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Yes. It's not impossible. Just really damn hard to pull off. Sodium chloride is useful for many things beside batteries, if we were to use that as the source.

Yes. It's not impossible. Just really damn hard to pull off. Sodium chloride is useful for many things beside batteries, if we were to use that as the source. Say, sulphur as well, other traces too. 10x batteries make this a no brainer and super easy to implement, and economical. Heck, 3x batteries even. You need to make and place enough panels too, doable but needs a lot of political will. And will of course take some time as well. I think we shouldn't put the cart before the horse though. Fix the immediate problem with a few smaller nuclear plants and work real hard on our own pace to replace them with renewables. If fusion comes in the meantime, great. In the meantime, we can use the spare resources to remove other sources of GHG vent. (Say optimize transportation.) See the other branch on how I view fusion. I see DD or enhanced DT fusion as endgame and mostly a space technology. (Fusion engines would be rather nice. Think 50x better ion engines, the technology is related.) Few hundred years of work.

pfdietz 6y ago
> Yes. It's not impossible. Just really damn hard to pull off. Yes, any global energy system will be extremely expensive. Trillions of dollars worth of expensive. That it is a lot of work is not a showstopper. I don't see nuclear being part of that solution, though. Why waste money on something that is demonstrably inferior? It had its chance. We don't need to invest in losers. Fusion is not an endgame. Fusion is bullshit. It's Rube Goldberg on stilts. From an engineering point of view, it's pretty much the opposite of attractive. Keep It Simple, Stupid is not just a slogan. DT fusion makes no sense in space. The energy comes out as neutrons, which get turned to heat. You can make heat with fission in space much more easily, and with much less reactor mass, than you can with fusion. The notion that fusion is somehow good for space comes from science fiction more than anything. It's a trope, not a good idea.
- jnxx 6y ago
  > Fusion is bullshit. Especially because the Tritium fuel problem is not solved, and nobody has the faintest idea how to solve it. The materials needed to breed Tritium in something different from the Sun (or thermonuclear weapons) just do not exist for now.
- N1H1L 6y ago
  At this point fusion is an elaborate high energy physics stimulus package.

pfdietz 6y ago

> Yes. It's not impossible. Just really damn hard to pull off. Yes, any global energy system will be extremely expensive. Trillions of dollars worth of expensive. That it is a lot of work is not a showstopper. I don't see nuclear being part of that solution, though. Why waste money on something that is demonstrably inferior? It had its chance. We don't need to invest in losers. Fusion is not an endgame. Fusion is bullshit. It's Rube Goldberg on stilts. From an engineering point of view, it's pretty much the opposite of attractive. Keep It Simple, Stupid is not just a slogan. DT fusion makes no sense in space. The energy comes out as neutrons, which get turned to heat. You can make heat with fission in space much more easily, and with much less reactor mass, than you can with fusion. The notion that fusion is somehow good for space comes from science fiction more than anything. It's a trope, not a good idea.

jnxx 6y ago
> Fusion is bullshit. Especially because the Tritium fuel problem is not solved, and nobody has the faintest idea how to solve it. The materials needed to breed Tritium in something different from the Sun (or thermonuclear weapons) just do not exist for now.
N1H1L 6y ago
At this point fusion is an elaborate high energy physics stimulus package.