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I think fusion is cool, but I also think it distracts from more important and promising approaches to clean power. No one has ever demonstrated a self-sustainin

I think fusion is cool, but I also think it distracts from more important and promising approaches to clean power. No one has ever demonstrated a self-sustaining, net positive fusion reaction. It will probably take >30 years to make this technology cheap , safe and reliable and another >20 years to deploy it at scale. We don't have 50 years to wait on clean energy, we need it today. We should be focusing our attention on renewables, like solar, which are rapidly dropping in cost, and good 'ol nuclear power, which is already proven to be safe and reliable, instead of crossing our fingers and waiting for some magical tech to save us. We already have the tech, we just need to get serious about deploying it. I bet a concerted roll-out of nuclear + solar could cut US emissions due to electricity generation by at least 30% over the next 20 years. EDIT: I see this is getting some downvotes. I want to reiterate that I support fusion research, I am just saying that I don't believe fusion is the quickest or most realistic approach to reducing emissions.

the-dude 6y ago
Don't be so alarmist. We don't need it today.
jansan 6y ago
Everybody else but the ITER people are focusing on solar and wind. What more do you expect?
spacephysics 6y ago
I agree we should look at multiple possible paths for renewable energy, but to say that they shouldn’t work on this, is a bit far fetched. This assumes the researchers working on fusion can work on the other renewable energies, when that’s typically not the case with highly specialized fields. Further, estimating the time it takes for advancement with the described time magnitude is a frivolous pursuit, if you put any weight behind it. Within 5 years, sure let’s predict. But at 30 years, now we’re talking a bit too far into the future. It’s much harder to guesstimate what will occur from now to then. Lastly, if we assume it will take 30 years to produce a working model, then that only assumes we’re working on it today. If we could, let’s say, divert all scientists away from fusion research onto other renewables, the 30 year estimate would be perpetually pushed until we start working on it once more. Let’s have people who are passionate about their field pursue as many paths to solving the energy crisis as possible. We could have a breakthrough sooner than 30 years, which I would place money on.
- throwaway744678 6y ago
  Your argument is sound, but the issue is also budget allocation: financial resources are not infinite, and we must choose how to allocate them.
  - pueblito 6y ago
    That's a very good point, we need to allocate much more towards fusion R&D
  - f6v 6y ago
    There’s so much things to divert budget from to fuel energy research. Completely unrealistic, but think luxury cars, football player’s salaries, just to name a few.
    - VyperCard 6y ago
      Coal subsidies …
    - tenuousemphasis 6y ago
      Military industrial complex? Billionaires? The things you mentioned are literally nothingburger.
      - adventured 6y ago
        It's very clearly not a nothingburger. High paid professional athletes in the US today have the income of billionaires. Professional athletes earn around $200 billion in league salary each decade (it excludes endorsements, which tilts the point that much further if included). It's far more than all S&P 500 CEOs combined. Just the three major sports leagues in the US are at around $14 billion per year in salary. That excludes coaches, which now have very high salaries as well. Stripping it down further, all NBA players combined (a mere ~450 players or so) earn more in salary every year than all the S&P 500 CEOs combined. As of 2019 there were 122 players in Major League Baseball earning $10 million per year or more. The top 30 NBA players earn a combined $1 billion every year. Pretty funny, the notion that ~$80+ billion in income taxes every ten years, is supposedly a nothingburger. It's a lot of tax revenue, even if it pales next to US Military spending.
cinntaile 6y ago
Can you explain why and how this distracts from renewables? I don't get how you reached this conclusion.
usui 6y ago
I do not think solar is going to work. As you say, it might take up to 50 years to crack the case on nuclear fusion. I argue that it might take up to 50 years for governments and companies around the world to even begin cooperating in a fashion such that they make a dent in carbon-based energy sources at the global scale using solar. The reason why solar is not going to work mostly is because there is no legitimate mass installation of batteries that can handle the demand of energy. And the reason why the batteries cannot handle the demand of energy is because governments are not serious about deploying more, and people are already comfortable with the quality of life they already have, so neither are going to step up to make this work. And to be fair, why should the average citizen impose restrictions on themselves to solve this crisis? It's not realistic. Governments are supposed to be the ones to make these initiatives. Analogy: I hate having to pay for taxes, but I like that the government gets it from everyone, so that it can implement common services that benefit a lot of people, which wouldn't be possible otherwise. The only way is nuclear fission because, as you said, it is proven to be safe and reliable. However, the people have spoken: They do not want "dangerous" nuclear reactors around, even if those impressions were formed by reactors designed and built in the 1950s-1960s. I personally think this is a shut case. There is no convincing of the people to go to nuclear fission anymore.
