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Meanwhile the entirety of fusion energy sciences is ~450 M USD, which is about 1% of DoE's entire budget. Inertial confinement fusion (listed under nuclear wea

Meanwhile the entirety of fusion energy sciences is ~450 M USD, which is about 1% of DoE's entire budget. Inertial confinement fusion (listed under nuclear weapons stockpile maintenance) is 530 M USD. https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-06/fy-22-budget-stat-by-appropriation-v3.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-06/fy-22-bud...

panick21_ 5y ago
For that fusion budget you could develop very viable commercial molten salt (or molten salt cooled) nuclear reactors. Fusion has no practice reason to exist compare to advanced fission. The improvements in energy density are not really relevant factor at that scale, meaning the difference from oil to fission, and oil to fusion doesn't really gain you much. Fusion fuel cost over the long term is likely more expensive then a fission fast breeder (not to mention a potential of thorium thermal breeder). Is a fusion reactor going to be cheaper to build then a advanced fission reactor? Not from anything know so far. Advanced fission concept are viable with pretty normal tubes pretty industrial steels or at most advanced aerospace materials. Any fission reactors actually consider would have waste more complex and expensive parts. The nuclear waste argument is sometimes made in favor of fusion but with the right kind of fission reactor this problem and issue that has very viable practical solutions and storage for a few hundred years is viable. Sometimes nuclear proliferation is held up as a reason why fusion is good, but that argument doesn't really work either once you think threw it. Access neutrons of fusion can certainty be used for all kind of things. Are fusion reactors inherently safer? That's questionable. To come up with a scenario where a modern molten salt breeder (or even molten salt reactor) leads to massive safety hazards for anything outside the exclusion zone is very hard to imagine. The scenarios you have to come up with for both fusion or advanced fission to be massive safety concerns are both possible and incredibly unlikely. My approach would be to do something like NASA did for Commercial and Crew, have competitive fixed price competition between a group of providers and offer the 2-3 winners of them at least 2 deployments.
- willis936 5y ago
  >For that fusion budget you could develop very viable commercial molten salt (or molten salt cooled) nuclear reactors. Could you, though? Look at the "Nuclear Energy" category. It is entirely devoted to fission reactor research and has a 1.85 Bn USD budget. That's a SPARC every year. Where are the LFTRs on the grid?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Tokamak fusion is a complete dead end. Advanced fission is, by contrast, just wildly uncompetitive, and getting more so every day.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    So your argument is that nuclear energy can not innovate and be cheaper? Why? What exactly is inherently expensive. From first principle, total resources invested, advanced nuclear wins by a huge amount. The same goes for land use. A single building with a modern nuclear reactor in it could replace a gigantic wind-farm.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Nukes are mature tech. No surprises coming. They are not getting cheaper. If you got approval to build one, you would get no power for ten years, minimum. A billion dollars buys a GW of solar panel generating capacity today. Another billion buys plenty of storage. No NRC approval, no containment vessel, no disaster plan. You can start generating power almost immediately, while you are still building out. Prices continue falling the whole time you are building, so the last panel you put up costs half what the first did. It all fits well within the exclusion zone of a typical nuke reservation. You can put up wind turbines too. And keep adding panels, paying for them with income from ones already up.
      - panick21_ 5y ago
        > Nukes are mature tech. No surprises coming. That is just complete nonsense. I think you are mixing up standard light water technology with nuclear power. A common mistake but also complete nonsense. I would highly advice you actually study nuclear power and nuclear reactor technology. I believe the same as you do now because I was ignorant about the technology, the I actually engaged with it. > If you got approval to build one, you would get no power for ten years, minimum. Again, this is not even true for PWRs if you built more then 1 every other decade. And the type of reactors I am talking about are totally different and require less then 10% the amount of resources and far smaller build project. They have no cooling towers and don't use any low heat steam power. A single factory mass producing nuclear modular nuclear vessels has a far higher potential energy density then anything else imaginable. The first principles are not really in question.
adamsmith143 5y ago
Well to be fair I don't think anyone is even remotely close to a viable on grid Fusion Reactor. It's a meme at this point but we're still several decades away from that point. Does more budget help that? My understanding is that most of the problems are around building sufficiently small and powerful Magnets and "Fusion" budget doesn't help solve the problems in that space.
- willis936 5y ago
  High field magnets do enable potentially economically viable designs. There are still engineering challenges that require effort. Materials will be in high neutron flux and high thermal gradients for years. Throwing money at problems warms up the industries around them. No one will get good at making HTS tapes unless they can pay to keep the lights on. Also, the plasma physics research is far from complete. Study of burning plasmas (coming with ITER) and different configurations of optimized stellarators (coming never?) are important places to shine the flashlight on. We aren't on the home stretch, but that isn't a reason to stop, slow down, or even not speed up.
  - adamsmith143 5y ago
    >We aren't on the home stretch, but that isn't a reason to stop, slow down, or even not speed up. Agreed, I'm very pro fusion but at this point you have companies like Commonwealth Fusion that have raised multibillion dollar amounts on their own so maybe that's a more viable path than DOE/NSF Grants to Universities?
    - willis936 5y ago
      It is quite exciting to see CFS' series B funding. I worry about commercializing too soon because companies need to turn a profit. The publicly funded fusion scientists and engineers are quite good at what they do and could efficiently spend money on research and new machines until the blueprint for a reactor is ready. The benefit of public programs is that they don't need to make quarterly profits and some problems are bigger than a year. CFS has a path to be profitable even if they don't make a blueprint for reactors. Research needs high field magnets and they're positioning themselves to be the supplier of them.
jpitz 5y ago
Do US contributions to ITER come out of the DOE budget?
- willis936 5y ago
  Yes, ITER contributions make up 220 M USD of the 450 M USD that is the Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) budget under the DoE. Most of that is paid in-kind, which means domestic manufacturing of components sent to ITER, so it's a bit like a stimulus. The US has also (famously) regularly failed to put in what they budget for, even in the past ten years having some years where they contribute less than half of what they agreed to.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    "Stimulus", meaning corporate welfare.
    - willis936 5y ago
      No I mean stimulus. If I meant corporate welfare I would have invoked the DoD budget.
- willis936 5y ago
  I thought I linked the FES budget somewhere around here but apparently I never did. Here it is: https://science.osti.gov/-/media/budget/pdf/sc-budget-request-to-congress/fy-2022/FY_2022_SC_FES_Cong_Budget.pdf https://science.osti.gov/-/media/budget/pdf/sc-budget-reques... 86 M USD cash, 220 M USD in-kind. The 450 M USD FES budget does not include in-kind contributions. I don't actually understand the accounting here.

