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While I'm excited for this, I'm also cynical about the public reaction to fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability. These pa

While I'm excited for this, I'm also cynical about the public reaction to fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability. These past 2 years have highlighted to many how a combination of poor critical thinking and politicisation of so many aspects of our lives can lead to literal catastrophes. Will the public see Fusion as the wonderful advancement for humanity that it will likely be, or will they see it as another dangerous nuclear thing? Will they see it as taking jobs from hard-working coal/oil workers? Will it be spun as the green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc? Will there be stories about how we could accidentally create a black hole and destroy the world? Hopefully I'm just being cynical, but I am worried about how the general public will perceive it, and/or how it will be sold by politicians and the less reputable parts of the media.

xupybd 5y ago
I don't think it will as it should be radically cheaper. It should come with an economic improvement.
- danpalmer 5y ago
  It might be in the long term, but the same can essentially be said for nuclear (fission) power – the materials cost is low (compared to fossil fuels), but due to the extremely high capex needed to build a plant it's considered expensive. I think the first ~50 years of fusion projects are likely to be very expensive and I'd expect that reputation to stick.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    Depends on the return. Solar was too expensive until it was a better investment then a coal plant.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Given the current trends, it seems very unlikely that fusion will be even close to competitive with solar or wind by the time it arrives (which is still probably more than 20 years away as a commercial endeavor). Fusion, in any of its forms, requires some of the highest technology ever produced by mankind. It then exposes these ultra-high-tech wonders to extreme temperatures, and extreme temperature differences, and large amounts of extreme radiation (neutron bombardment), plus corrosion from the extremely fine hydrogen gas. Initial fusion power plants will operate at a very small energy efficiency, and they will need constant maintenance via high-tech robots capable of withstanding the radioactive environment that the neutron bombardment will create all around the reactor. Most pieces of the reactor will probably not last for more than a few months or at best years, due to all of the pressures described before. Not to mention, the potential for catastrophic failure, though much less than with fission, is still enough to completely destroy the reactor and a good chunk of the plant, if the plasma containment fails. While of course incomparably safer than a fission reactor meltdown, it would still be a massive economic issue. So commercial fusion, when it does finally arrive (or if), will be extremely expensive, with its only plausible use case as a somewhat reliable base load. Cheap fusion, if it is even possible, is much further away into the future than that - I would confidently bet that cheap fusion will not exist this century, even if ITER or others reach all of their milestones as planned.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    It's not that catastrophic failure destroys a good chunk of the plant, it's that any accident in the hot part of the reactor becomes very difficult to repair. So even a relatively minor accident can turn your multibillion dollar investment into junk.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  Why should fusion be radically cheaper? It's very complex, has much lower power density than fission, and pushes materials and systems more strongly (power/area through surfaces, for example; neutron flux as well) than fission. If you claim either fuel cost or waste handling cost, neither of those is a major part of the cost of fission power. Capital cost is, and fusion moves that in the wrong direction.
  - pas 5y ago
    Fusion is "cheap" if the externalities are priced in. (Of course that's currently a very big if.) But even then, assuming a version of "fusion tech currently in R&D" realized today, we can probably build a lot of windmills and battery parks for the price of one fusion power plant. Again, on the long term it seems ideal. (It can be made portable, abundant fuel in the universe, safer than fission, etc.)
pas 5y ago
Certainly we'll have all of the above. > Will it be spun as the green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc? Well, the green energy sector is big. Solar companies push solar, wind folks push wind, and well, fusion folks are pushing for funding and VC money. But the important thing is, we need all of them. Plus batteries (and battery-like systems). And, yes, there will be spin doctors trying to discredit "green" because X, but that's what they do anyway, fusion or not. > Will there be stories about how we could accidentally create a black hole and destroy the world? Good idea, maybe :D But we'll sure hear a lot about how much irradiated/activated waste it will produce, and how it's not green at all, and so on.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  > But the important thing is, we need all of them. Why do we need fusion?
  - pas 5y ago
    Philosophically we don't _need_ anything of course :) But fusion as a power source: abundant fuel source, cleanest (no emissions, minimal raw materials required, minimal waste to bury), safest (no proliferation risk, safest to install and operate, no need to climb towers), no intermittency problem.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      All of those are desirable, but in no sense do any imply the necessity of fusion. They don't even imply the overall desirability of fusion, since one must also weigh the negatives, like cost.
      - pas 5y ago
        The cost of development is amortized over infinity. (Sure, on the other hand the NPV of a perpetuity bond is finite.) Of course (economically) the optimal allocation of current resources/funds probably would not involve fusion research, but instead instant (ASAP) replacement of coal, oil, gas power plants. Then working on fusion. But if we look at what fusion researchers should do, either they could be retrained or we can simply go ahead and print some money to pay them to work on what they want to do anyway (fusion research).
pasabagi 5y ago
> another dangerous nuclear thing I think this really understates the case against nuclear power. The problem with nuclear power stations is they are prone to the same kind of industrial accidents all large plants are prone to, and they are on the more dangerous end of the scale when it comes to what can happen if there is an industrial accident. You can say that people aren't accurately weighing the risks, but you can't say it's irrational for people in, say, Japan, to be very skeptical of their government's capacity to either regulate industry or respond to industrial accidents and spills in a way that protects public health. Fusion power, as far as I can see, is not on the more dangerous end of the scale, so would probably pass all of the mainstream, basically reasonable objections to new nuclear plants. (For the record, I'm not anti-nuclear.)
