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Yeah, any positive news on fusion progress and there always seems to be the same set of comments appear that are overwhelmingly critical of fusion development.

Yeah, any positive news on fusion progress and there always seems to be the same set of comments appear that are overwhelmingly critical of fusion development. Fusion is not well funded and imo has been let down by mismanagement of ITER, and despite this keeps making progress. I feel that fusion is one of humanity's best shots at actively reversing climate change, and it is disheartening to see such widespread pessimism about it. Yeah it's hard. There are huge hurdles in making it economicly viable, but if we can go from first powered flight to the moon in 70 years, and put billions of transistors on a chip in 50, then maybe we can get fusion going. It's clearly possible.

UnFleshedOne 5y ago
There is a species of environmentalism that would consider successful fusion or similar high tech mega scale energy source actually detrimental because you can't build one in your hippy community using old tractor parts and alternative ways of knowing. Environmentally clean energy source is not enough, it needs to be ideologically pure as well.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  This is projection. The irrationality is thinking that fusion is something desirable. I suspect this follows from exposure to fusion reactors as a trope in SF stories. From a hard nosed engineering point of view fusion is just terrible.
  - sprafa 5y ago
    Please tell me how it’s terrible, Mr Hard Nosed Engineer ?
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Low power density (at least an order of magnitude worse than fission), high complexity, need to maintain large complex objects for which hands-on maintenance is impossible and for which there are many parts for which no redundancy is possible. Fusion reactors are the opposite of "Keep It Simple, Stupid". The engineering undesirability of DT fusion has been known for decades. All the recent excitement doesn't address any of the known showstoppers.
      - sprafa 5y ago
        You sound like someone Id love to see proven wrong.
  - phscguy 5y ago
    I can understand that from an enginneering perspective ITER is terrible, but fusion in general? There are all sorts of approaches to fusion, and things such as type 2 superconductors were undiscovered 30 ago and uneconomic/unpractical 10 years ago. Timing control systems for magnetised target fusion were impossible but now are doable. Our understanding of plasma has been advancing a lot, simulations are good now, we can control plasmas much better. Chirped pulsed laser amplification is a thing now and really good at making high amplitude pulsed lasers for inertial approaches... I could go on and on. This isn't the 90s anymore, and our technology is still rapidly advancing. What happens if we find more efficient/cheap/high power density thermocouples, or find a direct energy electrostatic power capture method? Fusion's economic realities today may be overcome soon, we really do not know what we can do in even 20 years from now. The fundamental truth is that there is vast amounts of energy available in hydrogen, and all it takes is 100MK to ignite it.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      DT fusion looks bad even if you totally ignore anything related to plasma physics or magnetic fields. Simply handling the heat flow and neutrons from the reactor looks to make the reactor too big to compete, compared to fission reactors. And then you have the problem of having to stick sophisticated stuff in the hot zone where hands-on maintenance is impossible (compared to a fission reactor, where just the fuel and relatively simple hardware is in that zone.)
      - gfodor 5y ago
        Fusion doesn’t have the stigma of fission, or a lot of the risks, and so if we can get to a point where we are actually building new fusion reactors, we should assume the technology will improve rapidly.
        pfdietz 5y ago
        It's a common error to think that fission power plants aren't being built because of "stigma". The actual problem is failed economics. Fusion promises to be even more expensive, for the reasons I explained. It's not clear why one should expect fusion to have good experience effects. Fission didn't, and the non-nuclear parts of fusion power plants will be mature technologies.
- mcswell 5y ago
  Like Mr Fusion? runs on beer, from what I've seen.
crazygringo 5y ago
> I feel that fusion is one of humanity's best shots at actively reversing climate change Couldn't the same thing be said about current fission reactors? I get that fusion doesn't have the downsides of fission... but I'm also worried that people will be "scared" of fusion in the same way they're against GMO vegetables and irradiated fruits, totally irrationally...
- ncmncm 5y ago
  There is no need worry about that. Extreme high cost will suffice. It could never come within 10x fission cost. You might notice people are not breaking down doors to build fission plants.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > they're against GMO vegetables and irradiated fruits, totally irrationally... COVID-19 is GMO ... are you in favor of pandemics?
- phscguy 5y ago
  Sadly no. While I think that it would work and probably be cheaper and easier than fusion, fission has an absolutely abysmal public image. People are terrified of radiation, even if the danger is very low. This means it becomes prohibitively difficult and hence expensive to build and run a fission plant because safety has to be prioritized so heavily. That is even if permission is granted to build in the first place. I think it is unlikely for irrational fear of fusion to become mainstream like it has with fission. Because of this I think the barriers to fusion power are at this point lower than the barriers to scaling up fission power.
  - nickik 5y ago
    Fusion also produces radiation. So not sure why changing one word to the other should magically change public opinion. We can just rename fission to #goodenergy or something, that would be cheaper then developing fusion. People don't even know that nuclear reactors use fission, so the idea that this would change anything is crazy. People opposed will call fusion reactors 'nuclear' just like they do fission.

