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When I read that timeline, it doesn't sound serious to me. If you're planning to do something in 40 years, then you don't have the faintest clue how to do it no
by perl4ever 6y ago
When I read that timeline, it doesn't sound serious to me. If you're planning to do something in 40 years, then you don't have the faintest clue how to do it now, which means you don't know when you will know how to do it. It could be 5 years or 1,000 or never. You don't know what you don't know.
- shakezula 6y agoWe have fusion making consistent and significant gains right now.
- andi999 6y agoSo what is the plan for the nuclear waste (neutron capture from the hull activates it badly)?
- dosshell 6y agoThe radioactive strength and decay time is not that long, right?
- shakezula 6y agoThe nuclear waste problem is drastically overstated and, like almost every other aspect of nuclear power, is generally fear-mongered and cherry-picked as some sort of "gotcha". https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... From the article: "the U.S. has produced roughly 83,000 metrics tons of used fuel since the 1950s—and all of it could fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards." I'd be more comfortable with a nuclear waste storage facility in my area than I would be with a coal power plant polluting the same given area.
- KarlKemp 6y agoWe have wind and solar making even faster gains, and being real, right now as well.
- shakezula 6y agoSure, but solar won't be enough to power us forever, and doesn't scale like fusion eventually will. We will have energy needs orders of magnitudes more than we do right now within the next 20 years. I'm all for solar, but fusion will be necessary just in terms of dealing with climate change and the energy needs that alone will bring with it. Carbon sequestration, water desalination, etc... are all going to need serious energy behind them and will be knocking on humanity's door before the 2050s.
- matkoniecz 6y ago"First commercial fusion power station will start construction between 2050 and 2060" is mostly guess, but it is an educated guess based on some trends/predictions/achieved work. But compare it to "First commercial perpetum mobile power station will start construction between 2050 and 2060" or "First FTL spaceship will be launched in 2050s".
- officehero 6y agoThe educated guess for the last 50 years was 20-30 years away
- dosshell 6y agoMy wife showed me once a chart of both founding and the estimation of the fusion spark (plus net energy). It explained pretty good why the estimation had changed. My impression is that if humanity had focused on the question and not the politics we would already have fusion capacity. But do not forget, we still do not know if it is financial benefit to use fusion in the future.
- bildung 6y agoFor the last 60 years even! Fusion power was ~20 years away in Stanislaw Lems Summa Technologicae in 1961.
- cecilpl2 6y agoThis is mostly because it has not been funded to the level required for that timeline to be accurate. 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 agoFunding at the level in that chart would not have given us fusion. That chart is based on a crash program to develop tokamaks, but assumed tokamaks work better than they actually do. The main product of that crash program would have been tears and frustration, not practical fusion. One can turn this around and say that fusion not getting the funding in that chart is evidence it was not seen as a promising place to invest. One cannot simply presume it's a good investment and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
- abandonliberty 6y agoMusk somehow got a bunch of those right. Not as complex, but still filled with unknowns.
- perl4ever 6y agoMy gut tells me that fusion power is better analogized to a space elevator than reusable rockets. But you're suggesting what I already alluded to as a reason for doubting that economic fusion power will ever happen - he's the type of person who would be pursuing fusion if it seemed feasible. It's not that he's the only one, or that he knows about nuclear physics, but it's the sort of risk he would plausibly take if he didn't know of a good reason why it can't be done. Also, of course, you need power for Mars bases.
- abandonliberty 6y agoI'm not a huge SpaceX watcher, but I suspect it's harder to build electric cars than rockets. Yes, rockets are crazy expensive and time consuming but the fundamental principles are relatively understood. https://qz.com/1244768/why-are-electric-cars-so-much-harder-to-build-than-rockets/ https://qz.com/1244768/why-are-electric-cars-so-much-harder-... Tesla's continual hitting of projected targets is much more impressive to me. You're generally right though: the maturity, risk, and timelines of fusion are much greater than either of these. Better suited to long-term gov't/military spending. But the general principle applies. Everything is measurable and can be modeled with a predictive distribution. The more unknowns, the more variable the distribution is.