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Excellent news, we need this so badly, especially now in Europe with Germany shutting down its nuclear (fission) plants and NS2 being cancelled. It's astonishin

Excellent news, we need this so badly, especially now in Europe with Germany shutting down its nuclear (fission) plants and NS2 being cancelled. It's astonishing to me that the world isn't pulling out all the stops on fusion development, something like the space race or Manhattan project. Unfortunately, last I heard ITER building has halted: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-halts-assembly-of-iter-reactor/ http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-h...

andbberger 5y ago
we could just pull all the stops to turn the fission reactors back on. we already found a magical solution to our energy problems, like 80 years ago. how can you expect it would turn out any different for fusion?
tsimionescu 5y ago
Even if fusion succeeds in net positive energy (which is still a ways off - even ITER, planned to finish in 2030, will not actually generate energy, they didn't even add a turbine to try), there are huge hurdles to scanning it up. It's impossible for fusion to be a significant source of energy in the time left to avert catastrophic global warming. Even with the most optimistic estimates, we will at best have a handful of small plants, nothing comparable to a fission power plant.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  This is a really common kind of comment to this issue, but I think it's extremely short-sighted. At this point, because we're probably well past the point that anything we can practically do is likely to get us to net zero carbon before catastrophe (it's already here, really), we're at a point where we're probably going to need to go extremely negative even once we do get there. We're (ironically) going to need a lot of non-carbon-sourced energy to do that, it seems to me. We can't just be thinking about what we'll do to stem the tide, we have to keep working on how we're going to push it back.
  - urthor 5y ago
    We're realistically at a very good point in time to avert some of the worst case scenarios, I fail to see your point? We definitely want to be looking at technologies that have a high ROI for emission reduction in the next 10 year span, mixed with longer term projects. Fission is a longer term project. Simple as that.
    - stormbrew 5y ago
      > We definitely want to be looking at technologies that have a high ROI for emission reduction in the next 10 year span, mixed with longer term projects. This... is my point? So I think you do see it. "Fusion can't save us now so we shouldn't invest in it at all" is short-sighted. This is not an either-or proposition, and frankly people have completely out of whack ideas of the scale of money that's been invested in fusion. Tens of billions of dollars are nothing in what's going to be a trillions of dollars problem. We need to be building out renewables, and ideally fission too, now. We need to get to carbon zero asap. And then comes the project of getting things back to where we need to be, and we are just not ready for the energy we're going to need to do that.
      - urthor 5y ago
        See this is the thing. People thing 10 billion dollars is a lot of money. My view is that 10 billion dollars is nothing. My view is that the total OECD investment in fusion R&D should be 10 billion. A year. For the next 50 years. The investment in the high ROI technologies, principally solar R&D and overnight energy capacity projects like water pump batteries, should be 100 billion (across the OECD). And the investment in CapEx, installing new panels, 200 billion. Our investment in STEM R&D, as a society, is just pitiful across the Western world. The portion of our tax dollars that go to long term R&D, the primary driver of productivity growth and progress in our nation's, is scrap.
        stormbrew 5y ago
        I don't really disagree with any of this, so I guess that's confirmation that you did see my point. Certainly, the fact that solar and wind are sure things right now warrants massive investment. Just throwing endless gobs of money at a problem that's as-yet unsolved doesn't necessarily lead to good outcomes, it also takes directed goals and all that. That's in theory what ITER is all about, though I think the slowness with which it got started will hamper it and we'll see success on other projects before it even gets to the testing phase. It was an attempt to create a moonshot that kinda failed, but the private sector seems more interested now so it might not matter. That said I'd actually be surprised if there isn't already much more than $200bil going into building out solar capacity worldwide. It's just not easily enumerated because it's not special anymore, and a lot of it is on small scales (ie. I'm gonna install about $20k of solar panels to my home this spring and I'm not alone, but it's hard to tell how much that adds up to).
