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There’s no piece of the Tomamak individually that can’t be miniaturized or benefit from economies of scale. It doesn’t require exotic fuel like nuclear fission

There’s no piece of the Tomamak individually that can’t be miniaturized or benefit from economies of scale. It doesn’t require exotic fuel like nuclear fission reactors do. It doesn’t need gigantic quantities of space and material like wind and solar. It doesn’t have high up front engineering costs like geothermal. One day a tokamak might be an off the shelf industrial purchase, maybe akin to an MRI machine.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"It doesn’t have high up front engineering costs like geothermal." You are commenting on an article about how scientists had to build a reactor out of berillium and tungsten. Have you ever touched those materials? Is there any berillium in your car, or your washing machine? If you go around your neighbourhood looking for someone who can weld or work tungsten, will you find anyone? Can you buy a tool on amazon that will cut tungsten? The number of facilities that can produce precision-enginered thousand-ton vacuum vessel with exotic materials, are counted with fingers on one hand. > Tritium is very exotic, and fuel cost is a small and irrelevant cost to fission powerplant This is downright delusional, solar is the only technology that you can go and buy off the shelf and it is much cheaper than an MRI machine, any joe with basic electrical education can put together a solar power system and poor people in developing nations do it. Anyone who thinks that fusion will be easier than slapping solar panels together is smoking some serious dope
- thehappypm 5y ago
  You’re missing the point a little bit. No one is arguing that solar is going to be more expensive than fusion. The point is that fusion is about as far fetched as a lot of technology seem at first. Like microprocessors (billions of transistors?) or medical imaging (put a human into a giant magnetic field to see inside them) or internal combustion engines.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"It doesn’t have high up front engineering costs like geothermal." You are commenting on an article about how scientists had to build a reactor out of berillium and tungsten. Have you ever touched those materials? Is there any berillium in your car, or your washing machine? If you go around your neighbourhood looking for someone who can weld or work tungsten, will you find anyone? Can you buy a tool on amazon that will cut tungsten? The number of facilities that can produce precision-enginered thousand-ton vacuum vessel with exotic materials, are counted with fingers on one hand. > Tritium is very exotic, and fuel cost is a small and irrelevant cost to fission powerplant This is downright delusional, solar is the only technology that you can go and buy off the shelf and it is much cheaper than an MRI machine, any joe with basic electrical education can put together a solar power system and poor people in developing nations do it. Anyone who thinks that fusion will be easier than slapping solar panels together is smoking some serious dope

thehappypm 5y ago
You’re missing the point a little bit. No one is arguing that solar is going to be more expensive than fusion. The point is that fusion is about as far fetched as a lot of technology seem at first. Like microprocessors (billions of transistors?) or medical imaging (put a human into a giant magnetic field to see inside them) or internal combustion engines.