3 ms·

Fusion is N years in the future and it will always be so. N=30. With the news from Commonwealth Fusion Systems, N is still 30. And it will keep being 30 for a

• ncmncm 6y ago
  This is true, but is not the reason. The reason is that there has never been, at any stage, any serious intention of building practical Tokamak power generation systems. Power density is too small, plant lifetime is too short, scale is too large, reliability is too low, recovery from failures too costly: each by one or more orders of magnitude, and multiplied, while renewables costs are still in free fall. Even fission, overwhelmingly cheaper, is not competitive. Instead, Tokamak research has always and will always be a jobs program for hot-neutron physicists, intended solely as a way to maintain a pool of candidates for weapons work. Other, aneutronic fusion methods could possibly be practical someday for power generation or for propulsion, but are actively neglected because they are useless for the true purpose of the program. If your stable of physicists stop thinking about hot neutrons, and find job prospects not involving skills useful mainly for weapons work, they are lost. Money spent on Tokamak work could be spent on other methods that have any actual prospect of success. Production capacity of high-temperature superconducting tape could be used to cycle solar and wind power between geographic regions without losses. But they are diverted. Huge Tokamak construction projects have another organizational purpose: corruption. Any sufficiently large public-works project offers practically unlimited opportunities to siphon off monies to profit individuals not engaged in any societally useful capacity. This is why fission project costs balloon from, e.g., projected $2B to $10B+: not from regulation, not from change orders; it is because ballooning cost is the whole point of the project. Any finally useful outcome is mainly a carrot to keep the money flowing. ITER is such a project. It does not even pretend to "work" until 2050. It does not even pretend to any prospect of useful power output, ever. Yet, its construction consumes many $Bs every year. Each $B spent makes it harder to abandon, justifying endless overruns. Most projects must ultimately deliver something, even if vastly overpriced: a jet, a tunnel, a power plant; or finally be cancelled and written off. Fusion work has successfully resisted any demand for delivery, over many decades, and openly admits plans on not delivering for many more. It is perfectly corrupt. Note, not a penny evaporates: it all lines open pockets. I haven't heard of millionaire physicists (pace Myhrvold), so somebody else gets it.
  • Veedrac 6y ago
    There are nuggets of truth in here but they are combined in a way that makes no sense in net. Eg. it's true that some fusion programs are rooted in nuclear weapons work, but that cannot be easily said of ITER, because if that were the goal we'd have FIRE instead, the Fusion Ignition Research Experiment that used actively cooled conductors and higher chamber pressures. (And then also a bunch more since FIRE would be built.) ITER's advantages don't make sense if the goal isn't actually sustained fusion. Yes, ITER is slow, over budget, and had delays, as is typical of project of its scope, but this doesn't mean it's a fake project any more than James Webb or SLS. Not delivering power doesn't mean it's fake science any more than the LHC. Certainly its jobs program aspect doesn't transfer to new fusion startups, which are in large part privately funded.
    • ncmncm 6y ago
      ITER is, as you say, slow, over budget, and had delays, and never promises ever to deliver one solitary erg of energy, commercially viable or otherwise; yet it is planned to consume all fusion research money well into the 2050s, and with delays, beyond. FIRE would have failed more spectacularly, and then the gravy train might have dried up. To say a fusion program is "rooted in nuclear weapons work" suggests it is meant to produce results of interest for weapons, but that is wholly unnecessary. The connection to weapons work is more tenuous. An ITER physicist has no job prospects besides either ITER or weapons work. Without a stable of ITER physicists, who would be available to hire for weapons work, whenever it pops up? I think James-Webb has a telescope built and waiting to be scheduled for launch, so there's that. SLS certainly is a fake project. I will go on record, here, forecasting that SLS will never launch one solitary astronaut. It never had a purpose to exist other than to maintain employment in a sufficiently wide variety of Congressional districts. The planned "lunar station" had no reason to exist except that it was the farthest SLS could get to. Once Starship is flying, in a year or three, even the US Congress will find it difficult to continue funding SLS. Most fusion startups, like 90+% of startups, are about diverting VC money into ready pockets with no expectation of return. Principals of startups are mostly unaware of their role in this dance.
      • 6y ago