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Serious question: how does an article like this get written without mentioning SPARC[1] once? They're hardly secretive, they're MIT's people, they're moving on
by wcarss 6y ago
Serious question: how does an article like this get written without mentioning SPARC[1] once? They're hardly secretive, they're MIT's people, they're moving on a plan to get results in ~5 years, and they're talking about the same kind of things: tokamaks, better computer modeling, and easier to make higher temperature superconductors for stronger magnets.
I'm just a layperson, I only know pop science level stuff here, but they seem clearly like the best game in town -- so, seriously, can a person in the physics world shed some light on why they aren't at least a small part of every article about fusion, but ITER is?
1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC_(tokamak) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC_(tokamak)
(And, for those with an interest who still haven't seen Zach Hartwig's absolutely excellent 2017 talk: https://youtu.be/L0KuAx1COEk https://youtu.be/L0KuAx1COEk -- watch it!)
- free_rms 6y agoGod I wish we could Manhattan Project this shit. I'm a layman too but I get the impression that the theory is basically there and we just need to figure out the engineering. That's a solvable problem with lots of money and lots of teams. Are we going to wait until the sea level rises 20 feet and then say, geez, compared to the costs this imposed, fusion would have been easy?
- kortilla 6y agoFission is a solved engineering and science problem though and we’re still blocking it to let the sea levels rise. Point being, nobody actually cares about climate change enough to make hard decisions so a Manhattan style project is highly unlikely.
- orthecreedence 6y agoYes, I've been saying it over and over: raise the price of oil until gasoline et al are $20+/gallon. Then nuclear will be cheap. Why are we letting a silly thing like scarcity, supply, and demand dictate whether we self-destruct?
- jdeibele 6y agoI've been saying for a long time that the US should increase the tax on gas steadily every year. Even a nickel a year would be OK but more would be better. People would be able to plan on the price increasing every year and make sound economic decisions on whether they wanted to move closer to work, etc. Unfortunately, it became apparent about the same time that the US is almost incapable of doing something in an organized fashion. People would scream about the price of gas going up and it would be rolled back. Or there'd be subsidies that would negate the tax increases.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoFuel in the US is already much more expensive than two decades ago. I remember buying a gallon for around 90 cents in 1999, and at the same time I read a newspaper article about some immigrant-run stations on the Jersey shore that had slashed their prices to several cents below that, as they were content to make a tiny profit margin and play a long game. Now a gallon costs more than twice as much as then, but as far as I can tell the average American has not made significant lifestyle changes with regard to vehicle usage: they just suck it up.
- Xorlev 6y ago$0.90 in 1999 is $1.41 today. Near me, gas is ~$2 (give or take). So, more expensive (~40-50%), but not double.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoGranted, it may not be quite double, but average American salaries have not entirely kept pace with inflation in the last twenty years, so fuel expenses are appreciably higher than simply counting the inflation in.
- jacquesm 6y agoHere it's closer to $2 / liter. (1/4 of a Gallon).
- dchichkov 6y agoIs there a way to make people care? Personally, I think, for United States it does make perfect sense to redirect, say, half of the military budget onto solving real homeland security issues: climate change, sustainability, ecology, pandemics. There might be enough budget there to address climate change [1]. It'd be a risk to spend less on military, but considering that the United States has nuclear weapons and allies, is it a risk really? [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02460-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02460-9
- entropicdrifter 6y agoThe real risk is politicians not getting their kickbacks from defense suppliers, sadly. The military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about has a death-grip on the congressional budget, even against the wishes of Pentagon leaders.
- numpad0 6y agoPolitics, NIMBY, risks of accidents, and radioactive materials pollution are unsolved problems. You could argue it’s sociology than engineering but a problem nonetheless. I think nukes is the future but nukes belong in space; just build some fission on high orbit to perfect fusion, and bring the meat down over microwave or as bulk hydrocarbons or whatever that works. Solar system has unlimited free meal supplies of raw materials on first-come-first-serve basis. It’s been said that extraterrestrially constructed spacecraft can be launched for free merely by gently pushing it out of dockyard, or at most shooting out of a maglev train, for at least half a century. So build some gigantic fission satellites in space!
- Lammy 6y ago> You could argue it’s sociology than engineering but a problem nonetheless. It can be both when the consent is manufactured! :)
- vladTheInhaler 6y agoWhy do fission in orbit when you have unimpeded access to a huge natural fusion plant, and virtually unlimited real estate to harvest its energy?
- imtringued 6y agoPeople underestimate what 21% efficient means when it comes to solar panels... If you bring a solar panel to space and receive sunlight 24/7 at 44% higher intensity than the best place on earth you will generate an obscene amount of electricity.
