans — among other places — and no shortage of iron or phosphorus (ignoring agricultural use of P which is much larger), so that it is realistic to store weeks or months of energy in LiFePO4 batteries, even at a global scale. What we lack here is investment.