8 ms·

I used to like the idea of fusion energy, but practical application has always seemed to be 40 years in the future, and it's starting to sound more like 60 year

by mcv 5y ago

I used to like the idea of fusion energy, but practical application has always seemed to be 40 years in the future, and it's starting to sound more like 60 years now. I hope it will be possible some day, but it's not going to help with out energy needs in our lifetime. (Unless that longevity research is going to pay off, I guess.)

bsder 5y ago
> I used to like the idea of fusion energy, but practical application has always seemed to be 40 years in the future, and it's starting to sound more like 60 years now. You have to understand that fusion has been funded at "fusion never" levels for 5 decades now. The amount of money that we poured at the mining engineering that later became "fracking" was larger. Had we funded fusion at the amount we have funded petroleum extraction, we'd have free energy by now. :(
- credit_guy 5y ago
  Who is "we"? Fracking was funded with private money. It was "conventional" technology, no edge-of-science stuff, so private entrepreneurs could afford it, and the rewards were quick to materialize. Nuclear fusion? There's this urban myth that fusion could have been achieved if only we'd have poured more money into it, but where's the evidence? Plasma modeling requires a lot of computational power. What you have now in your iPhone in your pocket you could not have had for 10 billion dollars back in 1970. How much money were we supposed to put into fusion research? Do you think with lots of money and just a slide rule, you can solve the fusion problem?
  - brutusborn 5y ago
    I think you're mistaken about the government involvement in fracking. Sure, the basic technique may have been developed by private companies, but government supported research expanded it to oil and gas applications. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/us-government-role-in-shale-gas-fracking-history-a-response-to-our-critics https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/us-government-role...
    - credit_guy 5y ago
      > government supported research expanded it to oil and gas applications. The Government gets involved in a lot of things, but it doesn't mean its contribution is essential. For a recent example, the NIH is claiming the Moderna vaccine is due to their contribution, and sure, you'll be able to find one or a few grants here or there of a few hundred thousand dollars, but the massive investments of tens of millions of dollars were done by Moderna itself. As for fracking, the father of fracking is considered to be George P. Mitchell [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - brutusborn 5y ago
        You're right, but I think it was essential in this case: " His comment that “the DOE started it” refers to the Eastern Gas Shales Project, a research effort in the Appalachia Basin from 1979 that proved shale rock was rich in natural gas. The DOE-supported project tested the use of nitrogen foam to fracture shale formations, and its analysis led to a deeper understanding of natural shale fractures. George Mitchell’s team studied those results while developing the Barnett Shale near Fort Worth, the first modern fracking play. The company relied on research from the Sandia National Laboratory to use micro-seismic technology to map the shale fractures in wells, and Mitchell also benefited from federal tax credits for unconventional drilling, which helped underwrite the cost of developing hydraulic fracturing. " https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorensteffy/2013/10/31/how-much-did-the-feds-really-help-with-fracking/?sh=4b43ef853edf https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorensteffy/2013/10/31/how-much...
        credit_guy 5y ago
        From your link: “The government’s role in fracking’s development was important, but not so important that it eclipses the effort and investment of private industry”
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    At the very least I would have expected money to help with superconductor research.
Xixi 5y ago
It took more than 300 years to build the cathedral [1] in my home town (albeit with a 60-year pause in the middle). So indeed it might take another 4 or 5 generations to master nuclear fusion, but I see no issue with that. We should not shy away from starting projects that we won't see any benefit in our lifetime. But of course, it also means that we should not rely on nuclear fusion being available in the short term... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metz_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metz_Cathedral
- rurp 5y ago
  I suspect there was a lot of inceramental value to be had while the construction was ongoing. A cathedral doesn't need to be 100% complete to use as a house of worship, an inspiration for the community, a display of wealth and soft power, and so on. Fusion hasn't really produced much utility at all so far, aside from some interesting discussions.
  - gameswithgo 5y ago
    I imagine there have been some practical and theoretical gains from efforts to make fusion work already: https://www.energy.gov/science/articles/fusion-research-ignites-innovation https://www.energy.gov/science/articles/fusion-research-igni...
  - bin_bash 5y ago
    Are you trying to argue therefore we should stop or something? There are countless areas of research and activities we do as humans that offer virtually no tangible benefit to society. It seems to me that fusion is unfairly criticized because there is an obvious end-goal.
- pengaru 5y ago
  If you never stop working on some creative art project it's never finished, your endless cathedral build has nearly zero relevance to nuclear fusion producing electricity for consumers which would be a definitive "delivered" goalpost, after which any further developments/improvements would just be optimization iterations. I'm reminded of the Crazy Horse Memorial... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Memorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Memorial
reubenswartz 5y ago
I love the idea of fusion and certainly hope people make progress, but given advances in solar and wind, I’m starting to think the best location for a fusion reactor is 93M miles away.
lumost 5y ago
There is a class of problems that I've become accustomed to being forever in the future. - Nuclear Fusion - AGI - Driverless cars - Quantum Gravity - Carbon Nanotubes There appears to either be a problem where these are either convenient money sinks, problems that are missing key break-throughs or missing critical technologies. Nuclear Fusion would be easy if we had 400T magnetic fields and the structures to support them. We seem to be missing a critical cultural element required to drive these types of innovations - or we are missing the slow tooling, process, and incremental innovations required to support these technologies.
- amelius 5y ago
  Driverless cars really aren't that useful.
  - mcv 5y ago
    Driverless cars would be very useful; it would mean I can use my time in the car in a more useful way, like reading. Now I have to use the train for that. But maybe that's also the risk of driverless cars: it would make them more attractive than they should be, because they're really too inefficient to be able to afford them as society's main form of transportation.
- oddlama 5y ago
  You can add graphene based technologies to that list.
- rnk 5y ago
  Used to be on the list: reusable rockets, reasonably priced electric cars with charging infrastructure, rapid development of new vaccines with direct genetic engineering mechanisms.
  - biztos 5y ago
    Pocket supercomputers, meat-like fake meat, addictive virtual dystopias, two-way wrist radios…

