4 ms·

This has been a fumble of communication by the fusion science community. The window for fusion power being a saving grace from climate change passed decades ag

This has been a fumble of communication by the fusion science community. The window for fusion power being a saving grace from climate change passed decades ago yet it has been the claimed raison d'etre for the research. The important thing to note is that even though all climate projections end after 2050, the world does not. Better late than never. A carbon-neutral, virtually-limitless fuel, on-demand baseload energy source will still be handy even if it's "too late to reverse climate change". It will likely have a longer term of being handy than than the internal combustion engine will. The argument this video makes at the end about "needing to spend research dollars wisely" is the exact thing the fusion researchers fear when overselling the state of the art to the public. They've been continually defunded and in spite of that still make progress. If they didn't tell the politicians what they wanted to hear do you think any fusion program wouldn't be mothballed by this point? The reality of the long-term value of the research should be enough. We, as a society, can and should afford fusion energy research. We can also afford solar panel research, energy storage research, scaling up of carbon-neutral energy sources, and still have plenty left over to address aging infrastructure and wealth inequality. The issue is how the effort of society is actually being spent is not really beneficial to society. Whether we fund fusion research or not will not change that. Fund the research.

timmytokyo 5y ago
>The argument this video makes at the end about "needing to spend research dollars wisely" is the exact thing the fusion researchers fear when overselling the state of the art to the public. Intentionally deceiving the public about the state of your research in order to procure funding might work in the short term. But in the long term it is bad for science. Why should the public fund people who lie?
- willis936 5y ago
  We have an entire political class devoted to lying to the public. I expect better of the scientists, but if you were given the choice between having a chance at securing humanity's industrial course or being able to not stretch the truth, which would you pick? Importantly, this is a stretch of the truth with technically no lies actually being said. If you sat down and really talked to any fusion researcher they would not say a bald-faced lie.
  - timmytokyo 5y ago
    You claim a fusion scientist would not tell you a bald-faced lie to your face, and yet that's pretty much what Bernard Bigot did in that congressional hearing shown in the video. If it becomes a norm for scientists to discard or shade the truth in this way, then the public should become skeptical and stop listening to them. Fortunately, despite what's going on with fusion, I think most scientists are forthright and don't believe that the ends justify the means as you apparently do.
    - willis936 5y ago
      What is the bald-faced lie that Bernard Bigot told congress?
      - ewalk153 5y ago
        “This project will produce 10x the power output we put into”. Yes, the Congress shares some of the responsibility for following the science so loosely that point wasn’t challenge. Still folks here are arguing about the moral relativism of deception to maintain funding. Is there any dispute that the use of Q by scientist is anything but misleading?
        ncmncm 5y ago
        The Congress does not share responsibility. It dictates exactly the form required so that money can be disbursed on a regular schedule, over decades, to select constituents. Q is certainly misleading, but no one is misled.
        willis936 5y ago
        The context of the quote is while Bigot is being asked about problems for a commercial fusion reactor beyond ITER. Bigot used the traditional definition of Q (relative to the plasma). He never attempted a deception. As I've said elsewhere, pushing Q from 1 to 1000 is much easier than pushing Q from 0.001 to 1. So the point of thermodynamic losses seems a strange hill to die on. It does mean a fusion reactor is more efficient if it's larger, but that's true of most thermodynamic machines. The discussion in context (not the sound byte Sabine quoted) is here (page 63[0]): >Mr. FOSTER. Well, thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to sit on this committee hearing. I guess my first question is, assuming that ITER succeeds and that sometime around 2025, 2030, would succeed at everything including DT—the DT program, what are the—going to be the remaining unsolved problems A) to be able to design a production which—you know, something that is an energy plant, you know, what’s on the list of things that will be unsolved problems? And secondly, what will be needed to understand what the levelized cost of electricity from a tokamak of those dimensions might be? You know, those are the two things that have to succeed to make fusion succeed as—succeed scientifically and engineering-wise, and it has to succeed economically. And so what will be the unsolved problems in 2025 or 2030, assuming everything goes nominally? I’m happy to have—you two can split it. >Dr. BIGOT. May I start? Yes. Okay. I do believe that the main problem which will have—okay, there is two main problem from my point of view. Once—okay, the ITER will have in delivery, okay, full demonstration that we could have, okay, 500 megawatt coming out of the 50 megawatt we will put in. It is materials, okay. When we will have continuous production of plasma energies, with some energy flux with neutrons which are as large as 20 megawatt per square meter, when we know, for example, when many—— >Mr. FOSTER. That’s the power density on the diverter or not—— >Dr. BIGOT. Yes, on the diverter. >Mr. FOSTER. Right. Okay. Right. >Dr. BIGOT. Okay. So all we could manage is some material which could be able to sustain such a flux continuously. And the second, we know if we want to take full advantage of the investment of industry or tokamak, we’ve—okay, the superconducting coils which could last for very long because there is no real use with, okay, superconducting coils because there is no energy dissipation, as you know. And so it will be the remote handling. How could we change some of the piece, for example, okay, tiles which will be facing the plasma or we could make all this remote handling properly done in such a way that, okay, we could take the best investment and have a long lifetime, okay, expectation for the delivery. So in order to come to the point you mentioned about the economy: it is a big investment, but if the operational costs in the long lifetime of the equipment are very low, it will be quite economical process." >Mr. FOSTER. And is that—are there actually designed studies where you say just, okay, imagine that you’re not making one of ITER but you’re making worldwide 100 of them? You know, how cheap could you imagine making all the superconducting coils? How cheap could you imagine making all the different components? You know, you can be optimistic there, but if you find that the levelized cost of electricity doesn’t look—you know, doesn’t look attractive, then you have