- hunter-gatherer 6y agoA month or so ago I was listening to an NPR interview about insects. The interviewee said that the insect population in Germany has declined something like 75% in 25 years. He noted that people don't tend to notice big changes over the span of a couple decades, which is a good point, and helps explain why climate change will probably never be seriously tackled. Edit- link to article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-of-ecological-armageddon-after-dramatic-plunge-in-insect-numbers https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-...
- api 6y agoIt will be tackled through adaptation. Some coastal cities may die. Others may have to spend a ton on remediation. More people will migrate inland, and farming centers will shift. It’s far too late to stop it with prevention, though there is still value in trying to cut CO2 when possible to blunt it a bit.
- Lammy 6y ago> Are we going to wait until the sea level rises 20 feet and then say, geez, compared to the costs this imposed, fusion would have been easy? Well, yeah, the US spent the last 50 years (e.g. "WTF Happened In 1971?"[0]) widening the income gap and doing everything possible to keep their "undesirable" ethnic groups as poor as possible. When the bottom falls out, the only people left standing will be the people who would have been able to use the nice water fountain back when America was "Great", and anyone suffering will get individual blame for their lack of individual bootstraps. e: In case I was unclear, I think this is a bad thing :) [0]: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/, but I would ask "WTF Happened in 1968?" instead.
- logicchains 6y ago>God I wish we could Manhattan Project this shit. Interesting point of reference: the Manhattan project cost around around $25 billion in today's dollars. The US government spent at least $6 trillion on the coronavirus response, which could buy 200 Manhattan Projects. Coronavirus will kill around a million people this year at most; air pollution kills around five million per year (and sea level rises could kill a lot more).
- 01100011 6y agoAren't you implying, intentionally or not, that a "Manhattan Project" level of expenditure, $25 billion, is enough to make meaningful progress towards commercial fusion energy production? I don't think that is a given.
- xyzzyz 6y agoThe implication is rather that we’ve grown much more inept when it comes to getting things done.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoBecause there isn't an existential war going on forcing people to listen to the people who want to be economically efficient.
- xyzzyz 6y agoYeah it’s not like we’re in any kind of emergency that required reorganizing the whole society and economy, or anything like that.
- ars 6y agoOr because all the low hanging fruit is plucked.
- IanCal 6y agoThat's roughly the total cost of ITER.
- SiempreViernes 6y agoIts amazing how cutting emission by regulation is completely left out of the list of options, somehow spending infinite money is seen as easier than getting congress to act... Anyway, I let Wellerstein reply to this: """The Manhattan Project was an unusual, somewhat dubious enterprise that had massive, world-affecting consequences. Ignoring that not only misunderstands the Manhattan Project, it misunderstands what happens when you pour essentially unlimited resources into a given field — which actually is the primary goal of those who use this metaphor. The problem is, the Manhattan Project “worked,” if by “worked” you mean, “produced atomic bombs for use in the Pacific theatre during World War II.” It almost didn’t work — there are plenty of reasons to believe that the war would have been over fairly soon with or without the bombs (the main historical question is not whether it would soon end, but on what terms and at what costs).""" http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/04/02/do-we-want-another-manhattan-project/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/04/02/do-we-want-another...
- kenneth 6y agoIt's widely believed that the use of the bombs in WWII as a practical demonstration of the technology is what lead to there not being a WWIII and generally a period of (granted, uneasy) world stability throughout the cold war. Thanks to the bomb's use at the end of an almost-finished conflict, everyone was too afraid of the destruction to turn the cold war hot. Without it, the cold war would have turned hot and a lot more nukes would have been used. Who knows what the world would look like today without those two bombs.
- ahelwer 6y agoLove too incinerate 150,000 civilians instead of some random atoll with media floating in a boat a few miles away This is just one of many lacklustre attempts at justifying a hideous war crime. From Eisenhower: "I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon."
- pasabagi 6y agoI think the USSR was typically very keen to avoid a war for obvious reasons: they had a much smaller economy, exhausted population, significantly smaller military and massively smaller industrial base than the West. America was more keen, but the logistics of actually invading the USSR would make any war essentially unwinnable. Maybe if the nukes didn't exist, the USSR would have annexed western Berlin, but I don't really know how they would have managed more than that, even if they had wanted to. I also don't think nuclear weapons would have prevented a war if the USSR was more aggressive or more close to the USA in military power.