by mcv 5y ago

bsder 5y ago

> I used to like the idea of fusion energy, but practical application has always seemed to be 40 years in the future, and it's starting to sound more like 60 years now. You have to understand that fusion has been funded at "fusion never" levels for 5 decades now. The amount of money that we poured at the mining engineering that later became "fracking" was larger. Had we funded fusion at the amount we have funded petroleum extraction, we'd have free energy by now. :(

credit_guy 5y ago
Who is "we"? Fracking was funded with private money. It was "conventional" technology, no edge-of-science stuff, so private entrepreneurs could afford it, and the rewards were quick to materialize. Nuclear fusion? There's this urban myth that fusion could have been achieved if only we'd have poured more money into it, but where's the evidence? Plasma modeling requires a lot of computational power. What you have now in your iPhone in your pocket you could not have had for 10 billion dollars back in 1970. How much money were we supposed to put into fusion research? Do you think with lots of money and just a slide rule, you can solve the fusion problem?
- brutusborn 5y ago
  I think you're mistaken about the government involvement in fracking. Sure, the basic technique may have been developed by private companies, but government supported research expanded it to oil and gas applications. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/us-government-role-in-shale-gas-fracking-history-a-response-to-our-critics https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/us-government-role...
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    > government supported research expanded it to oil and gas applications. The Government gets involved in a lot of things, but it doesn't mean its contribution is essential. For a recent example, the NIH is claiming the Moderna vaccine is due to their contribution, and sure, you'll be able to find one or a few grants here or there of a few hundred thousand dollars, but the massive investments of tens of millions of dollars were done by Moderna itself. As for fracking, the father of fracking is considered to be George P. Mitchell [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - brutusborn 5y ago
      You're right, but I think it was essential in this case: " His comment that “the DOE started it” refers to the Eastern Gas Shales Project, a research effort in the Appalachia Basin from 1979 that proved shale rock was rich in natural gas. The DOE-supported project tested the use of nitrogen foam to fracture shale formations, and its analysis led to a deeper understanding of natural shale fractures. George Mitchell’s team studied those results while developing the Barnett Shale near Fort Worth, the first modern fracking play. The company relied on research from the Sandia National Laboratory to use micro-seismic technology to map the shale fractures in wells, and Mitchell also benefited from federal tax credits for unconventional drilling, which helped underwrite the cost of developing hydraulic fracturing. " https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorensteffy/2013/10/31/how-much-did-the-feds-really-help-with-fracking/?sh=4b43ef853edf https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorensteffy/2013/10/31/how-much...
      - credit_guy 5y ago
        From your link: “The government’s role in fracking’s development was important, but not so important that it eclipses the effort and investment of private industry”
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  At the very least I would have expected money to help with superconductor research.

