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Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy
- davidrusu 5y agoA shot of the pulse from within the reactor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMuOaTqdp4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMuOaTqdp4c
- darnfish 5y agoWhat would happen if you stood in that
- JulianChastain 5y agoYou would die
- Stevvo 5y agoYou contacting the plasma would cause it to collapse, but you would already by cooked. It's a chicken and egg question, because a plasma is never going to get started with a person inside; it needs a near perfect vacuum.
- rasz 5y agoNot the same thing, but Russian scientist tested a proton beam with his head and lived to tell the tale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski
- nomel 5y agoIsn't the stream supposed to be in the middle, away from the melty bits?
- willis936 5y agoYes, but the really hot part is not emitting visible light. ;) If you're curious about why the bottom glows: ExB drift pushes electrons to the bottom. I'm sure that doesn't make sense, but unfortunately there isn't really a shortcut to understanding here. Some books are pretty accessible though (I'm a fan of The Future of Fusion Energy). https://ebrary.net/174598/mathematics/drift_motion_energetic_particles_tokamak https://ebrary.net/174598/mathematics/drift_motion_energetic... And, of course, there is always the freely available IAEA textbook: https://www.iaea.org/publications/8879/fusion-physics https://www.iaea.org/publications/8879/fusion-physics
- iLoveOncall 5y agoYou can tell when someone didn't read the article, because the video is at the very top of it :)
- ummonk 5y agoI read through the whole article and didn't realize the video was there until I read this comment chain. I had just glanced past the video assuming it was an ad.
- pkaye 5y agoWhat do people think of this critique of nuclear fusion power? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
- rini17 5y agoSpot on. I also saw another good metaphor: it's like building jet engine in the 1800s right after discovering Bernoulli's equation. However, since it has such mighty political backing as a solemn hope to tackle climate change, politics will always win.
- anonporridge 5y agoGenerally good. My take is that the crux of her argument is that fusion is unlikely to be the great solution of all our energy problems any time soon, so we should not let that false hope direct our funding decisions in the race to a sustainable energy future. It would be an insanely good outcome if fusion becomes viable and massively scaled by the end of the century, and frankly, that's not soon enough for our climate and peak oil problems.
- willis936 5y agoAwful. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30090315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30090315
- yurishimo 5y agoThe couple of videos I watched above your comment seem to take this into account. I think that's why the aim is for a Q > 10 rather than just being content with Q > 1.
- BenoitP 5y agoHere is the paper detailing the preparations, which were about mimicking an ITER-like wall: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-4326/ab2276/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-4326/ab2276/...
- skywal_l 5y agoSo I read that this is good news for ITER. Sorry for the noob question but there is something I do not understand. I thought ITER design was more or less decided now as they are building it. Should I understand that they started building ITER without really knowing where they were going to go and are using JET experiment as a way know how to build ITER?
- IneffablePigeon 5y agoITER was planned in part through early results from JET in the 90s - but they more recently replaced the inner wall of JET to match what ITER will use, which was a good choice according to models but this gives empirical confirmation that it's possible to sustain the plasma using the new wall material. All new fusion plants are a risk, that's why they're experimental. I suspect they were reasonably confident they could make ITER work and that's why they started building, but this will give them confirmation that the material choice was a good one and will also show them in advance some of the operational obstacles and possible solutions. In other words, they knew "where they were going to go" but this gives them more confidence they were correct in deciding the direction, and will speed up their learning curve setting up the machine once built. Even if it is built and something fundamentally doesn't work about the concept, that will still be useful scientific knowledge, even if it is disappointing.
- vcdimension 5y agoThey're still a very long way from getting a net gain in energy: https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY
- willis936 5y agoThis wasn't a high-Q campaign.
- prohobo 5y agoSadge. But I think this is the best bet for sustainable and clean energy, so why not put all the enthusiasm we can into it? A breakthrough is a breakthrough, and that's good news.
- epistasis 5y agoIn what sense do you think this is good for sustainable energy? Do you think it will cost less, or have less environmental impact than, say, newer deep well geothermal? I'm not so optimistic that costs could ever be competitive with geothermal.
- tinco 5y agoDoesn't deep geothermal generally require fracking? At least the geothermal plants that I've seen being implemented right now do. Is there any fancy new tech breaking through there currently? I think both fusion and geothermal are very exciting, crazy thing is although geothermal sounds simpler, I have no idea what's holding it back technology-wise, yet I have a pretty good understanding of the state of fusion research right now. Why couldn't we get geothermal without fracking? Is it so hard to establish a more controlled heat exchange channel down there? Harder than developing nuclear fusion?
- ianai 5y agoGeothermal is very location sensitive and requires huge outlays upfront. Maybe it’d be a clearer choice if energy storage were better solved. It also requires political support to cross NIMBYism.
- artur_makly 5y agoa comment from a friend of mine “ I worked at JET for 2 years, That device is from 1979, it's a fucking joke and the $ millions being pumped into it every year would be more useful as paper fuel for a steam engine... the SPARC thing (private, but also in Oxford and in the same compound as JET)is much more promising”
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 317070 5y agoEdit: it's finished --The live announcement is going on now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H99hvPlC4is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H99hvPlC4is (from 12:00 until 13:00 GMT)--
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago[flagged]
- spuz 5y agoThis could be read as an either pro or anti-brexit comment but the fact that it is ambiguous makes it kind of pointless.
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoIf you can read that as a pro-Brexit comment, then the Brexit project succeeded beyond its instigators' wildest dreams. It's not ambiguous at all. Everything in the UK going on right now -- everything -- has a "some of this is unclear or worse because Brexit has destroyed agreements or because proposed, nearly impossible agreements have not been struck" subplot. Brexit has set fire to every kind of international complication. And so here we are with a sucessful fusion lab in the UK, doing the hard work, that is a precursor to a European project that it is really not at all clear we will be able to participate in or benefit from, because crucial parts of the Brexit neo-establishment want the benefits of the agreements without acceding to the legal underpinnings of the agreements.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoYou do realise that countries can work together without being part of the same trading block? ... If I understand your nonsensical ramblings correctly.
