10 ms·

Babies grow into humans which are clearly capable of running marathons. This science has no such birthright and may eventually prove to be truly unfeasible.

ncmncm 5y ago
Indeed, this is no baby, but a random blob of cells. Two things we can be certain of: 1. No economically viable hot-neutron Tokamak fusion plant will ever be built; 2. Every cent wasted on this, instead of being spent on building out solar, wind, and storage, brings climate catastrophe incrementally closer. It is just barely possible that something learned while fooling with this stuff will turn out to be helpful for making a practical non-Tokamak fusion system for spacecraft propulsion. The plasma fluid-dynamics physicists employed on these massive boondoggles are who would make that. But the longer they bumble about with this, the longer it will be until they can get started on that.
- Joeri 5y ago
  Every cent wasted on this, instead of being spent on building out solar, wind, and storage, brings climate catastrophe incrementally closer. But in the real world the money going into this is on top of that going into solar / wind / … and not instead of. The nature of the climate crisis is such that we need to stop debating which things to do and just do all the things unless we genuinely run into limits of what we can spend, which we are nowhere near reaching.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    We need to spend the money on things that will help, and take away the money from things which are not helping. Those latter things include weapons, internal-combustion vehicles, Portland cement, and Tokamak fusion projects.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Fusion research spending is de minimis. For the past decade, total US spending has been at or below $600 million/year, or 0.003% of total US GDP. Even with my low expectations of success or viability, the research itself is worth pursuing. US spending is a large fraction of global fusion spending, and though I don't have an aggregate total, it is also in all likelihood too small to matter. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/ There are vastly larger areas of expenditure that are far more harmful to achieving a sustainable, renewable, carbon-neutral energypath. Pressent fossil-fuel based infrastructure and exploration is among the leading candidates. You should be focusing your ire there, or other similarly significant areas.
- specialist 5y ago
  IDK. I guess I'm fine with it. Keeping the lights on. I more or less agree with Saul Griffins: Fission and maybe fusion will be important in a few decades. As a successor to renewables. Useful if we survive this key hole event. Of all the things we waste money on, I don't much resent Dream Big efforts like fusion, space exploration, and stuff.
zarzavat 5y ago
I doubt the science is infeasible. We do have working fusion reactors. Some time in the next few hundred years we will surely figure it out, if we don't go extinct first. The economics are much more likely to make it infeasible. If fusion power is forever more expensive than solar+storage is there any point to it? Even fission has been priced out of the market and I never heard anybody claim that fusion will be cheaper than fission.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Electricity prices have recently skyrocketed and generally have bounced around a lot. Right now fission is quite economically viable, blue that will continue in the future depends on how fossil fuels will be priced and how solar power grows. Fusion will definitely have big up front costs but the fuel costs could be as low as essentially zero or quite high depending on the tech that makes it, and who can say what the maintenance costs might be. How much energy might be produced for how much operating cost is a really open ended question and there is a wide range of possible answers.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Electricity prices are plummeting along with the prices for solar and wind power production systems. Storage cost is falling even faster.
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      Then you haven’t been keeping up with the news. European electricity prices hit record highs just a few days ago and have been growing enormously all year. Worldwide oil prices have been going way up, we’re in a much different energy market than at have been for quite a while.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Europe is not the world. Oil prices are rising as production falls. That is falling because exploration is not expected to pay off. It is a fundamental mistake to confuse short-term fluctuations with trends.
adrianN 5y ago
I think we have most of the actual science problems figured out. We essentially know that a sufficiently big tokamak will produce net energy. We do not yet know in detail how to build one that lasts long enough to make financial sense. ITER will probably answer the remaining engineering questions. Of course there are more open questions around the other potential ways of achieving fusion, because we haven't thrown as much money at them as we did for tokamaks. So there is a possibility that there are much cheaper designs that also work.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  ITER has, explicitly, no intention of ever even addressing the important engineering questions. It has, e.g., no liquified salt blanket.