panick21_ 5y ago

For that fusion budget you could develop very viable commercial molten salt (or molten salt cooled) nuclear reactors. Fusion has no practice reason to exist compare to advanced fission. The improvements in energy density are not really relevant factor at that scale, meaning the difference from oil to fission, and oil to fusion doesn't really gain you much. Fusion fuel cost over the long term is likely more expensive then a fission fast breeder (not to mention a potential of thorium thermal breeder). Is a fusion reactor going to be cheaper to build then a advanced fission reactor? Not from anything know so far. Advanced fission concept are viable with pretty normal tubes pretty industrial steels or at most advanced aerospace materials. Any fission reactors actually consider would have waste more complex and expensive parts. The nuclear waste argument is sometimes made in favor of fusion but with the right kind of fission reactor this problem and issue that has very viable practical solutions and storage for a few hundred years is viable. Sometimes nuclear proliferation is held up as a reason why fusion is good, but that argument doesn't really work either once you think threw it. Access neutrons of fusion can certainty be used for all kind of things. Are fusion reactors inherently safer? That's questionable. To come up with a scenario where a modern molten salt breeder (or even molten salt reactor) leads to massive safety hazards for anything outside the exclusion zone is very hard to imagine. The scenarios you have to come up with for both fusion or advanced fission to be massive safety concerns are both possible and incredibly unlikely. My approach would be to do something like NASA did for Commercial and Crew, have competitive fixed price competition between a group of providers and offer the 2-3 winners of them at least 2 deployments.