- gruturo 5y ago
  The catastrophic global warming you mention is not a boolean. It can always get worse, with the planet becoming more and more inhospitable, up to the point where mankind can't survive (wet bulb temperature permanently above 35c --> everyone dies without air conditioning) - and beyond. Even if it's too late to avoid it completely, it still makes very much sense to work on not making it even worse. Suggesting to abandon efforts in something because it will anyway not be ready in time, or to stop restrictions because "anyway it's too late" is just the next step in the strategy of the deniers - or, rather, their agitators, motivated by immense profit.
  - t43562 5y ago
    Should we build N Wind turbines or blow the money on more fusion research? I would guess that we need to keep fusion research alive but the real bulk of the money should be for things that will work now.
    - rob74 5y ago
      Why not do both? Unless the wind turbines are in my back yard of course (which they can't be, according to the rules where I live wind turbines have to be ~2 km away from anyone's back yard, but still).
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Because money is fungible. A dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on solar panels or turbines that would displace fossil fuels immediately. And, it would be a dollar wasted, because the fusion work will never produce any commercially competitive power, anyway. So, it is a choice between buying something that contributes to a solution, or just pissing it away.
        rhn_mk1 5y ago
        > A dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on solar panels or turbines that would displace fossil fuels immediately I see this claim a lot, but what makes this true? Why would money allocation be so inelastic, and why can't it become flexible?
- belter 5y ago
  ITER is a scientific experiment. Even if goes according to plan ( and they are already late again ) and according to their official documents, the experiment will only start in 2035.
- beowulfey 5y ago
  Fusion vs. renewables are not zero-sum. It’s possible to research one while supporting the other. All these fusion threads bash on fusion because renewables are here now, but in actuality fusion research and renewable rollouts can come from very different budgets.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    I'm not saying research into fusion should be stopped. But I also don't think it's important to increase spending into fusion power, as the comment that I was replying to suggested. Even more so, i don't think we should be blocking investment into fission power on expectations that fusion power will make it deprecated in 10 years. It's good to have fusion power in our back pockets, but we shouldn't be relying on it for our energy plans quite yet.
- DennisP 5y ago
  We should really stop using ITER as the reference. SPARC uses the same plasma physics with newer superconductors, and is expecting ITER-level performance in 2025. Most fusion scientists agree with that assessment. SPARC won't have a turbine either, but with a construction time of four years, it brings us a lot closer to the next reactor which will.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    ITER is still the biggest and best funded project. If SPARC shows anything impressive, we'll see, but so far I'd still bet on the bigger project.
    - m0llusk 5y ago
      > ITER is still the biggest and best funded project. Which may be the core explanation for its failure.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
epistasis 5y ago
Fusion will not solve any energy problems we have today, and is unconnected to them. Fusion will have to, maybe, compete with solar/wind/storage in 20-30 years, and beat the prices for that 20-30 years from now. With solar+storage being cheaper than many fossil fuels today, fusion is going to have to be extremely cheap to be able to be a competitive terrestrial energy source with 20-30 years more of solar and storage improvements.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  I agree that solar/wind price points have massively gone down but how is storage a solved problem? I have only seen research projects in this field, is there anyone who has commercially deployed an energy storage solution? (other than hydro projects)
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    I don't think it is correct. Offshore wind is cost competitive with fossil fuels in the UK. However, if you include storage I believe this cost balloons significantly. That said, there are significant grid scale batteries coming online. The largest of these in California is 1.2GWh. By comparison the UK has about 30GWh of pumped storage.
  - otherme123 5y ago
    This short read should answer your questions: https://www.energy-storage.news/battery-storage-at-us20-mwh-breaking-down-low-cost-solar-plus-storage-ppas-in-the-usa/ https://www.energy-storage.news/battery-storage-at-us20-mwh-... It seems that we are at the turning point.
  - RobertoG 5y ago
    These look almost there (I know, I know, "almost"): https://ambri.com/ https://ambri.com/ (liquid metal battery) https://www.hydrostor.ca/ https://www.hydrostor.ca/ (compressed air)
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    The only problems we have with storage are (1) determining which will end up cheapest, or has the most valuable side benefits, and (2) building out. Hydrogen, anhydrous ammonia, and liquified air all produce a valuable industrial product once the tanks are full. Used to be their round-trip efficiency was considered too low, but with solar panels getting dirt cheap, just putting up more panels accommodates almost any conceivable loss. Likewise for long-distance high-voltage transmission lines; China is even building cables to Chile (!) for winter power from desert panel farms. Factories for industrial amounts of iron-air batteries are already under construction, and will be in full production by end of next year. It turns out that pumped hydro, the most mature and efficient current method, has far more potential than generally assumed. A regular hydro power dam has to be in a river valley with a big watershed area. But for hydro storage, all you need is a penstock up to a depression in the hills, no watershed or river needed. There are millions of those. Even if you build a dam along one end, it's cheap. And you can float solar panels on it, where they will reduce evaporation and also run more efficiently. Storage is a solved problem. We don't have much of it yet just because a renewable dollar is today better spent on a panel or turbine, and because cost for storage is falling even faster than for solar panels. Wait a bit, get more for the same money.
4WIW 5y ago
I would think about more practical ways to reduce cost fuel consumption. We are still 10-15 years away from practical fusion. We have been, for the last 50 years. As for Germany, maybe it would make more sense not to hastily shut down nuclear reactors, in favor of coal and gas, or at least until the equivalent capacity of renewable energy is online, if they really cared about the environment?
- d-gearloose 5y ago
  The distance to energy production through fusion is better expressed in funding, less so in time. https://m.slashdot.org/story/167399 https://m.slashdot.org/story/167399
  - phreeza 5y ago
    ... says researcher trying to get their research funded.
    - k0k0r0 5y ago
      This seems to me like a comment driven by jealousy. Simply because it doesn't add any reason to it, like for example: a discussion or at least a comment about how the capital invested in fusion is needed somewhere else.
      - phreeza 5y ago
        Sorry if it sounded flippant. The point I wanted to make, and which was not clear from the comment above without opening the link, was that this statement comes from someone with a clear conflict of interest. I think the burden of proof should be on the scientist, it just doesn't seem plausible to me that fusion progress is so fungible, especially not at timescales less than what it takes to train a fusion researcher.
  - k0k0r0 5y ago
    Thank you very much for this artikel. I found the explainations in that Q&A for most parts very understandable, and felt like they actually give direct answers to direct questions. Also I perceived the questions to be a very good composition. Unfortunately, it's from 2012, if I understand correctly. Can anybody recommend a similarly braod discussion of the big questions for the 'simple (wo)man'?
inglor_cz 5y ago
I can't see the European Green movement embracing anything that has "nuclear" in it.
- markvdb 5y ago