- DrBazza 5y agoAnd 2 seconds of googling: "The UK will remain part of Iter" https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3551 https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3551
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoYour googling would also show that the article dates from more than a year ago. A lot changed. Basically, fundamental disagreements with Europe over predicate treaties mean that the thing we committed to do (remain part of ITER) is under threat, because other things we committed to do (uphold transition agreements regarding Northern Ireland) are in default. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/08/uk-and-european-scientists-urge-eu-to-allow-uk-access-to-10bn-fund-brexit https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/08/uk-and-euro... In this case, the EU is saying, sorry, you possibly can't stay a member of our science club because you promised you'd do certain things that underpin an internationally agreed peace process and you are undoing them. It's a completely legitimate political bargaining point that would not be an issue at all without Brexit. The intent to remain members of ITER and Horizon 2020 is genuinely at risk. All of this underpins my point: everything is more complex because of Brexit -- even staying in things we've said we really really want to stay in.
- spuz 5y ago> The experiments produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power). > This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997. > It's not a massive energy output - only enough to boil about 60 kettles' worth of water. But the significance is that it validates design choices that have been made for an even bigger fusion reactor now being constructed in France. I thought this was interesting as 59 megajoules of energy or 11 megawatts of power seems more than you would need to boil 60 kettles' of water. In fact, it takes 4,184 joules to raise the temperature of 1kg of water by 1 degree. Or 313800 joules to raise 1kg of water by 75 degrees. That means JET could have boiled about 188 kg of water.
- yaniqt 5y agoIs it possible they subtracted the energy required to facilitate the reaction in the first place? So net energy was enough to boil 60 kettles worth of water?
- varjag 5y agoThat would be a fusion breakthrough worth mentioning on its own.
- NextHendrix 5y ago"At Jet, two 500 megawatt flywheels are used to run the experiments." So net power is -989MW, assuming both flywheels are at full pelt the whole time and no power is required before fusion is acheived.
- willis936 5y agoThose are used for the confinement coils. Incredibly, JET uses copper coils. You can't run those all day, so the flywheels are used. The last machine I worked at worked the same way. 16 train motors with 1 ton flywheels spinning at 1600 RPM to be an 11 MW power supply for 1 second every few minutes. Plasma heating in JET is done via NBI+ICRH and is about 59 MW.
- willis936 5y agoIt's great to have a nuclear magnetic confinement device anywhere on the planet again. It looks like things are running well: profiles of NBI, and density are all under control.
- Kaibeezy 5y agoI believe this is the original/primary source for this news. Can someone confirm?
- axg11 5y agoWhat is stopping one of the major western governments from printing $50B of their own currency and investing it all in an intensive fusion programme? There doesn’t seem to be much to lose (these economies are already unreasonably inflated) but so much to gain from viable fusion.
- johlindenbaum 5y agoITER is doing that, no? Large scale test of fusion energy output.
- mavhc 5y agoProblem with ITER is it's not 1 country, it's lots, and they all want their piece of the pie instead of doing it efficiently
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoDoes one country have all the smart people needed to go it alone? (This is not a further joke about Brexit I pinky promise)
- kamarg 5y agoIf you're willing to print enough cash to pay for the smart people to come to you, you can probably import them. It seems to be more the exception than the rule that people dislike a country so much that no amount of money could get them to go there to do research on the topic they're interested in.
- nicoburns 5y agoA $50b program from 1 country would likely have the same problem (as indeed would a large private program). Injecting a large amount of capital all at once into a project just isn't efficient.
- mschuster91 5y ago
- NGRhodes 5y agoHow much energy was required to start the fusion ?
- danpalmer 5y agoProbably a lot, and while that's generally a useful question to ask about fusion research, in this case the point is not to create a sustainable fusion process but to validate specific pieces of technology, so it doesn't really matter here.
- ppaattrriicckk 5y agoIn extension to this news and the press conference, one thing I am super excited about, is the private SPARC project and the MIT-spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). If you don't know about it already, I would highly recommend checking it out (e.g. by searching YouTube for "MIT Sparc Fusion Reactor" for some fairly accessible videos on the theory behind why they should achieve fusion way faster than the current roadmap with ITER and DEMO). In the press conference just ended, they repeated how exactly the JET reactor worked as predicted by theory. In my layman's understanding, for the exact same reason (seemingly very sound theoretical groundwork), the SPARC reactor should exceed breakeven within the next few years. From Wiki on CFS: * Back in September 2021, they built the strongest high-room-temperature superconducting magnet (20 Tesla) suitable for a fusion reactor * Theory dictates that with stronger magnets, the reactor can be scaled down (with the square/cube, can't remember exactly), and thus cost and time to develop * Back in November 2021, they raised $1.8 billion from the likes of Bill Gates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Fusion_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Fusion_Systems Boy, do I think it would be crazy cool if they succeed, even taking twice as long as they've planned! :)
- willis936 5y agoI remember being nervous about CFS not being able to raise its 100 MUSD target a few years ago. I'm very excited for their results.
- moogly 5y ago> Theory dictates that with stronger magnets, the reactor can be scaled down (with the square/cube, can't remember exactly), and thus cost and time to develop OTOH, in a tokamak, the plasma volume (and potential energy output) scales quadratically with the torus' aspect ratio (ratio of major to minus radius), so I'm not sure that tokamak-based fusion really is particularly suitable to miniaturization.
- ppaattrriicckk 5y agoI had no idea, thanks for sharing. Again, I'm very much a layman to this subject, but how does miniaturization necessarily affect that particular aspect ratio? Since it's literally a ratio of two dimensions of the torus, shouldn't this be invariant to the overall size? (Assuming all things being equal, which I have no idea whether holds.)
- dfdz 5y ago> This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997. The experiment produced > 11 megawatts of power and at Jet > two 500 megawatt flywheels are used to run the experiments log_2(2*500/11)*(2022-1997) + 2022 = 2185 At this rate we will have fusion by 2185 I guess?
- DrBazza 5y agoIt's 30 years time. It's always 30 years time. https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/why-nuclear-fusion-is-always-30-years-away https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/why-nuclear-fusi...
- actionfromafar 5y agoI think it used to be in 20 years time. https://bigthink.com/videos/fusion-really-is-20-years-away-2/ https://bigthink.com/videos/fusion-really-is-20-years-away-2...
- giantrobot 5y agoInflation.
