12 ms·

To be honest a lot of the fusion news recently has made me skeptical (namely, for CFS guys who kinda smell a little sus to me if I'm being 100% honest), but th

To be honest a lot of the fusion news recently has made me skeptical (namely, for CFS guys who kinda smell a little sus to me if I'm being 100% honest), but this on the other hand is fantastic, actual results (although they should publish a paper on it, just my bias as a scientist), meeting good plasma temps with just $70M! Not a gigabuck not even 100 megabucks, that to me is a good sign for actual commercial fusion. Bravo to Tokamak Energy.

willis936 5y ago
What's sus about CFS? No one else is making 20 T confinement field coils. SPARC's campus is already up and the machine is being built. ARC is expected to have ground broken this year.
- GOONIMMUNE 5y ago
  Do you have a source on ARC breaking ground? I follow CFS and haven't heard anything- google didn't turn up anything either. Just curious
  - willis936 5y ago
    Just secondhand from a recruiter. I'm certain CFS will make announcements when they have something to announce.
  - willis936 5y ago
    Oh, and a friend of mine told me that Bob Mumgard (CFS CEO) mentioned the hope to break ground for ARC this Fall during a seminar last Friday. https://www.physics.wisc.edu/events/?id=6566 https://www.physics.wisc.edu/events/?id=6566
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  ARC is going to begin construction before SPARC is proven? That’s actually great news I just didn’t know about it. I guess they gotta find a way to spend their new $1.8B investment.
Mizza 5y ago
What about CFS is fishy to you? Those are the guys I'd put my money on, but I'm curious why you'd think otherwise.
- Retric 5y ago
  For me it’s the “seemingly” crazy unrealistic deadlines, which are achievable if they don’t actually try and hit net energy gain. Use 20MW of energy to add 10MW into plasma, get 20MW of fusion, convert 30MW of heat into 10MW of electricity and they have reached their stated goal without actually achieving anything useful. And that’s assuming steady state operation rather than a fraction of a second pulse that briefly reaches their goals. It’s exactly the same thing as a startup selling dollars for pennies and saying yea we’re going to make it up in volume.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    ARC will be about the size of JET, and JET was built in four years, with most of that being just for the buildings. The test reactor, SPARC, will be about half that size. Tokamak scaling is very well established. The output scales with the square of plasma volume, and the fourth power of magnetic field strength. Stronger magnetic fields also make the plasma more stable. JET already demonstrated a five-second plasma, which they only had to shut down because they have copper coils that would melt if operated longer than that. Because of all this, many independent fusion researchers think SPARC will succeed in getting 10X gain in 2025. After that, the larger ARC should easily reach commercial levels. Of all the commercial fusion companies, CFS is the most conservative one. Tokamak Energy is a close second, with a very similar approach. The other fusion startups are attempting approaches that have more physics risk, though many of them would have fewer engineering and economic difficulties if the physics does work out.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Simply scaling SPAR or ITER doesn’t result in commercial operation. First you need fuel, global Tritium supplies are tiny and DD fusion is much harder. Next stability is an open question, no Tokamak has ever operated near maximum capacity for even 1 hour. Add to that serious material science questions, etc etc and even Q>100 alone just doesn’t actually mean much. Now let’s just assume all of that is solved, you still need to actually ensure your design is economically viable. Simply producing energy from fusion alone isn’t enough which means you need to cheaply solve not only all the above but do so cheaply.
adhesive_wombat 5y ago
And to think, some people would rather spend $700 million on a boat[1]. If you wanted a legacy, you could hardly do better than being the Zefram Cochrane of energy. You don't even have to stop being an asshole! [1] The Scheherazade for a current example of interest, but there are thousands more examples.
- acchow 5y ago
  > And to think, some people would rather spend $700 million on a boat[1]. This is the weirdest thing to me. How do billionaires think a big boat is cooler than building nuclear fusion? If I was a billionaire, I'd build space ships and underground tunnels and nuclear micro reactors
  - cplusplusfellow 5y ago
    A lot of billionaires have organized businesses but never tinkered with anything constructive in their lives. They don’t even own a black and decker power tool.
    - contradictioned 5y ago
      It is enough to own black and decker... Scnr
  - api 5y ago
    The big boat is about status, which means attracting mates and increasing the odds of breeding before a lion eats you. Our brain stems don’t know what geological epoch we are in.
    - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
      That a big useless boat is a vastly bigger panty-dropper then a working fusion reactor says everything about our species, doesn't it?
      - 5y ago
acidburnNSA 5y ago
You'll love this voodoo fusion article. https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf

willis936 5y ago

What's sus about CFS? No one else is making 20 T confinement field coils. SPARC's campus is already up and the machine is being built. ARC is expected to have ground broken this year.