  I have anecdotal evidence to the contrary: myself. In the short and medium term, it's obvious that wind and solar are going to help us avoid the worst of the climate crisis. In the long term, we might need something more to reverse climate change. Existing nuclear fission energy capacity might be a short term stopgap. It's just clearly not sustainable because inherently too risky: - military/terror/nuclear proliferation risk - uninsurable accident risk - long-lived waste risk - uranium sourcing geopolitical risk Nuclear fusion however should be able to avoid most of these risks. All of this could be moot of course if dangerous idiots like Vladimir decide to solve the problem by killing a sufficiently large fraction of humanity. I'm cautiously optimistic though that a better solution is possible.
  - gmueckl 5y ago
    The German green party had made it part of their program to stop all research into all kinds of "nuclear" technologies, explicitly listing fusion research as something to be stopped. I think that this passage has been removed again, but the whole thing still serves as a good indicator for the sentiments here.
    - danuker 5y ago
      They do not mention fusion, but they are still clearly against fission: > Wir vollenden den Atomausstieg und bekennen uns zum verabredeten Pfad der Endlagersuche mit höchsten Sicherheitsstandards bei größtmöglicher Transparenz und Beteiligung der Bevölkerung. Der Rückbau der bestehenden Atomkraftwerke muss schleunigst und ohne Zeitverzögerung auf höchstem Sicherheitsniveau erfolgen. Die Atomfabriken in Gronau und Lingen wollen wir schnellstmöglich schließen Auch in der EU werden wir den Einstieg in den Atomausstieg vorantreiben. https://www.gruene.de/themen/energie https://www.gruene.de/themen/energie Google Translation: > We are completing the nuclear phase-out and are committed to the agreed path of searching for a repository with the highest safety standards and the greatest possible transparency and participation of the population. The dismantling of the existing nuclear power plants must be carried out as quickly as possible and without any delay at the highest level of safety. We want to close the nuclear factories in Gronau and Lingen as quickly as possible. In the EU, too, we will promote the phase-out of nuclear power. I believe it is misguided. Fission is a great intermediary technology, which killed way less people than coal, oil, and gas per energy produced, including the nuclear accidents. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#nuclear-energy-and-renewables-are-far-far-safer-than-fossil-fuels https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#nuclear-... Shutting down fission before finding a solution for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing is nuts, and results in emergency fuel burning (gas and coal).
wanda 5y ago
In the same timeframe, much more success has been found in improving the efficiency of renewable power solutions which are functional out of the box, easier to maintain/update, cheaper, and an easier sell. I agree that fusion is important to research, but comparing it to the Manhattan Project or the Space Race is to forget that the world was at war when the atomic bomb was delivered from theory to reality in, what, 27 months? The world was locked in the grip of paranoia about nuclear armageddon and the US/Russia both felt the same existential need to establish a space presence to avoid losing ground or giving so much as a hint that either side might be technologically less capable of catastrophically second striking the other. Fusion is a notion that has been actively researched and experimented with in a time of relative peace. There's less pressure on the world because no one sees climate change in the same light as nuclear war. The world still has conflicts, but in the minds of the West, the nations that are in conflict are always in conflict, it's just how it is out there. Obviously this view is absolutely ethnocentric and absurd, but that's the mindset. War's just something to report on, something people almost expect to see on breakfast TV when they go to work. It would almost be eerie for them not to see or read about a war somewhere. Thus, I would argue in the absence of existential crisis, and in the presence of the climate change narrative where words like "renewable" and "green" are easily distinguished over "less waste than fission", fusion power ultimately just lost as a business prospect to renewable energy.
panick21_ 5y ago
What we should have actually done is build new and more fission reactors decades ago and not shut the current once down. That how we could have solved the while issue decades ago. France had green energy for literally 40 years and nobody cares. Because 'nuke = evil' attitude, specially in Germany.
imhoguy 5y ago
> and NS2 being cancelled Only the certification has been suspended. I bet it resumes before the next winter season. All in good faith ofc - to overcome the inevitable energy crisis. Which in turn results from lobbying to shutdown so many nuclear plants so quickly.