to actually step back and maybe reallocate between more adventurous but potentially cheaper ones and straight ahead with the current plan. And so what’s the current state of knowledge of what the economics might be, just assuming everything works technically here? >Dr. BIGOT. Okay. Right now, there are several studies. As we know, ITER is the first of a kind, okay, and we have a lot of equipment around, the technology and so on. So the people mentioned to me very recently that when we will be moving to a real industrial facility, maybe the cost will be down compared to the cost of the ITER facility—— >Mr. FOSTER. Oh, unquestionably. And if you tell me you are optimistic it will be a factor of the—the unit cost will drop by a factor of five, it’s not unthinkable, but then you still have to do the cost of electricity calculation and see if you’re happy with the result. And that’s—I wonder if—those sort of studies must have been done for different versions of fusion machines at different levels of accuracy. What’s the current understanding for whether the ITER design point has a shot? I mean, that’s the question I’m trying to get at. >Dr. BIGOT. Okay. From my point of view all the studies I have seen so far we expect that the cost of the electricity which will come is—from such a facility will be around, okay, what we call 100 euro—I speak in euro, okay, which will be 100, okay, dollars, okay, per megawatt, as you have now, for example, with some of the, okay, windmills or solar energy. >Mr. FOSTER. That’s—— >Dr. BIGOT. So it would be comparable. >Mr. FOSTER. —13 cents a kilowatt hour, right? >Dr. BIGOT. Yes. >Mr. FOSTER. Yes. Stu, do you have anything? >Dr. PRAGER. I agree with everything Dr. Bigot said. I think for challenges, let me list three. I think one in the plasma science we have to learn how to hold the plasma in steady-state persistently. ITER will teach us about that but ITER will burn for about 8 minutes or so, and we need to learn how to have a burning plasma that lasts for months on end. That is in part a plasma science challenge, and there’s research underway to accomplish that, number one. Number two, as Bigot said, there’s a whole—the whole issue of materials research, both the plasma-facing component and the structural material that has to manage the neutron bombardment, and that’s a set of challenges, and there are ideas how to meet those challenges. And third, while ITER is operating, we are working on how to make the reactor concept even more attractive economically. So ITER will teach us all about burning plasma science and then maybe by the time we get that, we’ll have evolved beyond simply duplicating ITER for a reactor. So we can take that burning plasma science, ideas that have been developed in parallel maybe have a more highly optimized reactor. On cost of electricity, over the years there have been—the best engineering studies that could be done taking the cost of materials, the cost of assembly and calculating, you know, capital cost and cost of electricity, they always come out to be competitive with baseload power generation of today. However, projecting economics 30 years into the future is highly theoretical. We have an interesting data point with ITER, and we do ask ourselves the question, does the cost to construct ITER, is it consistent with the engineering calculations of what a reactor will cost? ITER is not a reactor, first of a kind, and so on. And at PPPL we had the beginnings of a study to try to quantify that, try to quantify how much extra cost is in ITER because it’s an experiment, it’s the first of a kind, internationally managed. And so we’re in the process of trying to get financial, if you like, data from the ITER partners so we can quantitatively answer your question. >Mr. FOSTER. Well, thank you. And, you know, that’s very important to our—the strategic decisions that we’re going to have to make. I guess at this point I yield back. 0. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY20/20160420/104815/HHRG-114-SY20-20160420-SD003.pdf https://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY20/20160420/104815/HHRG...
simonh 5y ago
> They've been continually defunded and in spite of that still make progress. In previous discussions here several times I’ve seen comments that not enough is spent of fusion research, and what we need is a fusion power Manhattan project. Manhattan cost about $22bn in 2021 dollars, but ITER by itself will cost around $18bn to $22bn, although some third party estimates come to more than double that. The project was supposed to cost $6bn, so this is hardly a case of defunding. Vast sums of money have been and still are being spent on fusion. I read plenty of SF with cheap powerful fusion reactors back on the day. I shared the dream, but the fact is there’s no guarantee fusion power will ever be practical. Let’s finish ITER, see where the alternate projects take us and see how it goes.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I support ITER with the caveat that whoever decided it should take decades to complete should be fired. There's no rationale for taking decades to build a fairly straightforward design Taking longer to build it actually dramatically increases the project cost while dramatically reducing the payback (i.e. solving fusion quick enough to be relevant to addressing climate change). They won't even do full fusion (i.e. payback) until 2035, and the actual power generation prototype plant isn't planned for operation until 2051, and I don't understand why people in charge have no sense of urgency here. I'm skeptical of alt-fusion projects, but... MIT's Commonwealth Fusion SPARC reactor uses a similar Tokamak design but with much higher magnetic field superconductors to be much more compact and thus is planning on a much earlier first full fusion date of 2025, i.e. a full decade earlier and actually potentially relevant to addressing climate change: https://cfs.energy/news-and-media/cfs-commercial-fusion-power-with-hts-magnet https://cfs.energy/news-and-media/cfs-commercial-fusion-powe...
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    If it were not scheduled to take decades to build, there would be no purpose in the project at all. Like other big public-works projects, the true purpose is the gravy train of money delivered with no required result. The will'o'th'wisp "fusion" is just a distraction. Taking less time would mean cutting off the gravy early. Nobody involved wants that. All of this would be garden-variety corruption, wholly legal under modern norms, except that a rapidly unfolding existential disaster looms: global climate disruption, and the project steals money from work that could actually help.
jeherr 5y ago
> The reality of the long-term value of the research should be enough. We have to decide how to apportion research funds from a limited pool. One project's gain is another project's loss. We also have to take into account that we don't know if the research is too far ahead of it's time or not. If the underlying technology just isn't there yet, we could be spinning our wheels on progress because other fields need to catch up. That money could be used for nuclear fission research instead, which it's looking more and more like we're going to need to fund in the near future.

