11 ms·

> this is still exciting given how anemic advancement in the fusion space has been for 50+ years At the top of my list for when I'll be king for a day is - mas

> this is still exciting given how anemic advancement in the fusion space has been for 50+ years At the top of my list for when I'll be king for a day is - massive, national-scale investments (think: reaching towards one percent of GDP) in fusion research. This is a major roadblock, but things look awesome on the other side. We just need to get our stuff together to hop over this fence somehow.

bilegeek 6y ago
> massive, national-scale investments A reminder of what could have been: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._his...
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Yes, we could have wasted much more money back then (those crash budgets would not have worked, since they assumed tokamaks work better than it turned out they did.)
DataDaoDe 6y ago
I couldn't agree more. Once you realize that energy is the fundamental unit which powers everything else in the economy, not only from every movement of ourselves to those of our machines as well, you realize the more we advance in our ability to produce more and more energy at cheaper and cheaper costs in increasingly reliable ways, the more we can accelerate, without exception, every other industry.
- Florin_Andrei 6y ago
  Make an efficient fusion reactor the size of a truck, and the solar system becomes your backyard.
  - Stubb 6y ago
    Make an efficient fusion reactor of any size, and you can power Fischer-Tropsch plants to synthesize carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuel for the existing fossil-fuel infrastructure.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - pault 6y ago
      I've never heard of this. How can a hydrocarbon fuel be carbon neutral?
      - wavegeek 6y ago
        You take CO2 out of the air and turn it into oil / methane / elemental carbon using vast amounts of energy and some water and catalysts. You then burn it, returning it to the atmosphere. Net CO2 impact = zero.
      - _Microft 6y ago
        The problem is not that we are burning hydrocarbons per se. The problem is rather that these hydrocarbons were extracted from the ground and introduced into the short term carbon cycle. The total amount of carbon rises thereby which leads to shifts like an increasing concentraction in the atmosphere and the oceans. These higher levels of carbondioxide in the atmosphere let less heat escape back into space (the atmosphere is normally somewhat transparent at the affected wavelengths but carbondioxide can absorb at that, trapping additional heat in the atmosphere, see [0]), leading to additional global warming (water vapor also traps heat and and made Earth suitable for life as we know it in first place). Higher levels of carbondioxide in the atmosphere also lead to more carbondioxide being absorbed by the oceans which in turns acidifies the water. We could extract carbondioxide from air, turn it into hydrocarbons and burn that all day/year/century long but producing it from fossil sources is what makes it so bad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#/media/File:CO2_H2O_absorption_atmospheric_gases_unique_pattern_energy_wavelengths_of_energy_transparent_to_others.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#/media/File:...
- Retric 6y ago
  There is ~zero expectation in the scientific community that fusion is going to be cheap at scale. It might eventually be cheaper than fission due to several factors. But, even that’s looking a long way off.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    How so? Unlimited, non-radioactive fuel and inherent safety of the system alone could tip this scale pretty severely in favor of fusion once it becomes energy-positive. And remember, once that happens, investment is going to be through the roof, which will accelerate progress. Either the "scientific community" (whatever that means) is either too pessimistic about this, or you've just made this up.
    - jvm_ 6y ago
      It was my understanding that fission and fusion both use the same Nuclear Power Plant sized facility. Fusion just replaces the radioactive bit, you still need steam/electricity conversion/transmission/cooling... it's not like a suitcase you can plug wires into, you still need a massive 'factory' to make electricity, just the one bit is a safer.
      - m0zg 6y ago
        Just the little bit responsible for Chernobyl and Fukushima is not a part of the design at all. No big deal. :-)
        ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        I am really tired of this line - the taunami killed 18,500 people. The reactor incident killed no-one through radiation and 32 people through physical injuries. One failure of Banqiao Dam killed an estimated 240,000 people. That's more than all people who have ever died from anything to do with nuclear, reactors and bombs combined. Air pollution kills about 2,000 people every single day. Reactor incidents are like plane crashes - they get attention. Fissil fuels are like car crashes - they kill more people every day and noone gives a shit.
- criddell 6y ago
  Can you make enough energy that you could satisfy the demands of bitcoin miners and still have enough left over for productive uses?
simonh 6y ago
I think it’s generally very hard to force technological progress along by just throwing money at it. Let’s suppose this proposal works out, ITER will become a very expensive boondoggle. A technological dead end. But if you’d taken the ‘Manhattan Project’ approach and thrown 10x as much money at fusion research 20 years ago we’d most likely have spent most of it on a super-ITER. It might be operational by now and might even have reached break-even on power generation, but in the longer term would now be just as redundant and superseded by this new approach.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  Sure, but on the other hand, such a lucky break of this new approach might have had never happened. At the same time, if super-ITER approach was shown to work, by producing it en masse, it would likely be cheaper per installed MW than nuclear power, which would remove the need for solar panels and wind altogether. We'd have cheap power with no danger of nuclear pollution, no real nuclear waste problem, and no destroyed habitats and landscapes by solar panels and wind turbines. We'd still have won over current status quo, just not as much as we might with this lucky break.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    You don't know that. What if you had spent 1000x the budget of the manhattan project on building an atom bomb in the year 1789? You would have gotten squat.
    - xyzzyz 6y ago
      I know that, because we already got ITER, which is widely expected to be energy positive. Moreover, the ITER approach is known to scale upwards: in fact, the ITER is so large, because it's the smallest size that is expected to work.
      - pfdietz 6y ago
        ITER is expected to be energy positive, but it's a kind of pyrrhic breakeven. The gross power density of ITER will be 1/400th power density of a PWR reactor vessel.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bilegeek 6y ago

> massive, national-scale investments A reminder of what could have been: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._his...

pfdietz 6y ago
Yes, we could have wasted much more money back then (those crash budgets would not have worked, since they assumed tokamaks work better than it turned out they did.)