- pfdietz 5y ago
  No, the problem with nuclear power stations is they are way too expensive. Fusion promises to make this main problem worse, not better. Fusion is a great example of solving the wrong problem.
  - danpalmer 5y ago
    This is a really good point, and could well be true, although I think it's a bit more complicated. Fission has two problems: the emotional one – weapons/danger, and the practical one – cost. Yes weapons could be a practical issue, but I think it's more an "emotional" issue. The question is, is it only the practical reason that is preventing widespread adoption of fission power? On the surface, maybe! Unpacking it a bit, I'm not sure. Anti-nuclear sentiment has caused government policy changes, not the cost issue. Similarly, restricting nuclear power technology to only certain countries is a political issue, not a cost issue, and more closely aligned with the former. Cost is a big issue, but I do wonder if we'd get over it if the danger aspect disappeared. The long term economics of nuclear power are actually really good, it's just that it takes ~10 years to realise those economics compared to (e.g.) ~3 for natural gas.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
wnkrshm 5y ago
Use of fusion as an energy source removes a lot of threats our civilizations are facing but it also comes with some caveats rooted in human behavior. Human energy consumption has always gone up when the supply got more efficient, from coal to oil to fission. While here, the power generation itself won't have such a drastic impact (unless humanity overdoes it, though, we seem to always do that) but maybe more power means more consumption and demand for other goods that get used up while using things that consume power. And with enough power you can think about making things that consume more or even build more things that consume more power. Lots of processes that were considered too wasteful suddenly become feasible. Just like with digital documents, when people predicted that paper wouldn't be needed in the modern economy and the demand for paper would decline, it has actually skyrocketed - because a paper document isn't important anymore. You throw it away and print a new one when it has a crease. Historically, we've been very bad at predicting such side effects. So I won't buy in a 'fusion solves everything' mindset. Fusion power can be a boon for humanity on a global scale but it could also make some problems worse.
- jeffparsons 5y ago
  > Lots of processes that were considered too wasteful suddenly become feasible. I worry about this, too, but couldn't there be some positive effects here, too? E.g. what if it made desalination a lot cheaper?
  - eru 5y ago
    Why do you even worry?
    - jeffparsons 5y ago
      Because the secondary effects of something becoming more efficient can be harmful, in counterintuitive ways. E.g. if some process in steel manufacturing is improved to require less power, you might think, yay, there's less power needed so less CO2 released. Good for mitigating global warming. But what might actually happen instead is that it becomes feasible to make more things out of steel because it is cheaper than before, so more energy is used on steel production in total, even though per unit it is more efficient. The same thing could happen with fusion energy, but in ways we can barely imagine now. What high-power workloads are not even considered now that would be cheap enough with fusion power?
myrmidon 5y ago
> fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability IMO it is not clear that fusion will ever be useable for power plants: Depending on costs (construction/maintenance/decomissioning), it might never be competitive with (battery backed) photovoltaics (or wind), no matter how much progress we make. Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are).
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are). One thing to remember is that a major goal of fusion research is also weapons applications, those that is never publically admitted.
  - danpalmer 5y ago
    I have never heard of fusion weapons research, or what they would even be. My understanding is limited but where I can see fission leading to weapons, I can't see the same for fusion. Could you give some more detail? What form would a fusion weapon take? Is it about the laser technology?
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      Thermonuclear bombs are fusion weapons (with a fission trigger). Having relatively easily handled, high density energy sources would also probably lead to deployment of energy weapons.
      - arethuza 5y ago
        Most modern weapon designs are actually fission-fusion-fission designs with most of the energy actually coming from the final fission step - the latter being driven by neutrons from the fusion step. Things get even more complicated with the fact that primaries are fusion boosted fission and the fusion step contains a fission "sparkplug".
sanp 5y ago
And, will electrons generated via fusion be easier to track so that the government knows what you r doing with electricity
hutzlibu 5y ago
"green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc" Since fusion does not work sustainable yet (or at all), I would not classify it as green energy. (Where is for example the tritium coming from?) But once it works - it likely will not magically supply all of humanity at once in a way, that is way cheaper than what we can have with wind, water and sun now. So why flip flopping? We use what works. If fusion really works soon, awesome. But honestly, I have to see, to believe. What I see is, that solar and co. are working now and do not require a fundamental breakthrough for very, very complex machinery under heavy fusion fire to work consistently. And desserts for solarfarming, we have enough. As well, as many, many roofes in the cities. Solarfoils might be the next big thing to cover them big scale cheaply. And stationary batteries can be made of cheap materials avaible in abundance. Lots of other possibilities, too. Simple, reliable tech, compared to Fusion. So fusion would be nice to have, but I would not allocate more critical ressources to it, that might be better spend elsewhere. Sure, investing into the energy grid, sounds not as sexy and interesting as building a fusion reactor. But maybe that is, what is currently more needed, to make it more flexible for the fluctating renewable energy sources. And with the sun, we have already a big working fusion reactor. Why not focus on harvesting that energy more?
- eru 5y ago
  > (Where is for example the tritium coming from?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Production
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Yeah, I know that. Mostly from nuclear fission reactors. So currently not really sustainable. Or is the plan, to keep the fission reactors running, to fuel the fusion reactors?
    - eru 5y ago
      You could do that. Or you could probably breed them from excess neutrons in some fusion reactor. Why do you think fission wouldn't be sustainable? Or do you mean, fusion alone wouldn't be sustainable? I guess that you'd always have some auxiliary industries.