- ambrozk 5y agoThis is a very dumb meme that people use to avoid learning anything about the actual hurdles that are currently being faced by fusion researchers. At some point, fusion will be much less than 30 years away, and at that point, I guarantee you that lazy people will still be repeating this joke, because it is literaly the only thing they know about the subject.
- khafra 5y ago"Fusion is always 30 years away" is a heuristic that almost always works. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost...
- xutopia 5y agoHad to look up what JET stood for: Joint European Torus.
- Reventlov 5y agoWeb Archive Snapshot: http://web.archive.org/web/20220209131058/https://www.euro-fusion.org/news/2022/european-researchers-achieve-fusion-energy-record/ http://web.archive.org/web/20220209131058/https://www.euro-f...
- martopix 5y agoI love how one of the articles on the HN frontpage says "Oxford", the other says "European researchers"
- tankenmate 5y agoEUROfusion is a consortium of national fusion research institutes located in the European Union, Switzerland and Ukraine. It was established in 2014 to succeed the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) as the umbrella organisation of Europe's fusion research laboratories. The consortium is currently funded by the Euratom Horizon 2020 programme. [0] -- Wikipedia So the reason it is called European is that it was conceived by the EU and it's partners and it primarily funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 funding programme. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20170830004728/http://horizon2020projects.com/sc-energy/europe-launches-eurofusion-to-make-fusion-energy-a-reality/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170830004728/http://horizon202...
- andyjohnson0 5y agoI think the point that your parent commenter was making is that Oxford is in the UK and the UK is no longer a member of the EU or Euratom, although it has various agreements with both.
- n4r9 5y agoI think OP was commenting more on the emphasis, i.e. one of the titles highlighting the name "Oxford" just because it's famous. The UK is still in Europe and will likely be for decades to come.
- marcus_holmes 5y agoI'm wondering about what you know that we don't? Is there a project to move the UK physically out of Europe? Or will this fusion go out of control and demolish the UK in a nuclear fireball?
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- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- adg001 5y agoThe title is unfair in suggesting this is a result coming from Oxford institutions alone. As correctly put in the EUROfusion official press release, the EUROfusion consortium comprises "4,800 experts, students and staff from across Europe, co-funded by the European Commission". Edited to add the link (now on HN front page): https://www.euro-fusion.org/news/2022/european-researchers-achieve-fusion-energy-record/ https://www.euro-fusion.org/news/2022/european-researchers-a...
- rahen 5y agoYes, additionally JET stands for Joint European Torus, it's not British. The title is as misleading as calling ITER French because it's located in France.
- dang 5y agoWe've edited the title to match the article now. Not sure if the submitted title ("Oxford's JET lab smashes nuclear fusion energy output record") was the BBC's and they've corrected it, or was editorializing by the submitter (which isn't allowed on HN - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
- j245 5y agoOxford is also a geographical location. So it could be interpreted as, Research lab in town of Oxford.
- formvoltron 5y agoOK so with fusion everybody loves it because the fuel would be clean and nearly endless. Isn't that what solar power offers? Nobody wants to deploy solar due to high upfront cost. However, wouldn't the startup on a fusion reactor be much greater?
- fvold 5y agoThe thing is, a commercial-scale fusion reactor could produce the same energy as a truly vast solar array, and also produces power at night, does not need to be exposed to wind and rain to operate and can be scaled directly instead of with costly battery arrays. Solar has the upside of actually producing a power surplus already, though.
- formvoltron 5y agoHow about putting panels in space?
- gtirloni 5y agoSolar panel manufacturing and disposal is far from clean though.
- elric 5y agoAnd you think this is going to be any different for fusion plants?
- gtirloni 5y agoYou seem to think it's not going to be any different (or maybe even worse). Could you elaborate?
- kolinko 5y agoWhat disposal? Less than 1% of the solar plants have been ever decommissioned. It's hard to set up recycling plants if you have nothing to recycle yet.
- fvold 5y agoFor the past 50 years, commercial fusion power has been only a decade away. Now it's only a decade away for sure!
- reacharavindh 5y agoAs an uneducated observer to nuclear physics, I could not tell the significance of this achievement. Did we finally learn how to extract more energy from a fusion rector than we supplied to operate it? Could anyone more in the know here explain in simpler and more practical terms please?
- lisper 5y ago> Did we finally learn how to extract more energy from a fusion rector than we supplied to operate it? No. > Could anyone more in the know here explain in simpler and more practical terms please? It's impossible to tell because the story is incoherent. The central claim is that they "release[d] a record 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy" but this makes no sense. One can talk about sustained power (over a period of time) but "sustained energy" is a category error because energy is just power integrated over time. You can get 59 megajoules out of your wall socket if you wait long enough. They apparently did something that had never been done before, but there's no way to tell exactly what that was from what is written in this story. (This kind of obfuscation is not unusual in fusion research. A cynic might argue that this is because if they were clear about the actual state of things their funding would cease.)
- SamBam 5y agoI don't believe that this is entirely mis-stated. We already know that fusion power plants are going to operate by igniting plasma in short bursts -- a few seconds, maybe 10s at most -- and generating a huge amount of power during that single burst. You then ignite it again and again. The question is how much total energy you can extract from each of those bursts. By that metric, the total energy is what's important, not the power. Producing 10 quadrillion watts of power isn't that useful if it's only for 100 trillionths of a second. (Both numbers pulled from an actual recent result last August. [1]) "59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy" means a single burst produced that much. That's significantly more than the paltry 1.3MJ from that other result I just linked to. Yes, of course you could get that much from a wall socket over the course of hours, but we know we haven't been able to sustain a fusion reaction for a few seconds, so that's the timeframe we're talking about for a single burst. 1. https://www.livescience.com/fusion-experiment-record-breaking-energy.html https://www.livescience.com/fusion-experiment-record-breakin... EDIT: And, at the bottom of the article it says that the reaction ran at 11MW, so plugging that in it sounds like, indeed, it ran for 5 seconds.
- limaoscarjuliet 5y agoAccording to Sabine Hossenfelder, published numbers are frequently mis-stated on purpose. When you look at frequently reported Q Plasma (or plasma efficiency) we are not that far from it being > 1. However, we should look at Q Total (total efficiency), which is still way below < 1, even in the best plans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY For years, I was hoping fusion is close. After watching Sabine's video, I'm not so optimistic anymore.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoNothing concrete to add, just the anecdote that the plasma physics class I took in grad school hands down had some of the sketchiest looking physicist math I think I have ever seen. Felt like a SWAT team from the mathematics department might burst through the door at any time.