Xixi 5y ago

It took more than 300 years to build the cathedral [1] in my home town (albeit with a 60-year pause in the middle). So indeed it might take another 4 or 5 generations to master nuclear fusion, but I see no issue with that. We should not shy away from starting projects that we won't see any benefit in our lifetime. But of course, it also means that we should not rely on nuclear fusion being available in the short term... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metz_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metz_Cathedral

rurp 5y ago
I suspect there was a lot of inceramental value to be had while the construction was ongoing. A cathedral doesn't need to be 100% complete to use as a house of worship, an inspiration for the community, a display of wealth and soft power, and so on. Fusion hasn't really produced much utility at all so far, aside from some interesting discussions.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  I imagine there have been some practical and theoretical gains from efforts to make fusion work already: https://www.energy.gov/science/articles/fusion-research-ignites-innovation https://www.energy.gov/science/articles/fusion-research-igni...
- bin_bash 5y ago
  Are you trying to argue therefore we should stop or something? There are countless areas of research and activities we do as humans that offer virtually no tangible benefit to society. It seems to me that fusion is unfairly criticized because there is an obvious end-goal.
pengaru 5y ago
If you never stop working on some creative art project it's never finished, your endless cathedral build has nearly zero relevance to nuclear fusion producing electricity for consumers which would be a definitive "delivered" goalpost, after which any further developments/improvements would just be optimization iterations. I'm reminded of the Crazy Horse Memorial... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Memorial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Memorial

reubenswartz 5y ago

I love the idea of fusion and certainly hope people make progress, but given advances in solar and wind, I’m starting to think the best location for a fusion reactor is 93M miles away.

lumost 5y ago

There is a class of problems that I've become accustomed to being forever in the future. - Nuclear Fusion - AGI - Driverless cars - Quantum Gravity - Carbon Nanotubes There appears to either be a problem where these are either convenient money sinks, problems that are missing key break-throughs or missing critical technologies. Nuclear Fusion would be easy if we had 400T magnetic fields and the structures to support them. We seem to be missing a critical cultural element required to drive these types of innovations - or we are missing the slow tooling, process, and incremental innovations required to support these technologies.

amelius 5y ago
Driverless cars really aren't that useful.
- mcv 5y ago
  Driverless cars would be very useful; it would mean I can use my time in the car in a more useful way, like reading. Now I have to use the train for that. But maybe that's also the risk of driverless cars: it would make them more attractive than they should be, because they're really too inefficient to be able to afford them as society's main form of transportation.
oddlama 5y ago
You can add graphene based technologies to that list.
rnk 5y ago
Used to be on the list: reusable rockets, reasonably priced electric cars with charging infrastructure, rapid development of new vaccines with direct genetic engineering mechanisms.
- biztos 5y ago
  Pocket supercomputers, meat-like fake meat, addictive virtual dystopias, two-way wrist radios…