andbberger 5y ago

we could just pull all the stops to turn the fission reactors back on. we already found a magical solution to our energy problems, like 80 years ago. how can you expect it would turn out any different for fusion?

tsimionescu 5y ago

Even if fusion succeeds in net positive energy (which is still a ways off - even ITER, planned to finish in 2030, will not actually generate energy, they didn't even add a turbine to try), there are huge hurdles to scanning it up. It's impossible for fusion to be a significant source of energy in the time left to avert catastrophic global warming. Even with the most optimistic estimates, we will at best have a handful of small plants, nothing comparable to a fission power plant.

stormbrew 5y ago
This is a really common kind of comment to this issue, but I think it's extremely short-sighted. At this point, because we're probably well past the point that anything we can practically do is likely to get us to net zero carbon before catastrophe (it's already here, really), we're at a point where we're probably going to need to go extremely negative even once we do get there. We're (ironically) going to need a lot of non-carbon-sourced energy to do that, it seems to me. We can't just be thinking about what we'll do to stem the tide, we have to keep working on how we're going to push it back.
- urthor 5y ago
  We're realistically at a very good point in time to avert some of the worst case scenarios, I fail to see your point? We definitely want to be looking at technologies that have a high ROI for emission reduction in the next 10 year span, mixed with longer term projects. Fission is a longer term project. Simple as that.
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    > We definitely want to be looking at technologies that have a high ROI for emission reduction in the next 10 year span, mixed with longer term projects. This... is my point? So I think you do see it. "Fusion can't save us now so we shouldn't invest in it at all" is short-sighted. This is not an either-or proposition, and frankly people have completely out of whack ideas of the scale of money that's been invested in fusion. Tens of billions of dollars are nothing in what's going to be a trillions of dollars problem. We need to be building out renewables, and ideally fission too, now. We need to get to carbon zero asap. And then comes the project of getting things back to where we need to be, and we are just not ready for the energy we're going to need to do that.
    - urthor 5y ago
      See this is the thing. People thing 10 billion dollars is a lot of money. My view is that 10 billion dollars is nothing. My view is that the total OECD investment in fusion R&D should be 10 billion. A year. For the next 50 years. The investment in the high ROI technologies, principally solar R&D and overnight energy capacity projects like water pump batteries, should be 100 billion (across the OECD). And the investment in CapEx, installing new panels, 200 billion. Our investment in STEM R&D, as a society, is just pitiful across the Western world. The portion of our tax dollars that go to long term R&D, the primary driver of productivity growth and progress in our nation's, is scrap.
      - stormbrew 5y ago
        I don't really disagree with any of this, so I guess that's confirmation that you did see my point. Certainly, the fact that solar and wind are sure things right now warrants massive investment. Just throwing endless gobs of money at a problem that's as-yet unsolved doesn't necessarily lead to good outcomes, it also takes directed goals and all that. That's in theory what ITER is all about, though I think the slowness with which it got started will hamper it and we'll see success on other projects before it even gets to the testing phase. It was an attempt to create a moonshot that kinda failed, but the private sector seems more interested now so it might not matter. That said I'd actually be surprised if there isn't already much more than $200bil going into building out solar capacity worldwide. It's just not easily enumerated because it's not special anymore, and a lot of it is on small scales (ie. I'm gonna install about $20k of solar panels to my home this spring and I'm not alone, but it's hard to tell how much that adds up to).
gruturo 5y ago
The catastrophic global warming you mention is not a boolean. It can always get worse, with the planet becoming more and more inhospitable, up to the point where mankind can't survive (wet bulb temperature permanently above 35c --> everyone dies without air conditioning) - and beyond. Even if it's too late to avoid it completely, it still makes very much sense to work on not making it even worse. Suggesting to abandon efforts in something because it will anyway not be ready in time, or to stop restrictions because "anyway it's too late" is just the next step in the strategy of the deniers - or, rather, their agitators, motivated by immense profit.
- t43562 5y ago
  Should we build N Wind turbines or blow the money on more fusion research? I would guess that we need to keep fusion research alive but the real bulk of the money should be for things that will work now.
  - rob74 5y ago
    Why not do both? Unless the wind turbines are in my back yard of course (which they can't be, according to the rules where I live wind turbines have to be ~2 km away from anyone's back yard, but still).
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Because money is fungible. A dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on solar panels or turbines that would displace fossil fuels immediately. And, it would be a dollar wasted, because the fusion work will never produce any commercially competitive power, anyway. So, it is a choice between buying something that contributes to a solution, or just pissing it away.
      - rhn_mk1 5y ago
        > A dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on solar panels or turbines that would displace fossil fuels immediately I see this claim a lot, but what makes this true? Why would money allocation be so inelastic, and why can't it become flexible?
belter 5y ago
ITER is a scientific experiment. Even if goes according to plan ( and they are already late again ) and according to their official documents, the experiment will only start in 2035.
beowulfey 5y ago
Fusion vs. renewables are not zero-sum. It’s possible to research one while supporting the other. All these fusion threads bash on fusion because renewables are here now, but in actuality fusion research and renewable rollouts can come from very different budgets.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  I'm not saying research into fusion should be stopped. But I also don't think it's important to increase spending into fusion power, as the comment that I was replying to suggested. Even more so, i don't think we should be blocking investment into fission power on expectations that fusion power will make it deprecated in 10 years. It's good to have fusion power in our back pockets, but we shouldn't be relying on it for our energy plans quite yet.
DennisP 5y ago
We should really stop using ITER as the reference. SPARC uses the same plasma physics with newer superconductors, and is expecting ITER-level performance in 2025. Most fusion scientists agree with that assessment. SPARC won't have a turbine either, but with a construction time of four years, it brings us a lot closer to the next reactor which will.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  ITER is still the biggest and best funded project. If SPARC shows anything impressive, we'll see, but so far I'd still bet on the bigger project.
  - m0llusk 5y ago
    > ITER is still the biggest and best funded project. Which may be the core explanation for its failure.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

epistasis 5y ago

Fusion will not solve any energy problems we have today, and is unconnected to them. Fusion will have to, maybe, compete with solar/wind/storage in 20-30 years, and beat the prices for that 20-30 years from now. With solar+storage being cheaper than many fossil fuels today, fusion is going to have to be extremely cheap to be able to be a competitive terrestrial energy source with 20-30 years more of solar and storage improvements.