- GoodJokes 5y ago
- mmazing 5y agoLike an ECON 101 course? I felt like the Calculus SWAT Team was going to burst through the doors in that class, ha.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoThis was no regular spherical cow, I tell you it was assumed to be time-independent while at the same time having an oscillatory frequency.
- siver_john 5y agoJust imagining the mathematics SWAT team coming through the door and swatting the marker out of one of my physics profs' hands when they went from ydy/dx=x -> ydy=xdx as if they were simply re-arranging a fraction, made me chuckle.
- 5y ago
- tuyiown 5y agoSabine Hossenfelder did a sobering wrap-up about fusion power press announcements a few months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
- IceHegel 5y agoNot to be an asshole, but I think the fusion crowd could go for more of an under promise, over deliver mentality.
- dangom 5y agoNo one will get funded with that mentality in such a high-risk high-reward area like fusion. But indeed after so many headlines I agree with you that no one gets excited about these news anymore.
- AniseAbyss 5y agoI'm not really sure about that. The promise of fusion power is so great that it would be idiotic not to throw money at it. The US was spending a billion a week in the Afghanistan war.
- dymk 5y agoYou just gave a great example of the irrationality of how things are funded. Idiotic things get cash thrown at them, National healthcare rests on the sidelines.
- bumby 5y agoI think it matters on perspective. That funding might be considered rational if you were a congressperson who have a vested interest in certain lobbies. Not saying it's necessary moral or optimizing for the right thing for society as a whole, but it may be rational.
- travisgriggs 5y agoJust wait… it’s kind of a tired trope, but I still think there will yet be a “War on Climate Change.” /s
- nosianu 5y agoYeah, but that helped out a lot of US companies that have significant lobbying backing and districts where those companies are located. Similar to how some NASA things get funded. The outcome itself is not nearly enough, if it even matters (see Afghanistan, it's not like the outcome was a surprise): What needs to happen is that the money river* needs to flow through areas that have influential congress(wo)men and senators who benefit both financially (campaign contributions) and politically (good headlines, get something they can use in deals, etc.). This is for anything where the outcomes are far away and/or uncertain. In those cases the money flow itself becomes the actual target. It is something concrete, with impact right away, compared to those types of goals. A politician will probably support military spending in case the homeland is actually really threatened, but when it's not it's all about the benefits not of the military equipment for the troops, which are questionable (even when it works, do they actually need it?), but the benefits of the spending itself, pretty much disregarding the final products. Example Afghanistan, which at first glance seems to fit my claim less than military spending for hardware: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/11/us-afghanistan-iraq-defense-spending https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/11/us-afg... https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-won-in-afghanistan-private-contractors-troops-withdrawal-war-pentagon-11640988154 https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-won-in-afghanistan-private-... (paywall) > One-third to half of that sum went to contractors, with five defense companies— Lockheed Martin Corp. , Boeing Co. , General Dynamics Corp. , Raytheon Technologies Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. —taking the lion’s share, $2.1 trillion, for weapons, supplies and other services
- 323 5y agoI'm pretty sure I've seen "fusion breakthrough" articles every year on HN for at least 10 years now. So I'm waiting for a real plant.
- fusionbro 5y agoThis has been by far the most informative source on Fusion I've seen and gives a clear picture on how to evaluate claims like this. MIT's Pathway to Fusion Energy (IAP 2017) - Zach Hartwig https://youtu.be/L0KuAx1COEk https://youtu.be/L0KuAx1COEk
- ck2 5y agoI've always wondered, can fusion be weaponized like fission? Because if so, that's the first thing governments are going to do with it, not free/cheap power for the masses.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xondono 5y agoNuclear fusion bombs are old tech, fission research is about getting fusion without requiring detonating a fission bomb first. Even if that wasn’t the case, why would they? Once you can kill the whole planet, there’s no extra points for killing it multiple times over.
- rland 5y agoIt has been. "Hydrogen" bombs are fusion bombs, they were invented in the 50s.
- thehappypm 5y agoCrazy idea for viable fusion: make tiny nuclear bombs, drop them underground, then use geothermal plants to extract the energy. There, just beat your world record.
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- pulse7 5y ago59 megajoules (MJ) = 16.4 kWh. For comparison: Tesla Model 3 (Standard Range) has 60 kWh battery. So they made about 1/4 of the full Tesla Model 3 battery.
- chrisweekly 5y agoOk, sure -- but it's nuclear fusion. Gotta start somewhere, right?
- j245 5y ago> So they made about 1/4 of the full Tesla Model 3 battery. Focusing on absolute numbers is pretty irrelevant, wouldn’t you say ? We know once we get a working prototype it can be scaled up relatively easily. Strange to see a storage mechanism (battery) compared to a generation mechanism (fusion plant)
- pulse7 5y agoSo comparison is about the "amount of energy", not about mechanisms...
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- j245 5y agoMy point is the comparison is meaningless. If they get this to work, they will just build something with 100x or 1000x the output. The number isn’t really important here, some indication of how the development of the technology is coming along is what we care about. Compare this energy to the last best output. If this works and we productionize it, we will suddenly go from 1/4 Tesla battery to 10,000 Tesla batteries.
- can16358p 5y agoJust to be sure: what we are seeing in the video is plasma from the fusion of hydrogen atoms, right? (And if I'm terribly wrong please don't flame, not a nuclear physics expert here)
- regularfry 5y agoYes, two different isotopes. JET uses deuterium-tritium fuel.
- Aperocky 5y ago> This is more than double [the energy] what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997. I was excited for a little bit there.
- q1w2 5y agoYep - we're still nowhere near break-even.
- DennisP 5y agoWe're not that far off. JET previously achieved Q=0.67, ie. two-thirds as much energy output as input. (The new result has higher output but lower Q.) For a practical reactor we need Q around 30, which might seem far away but tokamak output scales with the square of reactor volume and the fourth power of magnetic field strength. Double the field, 16X the output, and we can generate much more powerful magnetic fields with modern superconductors than we can with JET's copper coils.
