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"Decades of public investment, billions of dollars of new private investment, and major recent scientific advances suggest that now is the time to move boldly t

"Decades of public investment, billions of dollars of new private investment, and major recent scientific advances suggest that now is the time to move boldly to accelerate development of commercial fusion energy." They are referring to HTS magnets and startups such as CFS and Tokamak Energy. Previous tracks that were railroaded financially have too slow and inefficient of a track for public appeal. CFS' demonstration 20T coil changes the game. That's why this briefing happened.

belter 5y ago
Fair enough. But do any of those tracks realistically provide a road-map that make this timetable look like something more than wishful thinking?
- willis936 5y ago
  "Fusion – the same reaction that powers the sun – has the potential to be a game-changing technology to help us achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, increase energy security, and enhance U.S. technology leadership." I agree with everything in this statement except the idea that anything other than inducing a depression will have the US reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. It simply will not happen. Fusion has the potential to be an aid in hitting that by 2100.
- maccam94 5y ago
  CFS is aiming to have an operational demo reactor that is net energy positive in 2025, and a full scale reactor feeding power into the electric grid in the early 2030s. https://cfs.energy/technology https://cfs.energy/technology
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    It is one thing to aim, another entirely to have a nonzero possibility of hitting. Investment money seems to need only the aim.
- wcarss 5y ago
  disclaimer: I am not a fusion scientist, nor even a physicist. Just a bystander who has been following this closely for years. But: Yes. Just one of those avenues is what MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center[0] has been talking about publicly since at least 2017 -- here's a fantastic talk[1] by them about how to think about fusion research and engineering, different approaches available, and about what is different in a world of high strength magnetic tapes, which they have subsequently worked to produce at industrial scales in partnership with CFS[2][3], which was founded by people from the PSFC to take advantage of this research. The bottom line is: these new very strong magnets allow way, way smaller tokamaks to hit net positive. The hard research here is mostly done. The magnets it gave us have cleared a path forward at a far more tractable time and complexity scale than ITER can dream of. The work is now an engineering and industrial process problem, which is well under way: serious scientists and engineers around the world are hard at work at over a dozen different startups, working on reactors that could fire net-positively in well under a decade. Will those reactors fix our energy problems? Hey, there's still fuel, waste, maintenance (neutrons hit hard!), regulations, etc... -- commercialization and politics are their own whole problems. But I would absolutely take the long bet that we'll have at least one net positive tokamak running before 2030. 0 - https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk (really, if you're at all interested, this is simply an amazing talk and clarifies a lot) 2 - https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-major-advance-toward-fusion-energy-0908 https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-major-advance-toward-fusio... 3 - https://www.cfs.energy/ https://www.cfs.energy/ -- you can see Bob Mumgaard, CFS'CEO, is listed as a speaker at the white house event
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    But: No. Even if every single thing they hope to get working were to work perfectly the first time, there would still be no commercially competitive power out of it. If they offered the power exactly at cost, they would get no bids. Fission is today not competitive, and nobody involved can promise that Tokamak fusion could ever be competitive even with fission, never mind with what renewable power will be priced at, by then. So, no, those reactors will not fix our energy, or any other, problem, unless our problem is too much money and not enough things to waste it on.

belter 5y ago

Fair enough. But do any of those tracks realistically provide a road-map that make this timetable look like something more than wishful thinking?

willis936 5y ago
"Fusion – the same reaction that powers the sun – has the potential to be a game-changing technology to help us achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, increase energy security, and enhance U.S. technology leadership." I agree with everything in this statement except the idea that anything other than inducing a depression will have the US reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. It simply will not happen. Fusion has the potential to be an aid in hitting that by 2100.
maccam94 5y ago
CFS is aiming to have an operational demo reactor that is net energy positive in 2025, and a full scale reactor feeding power into the electric grid in the early 2030s. https://cfs.energy/technology https://cfs.energy/technology
- ncmncm 5y ago
  It is one thing to aim, another entirely to have a nonzero possibility of hitting. Investment money seems to need only the aim.
wcarss 5y ago
disclaimer: I am not a fusion scientist, nor even a physicist. Just a bystander who has been following this closely for years. But: Yes. Just one of those avenues is what MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center[0] has been talking about publicly since at least 2017 -- here's a fantastic talk[1] by them about how to think about fusion research and engineering, different approaches available, and about what is different in a world of high strength magnetic tapes, which they have subsequently worked to produce at industrial scales in partnership with CFS[2][3], which was founded by people from the PSFC to take advantage of this research. The bottom line is: these new very strong magnets allow way, way smaller tokamaks to hit net positive. The hard research here is mostly done. The magnets it gave us have cleared a path forward at a far more tractable time and complexity scale than ITER can dream of. The work is now an engineering and industrial process problem, which is well under way: serious scientists and engineers around the world are hard at work at over a dozen different startups, working on reactors that could fire net-positively in well under a decade. Will those reactors fix our energy problems? Hey, there's still fuel, waste, maintenance (neutrons hit hard!), regulations, etc... -- commercialization and politics are their own whole problems. But I would absolutely take the long bet that we'll have at least one net positive tokamak running before 2030. 0 - https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk (really, if you're at all interested, this is simply an amazing talk and clarifies a lot) 2 - https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-major-advance-toward-fusion-energy-0908 https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-major-advance-toward-fusio... 3 - https://www.cfs.energy/ https://www.cfs.energy/ -- you can see Bob Mumgaard, CFS'CEO, is listed as a speaker at the white house event
- ncmncm 5y ago
  But: No. Even if every single thing they hope to get working were to work perfectly the first time, there would still be no commercially competitive power out of it. If they offered the power exactly at cost, they would get no bids. Fission is today not competitive, and nobody involved can promise that Tokamak fusion could ever be competitive even with fission, never mind with what renewable power will be priced at, by then. So, no, those reactors will not fix our energy, or any other, problem, unless our problem is too much money and not enough things to waste it on.