timmytokyo 5y ago

>The argument this video makes at the end about "needing to spend research dollars wisely" is the exact thing the fusion researchers fear when overselling the state of the art to the public. Intentionally deceiving the public about the state of your research in order to procure funding might work in the short term. But in the long term it is bad for science. Why should the public fund people who lie?

willis936 5y ago
We have an entire political class devoted to lying to the public. I expect better of the scientists, but if you were given the choice between having a chance at securing humanity's industrial course or being able to not stretch the truth, which would you pick? Importantly, this is a stretch of the truth with technically no lies actually being said. If you sat down and really talked to any fusion researcher they would not say a bald-faced lie.
- timmytokyo 5y ago
  You claim a fusion scientist would not tell you a bald-faced lie to your face, and yet that's pretty much what Bernard Bigot did in that congressional hearing shown in the video. If it becomes a norm for scientists to discard or shade the truth in this way, then the public should become skeptical and stop listening to them. Fortunately, despite what's going on with fusion, I think most scientists are forthright and don't believe that the ends justify the means as you apparently do.
  - willis936 5y ago
    What is the bald-faced lie that Bernard Bigot told congress?
    - ewalk153 5y ago
      “This project will produce 10x the power output we put into”. Yes, the Congress shares some of the responsibility for following the science so loosely that point wasn’t challenge. Still folks here are arguing about the moral relativism of deception to maintain funding. Is there any dispute that the use of Q by scientist is anything but misleading?
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        The Congress does not share responsibility. It dictates exactly the form required so that money can be disbursed on a regular schedule, over decades, to select constituents. Q is certainly misleading, but no one is misled.
      - willis936 5y ago
        The context of the quote is while Bigot is being asked about problems for a commercial fusion reactor beyond ITER. Bigot used the traditional definition of Q (relative to the plasma). He never attempted a deception. As I've said elsewhere, pushing Q from 1 to 1000 is much easier than pushing Q from 0.001 to 1. So the point of thermodynamic losses seems a strange hill to die on. It does mean a fusion reactor is more efficient if it's larger, but that's true of most thermodynamic machines. The discussion in context (not the sound byte Sabine quoted) is here (page 63[0]): >Mr. FOSTER. Well, thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to sit on this committee hearing. I guess my first question is, assuming that ITER succeeds and that sometime around 2025, 2030, would succeed at everything including DT—the DT program, what are the—going to be the remaining unsolved problems A) to be able to design a production which—you know, something that is an energy plant, you know, what’s on the list of things that will be unsolved problems? And secondly, what will be needed to understand what the levelized cost of electricity from a tokamak of those dimensions might be? You know, those are the two things that have to succeed to make fusion succeed as—succeed scientifically and engineering-wise, and it has to succeed economically. And so what will be the unsolved problems in 2025 or 2030, assuming everything goes nominally? I’m happy to have—you two can split it. >Dr. BIGOT. May I start? Yes. Okay. I do believe that the main problem which will have—okay, there is two main problem from my point of view. Once—okay, the ITER will have in delivery, okay, full demonstration that we could have, okay, 500 megawatt coming out of the 50 megawatt we will put in. It is materials, okay. When we will have continuous production of plasma energies, with some energy flux with neutrons which are as large as 20 megawatt per square meter, when we know, for example, when many—— >Mr. FOSTER. That’s the power density on the diverter or not—— >Dr. BIGOT. Yes, on the diverter. >Mr. FOSTER. Right. Okay. Right. >Dr. BIGOT. Okay. So all we could manage is some material which could be able to sustain such a flux continuously. And the second, we know if we want to take full advantage of the investment of industry or tokamak, we’ve—okay, the superconducting coils which could last for very long because there is no real use with, okay, superconducting coils because there is no energy dissipation, as you know. And so it will be the remote handling. How could we change some of the piece, for example, okay, tiles which will be facing the plasma or we could make all this remote handling properly done in such a way that, okay, we could