ncmncm 5y ago

Indeed, this is no baby, but a random blob of cells. Two things we can be certain of: 1. No economically viable hot-neutron Tokamak fusion plant will ever be built; 2. Every cent wasted on this, instead of being spent on building out solar, wind, and storage, brings climate catastrophe incrementally closer. It is just barely possible that something learned while fooling with this stuff will turn out to be helpful for making a practical non-Tokamak fusion system for spacecraft propulsion. The plasma fluid-dynamics physicists employed on these massive boondoggles are who would make that. But the longer they bumble about with this, the longer it will be until they can get started on that.

Joeri 5y ago
Every cent wasted on this, instead of being spent on building out solar, wind, and storage, brings climate catastrophe incrementally closer. But in the real world the money going into this is on top of that going into solar / wind / … and not instead of. The nature of the climate crisis is such that we need to stop debating which things to do and just do all the things unless we genuinely run into limits of what we can spend, which we are nowhere near reaching.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  We need to spend the money on things that will help, and take away the money from things which are not helping. Those latter things include weapons, internal-combustion vehicles, Portland cement, and Tokamak fusion projects.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Fusion research spending is de minimis. For the past decade, total US spending has been at or below $600 million/year, or 0.003% of total US GDP. Even with my low expectations of success or viability, the research itself is worth pursuing. US spending is a large fraction of global fusion spending, and though I don't have an aggregate total, it is also in all likelihood too small to matter. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/ There are vastly larger areas of expenditure that are far more harmful to achieving a sustainable, renewable, carbon-neutral energypath. Pressent fossil-fuel based infrastructure and exploration is among the leading candidates. You should be focusing your ire there, or other similarly significant areas.
specialist 5y ago
IDK. I guess I'm fine with it. Keeping the lights on. I more or less agree with Saul Griffins: Fission and maybe fusion will be important in a few decades. As a successor to renewables. Useful if we survive this key hole event. Of all the things we waste money on, I don't much resent Dream Big efforts like fusion, space exploration, and stuff.

zarzavat 5y ago

I doubt the science is infeasible. We do have working fusion reactors. Some time in the next few hundred years we will surely figure it out, if we don't go extinct first. The economics are much more likely to make it infeasible. If fusion power is forever more expensive than solar+storage is there any point to it? Even fission has been priced out of the market and I never heard anybody claim that fusion will be cheaper than fission.

colechristensen 5y ago
Electricity prices have recently skyrocketed and generally have bounced around a lot. Right now fission is quite economically viable, blue that will continue in the future depends on how fossil fuels will be priced and how solar power grows. Fusion will definitely have big up front costs but the fuel costs could be as low as essentially zero or quite high depending on the tech that makes it, and who can say what the maintenance costs might be. How much energy might be produced for how much operating cost is a really open ended question and there is a wide range of possible answers.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Electricity prices are plummeting along with the prices for solar and wind power production systems. Storage cost is falling even faster.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Then you haven’t been keeping up with the news. European electricity prices hit record highs just a few days ago and have been growing enormously all year. Worldwide oil prices have been going way up, we’re in a much different energy market than at have been for quite a while.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Europe is not the world. Oil prices are rising as production falls. That is falling because exploration is not expected to pay off. It is a fundamental mistake to confuse short-term fluctuations with trends.

adrianN 5y ago

I think we have most of the actual science problems figured out. We essentially know that a sufficiently big tokamak will produce net energy. We do not yet know in detail how to build one that lasts long enough to make financial sense. ITER will probably answer the remaining engineering questions. Of course there are more open questions around the other potential ways of achieving fusion, because we haven't thrown as much money at them as we did for tokamaks. So there is a possibility that there are much cheaper designs that also work.

ncmncm 5y ago
ITER has, explicitly, no intention of ever even addressing the important engineering questions. It has, e.g., no liquified salt blanket.