4 ms·

You're making a lot of speculation with no basis. Not a single model or citation across half a dozen comments. Just baseless nonsense of the same quality I ca

You're making a lot of speculation with no basis. Not a single model or citation across half a dozen comments. Just baseless nonsense of the same quality I can find on the street corner.

ncmncm 5y ago
Burden of proof is on whoever insists it is possible. I have not seen anything persuasive. If you have, it is up to you to provide it. Nobody has ever come forward with any such thing, to my knowledge.
- willis936 5y ago
  Except for the dozens of machines made on time and on budget that have established empirical scaling laws of triple product performance. Suddenly those scaling laws are invalid because someone on the internet who has no idea how to make an MCF machine implicitly thinks they are incorrect. You'll pardon my skepticism.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Each one of those dozens was expected to work. Instead, each one turned out to be ... educational. All the best people don't know how to make an MCF machine. It is an honor to be placed among them. I will welcome any skepticism you can muster.
    - willis936 5y ago
      Every single one of them did work. Notice how none of them used nuclear fuel. Did you miss that? Do you think every MCF device made has been a reactor attempt? You're making yourself look foolish.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        If you define "work", for a magnetic-confinement fusion device, as producing sustained fusion, no, they did not work. We aren't even talking about useful output; they reliably failed to confine hot plasma. Before you can even start talking about fusion as a technology to produce energy, you need to achieve confinement of (1) a useful mass of plasma at (2) a useful temperature for (3) a useful period. Without, you have at best a physics experiment. After you get all of 1, 2, and 3, you are ready to begin actual work on turning emitted neutrons into electrical power in an economically viable way. We have not had occasion to begin such work. If begun, it will predictably fail, for relentlessly practical economic reasons.
ncmncm 5y ago
We have plenty of evidence of fusion consuming money in unbounded quantities -- the people spending it say they could spend a very great deal more -- and no solitary erg of griddable energy out, decade after decade. The designs they publish for the fateful day they do get anything out are overwhelmingly bigger than a fission plant of similar capacity, overwhelmingly more costly to build, and overwhelmingly more expensive to operate. Leaving aside the plasma physics, no solutions are known for basic engineering questions in construction and operation. Fission has turned out to be a dead end, for cost reasons: renewables are cheaper, and easier and quicker to field, and cost is still plummeting, making fission less competitive with each passing day. So, anything that costs more obviously has no chance. All of this is a click away, if you care to know. Nobody is obliged to know, or care. But not bothering says all.
- willis936 5y ago
  You can construct any narrative you want if you have selective perception and decide to not actually research or learn anything. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.3540v1.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.3540v1.pdf
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    ITER was supposed to cost $5 billion, originally. Now it is supposed to cost $25 billion. It is still far from done. Cost for these things only ever goes up, and can continue rising until it is actually delivered, enabling cost to rise without bound, until it is finally canceled. My prediction is that it will never be delivered, and none of the money will ever be returned. $25 billion would build a hell of a lot of solar, wind, and storage, that would start displacing fossil-generated power immediately, and then generate revenue to build out more.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Ah yes, that paper. I cite it often. The reactor described there has a thermal power density 1/40th that of a PWR reactor vessel. And it uses so much beryllium that using the entire world's estimated resource of that element would let you build enough reactors to supply maybe 1% of world primary energy demand.
tuatoru 5y ago
If and when we have a fusion demonstrator (preferably several of them) operating for a million seconds with a total energy gain of 100 or more, we'll be in a position to make detailed LCOE estimates. In the mean time, there are arguments from analogy/difference. The market for fusion power is electricity production. (Other possible uses such as hydrogen production, district heat, desalination, or carbon sequestration have been hypothesized[1], but adding fusion to any of those needlessly adds technical risk, and is unlikely to be greenlit.) At a very high level, fusion electric power plants would be like fission power plants in all economic respects except being more complicated and therefore having higher O & M costs, and that they operate with bigger parasitic losses and startup power and energy requirements. Therefore fusion plants would have a worse return on capital employed than fission plants. We observe (1) that capital costs are nearly all of the cost of fission plants, and the same would be true of fusion, and (2) that fission power plants are uncompetitive[2] and will almost certainly remain so. Therefore fusion, being strictly less profitable than fission, will not be competitive. 1. ARPA-E review of initial markets for fusion energy: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/105PM_Handley.pdf https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/105PM_... 2. Lazard's LCOE Analysis: https://www.lazard.com/media/451881/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-150-vf.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/451881/lazards-levelized-cost-o...
- willis936 5y ago
  Fusion reactors are trivial to operate. You just turn them on. There are no runaway scenarios related to hidden states of isotope distributions. There are no dangerous refueling procedures. There are many fewer necessary safety measures and no fuel waste disposal. The most expensive operating cost is hull maintenance and that can be dropped to arbitrarily low levels with R&D (swallowed by capex).
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    The whole plant has to be taken apart at regular intervals (2 years? 1 year?), all the fiercely radioactive "blanket" plumbing and reactor wall replaced by robotic remote control (and the old stuff put where?); and the thousand tons of molten radioactive lithium/beryllium has to be continually sieved for tritium to use for fuel. If the thousand tons of molten radioactive lithium/beryllium gets loose, it it distinguishable from a fission meltdown by being worse. Ordinary beryllium oxide dust is worse than radioactives; radioactive beryllium might be worse, or only just equally bad. Molten lithium burns on contact with air and explodes on contact with water, and lithium oxide vapor turns into drain opener on contact with your nose or throat. "Hull maintenance" is I guess your name for dismantling and replacing the whole hundreds-of-tons and miles-of-pipes radioactive innards of the reactor using only R/C robots. The most reliable product of fusion promotion has always been falsehood. It seems unlikely tho change.

You're making a lot of speculation with no basis. Not a single model or citation across half a dozen comments. Just baseless nonsense of the same quality I can find on the street corner.

ncmncm 5y ago

Burden of proof is on whoever insists it is possible. I have not seen anything persuasive. If you have, it is up to you to provide it. Nobody has ever come forward with any such thing, to my knowledge.

willis936 5y ago
Except for the dozens of machines made on time and on budget that have established empirical scaling laws of triple product performance. Suddenly those scaling laws are invalid because someone on the internet who has no idea how to make an MCF machine implicitly thinks they are incorrect. You'll pardon my skepticism.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Each one of those dozens was expected to work. Instead, each one turned out to be ... educational. All the best people don't know how to make an MCF machine. It is an honor to be placed among them. I will welcome any skepticism you can muster.
  - willis936 5y ago
    Every single one of them did work. Notice how none of them used nuclear fuel. Did you miss that? Do you think every MCF device made has been a reactor attempt? You're making yourself look foolish.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      If you define "work", for a magnetic-confinement fusion device, as producing sustained fusion, no, they did not work. We aren't even talking about useful output; they reliably failed to confine hot plasma. Before you can even start talking about fusion as a technology to produce energy, you need to achieve confinement of (1) a useful mass of plasma at (2) a useful temperature for (3) a useful period. Without, you have at best a physics experiment. After you get all of 1, 2, and 3, you are ready to begin actual work on turning emitted neutrons into electrical power in an economically viable way. We have not had occasion to begin such work. If begun, it will predictably fail, for relentlessly practical economic reasons.

ncmncm 5y ago

We have plenty of evidence of fusion consuming money in unbounded quantities -- the people spending it say they could spend a very great deal more -- and no solitary erg of griddable energy out, decade after decade. The designs they publish for the fateful day they do get anything out are overwhelmingly bigger than a fission plant of similar capacity, overwhelmingly more costly to build, and overwhelmingly more expensive to operate. Leaving aside the plasma physics, no solutions are known for basic engineering questions in construction and operation. Fission has turned out to be a dead end, for cost reasons: renewables are cheaper, and easier and quicker to field, and cost is still plummeting, making fission less competitive with each passing day. So, anything that costs more obviously has no chance. All of this is a click away, if you care to know. Nobody is obliged to know, or care. But not bothering says all.

willis936 5y ago
You can construct any narrative you want if you have selective perception and decide to not actually research or learn anything. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.3540v1.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.3540v1.pdf
- ncmncm 5y ago
  ITER was supposed to cost $5 billion, originally. Now it is supposed to cost $25 billion. It is still far from done. Cost for these things only ever goes up, and can continue rising until it is actually delivered, enabling cost to rise without bound, until it is finally canceled. My prediction is that it will never be delivered, and none of the money will ever be returned. $25 billion would build a hell of a lot of solar, wind, and storage, that would start displacing fossil-generated power immediately, and then generate revenue to build out more.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  Ah yes, that paper. I cite it often. The reactor described there has a thermal power density 1/40th that of a PWR reactor vessel. And it uses so much beryllium that using the entire world's estimated resource of that element would let you build enough reactors to supply maybe 1% of world primary energy demand.

tuatoru 5y ago

If and when we have a fusion demonstrator (preferably several of them) operating for a million seconds with a total energy gain of 100 or more, we'll be in a position to make detailed LCOE estimates. In the mean time, there are arguments from analogy/difference. The market for fusion power is electricity production. (Other possible uses such as hydrogen production, district heat, desalination, or carbon sequestration have been hypothesized[1], but adding fusion to any of those needlessly adds technical risk, and is unlikely to be greenlit.) At a very high level, fusion electric power plants would be like fission power plants in all economic respects except being more complicated and therefore having higher O & M costs, and that they operate with bigger parasitic losses and startup power and energy requirements. Therefore fusion plants would have a worse return on capital employed than fission plants. We observe (1) that capital costs are nearly all of the cost of fission plants, and the same would be true of fusion, and (2) that fission power plants are uncompetitive[2] and will almost certainly remain so. Therefore fusion, being strictly less profitable than fission, will not be competitive. 1. ARPA-E review of initial markets for fusion energy: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/105PM_Handley.pdf https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/105PM_... 2. Lazard's LCOE Analysis: https://www.lazard.com/media/451881/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-150-vf.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/451881/lazards-levelized-cost-o...

willis936 5y ago
Fusion reactors are trivial to operate. You just turn them on. There are no runaway scenarios related to hidden states of isotope distributions. There are no dangerous refueling procedures. There are many fewer necessary safety measures and no fuel waste disposal. The most expensive operating cost is hull maintenance and that can be dropped to arbitrarily low levels with R&D (swallowed by capex).
- ncmncm 5y ago
  The whole plant has to be taken apart at regular intervals (2 years? 1 year?), all the fiercely radioactive "blanket" plumbing and reactor wall replaced by robotic remote control (and the old stuff put where?); and the thousand tons of molten radioactive lithium/beryllium has to be continually sieved for tritium to use for fuel. If the thousand tons of molten radioactive lithium/beryllium gets loose, it it distinguishable from a fission meltdown by being worse. Ordinary beryllium oxide dust is worse than radioactives; radioactive beryllium might be worse, or only just equally bad. Molten lithium burns on contact with air and explodes on contact with water, and lithium oxide vapor turns into drain opener on contact with your nose or throat. "Hull maintenance" is I guess your name for dismantling and replacing the whole hundreds-of-tons and miles-of-pipes radioactive innards of the reactor using only R/C robots. The most reliable product of fusion promotion has always been falsehood. It seems unlikely tho change.