xupybd 5y ago

I don't think it will as it should be radically cheaper. It should come with an economic improvement.

danpalmer 5y ago
It might be in the long term, but the same can essentially be said for nuclear (fission) power – the materials cost is low (compared to fossil fuels), but due to the extremely high capex needed to build a plant it's considered expensive. I think the first ~50 years of fusion projects are likely to be very expensive and I'd expect that reputation to stick.
- XorNot 5y ago
  Depends on the return. Solar was too expensive until it was a better investment then a coal plant.
tsimionescu 5y ago
Given the current trends, it seems very unlikely that fusion will be even close to competitive with solar or wind by the time it arrives (which is still probably more than 20 years away as a commercial endeavor). Fusion, in any of its forms, requires some of the highest technology ever produced by mankind. It then exposes these ultra-high-tech wonders to extreme temperatures, and extreme temperature differences, and large amounts of extreme radiation (neutron bombardment), plus corrosion from the extremely fine hydrogen gas. Initial fusion power plants will operate at a very small energy efficiency, and they will need constant maintenance via high-tech robots capable of withstanding the radioactive environment that the neutron bombardment will create all around the reactor. Most pieces of the reactor will probably not last for more than a few months or at best years, due to all of the pressures described before. Not to mention, the potential for catastrophic failure, though much less than with fission, is still enough to completely destroy the reactor and a good chunk of the plant, if the plasma containment fails. While of course incomparably safer than a fission reactor meltdown, it would still be a massive economic issue. So commercial fusion, when it does finally arrive (or if), will be extremely expensive, with its only plausible use case as a somewhat reliable base load. Cheap fusion, if it is even possible, is much further away into the future than that - I would confidently bet that cheap fusion will not exist this century, even if ITER or others reach all of their milestones as planned.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  It's not that catastrophic failure destroys a good chunk of the plant, it's that any accident in the hot part of the reactor becomes very difficult to repair. So even a relatively minor accident can turn your multibillion dollar investment into junk.
pfdietz 5y ago
Why should fusion be radically cheaper? It's very complex, has much lower power density than fission, and pushes materials and systems more strongly (power/area through surfaces, for example; neutron flux as well) than fission. If you claim either fuel cost or waste handling cost, neither of those is a major part of the cost of fission power. Capital cost is, and fusion moves that in the wrong direction.
- pas 5y ago
  Fusion is "cheap" if the externalities are priced in. (Of course that's currently a very big if.) But even then, assuming a version of "fusion tech currently in R&D" realized today, we can probably build a lot of windmills and battery parks for the price of one fusion power plant. Again, on the long term it seems ideal. (It can be made portable, abundant fuel in the universe, safer than fission, etc.)