- olau 6y agoFusion is not going to solve the sea level rise problem. You can see this by comparing it to fission. Fission fuels is not expensive on a kWh base, so cheaper fuel is not really a big advantage. Fusion plants produce radioactive waste too (perhaps less?), so you don't save yourself from that headache. Which isn't actually that big of a problem either, even if the costs are probably underestimated for fission plants. Now, the real killer for fission is the cost of the plants. They are just so incredibly complex and expensive that they are not competitive. Will a fusion plant be cheaper? Probably not. It will most likely, with current tech, be much more expensive. So it won't be able to compete with fission. And fission can't compete (in most parts of the world) with renewables, that are still falling exponentially in price. So fusion may still be interesting from a scientific stand point, and perhaps things will change in the far future. An argument I often see is that renewables need storage, and that's true. But so does a fission or a fusion plant, unless you overbuild and accept a bad capacity factor. Some amount of overbuild combined with storage looks like the most economical solution currently - the specifics depend very much on where you are in the world.
- deweller 6y agoFusion does not create any long-lived radioactive waste.
- tyho 6y agoNo, but fast neutrons are created in some processes which induce long lived radiation in reactor materials though.
- willis936 6y ago100 years is not “long lived” in the context of radioactive waste disposal. http://www.acamedia.info/sciences/J_G/fusion.html http://www.acamedia.info/sciences/J_G/fusion.html
- pfdietz 6y agoFusion will likely produce a larger volume of waste contaminated enough to prevent easy disposal. That could very well make the waste more expensive to deal with.
- pfdietz 6y agoFission was a fundamentally easier problem than fusion. The equivalent of ignition was achieved in 1942 after one year of effort.
- baking 6y agoBecause SPARC is already happening. This is planning for research in areas that the next reactor will need including a neutron source to test materials and a blanket test facility. See Bob Mumgaard's slides from last year's annual meeting of Fusion Power Associates where he outlines the research for technologies needed for by all the approaches to fusion power. http://www.firefusionpower.org/FPA19_Speed_Mumgaard_CFS.pdf http://www.firefusionpower.org/FPA19_Speed_Mumgaard_CFS.pdf Quote from the last slide: "It would be a travesty for somebody to have a concept that works and have fusion stall because we, CHOSE not to prioritize the parts that help everybody." This is where government funded research helps the emerging fusion power industry.
- Lammy 6y agoI am pro-nuclear, and I think it would be a mistake to assume this article is also pro-nuclear. Heck, the very first six words ("U.S. fusion scientists, notorious for squabbling") prime a reader to see those hardworking people as bickering nerds working on fleeting, individual, theoretical interests. I sincerely doubt we will see any uranium-based energy technology ascend to dominance/ubiquity while over half of Earth's known uranium deposits are in the Afghanistan/Kazakhstan/Ukraine region alone. Nobody would want to buy crude (priced exclusively in USD in most markets) if nuclear were widespread. We might have to lay off a few Stuxnet malware developers then too. Takin' their jobs :p [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_reserves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r...
- czzr 6y agoFusion is not a uranium based energy technology.
- halfdan 6y agoYou are talking about fission, not fusion. Nuclear plants are using radioactive sources like uranium to generate energy. Fusion tech would use hydrogen and fuse it to helium.
- Lammy 6y agoYep, and it is not just feasible but easy to build fission plants right now and stop using greenhouse-gas emitters entirely, but we won't, because Reasons. Our collective focus is being distracted from that working, clean, but politically-disadvantageous tech to this non-functional speculative future-tech that the author simultaneously insults.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoPeople love to post comments like this on every thread where nuclear comes up, but it really distorts the reality of the situation. Investment in nuclear has essentially evaporated. This is because fission plants take billions of dollars and around a decade to stand up. If you go through the numbers the ROI looks pretty ugly. Meanwhile you can look at the trend over time in levelized energy costs and storage costs, and can see that we're very near the thresholds for simply doing it all with renewables plus storage. All together this makes it clear to any investor doing the most basic of diligence that fission is a risky bet. Even if you waved a magic wand and eliminated any form of political opposition, that doesn't change this less than favorable cost picture.
- sbierwagen 6y agoThe article image is of ARC, the predecessor to SPARC.
- baking 6y agoWell, SPARC is a mini version of ARC. Smaller and without a blanket.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lambdatronics 6y agoAs a technical answer: this is about the federal program, and SPARC isn't part of it, while ITER is. More practically, Commonwealth & other private fusion efforts have been advocating for (A) federal funds to be allocated to solving the thorny nuclear materials science issues common to (essentially) all fusion schemes (B) a NASA-COTS-inspired cost-share approach to building the eventual pilot plant. (Presumably the industry players would like to get federal support for building their pilot plants (like ARC), much the way SpaceX got support for Falcon 9 / Crew Dragon development.) This plan reflects (A) for sure, and a step in the direction of (B). I was involved in the early stages of the community input to the plan. I think there's openness to increased partnership with industry like this.