4 ms·

If anyone's not already aware of it, the SPARC/ARC reactor work spun out of MIT looks pretty promising on shorter timescales than ITER: https://www.youtube.com

If anyone's not already aware of it, the SPARC/ARC reactor work spun out of MIT looks pretty promising on shorter timescales than ITER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY6U4wB-oYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY6U4wB-oYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8uYNhevRtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8uYNhevRtk

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
Stuff like this is what got me excited about fusion. Energy is the most fundamental constraint of the universe and people like MIT's Zach Hartwig say fusion merely has a funding problem.
- effie 6y ago
  > fusion merely has a funding problem. When you look at history of ITER failures and the real problems involved in making the whole fusion power production operation economically sustainable, this claim disintegrates. It is a very complex project that is hard to manage, and building and operating fusion power plant is currently much more costly than doing that for a fission power plant. The only benefit of fusion vs. fission is that fusion can give us much more energy. But fission can give enough energy now for decades, and much more cheaply.
  - rossnordby 6y ago
    It's worth distinguishing ITER from fusion research as a whole. While it's an interesting project, I doubt it's going to be first to market for actual power generation. Its design is fighting some pretty nasty scaling laws that newer research is bypassing. I wouldn't advocate shutting down fission plants with the expectation that they'd be replaced by fusion in the immediate future, obviously, but some of the non-ITER work might end up viable sooner than a lot of people expect.
    - effie 6y ago
      Which non-ITER work is closer to power generation? Can you be specific?
      - rossnordby 6y ago
        The most prominent example I'm aware of is the one I linked earlier in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26674988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26674988 It's still not going to be ready tomorrow, but it doesn't require building the eighth wonder of the world.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

Stuff like this is what got me excited about fusion. Energy is the most fundamental constraint of the universe and people like MIT's Zach Hartwig say fusion merely has a funding problem.

effie 6y ago
> fusion merely has a funding problem. When you look at history of ITER failures and the real problems involved in making the whole fusion power production operation economically sustainable, this claim disintegrates. It is a very complex project that is hard to manage, and building and operating fusion power plant is currently much more costly than doing that for a fission power plant. The only benefit of fusion vs. fission is that fusion can give us much more energy. But fission can give enough energy now for decades, and much more cheaply.
- rossnordby 6y ago
  It's worth distinguishing ITER from fusion research as a whole. While it's an interesting project, I doubt it's going to be first to market for actual power generation. Its design is fighting some pretty nasty scaling laws that newer research is bypassing. I wouldn't advocate shutting down fission plants with the expectation that they'd be replaced by fusion in the immediate future, obviously, but some of the non-ITER work might end up viable sooner than a lot of people expect.
  - effie 6y ago
    Which non-ITER work is closer to power generation? Can you be specific?
    - rossnordby 6y ago
      The most prominent example I'm aware of is the one I linked earlier in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26674988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26674988 It's still not going to be ready tomorrow, but it doesn't require building the eighth wonder of the world.