- svara 6y ago
  It's a bit odd to me that you seem to deem fusion power realistic, while discounting other ways of generating and storing power that are basically available already. Power from renewables can be stored for the long term as hydrogen. That's well understood technology, scaling up is an engineering problem. When the sun shines and the wind blows, solar and onshore wind are the cheapest ways to make electricity, so there's a huge economic incentive to solving the storage issue.
  - usui 6y ago
    Thanks for pointing out, because now that I think of it, my view does come off as odd. What I think it reflects is that despite nuclear fusion being a technical, engineering problem, I believe getting companies/governments to abandon carbon for wind/solar to the point of carbon-neutral is even more insurmountable. Does that viewpoint make sense? For them to get off fossil fuels, it's going to need a ball-out-of-the-park solution. It's too hard to compete with the fracking revolution.
thechao 6y ago
Net-positive was achieved in 2013. As far as I can remember, ITER is a test-bed for economical and scalable nuclear fusion. Also, the corporate world (at least here in Texas, of all places) is perfectly capable of rolling out state-scale renewable power (wind).
- kibwen 6y ago
  > Net-positive was achieved in 2013. Do you have a source for this? I was also under the impression that fusion has never yet produced a net of energy.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    Probably referring to this highly controversial re-definition of Q: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor#Scientific_breakeven_at_NIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor#Scie...
  - elil17 6y ago
    If you define your efficiency metric in a clever way, anything is possible: https://io9.gizmodo.com/breakthrough-the-worlds-first-net-positive-nuclear-fu-1442537401 https://io9.gizmodo.com/breakthrough-the-worlds-first-net-po...
- lambdatronics 6y ago
  Nope. JET achieved Q~0.7 in 1997[1],and that hasn't been beat since. In 1998, JT-60 would have gotten Q~1.2, had they put deuterium-tritium fuel [2] (but it wasn't built for that). You might be thinking of some news from NIF. In 2013, they sorta claimed to have reached ignition, but that was only by moving the goal-posts.[3] ITER is not by any means a test of an economical or scalable reactor -- it's still at the stage of a science experiment. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60 [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#Breakeven_claims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#Bre...
cmdli 6y ago
I would argue that we are already seriously building more and more solar and wind power, along with research into better battery storage. Even if we solve the current climate crisis with solar and wind, we may still be able to do even better with fusion in 50 years. Fusion would be very energy dense, requiring a lot less resources and land than solar or wind, and has the potential for even cheaper and less environmentally-destructive energy than current renewable resources.
Reason077 6y ago
> "I bet a concerted roll-out of nuclear + solar could cut US emissions due to electricity generation by at least 30% over the next 20 years." 30% over 20 years in unambitious. The UK has cut grid carbon emissions by 60% in the past 10 years. (2010 average: 467g/kWh. 2019 average: 189g/kWh). Emissions continue to decline every year. This was largely achieved by closing coal power plants, and building a lot of wind (both on and off-shore), solar, biomass, and new interconnections with continental Europe. No new nuclear was built in this time. Wind is now the second largest source of electricity in the UK, after natural gas. (But natural gas usage is also declining!)
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Just switching over all new development to nuclear and ignoring the luddites would basically make us guilt free and green, but that won't happen until we're desperate.
nucpal 6y ago
agreed! the CEO of JET (largest working fusion reactor, until ITER is finished) Ian Chapman said in a lecture that renewables (and nuclear fission) are key to holding off climate change until fusion is a more mature technology why should the research be mutually exclusive though? there's resources and brainpower to pursue both.
scottious 6y ago
It's not an either/or... we should be pursuing lots of different avenues for power generation because we don't know what will pan out and what won't. Fusion might still be a huge win even if it takes 50 more years to perfect.
mkoubaa 6y ago
butter and guns

the-dude 6y ago

Don't be so alarmist. We don't need it today.