willis936 5y ago
>For that fusion budget you could develop very viable commercial molten salt (or molten salt cooled) nuclear reactors. Could you, though? Look at the "Nuclear Energy" category. It is entirely devoted to fission reactor research and has a 1.85 Bn USD budget. That's a SPARC every year. Where are the LFTRs on the grid?
ncmncm 5y ago
Tokamak fusion is a complete dead end. Advanced fission is, by contrast, just wildly uncompetitive, and getting more so every day.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  So your argument is that nuclear energy can not innovate and be cheaper? Why? What exactly is inherently expensive. From first principle, total resources invested, advanced nuclear wins by a huge amount. The same goes for land use. A single building with a modern nuclear reactor in it could replace a gigantic wind-farm.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Nukes are mature tech. No surprises coming. They are not getting cheaper. If you got approval to build one, you would get no power for ten years, minimum. A billion dollars buys a GW of solar panel generating capacity today. Another billion buys plenty of storage. No NRC approval, no containment vessel, no disaster plan. You can start generating power almost immediately, while you are still building out. Prices continue falling the whole time you are building, so the last panel you put up costs half what the first did. It all fits well within the exclusion zone of a typical nuke reservation. You can put up wind turbines too. And keep adding panels, paying for them with income from ones already up.
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      > Nukes are mature tech. No surprises coming. That is just complete nonsense. I think you are mixing up standard light water technology with nuclear power. A common mistake but also complete nonsense. I would highly advice you actually study nuclear power and nuclear reactor technology. I believe the same as you do now because I was ignorant about the technology, the I actually engaged with it. > If you got approval to build one, you would get no power for ten years, minimum. Again, this is not even true for PWRs if you built more then 1 every other decade. And the type of reactors I am talking about are totally different and require less then 10% the amount of resources and far smaller build project. They have no cooling towers and don't use any low heat steam power. A single factory mass producing nuclear modular nuclear vessels has a far higher potential energy density then anything else imaginable. The first principles are not really in question.

adamsmith143 5y ago

Well to be fair I don't think anyone is even remotely close to a viable on grid Fusion Reactor. It's a meme at this point but we're still several decades away from that point. Does more budget help that? My understanding is that most of the problems are around building sufficiently small and powerful Magnets and "Fusion" budget doesn't help solve the problems in that space.

willis936 5y ago
High field magnets do enable potentially economically viable designs. There are still engineering challenges that require effort. Materials will be in high neutron flux and high thermal gradients for years. Throwing money at problems warms up the industries around them. No one will get good at making HTS tapes unless they can pay to keep the lights on. Also, the plasma physics research is far from complete. Study of burning plasmas (coming with ITER) and different configurations of optimized stellarators (coming never?) are important places to shine the flashlight on. We aren't on the home stretch, but that isn't a reason to stop, slow down, or even not speed up.
- adamsmith143 5y ago
  >We aren't on the home stretch, but that isn't a reason to stop, slow down, or even not speed up. Agreed, I'm very pro fusion but at this point you have companies like Commonwealth Fusion that have raised multibillion dollar amounts on their own so maybe that's a more viable path than DOE/NSF Grants to Universities?
  - willis936 5y ago
    It is quite exciting to see CFS' series B funding. I worry about commercializing too soon because companies need to turn a profit. The publicly funded fusion scientists and engineers are quite good at what they do and could efficiently spend money on research and new machines until the blueprint for a reactor is ready. The benefit of public programs is that they don't need to make quarterly profits and some problems are bigger than a year. CFS has a path to be profitable even if they don't make a blueprint for reactors. Research needs high field magnets and they're positioning themselves to be the supplier of them.

jpitz 5y ago

Do US contributions to ITER come out of the DOE budget?

willis936 5y ago
Yes, ITER contributions make up 220 M USD of the 450 M USD that is the Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) budget under the DoE. Most of that is paid in-kind, which means domestic manufacturing of components sent to ITER, so it's a bit like a stimulus. The US has also (famously) regularly failed to put in what they budget for, even in the past ten years having some years where they contribute less than half of what they agreed to.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  "Stimulus", meaning corporate welfare.
  - willis936 5y ago
    No I mean stimulus. If I meant corporate welfare I would have invoked the DoD budget.
willis936 5y ago
I thought I linked the FES budget somewhere around here but apparently I never did. Here it is: https://science.osti.gov/-/media/budget/pdf/sc-budget-request-to-congress/fy-2022/FY_2022_SC_FES_Cong_Budget.pdf https://science.osti.gov/-/media/budget/pdf/sc-budget-reques... 86 M USD cash, 220 M USD in-kind. The 450 M USD FES budget does not include in-kind contributions. I don't actually understand the accounting here.