- faeyanpiraat 5y agoSo they just need to build the same thing, but make it gigantic in size? Why is it not yet done?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- willis936 5y agoIt is very expensive to do. HTS was known but not practical when ITER was planned, but it's almost done. ITER is almost large enough to be an LTS-based power plant. ITER will still produce a lot of useful science, but there is a now a potential class of mid-scale HTS machines that would help develop plasma models. These iterations seem frustrating and time consuming, but their results are lowering the cost of a hypothetical power plant until one day maybe society will decide they're worth making for power generation.
- 5y ago
- mklarmann 5y agoAccording to Wikipedia (German) the Wendelstein 7-X already did 150 mega joules of "sustained fusion" [1]. So how is this record breaking? [1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X
- danbruc 5y agoWendelstein 7-X is for plasma science, it is not intended to fuse anything.
- freeflight 5y ago> though this experimental reactor will not produce electricity, it is used to evaluate the main components of a future fusion power plant
- danbruc 5y agoAnd you can evaluate fusion reactor components without fusing anything. Or are you disagreeing because I summarized it with the term plasma science? In that case, I was not really happy with the term either but could not come up with anything better. My point however is that Wendelstein 7-X is not intended to fuse anything, not to precisely describe the nature and goals of the experiments. Google translation of the beginning of the Strahlenschutzaspekte (radiation protection concerns) section from the German Wikipedia article [1]. There will only be a tiny bit of accidental fusion. Wendelstein 7-X only examines plasmas made of hydrogen (H) or deuterium (D), so it does not use a mixture of deuterium and tritium, as is necessary for later fusion reactors. The omission of this reduces the release of neutrons and enables access to the facility and the surrounding instruments immediately after the end of each experiment. This facilitates modifications for subsequent experiments. During operation, however, access to the torus hall is generally not possible for safety reasons (danger of voltage flashovers, stored energy in the magnetic fields). Hydrogen is provided as the working gas for normal operation. In addition, experiments with deuterium are to be carried out in order to extrapolate the properties of a plasma mixture of deuterium and tritium. Fusion reactions between deuterium nuclei, in which neutrons are released, can occur to a small extent. To shield them, the torus hall is surrounded by a 1.8 m thick wall made of borated concrete. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X#Strahlenschutzaspekte https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X#Strahlenschutz...
- soperj 5y ago
- rlt 5y agoYou’re going to have to be more specific.
- soperj 5y ago
- Decker87 5y agoHe's pretty into the future of clean energy. If one looks at it just from that perspective and not a moralistic one, I think it means something for him to invest.
- ambrozk 5y agoWhy? He dedicates huge amounts of money to worldwide public health, and is giving away the vast majority of his fortune over the course of his life. Why shouldn't I hold such a person in high regard?
- soperj 5y agoFrom other comment > I mean, start with why his wife is divorcing him (Jeffery Epstein) and why he's no longer on the board at Microsoft(inappropriate relationships with staffers), then go into how he's screwed up public schooling in the US, then Microsoft under him. That's the easy stuff that you can see publicly.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoWhats with public schooling? I havent found anything that looks relevant
- soperj 5y agoThey're responsible for common core, which basically makes teachers teach to the test to keep their jobs.
- Gadiguibou 5y agoI really appreciate the note of the environmental analyst which helps readers who don't have deep knowledge of the field understand the meaning of this breakthrough in context. I wish more news agencies adopted the same practice.
- openknot 5y agoThe Financial Times, though pricey as a financial newspaper, is a good source for this. It regularly publishes in-depth articles with a wide range of interviews with experts for readers to learn the context of current issues (via their "News in-depth" series, and also their series called "The Big Read").
- Gadiguibou 5y agoThanks for the tip!
- CobrastanJorji 5y agoI don't understand a lot about these fusion plans, so this might be a dumb question, but if it were to be used at scale, aside from the energy stuff, would it be a viable source of substantial quantities of helium?
- Filligree 5y agoNot in significant quantities. It also produces huge amounts of activating radiation. The reactor walls will be highly radioactive, as will everything from the fuel supply to the helium itself. In principle you can split that off, but I wouldn't want to try. Fission reactors are a lot more tractable.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago> It's not a massive energy output - only enough to boil about 60 kettles' worth of water. This made me laugh. How much more British can you get?
- johnthesecure 5y agoThat's enough energy to boil those kettles dry, if my calculations are correct. To bring them to the boil, 59MJ would run about 600 kettles.
- ComputerGuru 5y agoMaybe they meant from a frozen solid state?
- advisedwang 5y agoWater has a specific heat capacity of 4184J/kg/C. Lets say to get to the boil you need to go from 20C to 100C and that a kettle holds 1.75L. 59MJ / (80C * 4184J/kg/C) = 176kg ~= 176L ~= 100 kettles. Water has a latent heat of vaporization of 2260 kJ/kg. So to boil it dry: 59MJ / (80C * 4184J/kg/C + 2260 kJ/kg) = 22kg ~= 22L ~= 12 kettles. I have no idea what the journalist calculated.
- moron4hire 5y agoDid you factor in the inefficiencies of the power distribution grid and the heating element of the kettle? I'd say the journalists are just repeating what they've been told by the scientists, and the scientists factored inefficiency in on a calculation similar to your first.
- advisedwang 5y agoNope, I didn't factor in anything like that. Also kettle's don't actually heat every ml to 100C so there's some fudge in the other direction. I mostly was just getting nerdsniped.
- cranberryturkey 5y agoThey always say this...its like when NASA says "Possible alien life found on Mars" and it turns out to be just a new kind of dust particle.
- aquamarine1 5y agoIt's not, until it is...
- chaps 5y agoCan you give an example where NASA has actually said they found possible life?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jstummbillig 5y agoAnd then there's all those times where it was not in fact nothing but major scientific progress.
- broAhmed 5y agoIn my experience, it's not the scientists (NASA or JET in this case) that utter such statements but journalists. NASA scientists will say something like "we've encountered something new, but we're not jumping to conclusions until we've investigated fully" and then you'll see some bloggers/journalists putting out clickbait titles like "Possible alien life discovered on Mars!" In this case, the celebration seems well-reasoned. From the article: "It's a landmark because they demonstrated stability of the plasma over five seconds. That doesn't sound very long, but on a nuclear timescale, it's a very, very long time indeed. And it's very easy then to go from five seconds to five minutes, or five hours, or even longer."