jansan 6y ago

Everybody else but the ITER people are focusing on solar and wind. What more do you expect?

spacephysics 6y ago

I agree we should look at multiple possible paths for renewable energy, but to say that they shouldn’t work on this, is a bit far fetched. This assumes the researchers working on fusion can work on the other renewable energies, when that’s typically not the case with highly specialized fields. Further, estimating the time it takes for advancement with the described time magnitude is a frivolous pursuit, if you put any weight behind it. Within 5 years, sure let’s predict. But at 30 years, now we’re talking a bit too far into the future. It’s much harder to guesstimate what will occur from now to then. Lastly, if we assume it will take 30 years to produce a working model, then that only assumes we’re working on it today. If we could, let’s say, divert all scientists away from fusion research onto other renewables, the 30 year estimate would be perpetually pushed until we start working on it once more. Let’s have people who are passionate about their field pursue as many paths to solving the energy crisis as possible. We could have a breakthrough sooner than 30 years, which I would place money on.

throwaway744678 6y ago
Your argument is sound, but the issue is also budget allocation: financial resources are not infinite, and we must choose how to allocate them.
- pueblito 6y ago
  That's a very good point, we need to allocate much more towards fusion R&D
- f6v 6y ago
  There’s so much things to divert budget from to fuel energy research. Completely unrealistic, but think luxury cars, football player’s salaries, just to name a few.
  - VyperCard 6y ago
    Coal subsidies …
  - tenuousemphasis 6y ago
    Military industrial complex? Billionaires? The things you mentioned are literally nothingburger.
    - adventured 6y ago
      It's very clearly not a nothingburger. High paid professional athletes in the US today have the income of billionaires. Professional athletes earn around $200 billion in league salary each decade (it excludes endorsements, which tilts the point that much further if included). It's far more than all S&P 500 CEOs combined. Just the three major sports leagues in the US are at around $14 billion per year in salary. That excludes coaches, which now have very high salaries as well. Stripping it down further, all NBA players combined (a mere ~450 players or so) earn more in salary every year than all the S&P 500 CEOs combined. As of 2019 there were 122 players in Major League Baseball earning $10 million per year or more. The top 30 NBA players earn a combined $1 billion every year. Pretty funny, the notion that ~$80+ billion in income taxes every ten years, is supposedly a nothingburger. It's a lot of tax revenue, even if it pales next to US Military spending.

cinntaile 6y ago

Can you explain why and how this distracts from renewables? I don't get how you reached this conclusion.

usui 6y ago

I do not think solar is going to work. As you say, it might take up to 50 years to crack the case on nuclear fusion. I argue that it might take up to 50 years for governments and companies around the world to even begin cooperating in a fashion such that they make a dent in carbon-based energy sources at the global scale using solar. The reason why solar is not going to work mostly is because there is no legitimate mass installation of batteries that can handle the demand of energy. And the reason why the batteries cannot handle the demand of energy is because governments are not serious about deploying more, and people are already comfortable with the quality of life they already have, so neither are going to step up to make this work. And to be fair, why should the average citizen impose restrictions on themselves to solve this crisis? It's not realistic. Governments are supposed to be the ones to make these initiatives. Analogy: I hate having to pay for taxes, but I like that the government gets it from everyone, so that it can implement common services that benefit a lot of people, which wouldn't be possible otherwise. The only way is nuclear fission because, as you said, it is proven to be safe and reliable. However, the people have spoken: They do not want "dangerous" nuclear reactors around, even if those impressions were formed by reactors designed and built in the 1950s-1960s. I personally think this is a shut case. There is no convincing of the people to go to nuclear fission anymore.