UnFleshedOne 5y ago

There is a species of environmentalism that would consider successful fusion or similar high tech mega scale energy source actually detrimental because you can't build one in your hippy community using old tractor parts and alternative ways of knowing. Environmentally clean energy source is not enough, it needs to be ideologically pure as well.

pfdietz 5y ago
This is projection. The irrationality is thinking that fusion is something desirable. I suspect this follows from exposure to fusion reactors as a trope in SF stories. From a hard nosed engineering point of view fusion is just terrible.
- sprafa 5y ago
  Please tell me how it’s terrible, Mr Hard Nosed Engineer ?
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Low power density (at least an order of magnitude worse than fission), high complexity, need to maintain large complex objects for which hands-on maintenance is impossible and for which there are many parts for which no redundancy is possible. Fusion reactors are the opposite of "Keep It Simple, Stupid". The engineering undesirability of DT fusion has been known for decades. All the recent excitement doesn't address any of the known showstoppers.
    - sprafa 5y ago
      You sound like someone Id love to see proven wrong.
- phscguy 5y ago
  I can understand that from an enginneering perspective ITER is terrible, but fusion in general? There are all sorts of approaches to fusion, and things such as type 2 superconductors were undiscovered 30 ago and uneconomic/unpractical 10 years ago. Timing control systems for magnetised target fusion were impossible but now are doable. Our understanding of plasma has been advancing a lot, simulations are good now, we can control plasmas much better. Chirped pulsed laser amplification is a thing now and really good at making high amplitude pulsed lasers for inertial approaches... I could go on and on. This isn't the 90s anymore, and our technology is still rapidly advancing. What happens if we find more efficient/cheap/high power density thermocouples, or find a direct energy electrostatic power capture method? Fusion's economic realities today may be overcome soon, we really do not know what we can do in even 20 years from now. The fundamental truth is that there is vast amounts of energy available in hydrogen, and all it takes is 100MK to ignite it.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    DT fusion looks bad even if you totally ignore anything related to plasma physics or magnetic fields. Simply handling the heat flow and neutrons from the reactor looks to make the reactor too big to compete, compared to fission reactors. And then you have the problem of having to stick sophisticated stuff in the hot zone where hands-on maintenance is impossible (compared to a fission reactor, where just the fuel and relatively simple hardware is in that zone.)
    - gfodor 5y ago
      Fusion doesn’t have the stigma of fission, or a lot of the risks, and so if we can get to a point where we are actually building new fusion reactors, we should assume the technology will improve rapidly.
      - pfdietz 5y ago
        It's a common error to think that fission power plants aren't being built because of "stigma". The actual problem is failed economics. Fusion promises to be even more expensive, for the reasons I explained. It's not clear why one should expect fusion to have good experience effects. Fission didn't, and the non-nuclear parts of fusion power plants will be mature technologies.
mcswell 5y ago
Like Mr Fusion? runs on beer, from what I've seen.

crazygringo 5y ago

> I feel that fusion is one of humanity's best shots at actively reversing climate change Couldn't the same thing be said about current fission reactors? I get that fusion doesn't have the downsides of fission... but I'm also worried that people will be "scared" of fusion in the same way they're against GMO vegetables and irradiated fruits, totally irrationally...

ncmncm 5y ago
There is no need worry about that. Extreme high cost will suffice. It could never come within 10x fission cost. You might notice people are not breaking down doors to build fission plants.
redis_mlc 5y ago
> they're against GMO vegetables and irradiated fruits, totally irrationally... COVID-19 is GMO ... are you in favor of pandemics?
phscguy 5y ago
Sadly no. While I think that it would work and probably be cheaper and easier than fusion, fission has an absolutely abysmal public image. People are terrified of radiation, even if the danger is very low. This means it becomes prohibitively difficult and hence expensive to build and run a fission plant because safety has to be prioritized so heavily. That is even if permission is granted to build in the first place. I think it is unlikely for irrational fear of fusion to become mainstream like it has with fission. Because of this I think the barriers to fusion power are at this point lower than the barriers to scaling up fission power.
- nickik 5y ago
  Fusion also produces radiation. So not sure why changing one word to the other should magically change public opinion. We can just rename fission to #goodenergy or something, that would be cheaper then developing fusion. People don't even know that nuclear reactors use fission, so the idea that this would change anything is crazy. People opposed will call fusion reactors 'nuclear' just like they do fission.