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y agoIt's more like when USA Today says "NASA possibly found alien life on Mars." The path from the workers' "Compound A-9512 is present in thygmolonogical quantities in martian topsoil" to the PR office's "We found really exciting organic compounds on mars" to mainstream news's "Possible alien life found on mars" is so predictable and happens the same way every single time. It's depressing.
- Aeolun 5y agoTwo times as much energy as 1997. That’s… dissapointing?
- azinman2 5y agoIt’s not a linear process. It’s about solving specific problems before you scale up exponentially.
- pizlonator 5y agoThis is a red flag: "These experiments we've just completed had to work," Situations like this create a pressure cooker of bias. Maybe they got the result they wanted by force of will not because of the underlying science or engineering.
- willis936 5y agoThe stakes are high, but failure is always an option. I've seen machines take years to get density under control. What the JET team has achieved is exceptional.
- advisedwang 5y agoI mean... they achieved the milestone. That seems like an objective fact that isn't really subject to bias. It sounds like what you are talking about is "motivation" not "bias".
- gw67 5y agoIt's incredible how much innovation it's coming from EU recently instead of US.
- Axien 5y agoI noticed the waste output is helium. Does this fix the worldwide helium scarcity issue?
- danparsonson 5y agoOne thing's for sure - the scientists working there will all have really squeaky voices
- vaylian 5y agoNo idea. But it would be absolutely awesome if we had another age of airships.
- _joel 5y agoI thought they'd found masses of deposits recently?
- gus_massa 5y agoLet's make some back of the envelope calculation: * World electricity production: 25000TWh/year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation * Energy per Helium atom: 17.6MeV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium%E2%80%93tritium_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium%E2%80%93tritium_fusi... So per year (with a 100% efficiency [1]) you would produce as a side effect 25000TWh/17.6MeV ~= 3E31 Helium atoms. The Avogadro constant is 6,022E23 and that produces 22.4 liters of gas, so you get 1.2E9 liters, that is 1.2E6 cubic meters. Let's round that to 1 million cubic meters per year. The worldwide production of Helium is 140 million cubic meter per year https://www.statista.com/statistics/925214/helium-production-worldwide-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/925214/helium-production... [1] A 100% efficiency is too optimistic. The second law and the nasty details of the real world reduce the efficiency a lot. Let me guess 50% from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conversion_efficiency#Example_of_energy_conversion_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conversion_efficiency#E... But this is good! If you waste half of the produced energy, you need the double of fusion plants, and that means the double of Helium balloons.
- 5y ago
- cletus 5y agoDoes deuterium-tritium ("D-T") fusion really have a future? Net energy output is one thing but neutrons are the big problem. The two issues are energy loss and destruction of the container (aka neutron embrittlement). I see ITER plans to handle this with basically a large, thick absorption layer (steel and water). CFS OTOH is looking at molten salt solutions. But these solutions seem to be aimed at the embrittlement issue and not really the energy loss issue.
- tra3 5y agoCan someone ELI5 for people that don't follow fusion tech closely? In particular does this mean we're going to have fusion soon?
- humanistbot 5y agoWe have controlled fusion in labs, but it takes more energy to start up than what you get out of it. The longer you can sustain the fusion reaction, the more you can get out of it. They did it for 5 seconds, which is longer than anyone else, but still a net negative. Predictions about the future of fusion are notoriously difficult to make.
- openknot 5y agoTo respond to the second question, though I haven't followed fusion tech closely, from the environmental analyst featured in the article: "The fusion announcement is great news but sadly it won't help in our battle to lessen the effects of climate change. "There's huge uncertainty about when fusion power will be ready for commercialisation. One estimate suggests maybe 20 years. Then fusion would need to scale up, which would mean a delay of perhaps another few decades. "And here's the problem: the need for carbon-free energy is urgent - and the government has pledged that all electricity in the UK must be zero emissions by 2035. That means nuclear, renewables and energy storage. "In the words of my colleague Jon Amos: "Fusion is not a solution to get us to 2050 net zero. This is a solution to power society in the second half of this century.""
- tommywiseausmom 5y agoThis is the ONLY way we'll get out of our current situation. Unfortunately I think it might be a decade too late as we're still about 10 years from viability.
- 1024core 5y agoIt's not a massive energy output - only enough to boil about 60 kettles' worth of water. ... The British and their penchant for tea...
- jjoonathan 5y agoDid the British go with 240V because it makes tea faster? I don't know the history... but I want to believe.
- jedberg 5y agoI think you mean 230V, but it was picked because it's more efficient and cheaper (you can use smaller wires for the same output).
- scovetta 5y agoThis is super cool, but I didn't see how much energy was put into the system in order to generate the output 57 MW, and whether the output energy was all usable (e.g. could the team have actually boiled 60 kettles of water?). It'd also be useful to know how whatever energy is needed to run the machine would be expected to scale as the output is increased. Don't get me wrong, fusion (IANANP) seems to be the best approach for long-term energy, and I'm strongly in favor of lots of research and experimentation in this area, and this seems like incremental progress. Kudos to the team!
- pnt12 5y ago>I didn't see how much energy was put into the system in order to generate the output 57 MW It's in the article: 500 MW. Scientists hope further experiments move into breaking even and later having net gains.
- throwaway5752 5y agoAs the article itself states: In the words of my colleague Jon Amos: "Fusion is not a solution to get us to 2050 net zero. This is a solution to power society in the second half of this century."
- louwrentius 5y agoSorry for being like this but what I like most about that remark is the joyful optimism that there will be a society to power in the first place, and secondly one that can (still) build and operate such technology. Edit: maybe I’m needlessly pessimistic but I feel societies are much more fragile than they seem. We had it unreasonably good in ‘the west’ for the last 77 years but that time span is so short in the grander scheme of things, it gives a false sense of security. In some part, due to societal changes, schisms, injustices, the increasing distrust that eats at the foundation of society, At some point, there may be nothing worth left to power with nuclear fusion. Although I start to wonder if we should keep powering a lot of things in today’s world. There is so much needless unnecessary madness going on.
- willis936 5y agoWhy bet against society existing in 30 years? If you're right then you make money and if you're wrong then money is worthless. Replace money with "technology that sustains society".