svara 6y ago
It's a bit odd to me that you seem to deem fusion power realistic, while discounting other ways of generating and storing power that are basically available already. Power from renewables can be stored for the long term as hydrogen. That's well understood technology, scaling up is an engineering problem. When the sun shines and the wind blows, solar and onshore wind are the cheapest ways to make electricity, so there's a huge economic incentive to solving the storage issue.
- usui 6y ago
  Thanks for pointing out, because now that I think of it, my view does come off as odd. What I think it reflects is that despite nuclear fusion being a technical, engineering problem, I believe getting companies/governments to abandon carbon for wind/solar to the point of carbon-neutral is even more insurmountable. Does that viewpoint make sense? For them to get off fossil fuels, it's going to need a ball-out-of-the-park solution. It's too hard to compete with the fracking revolution.

thechao 6y ago

Net-positive was achieved in 2013. As far as I can remember, ITER is a test-bed for economical and scalable nuclear fusion. Also, the corporate world (at least here in Texas, of all places) is perfectly capable of rolling out state-scale renewable power (wind).

kibwen 6y ago
> Net-positive was achieved in 2013. Do you have a source for this? I was also under the impression that fusion has never yet produced a net of energy.
- wtallis 6y ago
  Probably referring to this highly controversial re-definition of Q: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor#Scientific_breakeven_at_NIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor#Scie...
- elil17 6y ago
  If you define your efficiency metric in a clever way, anything is possible: https://io9.gizmodo.com/breakthrough-the-worlds-first-net-positive-nuclear-fu-1442537401 https://io9.gizmodo.com/breakthrough-the-worlds-first-net-po...
lambdatronics 6y ago
Nope. JET achieved Q~0.7 in 1997[1],and that hasn't been beat since. In 1998, JT-60 would have gotten Q~1.2, had they put deuterium-tritium fuel [2] (but it wasn't built for that). You might be thinking of some news from NIF. In 2013, they sorta claimed to have reached ignition, but that was only by moving the goal-posts.[3] ITER is not by any means a test of an economical or scalable reactor -- it's still at the stage of a science experiment. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60 [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#Breakeven_claims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#Bre...

cmdli 6y ago

I would argue that we are already seriously building more and more solar and wind power, along with research into better battery storage. Even if we solve the current climate crisis with solar and wind, we may still be able to do even better with fusion in 50 years. Fusion would be very energy dense, requiring a lot less resources and land than solar or wind, and has the potential for even cheaper and less environmentally-destructive energy than current renewable resources.

Reason077 6y ago

> "I bet a concerted roll-out of nuclear + solar could cut US emissions due to electricity generation by at least 30% over the next 20 years." 30% over 20 years in unambitious. The UK has cut grid carbon emissions by 60% in the past 10 years. (2010 average: 467g/kWh. 2019 average: 189g/kWh). Emissions continue to decline every year. This was largely achieved by closing coal power plants, and building a lot of wind (both on and off-shore), solar, biomass, and new interconnections with continental Europe. No new nuclear was built in this time. Wind is now the second largest source of electricity in the UK, after natural gas. (But natural gas usage is also declining!)

stjohnswarts 6y ago
Just switching over all new development to nuclear and ignoring the luddites would basically make us guilt free and green, but that won't happen until we're desperate.

nucpal 6y ago

agreed! the CEO of JET (largest working fusion reactor, until ITER is finished) Ian Chapman said in a lecture that renewables (and nuclear fission) are key to holding off climate change until fusion is a more mature technology why should the research be mutually exclusive though? there's resources and brainpower to pursue both.

scottious 6y ago

It's not an either/or... we should be pursuing lots of different avenues for power generation because we don't know what will pan out and what won't. Fusion might still be a huge win even if it takes 50 more years to perfect.

mkoubaa 6y ago

butter and guns