DataDaoDe 6y ago

I couldn't agree more. Once you realize that energy is the fundamental unit which powers everything else in the economy, not only from every movement of ourselves to those of our machines as well, you realize the more we advance in our ability to produce more and more energy at cheaper and cheaper costs in increasingly reliable ways, the more we can accelerate, without exception, every other industry.

Florin_Andrei 6y ago
Make an efficient fusion reactor the size of a truck, and the solar system becomes your backyard.
- Stubb 6y ago
  Make an efficient fusion reactor of any size, and you can power Fischer-Tropsch plants to synthesize carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuel for the existing fossil-fuel infrastructure.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - pault 6y ago
    I've never heard of this. How can a hydrocarbon fuel be carbon neutral?
    - wavegeek 6y ago
      You take CO2 out of the air and turn it into oil / methane / elemental carbon using vast amounts of energy and some water and catalysts. You then burn it, returning it to the atmosphere. Net CO2 impact = zero.
    - _Microft 6y ago
      The problem is not that we are burning hydrocarbons per se. The problem is rather that these hydrocarbons were extracted from the ground and introduced into the short term carbon cycle. The total amount of carbon rises thereby which leads to shifts like an increasing concentraction in the atmosphere and the oceans. These higher levels of carbondioxide in the atmosphere let less heat escape back into space (the atmosphere is normally somewhat transparent at the affected wavelengths but carbondioxide can absorb at that, trapping additional heat in the atmosphere, see [0]), leading to additional global warming (water vapor also traps heat and and made Earth suitable for life as we know it in first place). Higher levels of carbondioxide in the atmosphere also lead to more carbondioxide being absorbed by the oceans which in turns acidifies the water. We could extract carbondioxide from air, turn it into hydrocarbons and burn that all day/year/century long but producing it from fossil sources is what makes it so bad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#/media/File:CO2_H2O_absorption_atmospheric_gases_unique_pattern_energy_wavelengths_of_energy_transparent_to_others.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#/media/File:...
Retric 6y ago
There is ~zero expectation in the scientific community that fusion is going to be cheap at scale. It might eventually be cheaper than fission due to several factors. But, even that’s looking a long way off.
- m0zg 6y ago
  How so? Unlimited, non-radioactive fuel and inherent safety of the system alone could tip this scale pretty severely in favor of fusion once it becomes energy-positive. And remember, once that happens, investment is going to be through the roof, which will accelerate progress. Either the "scientific community" (whatever that means) is either too pessimistic about this, or you've just made this up.
  - jvm_ 6y ago
    It was my understanding that fission and fusion both use the same Nuclear Power Plant sized facility. Fusion just replaces the radioactive bit, you still need steam/electricity conversion/transmission/cooling... it's not like a suitcase you can plug wires into, you still need a massive 'factory' to make electricity, just the one bit is a safer.
    - m0zg 6y ago
      Just the little bit responsible for Chernobyl and Fukushima is not a part of the design at all. No big deal. :-)
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        I am really tired of this line - the taunami killed 18,500 people. The reactor incident killed no-one through radiation and 32 people through physical injuries. One failure of Banqiao Dam killed an estimated 240,000 people. That's more than all people who have ever died from anything to do with nuclear, reactors and bombs combined. Air pollution kills about 2,000 people every single day. Reactor incidents are like plane crashes - they get attention. Fissil fuels are like car crashes - they kill more people every day and noone gives a shit.
criddell 6y ago
Can you make enough energy that you could satisfy the demands of bitcoin miners and still have enough left over for productive uses?

simonh 6y ago

I think it’s generally very hard to force technological progress along by just throwing money at it. Let’s suppose this proposal works out, ITER will become a very expensive boondoggle. A technological dead end. But if you’d taken the ‘Manhattan Project’ approach and thrown 10x as much money at fusion research 20 years ago we’d most likely have spent most of it on a super-ITER. It might be operational by now and might even have reached break-even on power generation, but in the longer term would now be just as redundant and superseded by this new approach.

xyzzyz 6y ago
Sure, but on the other hand, such a lucky break of this new approach might have had never happened. At the same time, if super-ITER approach was shown to work, by producing it en masse, it would likely be cheaper per installed MW than nuclear power, which would remove the need for solar panels and wind altogether. We'd have cheap power with no danger of nuclear pollution, no real nuclear waste problem, and no destroyed habitats and landscapes by solar panels and wind turbines. We'd still have won over current status quo, just not as much as we might with this lucky break.
- dnautics 6y ago
  You don't know that. What if you had spent 1000x the budget of the manhattan project on building an atom bomb in the year 1789? You would have gotten squat.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    I know that, because we already got ITER, which is widely expected to be energy positive. Moreover, the ITER approach is known to scale upwards: in fact, the ITER is so large, because it's the smallest size that is expected to work.
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      ITER is expected to be energy positive, but it's a kind of pyrrhic breakeven. The gross power density of ITER will be 1/400th power density of a PWR reactor vessel.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]