- dylan604 5y agoHuh? It's only like 30 years off. They didn't say 2150 or something else further into the future. How bad do you think things are currently that 28 years from now, society will be totally shattered?
- benlumen 5y agoYou don’t give it 28 years? In the early 2000s I was in the “fast crash” camp, too. Not anymore.
- dabeeeenster 5y agoAre there any studies on what the world might look like in 50 years, based on a reasonable, realistic projection of climate change, human change in behaviour etc etc? Just to be clear, I 100% believe in climate change, and do what I think is a fair amount to help (cycle as much as I can, don't take long haul flights, take train instead of short haul flights, drive EV, insulate house, don't eat much meat, Solar PV panels). BUT! I feel like humanity and the earth are way more fault-tolerant than the parent comment gives them credit for. I don't think we are going to see the total collapse of civilisation - far from it. But I would welcome any links on people/studies/groups who have theorised what might happen in a medium-case scenario?
- civilized 5y agoThis article seems very gung-ho on ITER, but over the past few months, I've seen other articles and HN comments suggesting that ITER is already hopelessly obsolete, locked into a design that's likely to be far from optimal, and new startups taking fresh approaches are much more relevant to the future of fusion. I wonder who's right?
- smm11 5y agoHit men are on their way.
- TrevorJ 5y agoCan someone explain something about fusion for me? To make a fusion reactor that's useful you have to solve two problems: First you have to build a working fusion reactor. Second, you have to capture that energy to do useful work. Given that, wouldn't it make more sense to focus on technology to capture energy from the giant, already working fusion reactor in the sky?
- alexchamberlain 5y agoThe giant fusion reactor in the sky dissipates most of its energy before it gets to Earth, and more of it in the atmosphere. A new star born in a reactor can be fully contained, so most of its energy can be captured for its intended use case.
- space_fountain 5y agoA fusion reactor could have much more concentrated energy. The sun is great, but it's putting out energy in all directions and we're a long way away
- thescriptkiddie 5y agoSolar panels are all well and good, but you couldn't use them inside of a fusion reactor. For one thing they wouldn't be able to withstand the temperature and neutron flux. Most fusion reactor designs capture energy by heating water, same as a fission reactor.
- 300bps 5y agoWe generate electricity with fusion the same way we do with many other technologies. We heat up water until it turns to steam which moves a turbine to spin some magnets to generate electricity. Fusion’s advantage over solar is it can theoretically generate unlimited energy in a relatively small footprint. It also doesn’t go out 8-12 hours per day. But I think the reality is that we need to pursue many options for clean energy.
- zulban 5y agoIn addition to what others have said, the sun isn't always in the sky.
- pbhjpbhj 5y agoThe timing is impeccable (making me suspicious), I was just at a UKAEA public meeting yesterday -- they're choosing a site for a new fusion project, a small "demo" reactor. https://step.ukaea.uk/ https://step.ukaea.uk/ You couldn't have better timing to encourage the public that this is a positive thing for us to develop. FWIW I'm a big fan of JET, Wendelstein, and fusion research in general. And, I think this STEP project is very positive.
- SubiculumCode 5y agoSidenotes from the Blockchain Twitter-sphere, Fusion = Proof of Work that Doesn't Destroy the Planet.
- Terry_Roll 5y agoSo are they still using a steam engine to generate the electricity? Will the design of the steam engine working with this reactor be revolutionary?
- elihu 5y agoProbably not. Steam turbines are a pretty mature technology, though I suppose you'd want to use the most efficient kind of turbine available if energy output isn't overwhelmingly bigger than energy input. edit: since JET is used for research rather than practical power generation, they might not have a steam turbine at all. I was thinking more of the scenario where they're past the research phase and actually doing power generation.
- mbgerring 5y agoIt would benefit the discourse on this subject a great deal if these stories were subject to having their headlines edited, or if there were a sticky comment summarizing the actual substance of the “breakthrough.” A great deal of VC money is going into nuclear fusion at the moment, and there is obvious interest in creating the impression that economically viable fusion reactors are just around the corner. It would be prudent to guard against the efforts of publicists and PR professionals by providing context.
- softwarebeware 5y agoDarn, I found the article quite underwhelming. It may be a major breakthrough relative to past accomplishments in the field but it’s far from commercial viability.
- nr2x 5y agoYes, but every step forward on this path is thrilling. If we crack carbon capture at scale, and unleash fusion, it would change the game for the survival of our species.
- immmmmm 5y agoTo change the game for the survival of our species (if protecting a species that destroyed 75% of ecosystems as of today is really sth wanted anyway) we might want to protect the other species as well since we rely on them almost entirely for anything relevant to survival. Also I am not sure having ten times more energy would do any good. IPBES reports as well as the literature in relevant conservation journals are recommended readings.
- mdavis6890 5y agoNegative. If we want to "change the game for the survival of our species" that would be fission, a super-mature and proven technology that is already widely deployed. As far as "carbon sequestration" - that is just a tree. No R&D required.
- axiosgunnar 5y agoFusion research is the „building a cathedral“ of our times.
- baryphonic 5y ago> The fusion announcement is great news but sadly it won't help in our battle to lessen the effects of climate change. > There's huge uncertainty about when fusion power will be ready for commercialisation. One estimate suggests maybe 20 years. Then fusion would need to scale up, which would mean a delay of perhaps another few decades. > And here's the problem: the need for carbon-free energy is urgent - and the government has pledged that all electricity in the UK must be zero emissions by 2035. That means nuclear, renewables and energy storage. > In the words of my colleague Jon Amos: "Fusion is not a solution to get us to 2050 net zero. This is a solution to power society in the second half of this century." Between promising results like this, the Wendelstein-7X (which sadly seems to have been delayed by COVID), and then the exceptionally exciting CFS in Massachusetts, I have a sense that we're making real progress toward fusion for the first time in a few decades. Doom and gloom won't do anything to increase investment in fusion that is beginning to look like a reasonable bet.
- zerobits 5y agoCan anyone explain these timelines better? Can we throw more money at this and scale much faster? Are safety/regulation considerations the main bottleneck? This has gotta be one of the most important investments for humanity and our planet. Hard to fathom these timeline predictions in the same world where mRNA vaccines and various spacecraft have scaled in <1 year.
