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I don't understand this; if fission reactors were "better", we wouldn't be pouring so much into fusion? Also, if it makes a difference, I didn't mean we'd be b

I don't understand this; if fission reactors were "better", we wouldn't be pouring so much into fusion? Also, if it makes a difference, I didn't mean we'd be bolting a first gen tokamak to a container ship; I meant, much later down the line, if we were able to miniaturise (similar to how we have nuclear powered subs and ice breakers).

pfdietz 4y ago
You seem to think that government decisions are rational. Fusion is a meme technology. People just have this assumption that's it's valuable, without having rationally arrived at that conclusion (which, when you examine it in detail, is very difficult to justify.) I suspect this was because it started back in the 1950s when consent was easier to manufacture and nuclear was being pushed. Fission lost that glamour with most people, but fusion somehow has retained it.
- GordonS 4y ago
  It's not only governments pouring cash in, but private equity too. With all due respect, it seems ridiculous to me that fusion is a "meme technology" - aside from money, are all those many thousands of scientists really working on a technology they know can't work?
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Some of that private investment has been sadly lacking in critical due diligence. Look at Tri-Alpha. The people involved with that (Rostoker, Binderbauer and Monkhorst) were told 23 years ago that their colliding beam H-11B concept didn't work, for multiple reasons. Yet look at how much money they raised. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235032059_Comments_on_the_Colliding_Beam_Fusion_Reactor_Proposed_by_Rostoker_Binderbauer_and_Monkhorst_for_Use_with_the_p-11B_Fusion_Reaction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235032059_Comments_...
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Let us just observe that securities fraud is very unevenly enforced. None of these startup companies will ever produce a lone kWh of commercial power. But they will very diligently spend every dollar they are handed by VCs. The VC brokers know the score, but the money spent goes for equipment from quite profitable companies. It is not their money, and there seems to be plenty of it.
stormbrew 4y ago
Much more money is "poured into" fission than fusion, likely by a few orders of magnitude. There's one mega project around fusion (ITER) that has a price tag of about 1-2 billion dollars a year if you average it out over the many-decade life of the project, while any given fission plant built also costs billions of dollars. Like, whether or not fusion itself is a "meme," the idea that we spend obscene amounts of money on it is absolutely a meme with no real backing in reality. The appeal of fusion is really more about getting out of worrying so much about meltdowns and weapon proliferation, and that there is potential for much higher overall energy output if we can figure it out. That last bit is why, imo, we should be investing in it now even though it won't really help us reach net zero carbon "in time". If we want to reverse our carbon impact, if and when we get to net zero, we're going to need immense amounts of energy to do it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Who said it was "obscene"? You seem to be putting words in mouths. I will say I do think money has been spent unwisely on fusion, particularly on approaches that have very little chance of success, with programmatic dysfunction that even fusion advocates have noted with anger. Chance of success does have to enter into the evaluation of whether funding is wise, or else one could argue for spending on perpetual motion machines.
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    I.. wasn't replying to you? And I wasn't referring to you or the person I was replying to specifically anyways, but the common sentiment whenever this comes up. But it is absolutely a common misconception that fusion is very well funded when, given the challenges involved, it is funded quite poorly. If it was well funded, ITER might have been finished 20 years ago. That said I think the results would have been disappointing, it doesn't really seem like material science was there yet and it's not clear more money thrown at it then would have gotten us there. Imo I think even if you think it's a boondoggle it'd be better to fund it well (much better than we are) now and find out than drag this slow march of wasted money on old designs and ideas out forever. The ITER funding should have probably gone to something more like milestone awards and letting a bunch of paths proliferate.

pfdietz 4y ago

You seem to think that government decisions are rational. Fusion is a meme technology. People just have this assumption that's it's valuable, without having rationally arrived at that conclusion (which, when you examine it in detail, is very difficult to justify.) I suspect this was because it started back in the 1950s when consent was easier to manufacture and nuclear was being pushed. Fission lost that glamour with most people, but fusion somehow has retained it.

GordonS 4y ago
It's not only governments pouring cash in, but private equity too. With all due respect, it seems ridiculous to me that fusion is a "meme technology" - aside from money, are all those many thousands of scientists really working on a technology they know can't work?
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Some of that private investment has been sadly lacking in critical due diligence. Look at Tri-Alpha. The people involved with that (Rostoker, Binderbauer and Monkhorst) were told 23 years ago that their colliding beam H-11B concept didn't work, for multiple reasons. Yet look at how much money they raised. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235032059_Comments_on_the_Colliding_Beam_Fusion_Reactor_Proposed_by_Rostoker_Binderbauer_and_Monkhorst_for_Use_with_the_p-11B_Fusion_Reaction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235032059_Comments_...
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Let us just observe that securities fraud is very unevenly enforced. None of these startup companies will ever produce a lone kWh of commercial power. But they will very diligently spend every dollar they are handed by VCs. The VC brokers know the score, but the money spent goes for equipment from quite profitable companies. It is not their money, and there seems to be plenty of it.

stormbrew 4y ago

Much more money is "poured into" fission than fusion, likely by a few orders of magnitude. There's one mega project around fusion (ITER) that has a price tag of about 1-2 billion dollars a year if you average it out over the many-decade life of the project, while any given fission plant built also costs billions of dollars. Like, whether or not fusion itself is a "meme," the idea that we spend obscene amounts of money on it is absolutely a meme with no real backing in reality. The appeal of fusion is really more about getting out of worrying so much about meltdowns and weapon proliferation, and that there is potential for much higher overall energy output if we can figure it out. That last bit is why, imo, we should be investing in it now even though it won't really help us reach net zero carbon "in time". If we want to reverse our carbon impact, if and when we get to net zero, we're going to need immense amounts of energy to do it.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pfdietz 4y ago
Who said it was "obscene"? You seem to be putting words in mouths. I will say I do think money has been spent unwisely on fusion, particularly on approaches that have very little chance of success, with programmatic dysfunction that even fusion advocates have noted with anger. Chance of success does have to enter into the evaluation of whether funding is wise, or else one could argue for spending on perpetual motion machines.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  I.. wasn't replying to you? And I wasn't referring to you or the person I was replying to specifically anyways, but the common sentiment whenever this comes up. But it is absolutely a common misconception that fusion is very well funded when, given the challenges involved, it is funded quite poorly. If it was well funded, ITER might have been finished 20 years ago. That said I think the results would have been disappointing, it doesn't really seem like material science was there yet and it's not clear more money thrown at it then would have gotten us there. Imo I think even if you think it's a boondoggle it'd be better to fund it well (much better than we are) now and find out than drag this slow march of wasted money on old designs and ideas out forever. The ITER funding should have probably gone to something more like milestone awards and letting a bunch of paths proliferate.