pas 5y ago

Certainly we'll have all of the above. > Will it be spun as the green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc? Well, the green energy sector is big. Solar companies push solar, wind folks push wind, and well, fusion folks are pushing for funding and VC money. But the important thing is, we need all of them. Plus batteries (and battery-like systems). And, yes, there will be spin doctors trying to discredit "green" because X, but that's what they do anyway, fusion or not. > Will there be stories about how we could accidentally create a black hole and destroy the world? Good idea, maybe :D But we'll sure hear a lot about how much irradiated/activated waste it will produce, and how it's not green at all, and so on.

pfdietz 5y ago
> But the important thing is, we need all of them. Why do we need fusion?
- pas 5y ago
  Philosophically we don't _need_ anything of course :) But fusion as a power source: abundant fuel source, cleanest (no emissions, minimal raw materials required, minimal waste to bury), safest (no proliferation risk, safest to install and operate, no need to climb towers), no intermittency problem.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    All of those are desirable, but in no sense do any imply the necessity of fusion. They don't even imply the overall desirability of fusion, since one must also weigh the negatives, like cost.
    - pas 5y ago
      The cost of development is amortized over infinity. (Sure, on the other hand the NPV of a perpetuity bond is finite.) Of course (economically) the optimal allocation of current resources/funds probably would not involve fusion research, but instead instant (ASAP) replacement of coal, oil, gas power plants. Then working on fusion. But if we look at what fusion researchers should do, either they could be retrained or we can simply go ahead and print some money to pay them to work on what they want to do anyway (fusion research).

pasabagi 5y ago

> another dangerous nuclear thing I think this really understates the case against nuclear power. The problem with nuclear power stations is they are prone to the same kind of industrial accidents all large plants are prone to, and they are on the more dangerous end of the scale when it comes to what can happen if there is an industrial accident. You can say that people aren't accurately weighing the risks, but you can't say it's irrational for people in, say, Japan, to be very skeptical of their government's capacity to either regulate industry or respond to industrial accidents and spills in a way that protects public health. Fusion power, as far as I can see, is not on the more dangerous end of the scale, so would probably pass all of the mainstream, basically reasonable objections to new nuclear plants. (For the record, I'm not anti-nuclear.)

pfdietz 5y ago
No, the problem with nuclear power stations is they are way too expensive. Fusion promises to make this main problem worse, not better. Fusion is a great example of solving the wrong problem.
- danpalmer 5y ago
  This is a really good point, and could well be true, although I think it's a bit more complicated. Fission has two problems: the emotional one – weapons/danger, and the practical one – cost. Yes weapons could be a practical issue, but I think it's more an "emotional" issue. The question is, is it only the practical reason that is preventing widespread adoption of fission power? On the surface, maybe! Unpacking it a bit, I'm not sure. Anti-nuclear sentiment has caused government policy changes, not the cost issue. Similarly, restricting nuclear power technology to only certain countries is a political issue, not a cost issue, and more closely aligned with the former. Cost is a big issue, but I do wonder if we'd get over it if the danger aspect disappeared. The long term economics of nuclear power are actually really good, it's just that it takes ~10 years to realise those economics compared to (e.g.) ~3 for natural gas.
  - pfdietz 5y ago