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
I agree that solar/wind price points have massively gone down but how is storage a solved problem? I have only seen research projects in this field, is there anyone who has commercially deployed an energy storage solution? (other than hydro projects)
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  I don't think it is correct. Offshore wind is cost competitive with fossil fuels in the UK. However, if you include storage I believe this cost balloons significantly. That said, there are significant grid scale batteries coming online. The largest of these in California is 1.2GWh. By comparison the UK has about 30GWh of pumped storage.
- otherme123 5y ago
  This short read should answer your questions: https://www.energy-storage.news/battery-storage-at-us20-mwh-breaking-down-low-cost-solar-plus-storage-ppas-in-the-usa/ https://www.energy-storage.news/battery-storage-at-us20-mwh-... It seems that we are at the turning point.
- RobertoG 5y ago
  These look almost there (I know, I know, "almost"): https://ambri.com/ https://ambri.com/ (liquid metal battery) https://www.hydrostor.ca/ https://www.hydrostor.ca/ (compressed air)
- ncmncm 5y ago
  The only problems we have with storage are (1) determining which will end up cheapest, or has the most valuable side benefits, and (2) building out. Hydrogen, anhydrous ammonia, and liquified air all produce a valuable industrial product once the tanks are full. Used to be their round-trip efficiency was considered too low, but with solar panels getting dirt cheap, just putting up more panels accommodates almost any conceivable loss. Likewise for long-distance high-voltage transmission lines; China is even building cables to Chile (!) for winter power from desert panel farms. Factories for industrial amounts of iron-air batteries are already under construction, and will be in full production by end of next year. It turns out that pumped hydro, the most mature and efficient current method, has far more potential than generally assumed. A regular hydro power dam has to be in a river valley with a big watershed area. But for hydro storage, all you need is a penstock up to a depression in the hills, no watershed or river needed. There are millions of those. Even if you build a dam along one end, it's cheap. And you can float solar panels on it, where they will reduce evaporation and also run more efficiently. Storage is a solved problem. We don't have much of it yet just because a renewable dollar is today better spent on a panel or turbine, and because cost for storage is falling even faster than for solar panels. Wait a bit, get more for the same money.

4WIW 5y ago

I would think about more practical ways to reduce cost fuel consumption. We are still 10-15 years away from practical fusion. We have been, for the last 50 years. As for Germany, maybe it would make more sense not to hastily shut down nuclear reactors, in favor of coal and gas, or at least until the equivalent capacity of renewable energy is online, if they really cared about the environment?

d-gearloose 5y ago
The distance to energy production through fusion is better expressed in funding, less so in time. https://m.slashdot.org/story/167399 https://m.slashdot.org/story/167399
- phreeza 5y ago
  ... says researcher trying to get their research funded.
  - k0k0r0 5y ago
    This seems to me like a comment driven by jealousy. Simply because it doesn't add any reason to it, like for example: a discussion or at least a comment about how the capital invested in fusion is needed somewhere else.
    - phreeza 5y ago
      Sorry if it sounded flippant. The point I wanted to make, and which was not clear from the comment above without opening the link, was that this statement comes from someone with a clear conflict of interest. I think the burden of proof should be on the scientist, it just doesn't seem plausible to me that fusion progress is so fungible, especially not at timescales less than what it takes to train a fusion researcher.
- k0k0r0 5y ago
  Thank you very much for this artikel. I found the explainations in that Q&A for most parts very understandable, and felt like they actually give direct answers to direct questions. Also I perceived the questions to be a very good composition. Unfortunately, it's from 2012, if I understand correctly. Can anybody recommend a similarly braod discussion of the big questions for the 'simple (wo)man'?

inglor_cz 5y ago

I can't see the European Green movement embracing anything that has "nuclear" in it.

