4 ms·

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 aven

by 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.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  You just keep saying this, but never provide a shred of evidence.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Evidence is all just a click away, if you care to know.
- wcarss 5y ago
  Supposing you're discussing in good faith, I'll engage with you, and _agree_: for the near term, I do not believe that fusion will be a commercially viable competitor to wind and/or solar. Not within 10, 20, 30, or even 50 years. I also agree that it likely won't beat the dollar-cost of fission power in that timeframe. But I do think it will replace fission for most new power projects somewhere within that timeframe, especially in developing nations. The expensive thing about fission is not getting a fission reactor to work, nor keeping it running. It's in getting the reactor greenlit at all, bespoke-designed, and handling supply and waste management. In many places, it is simply not an option due to geopolitics. So fission problem is not impractical because it is cost-prohibitive. Instead, it is impractical because it is responsible-waste-management and weapons-proliferation-regulations and spooky-stuff-difficult-political-battle-PR-nightmares-prohibitive. Sadly, very few people a) want a nuclear reactor in town, b) want to shoulder the risk of building, maintaining, and staffing a fission plant for 50 years, or c) want any "risky" nations to have easy access to them. That, far more than dollar-cost-per-megawatt-hour, is why we don't have nuclear plants everywhere today. Solar and wind are amazing, and obviously essential to any future we have, but today they cannot do everything, everywhere. Further revolutions in power storage and transmission might enable that (like huge flywheels?) but that's not what we're discussing, we're discussing whether fusion a) can work, b) is useful at all, and c) will ever see large scale use for power production. I do grant that it's _possible_ that a flywheel-revolution could outpace a fusion-revolution. Because of fission's problems, the niche of fusion over the next 30-50 years may be "nuclear power, but safer": it's more expensive, but it can be sold or built anywhere, the fuel control is not so vital/tough, and the waste is handleable on a timescale we can _at least_ wrap our heads around. Wind and solar currently need baseline plants for supplementation, and fusion may be the ticket to turning off the last remaining gas and coal plants out there, or in supplying power to underpowered nations with less favourable conditions for wind and solar. That is wonderful! That is lightning in a goddamned bottle. Literally! Does it have to be the cheapest option, when for many it's the only option? Past 50 years, well, history would suggest it'll likely get better. Fission would likely be a lot better today (read: cheaper, smaller) if it were safer to begin with, and solar and wind have gotten astoundingly cheap as they've seen investment and use expand over time, so why shouldn't fusion do the same? So the argument is: we're now likely to get net-positive tokamaks by ~2030. And if we have any net-positive tokamaks by 2030, then they can likely fill a power-niche that fission just can't. And if we spend 50 years making fusion plants and proliferating the technology, by 2080 it might get pretty damn cost effective. I think that's the bet all these smart people are making, and personally, I'm inclined to take it.

by wcarss 5y ago

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.

fallingknife 5y ago
You just keep saying this, but never provide a shred of evidence.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Evidence is all just a click away, if you care to know.
wcarss 5y ago
Supposing you're discussing in good faith, I'll engage with you, and _agree_: for the near term, I do not believe that fusion will be a commercially viable competitor to wind and/or solar. Not within 10, 20, 30, or even 50 years. I also agree that it likely won't beat the dollar-cost of fission power in that timeframe. But I do think it will replace fission for most new power projects somewhere within that timeframe, especially in developing nations. The expensive thing about fission is not getting a fission reactor to work, nor keeping it running. It's in getting the reactor greenlit at all, bespoke-designed, and handling supply and waste management. In many places, it is simply not an option due to geopolitics. So fission problem is not impractical because it is cost-prohibitive. Instead, it is impractical because it is responsible-waste-management and weapons-proliferation-regulations and spooky-stuff-difficult-political-battle-PR-nightmares-prohibitive. Sadly, very few people a) want a nuclear reactor in town, b) want to shoulder the risk of building, maintaining, and staffing a fission plant for 50 years, or c) want any "risky" nations to have easy access to them. That, far more than dollar-cost-per-megawatt-hour, is why we don't have nuclear plants everywhere today. Solar and wind are amazing, and obviously essential to any future we have, but today they cannot do everything, everywhere. Further revolutions in power storage and transmission might enable that (like huge flywheels?) but that's not what we're discussing, we're discussing whether fusion a) can work, b) is useful at all, and c) will ever see large scale use for power production. I do grant that it's _possible_ that a flywheel-revolution could outpace a fusion-revolution. Because of fission's problems, the niche of fusion over the next 30-50 years may be "nuclear power, but safer": it's more expensive, but it can be sold or built anywhere, the fuel control is not so vital/tough, and the waste is handleable on a timescale we can _at least_ wrap our heads around. Wind and solar currently need baseline plants for supplementation, and fusion may be the ticket to turning off the last remaining gas and coal plants out there, or in supplying power to underpowered nations with less favourable conditions for wind and solar. That is wonderful! That is lightning in a goddamned bottle. Literally! Does it have to be the cheapest option, when for many it's the only option? Past 50 years, well, history would suggest it'll likely get better. Fission would likely be a lot better today (read: cheaper, smaller) if it were safer to begin with, and solar and wind have gotten astoundingly cheap as they've seen investment and use expand over time, so why shouldn't fusion do the same? So the argument is: we're now likely to get net-positive tokamaks by ~2030. And if we have any net-positive tokamaks by 2030, then they can likely fill a power-niche that fission just can't. And if we spend 50 years making fusion plants and proliferating the technology, by 2080 it might get pretty damn cost effective. I think that's the bet all these smart people are making, and personally, I'm inclined to take it.