- WillPostForFood 5y agoThis has gotta be one of the most important investments for humanity and our planet. If you think climate change is an existential threat, we should divert fusion research money into immediate construction of traditional nuclear power plants.
- willis936 5y agoDivert a puff of dust? Why not divert the deluge that is fossil fuel subsidies or defense budget?
- iaw 5y agoI am a strong proponent of Fusion energy and did some work on the subject in undergrad. This is not a major breakthrough, it's a benchmark. A major breakthrough would be materials that could withstand the neutron bombardment longer, the ultimate limiting factor for fusion energy plants after we achieve positive net energy.
- bobsmooth 5y agoHave you heard of General Fusion? They're using liquid metal as both containment and energy extraction. Really cool, they're building a demo plant in the UK.
- mikeytown2 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_reflector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_reflector Doesn't reflectors help a lot here or am I missing something?
- SomeCollegeBro 5y agoProbably, but I'd guess that the reflector still absorbs a small percentage of the beam it's reflecting. And at the GW scale I'm sure even a small percentage is enough to absorb a great deal of energy.
- mrjangles 5y agoYou will find, especially after reading the comments, that fusion is not about creating electricity (it never will), it is about sparking people's imagination. Many people grew up reading science fiction and there is seriously nothing it the last 50 years that comes close to the amazing breakthroughs in the physical world that happened in the 50 years before that. The idea of fusion is the best thing going right now. You won't be able to have a serious conversation about the pros and cons of fusion power because any serious conversation will always be trampling on people's dreams.
- mcv 5y agoIf fusion is the best thing right now, that would be incredibly sad, because it barely seems to be making any progress at all. Fortunately we've seen tons of progress in other fields: computing, quantum computing, solar energy, medical, gene therapy. Even superconductors are slowly getting better.
- pontifier 5y agoWhen Fusion is on the front page, I like to take the opportunity to mention the Fusion reactor I have designed. The device will cycle between a hot dense implosion (similar to NIF) and a cold, rotating cloud, at a very high frequency in a large Penning trap. I have more information at my website, http://www.DDproFusion.com http://www.DDproFusion.com If things go well, I should begin building the first prototype in a few months. I just acquired the main magnet, an old permanent magnet MRI machine, that will provide the field for the giant Penning trap.
- njarboe 5y ago"This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997" Hopefully the current crop of VC funded fusion projects can improve the tech a little faster than this.
- mbowcut2 5y agoI just can't get over the fact even fusion reactors are basically just steam engines. We haven't figured out a better way to produce electricity than boiling water?
- stakkur 5y agoDumb question from a non-nuclear expert: I more or less understand the science and the goal, but: is this safe? What are the dangers/risks?
- mrichman 5y agoElon Musk needs to get in on this.
- noetic_techy 5y agoNot a breakthrough, just a milestone. Yet again they cite the "20 years out" which has become a joke among anyone that follows fusion research. There is really nothing to see in this article, move along.
- gameswithgo 5y agowhen i was a boy it 40 years out, seems good that even the hyper cynical snarky comments are twice as optimistic now.
- noetic_techy 5y agoLMAO. I really think these fusion people just need more money. MIT wants to build their SPARC reactor prototype, which will make ITER look stupidly large and expensive, but they need $40 Billion. I dream of the future of SpaceX fusion powered star-ships with quantum computers and Alcubier warp drives are thing.
- neo_spike 5y agoSo this would be at what TRL 5/6?
- HNSucksAss 5y ago
- mbroshi 5y agoAs Tyler Cowen always responds to headlines like this: "If it’s true, why isn’t the price of oil down?"
- pyuser583 5y agoNice!
- dougSF70 5y agoLooks like this break through would solve the Helium shortage too.
- pabs3 5y ago> only very small amounts of short-lived radioactive waste Does anyone know the details here?
- pabs3 5y agoIf humanity switches to fusion and as a result vastly increases our energy usage, how much waste heat can we emit before it starts to affect global temperatures? Will we need to use some of that energy on carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere?
- xiaodai 5y ago
- OJFord 5y ago> There's huge uncertainty about when fusion power will be ready for commercialisation. One estimate suggests maybe 20 years. I bet whoever 'estimated' that said it as a joke. I'm no physicist, but that seems like reporting 'insiders suggested the toroid could be made about as long as a piece of string' to me.
- brainburp 5y agoMissing from that article is how much energy was used to get that output.
- dicroce 5y agoFor me, a working net positive fusion reactor means a ton. Here are some things you could do with free (or essentially free) clean energy: 1) desalinization to provide water to everyone. 2) massive carbon capture 3) convert the world away from liquid fuels - and for the cases we are unable to do that, make the fuels from captured atmospheric carbon.
- Softcadbury 5y agoIt's in French, but here is a fascinating documentary about ITER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36WpRwY2DYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36WpRwY2DYw
- mcculley 5y agoOne thing that has been on my mind lately is wondering if having easy fusion would be bad. I am 50. All my life, we have been told that workable fusion would end our energy problems. But now we have the climate crisis, which is a result of inhabitants of the planet not being responsible for externalities. If we all had cheap fusion reactors, wouldn't humanity just use a lot more energy, creating waste heat and dumping it into the atmosphere? I'm not convinced humans can be trusted with cheaper energy if it leads to more waste heat.
- RyEgswuCsn 5y agoI feel that the issue at the moment is the more heat is being trapped due to a CO2-rich atmosphere rather than producing excessive heat. After all, the energy we produce is probably miniscule compared to the amount of energy Earth receives from the sun.
- mcculley 5y agoThat’s a good point. But I still wonder what happens when we can cheaply generate orders of magnitude more energy. I don’t see how we would be stopped from causing problems with it.
- RyEgswuCsn 5y agoIf fusion is achieved I guess we can at least start to remove carbon from the atmosphere by spending generous amount of energy. Though I do agree with you that once human mastered nuclear fusion, it will only be a matter of time before we have to start worrying about overheating our planet. A potentially Sci-Fi solution would be to build planet-scale radiators to disseminate the waste heat.
- mcculley 5y agoI am unfortunately also pessimistic about carbon sequestration. There is a game theory problem in that it only works if we get everybody on the same page for carbon targets. If I start spending energy to sequester carbon, I remove some pressure for others to limit carbon output.