markvdb 5y ago
I have anecdotal evidence to the contrary: myself. In the short and medium term, it's obvious that wind and solar are going to help us avoid the worst of the climate crisis. In the long term, we might need something more to reverse climate change. Existing nuclear fission energy capacity might be a short term stopgap. It's just clearly not sustainable because inherently too risky: - military/terror/nuclear proliferation risk - uninsurable accident risk - long-lived waste risk - uranium sourcing geopolitical risk Nuclear fusion however should be able to avoid most of these risks. All of this could be moot of course if dangerous idiots like Vladimir decide to solve the problem by killing a sufficiently large fraction of humanity. I'm cautiously optimistic though that a better solution is possible.
- gmueckl 5y ago
  The German green party had made it part of their program to stop all research into all kinds of "nuclear" technologies, explicitly listing fusion research as something to be stopped. I think that this passage has been removed again, but the whole thing still serves as a good indicator for the sentiments here.
  - danuker 5y ago
    They do not mention fusion, but they are still clearly against fission: > Wir vollenden den Atomausstieg und bekennen uns zum verabredeten Pfad der Endlagersuche mit höchsten Sicherheitsstandards bei größtmöglicher Transparenz und Beteiligung der Bevölkerung. Der Rückbau der bestehenden Atomkraftwerke muss schleunigst und ohne Zeitverzögerung auf höchstem Sicherheitsniveau erfolgen. Die Atomfabriken in Gronau und Lingen wollen wir schnellstmöglich schließen Auch in der EU werden wir den Einstieg in den Atomausstieg vorantreiben. https://www.gruene.de/themen/energie https://www.gruene.de/themen/energie Google Translation: > We are completing the nuclear phase-out and are committed to the agreed path of searching for a repository with the highest safety standards and the greatest possible transparency and participation of the population. The dismantling of the existing nuclear power plants must be carried out as quickly as possible and without any delay at the highest level of safety. We want to close the nuclear factories in Gronau and Lingen as quickly as possible. In the EU, too, we will promote the phase-out of nuclear power. I believe it is misguided. Fission is a great intermediary technology, which killed way less people than coal, oil, and gas per energy produced, including the nuclear accidents. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#nuclear-energy-and-renewables-are-far-far-safer-than-fossil-fuels https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#nuclear-... Shutting down fission before finding a solution for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing is nuts, and results in emergency fuel burning (gas and coal).

wanda 5y ago

In the same timeframe, much more success has been found in improving the efficiency of renewable power solutions which are functional out of the box, easier to maintain/update, cheaper, and an easier sell. I agree that fusion is important to research, but comparing it to the Manhattan Project or the Space Race is to forget that the world was at war when the atomic bomb was delivered from theory to reality in, what, 27 months? The world was locked in the grip of paranoia about nuclear armageddon and the US/Russia both felt the same existential need to establish a space presence to avoid losing ground or giving so much as a hint that either side might be technologically less capable of catastrophically second striking the other. Fusion is a notion that has been actively researched and experimented with in a time of relative peace. There's less pressure on the world because no one sees climate change in the same light as nuclear war. The world still has conflicts, but in the minds of the West, the nations that are in conflict are always in conflict, it's just how it is out there. Obviously this view is absolutely ethnocentric and absurd, but that's the mindset. War's just something to report on, something people almost expect to see on breakfast TV when they go to work. It would almost be eerie for them not to see or read about a war somewhere. Thus, I would argue in the absence of existential crisis, and in the presence of the climate change narrative where words like "renewable" and "green" are easily distinguished over "less waste than fission", fusion power ultimately just lost as a business prospect to renewable energy.

panick21_ 5y ago

What we should have actually done is build new and more fission reactors decades ago and not shut the current once down. That how we could have solved the while issue decades ago. France had green energy for literally 40 years and nobody cares. Because 'nuke = evil' attitude, specially in Germany.

imhoguy 5y ago

> and NS2 being cancelled Only the certification has been suspended. I bet it resumes before the next winter season. All in good faith ofc - to overcome the inevitable energy crisis. Which in turn results from lobbying to shutdown so many nuclear plants so quickly.