take the best investment and have a long lifetime, okay, expectation for the delivery. So in order to come to the point you mentioned about the economy: it is a big investment, but if the operational costs in the long lifetime of the equipment are very low, it will be quite economical process." >Mr. FOSTER. And is that—are there actually designed studies where you say just, okay, imagine that you’re not making one of ITER but you’re making worldwide 100 of them? You know, how cheap could you imagine making all the superconducting coils? How cheap could you imagine making all the different components? You know, you can be optimistic there, but if you find that the levelized cost of electricity doesn’t look—you know, doesn’t look attractive, then you have to actually step back and maybe reallocate between more adventurous but potentially cheaper ones and straight ahead with the current plan. And so what’s the current state of knowledge of what the economics might be, just assuming everything works technically here? >Dr. BIGOT. Okay. Right now, there are several studies. As we know, ITER is the first of a kind, okay, and we have a lot of equipment around, the technology and so on. So the people mentioned to me very recently that when we will be moving to a real industrial facility, maybe the cost will be down compared to the cost of the ITER facility—— >Mr. FOSTER. Oh, unquestionably. And if you tell me you are optimistic it will be a factor of the—the unit cost will drop by a factor of five, it’s not unthinkable, but then you still have to do the cost of electricity calculation and see if you’re happy with the result. And that’s—I wonder if—those sort of studies must have been done for different versions of fusion machines at different levels of accuracy. What’s the current understanding for whether the ITER design point has a shot? I mean, that’s the question I’m trying to get at. >Dr. BIGOT. Okay. From my point of view all the studies I have seen so far we expect that the cost of the electricity which will come is—from such a facility will be around, okay, what we call 100 euro—I speak in euro, okay, which will be 100, okay, dollars, okay, per megawatt, as you have now, for example, with some of the, okay, windmills or solar energy. >Mr. FOSTER. That’s—— >Dr. BIGOT. So it would be comparable. >Mr. FOSTER. —13 cents a kilowatt hour, right? >Dr. BIGOT. Yes. >Mr. FOSTER. Yes. Stu, do you have anything? >Dr. PRAGER. I agree with everything Dr. Bigot said. I think for challenges, let me list three. I think one in the plasma science we have to learn how to hold the plasma in steady-state persistently. ITER will teach us about that but ITER will burn for about 8 minutes or so, and we need to learn how to have a burning plasma that lasts for months on end. That is in part a plasma science challenge, and there’s research underway to accomplish that, number one. Number two, as Bigot said, there’s a whole—the whole issue of materials research, both the plasma-facing component and the structural material that has to manage the neutron bombardment, and that’s a set of challenges, and there are ideas how to meet those challenges. And third, while ITER is operating, we are working on how to make the reactor concept even more attractive economically. So ITER will teach us all about burning plasma science and then maybe by the time we get that, we’ll have evolved beyond simply duplicating ITER for a reactor. So we can take that burning plasma science, ideas that have been developed in parallel maybe have a more highly optimized reactor. On cost of electricity, over the years there have been—the best engineering studies that could be done taking the cost of materials, the cost of assembly and calculating, you know, capital cost and cost of electricity, they always come out to be competitive with baseload power generation of today. However, projecting economics 30 years into the future is highly theoretical. We have an interesting data point with ITER, and we do ask ourselves the question, does the cost to construct ITER, is it consistent with the engineering calculations of what a reactor will cost? ITER is not a reactor, first of a kind, and so on. And at PPPL we had the beginnings of a study to try to quantify that, try to quantify how much extra cost is in ITER because it’s an experiment, it’s the first of a kind, internationally managed. And so we’re in the process of trying to get financial, if you like, data from the ITER partners so we can quantitatively answer your question. >Mr. FOSTER. Well, thank you. And, you know, that’s very important to our—the strategic decisions that we’re going to have to make. I guess at this point I yield back. 0. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY20/20160420/104815/HHRG-114-SY20-20160420-SD003.pdf https://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY20/20160420/104815/HHRG...

