4 ms·

Probably not. ITER takes 440 megawatts of total power to generate 500 megawatts of power, at the cost of many years of development & billions of dollars. [1]

Probably not. ITER takes 440 megawatts of total power to generate 500 megawatts of power, at the cost of many years of development & billions of dollars. [1] [1] http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nuclear-fusion-power.html http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nuclea...

chii 5y ago
> ITER takes 440 megawatts of total power to generate 500 megawatts of power not 500 MW of usable power. Have a watch of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  Yeah, you're right. I forgot about the heat efficiency. Even if it generated the full 500 megawatts, it wouldn't even be close to practical.
erazor42 5y ago
From your article it's more: "Okay, so ITER will have delivered in that full demonstration that we could have okay 500 Megawatt coming out of the 50 Megawatt we will put in."
- leephillips 5y ago
  No, it’s less. Please read the whole thing. The claimed gain is only 0.57.
- simiones 5y ago
  That's 50 MW going into the plasma. But they have to draw 440MW from the grid to deliver this power to dump those 50 MW into the plasma (lasers are extremely wasteful). Also note, the 500MW are the power of the plasma - in the best case scenario, maybe 50% of that could be converted into electrical energy, the rest will be lost as heat. So grid-to-grid, they will be taking out 440MW of power and putting back in 250MW. Except that is useless, so they didn't even bother with a turbine the full 500MW of plasma power will have to be vented as heat in ITER itself (DEMO will take over, and aims to deliver net power generation ~20 years after ITER is successful).
yboris 5y ago
Shouldn't we be betting for SPARC from MIT and not ITER? https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc
skywal_l 5y ago
ITER means International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. It's not supposed to be useful. It is a prototype. And yes, it costs a lot, but if they succeed, it would solve so many problems, it would be worth it. And for scale, compare this to the amount of money being spent on, I don't know, the video game industry[1]. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190509014637/https://newzoo.com/key-numbers/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190509014637/https://newzoo.co...
leephillips 5y ago
No, read further down in that article. The gain is actually 0.57, certainly not > 1. And that is the plan, not anything demonstrated.

chii 5y ago

> ITER takes 440 megawatts of total power to generate 500 megawatts of power not 500 MW of usable power. Have a watch of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY

devoutsalsa 5y ago
Yeah, you're right. I forgot about the heat efficiency. Even if it generated the full 500 megawatts, it wouldn't even be close to practical.

erazor42 5y ago

From your article it's more: "Okay, so ITER will have delivered in that full demonstration that we could have okay 500 Megawatt coming out of the 50 Megawatt we will put in."

leephillips 5y ago
No, it’s less. Please read the whole thing. The claimed gain is only 0.57.
simiones 5y ago
That's 50 MW going into the plasma. But they have to draw 440MW from the grid to deliver this power to dump those 50 MW into the plasma (lasers are extremely wasteful). Also note, the 500MW are the power of the plasma - in the best case scenario, maybe 50% of that could be converted into electrical energy, the rest will be lost as heat. So grid-to-grid, they will be taking out 440MW of power and putting back in 250MW. Except that is useless, so they didn't even bother with a turbine the full 500MW of plasma power will have to be vented as heat in ITER itself (DEMO will take over, and aims to deliver net power generation ~20 years after ITER is successful).

yboris 5y ago

Shouldn't we be betting for SPARC from MIT and not ITER? https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc

skywal_l 5y ago

ITER means International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. It's not supposed to be useful. It is a prototype. And yes, it costs a lot, but if they succeed, it would solve so many problems, it would be worth it. And for scale, compare this to the amount of money being spent on, I don't know, the video game industry[1]. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20190509014637/https://newzoo.com/key-numbers/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190509014637/https://newzoo.co...

leephillips 5y ago

No, read further down in that article. The gain is actually 0.57, certainly not > 1. And that is the plan, not anything demonstrated.