GOONIMMUNE 5y ago
Do you have a source on ARC breaking ground? I follow CFS and haven't heard anything- google didn't turn up anything either. Just curious
- willis936 5y ago
  Just secondhand from a recruiter. I'm certain CFS will make announcements when they have something to announce.
- willis936 5y ago
  Oh, and a friend of mine told me that Bob Mumgard (CFS CEO) mentioned the hope to break ground for ARC this Fall during a seminar last Friday. https://www.physics.wisc.edu/events/?id=6566 https://www.physics.wisc.edu/events/?id=6566
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
ARC is going to begin construction before SPARC is proven? That’s actually great news I just didn’t know about it. I guess they gotta find a way to spend their new $1.8B investment.

Mizza 5y ago

What about CFS is fishy to you? Those are the guys I'd put my money on, but I'm curious why you'd think otherwise.

Retric 5y ago
For me it’s the “seemingly” crazy unrealistic deadlines, which are achievable if they don’t actually try and hit net energy gain. Use 20MW of energy to add 10MW into plasma, get 20MW of fusion, convert 30MW of heat into 10MW of electricity and they have reached their stated goal without actually achieving anything useful. And that’s assuming steady state operation rather than a fraction of a second pulse that briefly reaches their goals. It’s exactly the same thing as a startup selling dollars for pennies and saying yea we’re going to make it up in volume.
- DennisP 5y ago
  ARC will be about the size of JET, and JET was built in four years, with most of that being just for the buildings. The test reactor, SPARC, will be about half that size. Tokamak scaling is very well established. The output scales with the square of plasma volume, and the fourth power of magnetic field strength. Stronger magnetic fields also make the plasma more stable. JET already demonstrated a five-second plasma, which they only had to shut down because they have copper coils that would melt if operated longer than that. Because of all this, many independent fusion researchers think SPARC will succeed in getting 10X gain in 2025. After that, the larger ARC should easily reach commercial levels. Of all the commercial fusion companies, CFS is the most conservative one. Tokamak Energy is a close second, with a very similar approach. The other fusion startups are attempting approaches that have more physics risk, though many of them would have fewer engineering and economic difficulties if the physics does work out.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Simply scaling SPAR or ITER doesn’t result in commercial operation. First you need fuel, global Tritium supplies are tiny and DD fusion is much harder. Next stability is an open question, no Tokamak has ever operated near maximum capacity for even 1 hour. Add to that serious material science questions, etc etc and even Q>100 alone just doesn’t actually mean much. Now let’s just assume all of that is solved, you still need to actually ensure your design is economically viable. Simply producing energy from fusion alone isn’t enough which means you need to cheaply solve not only all the above but do so cheaply.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago

And to think, some people would rather spend $700 million on a boat[1]. If you wanted a legacy, you could hardly do better than being the Zefram Cochrane of energy. You don't even have to stop being an asshole! [1] The Scheherazade for a current example of interest, but there are thousands more examples.

acchow 5y ago
> And to think, some people would rather spend $700 million on a boat[1]. This is the weirdest thing to me. How do billionaires think a big boat is cooler than building nuclear fusion? If I was a billionaire, I'd build space ships and underground tunnels and nuclear micro reactors
- cplusplusfellow 5y ago
  A lot of billionaires have organized businesses but never tinkered with anything constructive in their lives. They don’t even own a black and decker power tool.
  - contradictioned 5y ago
    It is enough to own black and decker... Scnr
- api 5y ago
  The big boat is about status, which means attracting mates and increasing the odds of breeding before a lion eats you. Our brain stems don’t know what geological epoch we are in.
  - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
    That a big useless boat is a vastly bigger panty-dropper then a working fusion reactor says everything about our species, doesn't it?
    - 5y ago

acidburnNSA 5y ago

You'll love this voodoo fusion article. https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf