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It kills me that more people don't know about General Fusion. They have a practical design for a fusion reactor and are currently building a test reactor in the

It kills me that more people don't know about General Fusion. They have a practical design for a fusion reactor and are currently building a test reactor in the UK.

deepspace 4y ago
I believe that General Fusion has been in business for over 10 years and that they have yet to actually demonstrate fusion. Definitely not fusion with net energy gain. It's all smoke and mirrors. Their press releases read like they were written by business majors, not scientists. What is the "test reactor" going to test?
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  They're building a small scale reactor to test the design. And are you really criticizing a private company for taking just 10 years to get to working reactor? Their approach to fusion can't work in small scale tests.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    It has worked perfectly thus far, at separating investors' money from the investors. Most private fusion projects operate on similar principles. We are starting to see similar projects in the renewables space, most notably Energy Vault (NRGV). Their stuff does not work, and cannot work, but it does not matter because the customer is the investors, not the utilities, and what the investors buy is pipe dreams.
    - vlovich123 4y ago
      Investors make a speculative bet that the people involved will make things work. They also generally understand the risks associated with it and are willing to do it despite that because they think there’s a meaningful non-0 chance of success. I think with fusion investors would be thinking about generational ROI (20-40 years) instead of 5-10 years. What I don’t understand is why there isn’t a similar push to really shake things up with fission. Our current power mix will take a century or so to replace. Fission should be a MUCH faster path.
      - dotnet00 4y ago
        Fission would be faster if the path to deployment was realistic, but it isn't. A recently approved small modular reactor design was the first one to be approved in the US in several decades and it still has another 10 years and several more regulatory bodies to go through to build it, let alone start deploying it.
        vlovich123 4y ago
        I suggest that the regulatory bodies are acting (likely intentionally) more of a hindrance than a help. It’s highly likely there’s been regulatory capture by the fossil fuels industry given their political clout and significant lobbying experience. It’s not an accident that the recent “climate bill” just has a bunch of concessions for the oil industry [1]: > it requires the U.S. Department of the Interior to lease 2 million acres in federal lands onshore and 60 million acres offshore each year for oil and gas development (or whatever acreage the industry requests, whichever is smaller). These quotas must be met to allow federal leasing for onshore and offshore renewables development, respectively. > In an online statement, a senior scientist at 350.org called the bill a “sham” and said that it “contained so many giveaways to the fossil fuel industry” that it “turns all of the gains in addressing the climate crisis into a moot point.” Nuclear power plants with today’s technology are already safe. Small modular designs are nice but it’s not an either or. We should be building reactors with the best technology available at the time, not waiting for a hypothetical future. In fact, building with today’s technology helps because a) provides clarity that allows for greater private investment b) Wright’s law tells us it’ll have compound benefits where nuclear technology gets cheaper and safer. Look at China. They’ve already build 47 power plants with another 11 approved [2]. They know what kind of problem oil is and they’re making significant effort to fix it while the rest of the world is sitting on their hands. It plans to build another 150 reactors, 30 of which are outside of China [3]. They’re spending 440B (almost 0.5T) in building out nuclear fission [4]. Fission has a realistic path to displacing all fossil fuels. We should have been doing this for the past 60 years - it would have been even cheaper in the past. Even with all the accidents, nuclear technology has fewer deaths per KWh produced than almost any other technology [5] (on par with solar and wind). [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpolicy/2022/08/04/the-climate-bills-oil-and-gas-provisions-are-a-worthwhile-tradeoff/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpolicy/2022/08/04/the-c... [2] https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/China/China.htm https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/China/China.htm [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-climate-goals-hinge-on-440-billion-nuclear-power-plan-to-rival-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli... [5] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
tinco 4y ago
There's a company in the UK that has already built multiple test reactors: https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/ https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/ The more the better of course, but I'm not sure why more people would need to know of them, it's not like we could buy shares. I like TE because they post regular updates on the construction of their reactors, though it's been a while since they've posted anything concrete.
mlindner 4y ago
General Fusion was interesting until they repeatedly failed to meet their own timelines. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is meeting their own timelines thus far as their design is very run of the mill, other than the magnet technology, which they've already demonstrated.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  They also changed their design to use a rod down the middle (because the previous design didn't work for three different reasons.) Now they are exposing that rod to orders of magnitude higher neutron fluence than the wall of a typical DT reactor design, as well as subjecting it to forces from magnetic fields up to 100 T. I am not optimistic this will work.

It kills me that more people don't know about General Fusion. They have a practical design for a fusion reactor and are currently building a test reactor in the UK.

deepspace 4y ago

I believe that General Fusion has been in business for over 10 years and that they have yet to actually demonstrate fusion. Definitely not fusion with net energy gain. It's all smoke and mirrors. Their press releases read like they were written by business majors, not scientists. What is the "test reactor" going to test?

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
They're building a small scale reactor to test the design. And are you really criticizing a private company for taking just 10 years to get to working reactor? Their approach to fusion can't work in small scale tests.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  It has worked perfectly thus far, at separating investors' money from the investors. Most private fusion projects operate on similar principles. We are starting to see similar projects in the renewables space, most notably Energy Vault (NRGV). Their stuff does not work, and cannot work, but it does not matter because the customer is the investors, not the utilities, and what the investors buy is pipe dreams.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    Investors make a speculative bet that the people involved will make things work. They also generally understand the risks associated with it and are willing to do it despite that because they think there’s a meaningful non-0 chance of success. I think with fusion investors would be thinking about generational ROI (20-40 years) instead of 5-10 years. What I don’t understand is why there isn’t a similar push to really shake things up with fission. Our current power mix will take a century or so to replace. Fission should be a MUCH faster path.
    - dotnet00 4y ago
      Fission would be faster if the path to deployment was realistic, but it isn't. A recently approved small modular reactor design was the first one to be approved in the US in several decades and it still has another 10 years and several more regulatory bodies to go through to build it, let alone start deploying it.
      - vlovich123 4y ago
        I suggest that the regulatory bodies are acting (likely intentionally) more of a hindrance than a help. It’s highly likely there’s been regulatory capture by the fossil fuels industry given their political clout and significant lobbying experience. It’s not an accident that the recent “climate bill” just has a bunch of concessions for the oil industry [1]: > it requires the U.S. Department of the Interior to lease 2 million acres in federal lands onshore and 60 million acres offshore each year for oil and gas development (or whatever acreage the industry requests, whichever is smaller). These quotas must be met to allow federal leasing for onshore and offshore renewables development, respectively. > In an online statement, a senior scientist at 350.org called the bill a “sham” and said that it “contained so many giveaways to the fossil fuel industry” that it “turns all of the gains in addressing the climate crisis into a moot point.” Nuclear power plants with today’s technology are already safe. Small modular designs are nice but it’s not an either or. We should be building reactors with the best technology available at the time, not waiting for a hypothetical future. In fact, building with today’s technology helps because a) provides clarity that allows for greater private investment b) Wright’s law tells us it’ll have compound benefits where nuclear technology gets cheaper and safer. Look at China. They’ve already build 47 power plants with another 11 approved [2]. They know what kind of problem oil is and they’re making significant effort to fix it while the rest of the world is sitting on their hands. It plans to build another 150 reactors, 30 of which are outside of China [3]. They’re spending 440B (almost 0.5T) in building out nuclear fission [4]. Fission has a realistic path to displacing all fossil fuels. We should have been doing this for the past 60 years - it would have been even cheaper in the past. Even with all the accidents, nuclear technology has fewer deaths per KWh produced than almost any other technology [5] (on par with solar and wind). [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpolicy/2022/08/04/the-climate-bills-oil-and-gas-provisions-are-a-worthwhile-tradeoff/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpolicy/2022/08/04/the-c... [2] https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/China/China.htm https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/China/China.htm [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-climate-goals-hinge-on-440-billion-nuclear-power-plan-to-rival-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli... [5] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

tinco 4y ago

There's a company in the UK that has already built multiple test reactors: https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/ https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/ The more the better of course, but I'm not sure why more people would need to know of them, it's not like we could buy shares. I like TE because they post regular updates on the construction of their reactors, though it's been a while since they've posted anything concrete.

mlindner 4y ago

General Fusion was interesting until they repeatedly failed to meet their own timelines. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is meeting their own timelines thus far as their design is very run of the mill, other than the magnet technology, which they've already demonstrated.

pfdietz 4y ago
They also changed their design to use a rod down the middle (because the previous design didn't work for three different reasons.) Now they are exposing that rod to orders of magnitude higher neutron fluence than the wall of a typical DT reactor design, as well as subjecting it to forces from magnetic fields up to 100 T. I am not optimistic this will work.