simonh 5y ago

> They've been continually defunded and in spite of that still make progress. In previous discussions here several times I’ve seen comments that not enough is spent of fusion research, and what we need is a fusion power Manhattan project. Manhattan cost about $22bn in 2021 dollars, but ITER by itself will cost around $18bn to $22bn, although some third party estimates come to more than double that. The project was supposed to cost $6bn, so this is hardly a case of defunding. Vast sums of money have been and still are being spent on fusion. I read plenty of SF with cheap powerful fusion reactors back on the day. I shared the dream, but the fact is there’s no guarantee fusion power will ever be practical. Let’s finish ITER, see where the alternate projects take us and see how it goes.

Robotbeat 5y ago
I support ITER with the caveat that whoever decided it should take decades to complete should be fired. There's no rationale for taking decades to build a fairly straightforward design Taking longer to build it actually dramatically increases the project cost while dramatically reducing the payback (i.e. solving fusion quick enough to be relevant to addressing climate change). They won't even do full fusion (i.e. payback) until 2035, and the actual power generation prototype plant isn't planned for operation until 2051, and I don't understand why people in charge have no sense of urgency here. I'm skeptical of alt-fusion projects, but... MIT's Commonwealth Fusion SPARC reactor uses a similar Tokamak design but with much higher magnetic field superconductors to be much more compact and thus is planning on a much earlier first full fusion date of 2025, i.e. a full decade earlier and actually potentially relevant to addressing climate change: https://cfs.energy/news-and-media/cfs-commercial-fusion-power-with-hts-magnet https://cfs.energy/news-and-media/cfs-commercial-fusion-powe...
- ncmncm 5y ago
  If it were not scheduled to take decades to build, there would be no purpose in the project at all. Like other big public-works projects, the true purpose is the gravy train of money delivered with no required result. The will'o'th'wisp "fusion" is just a distraction. Taking less time would mean cutting off the gravy early. Nobody involved wants that. All of this would be garden-variety corruption, wholly legal under modern norms, except that a rapidly unfolding existential disaster looms: global climate disruption, and the project steals money from work that could actually help.

jeherr 5y ago

> The reality of the long-term value of the research should be enough. We have to decide how to apportion research funds from a limited pool. One project's gain is another project's loss. We also have to take into account that we don't know if the research is too far ahead of it's time or not. If the underlying technology just isn't there yet, we could be spinning our wheels on progress because other fields need to catch up. That money could be used for nuclear fission research instead, which it's looking more and more like we're going to need to fund in the near future.