wnkrshm 5y ago

Use of fusion as an energy source removes a lot of threats our civilizations are facing but it also comes with some caveats rooted in human behavior. Human energy consumption has always gone up when the supply got more efficient, from coal to oil to fission. While here, the power generation itself won't have such a drastic impact (unless humanity overdoes it, though, we seem to always do that) but maybe more power means more consumption and demand for other goods that get used up while using things that consume power. And with enough power you can think about making things that consume more or even build more things that consume more power. Lots of processes that were considered too wasteful suddenly become feasible. Just like with digital documents, when people predicted that paper wouldn't be needed in the modern economy and the demand for paper would decline, it has actually skyrocketed - because a paper document isn't important anymore. You throw it away and print a new one when it has a crease. Historically, we've been very bad at predicting such side effects. So I won't buy in a 'fusion solves everything' mindset. Fusion power can be a boon for humanity on a global scale but it could also make some problems worse.

jeffparsons 5y ago
> Lots of processes that were considered too wasteful suddenly become feasible. I worry about this, too, but couldn't there be some positive effects here, too? E.g. what if it made desalination a lot cheaper?
- eru 5y ago
  Why do you even worry?
  - jeffparsons 5y ago
    Because the secondary effects of something becoming more efficient can be harmful, in counterintuitive ways. E.g. if some process in steel manufacturing is improved to require less power, you might think, yay, there's less power needed so less CO2 released. Good for mitigating global warming. But what might actually happen instead is that it becomes feasible to make more things out of steel because it is cheaper than before, so more energy is used on steel production in total, even though per unit it is more efficient. The same thing could happen with fusion energy, but in ways we can barely imagine now. What high-power workloads are not even considered now that would be cheap enough with fusion power?

myrmidon 5y ago

> fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability IMO it is not clear that fusion will ever be useable for power plants: Depending on costs (construction/maintenance/decomissioning), it might never be competitive with (battery backed) photovoltaics (or wind), no matter how much progress we make. Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are).

tsimionescu 5y ago
> Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are). One thing to remember is that a major goal of fusion research is also weapons applications, those that is never publically admitted.
- danpalmer 5y ago
  I have never heard of fusion weapons research, or what they would even be. My understanding is limited but where I can see fission leading to weapons, I can't see the same for fusion. Could you give some more detail? What form would a fusion weapon take? Is it about the laser technology?
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    Thermonuclear bombs are fusion weapons (with a fission trigger). Having relatively easily handled, high density energy sources would also probably lead to deployment of energy weapons.
    - arethuza 5y ago
      Most modern weapon designs are actually fission-fusion-fission designs with most of the energy actually coming from the final fission step - the latter being driven by neutrons from the fusion step. Things get even more complicated with the fact that primaries are fusion boosted fission and the fusion step contains a fission "sparkplug".

sanp 5y ago

And, will electrons generated via fusion be easier to track so that the government knows what you r doing with electricity

hutzlibu 5y ago

"green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc" Since fusion does not work sustainable yet (or at all), I would not classify it as green energy. (Where is for example the tritium coming from?) But once it works - it likely will not magically supply all of humanity at once in a way, that is way cheaper than what we can have with wind, water and sun now. So why flip flopping? We use what works. If fusion really works soon, awesome. But honestly, I have to see, to believe. What I see is, that solar and co. are working now and do not require a fundamental breakthrough for very, very complex machinery under heavy fusion fire to work consistently. And desserts for solarfarming, we have enough. As well, as many, many roofes in the cities. Solarfoils might be the next big thing to cover them big scale cheaply. And stationary batteries can be made of cheap materials avaible in abundance. Lots of other possibilities, too. Simple, reliable tech, compared to Fusion. So fusion would be nice to have, but I would not allocate more critical ressources to it, that might be better spend elsewhere. Sure, investing into the energy grid, sounds not as sexy and interesting as building a fusion reactor. But maybe that is, what is currently more needed, to make it more flexible for the fluctating renewable energy sources. And with the sun, we have already a big working fusion reactor. Why not focus on harvesting that energy more?

eru 5y ago
> (Where is for example the tritium coming from?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Production
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Yeah, I know that. Mostly from nuclear fission reactors. So currently not really sustainable. Or is the plan, to keep the fission reactors running, to fuel the fusion reactors?
  - eru 5y ago
    You could do that. Or you could probably breed them from excess neutrons in some fusion reactor. Why do you think fission wouldn't be sustainable? Or do you mean, fusion alone wouldn't be sustainable? I guess that you'd always have some auxiliary industries.