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"Star machines", "This form of energy ... will be abundant, efficient, carbon-free, safe", and "solve all of humanity’s energy problems in one fell swoop – amon
by jacknews 4y ago
"Star machines", "This form of energy ... will be abundant, efficient, carbon-free, safe", and "solve all of humanity’s energy problems in one fell swoop – amongst many other things. "
Humbug.
Even if/when it is possible to build a power plant (many decades IMHO) it will be massively costly, the waste from D-T fusion is far more of an issue than is being discussed, the efficiency will be terrible, barely enough to make the thing workable, etc.
"Tritium… can be made from another element that is extremely plentiful: lithium."
So we're going to burn all the lithium, instead of building batteries with it?
- tuatoru 4y agoDoesn't really matter, as we can also build batteries with sodium, calcium, aluminum, iron, zinc, and with carbon polymers. And probably more.
- ncmncm 4y agoThere is plenty of lithium, but we won't be burning any except in H-bombs. We may hope not there, either. If we don't fend off climate disaster, there will be plenty of that soon enough.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago> So we're going to burn all the lithium, instead of building batteries with it? There are lots of reasons DT fusion is stupid, but this isn't one of them. If you made a 1kg lithium battery and filled it with DT fusion from one kg of fuel then you'd have to wear the battery out after filling it thousands of times and recycle it 10s of thousands of times. If you lost 100mg each time you recycled your 1kg battery, you'd run out of battery long before the fuel ran out. The massive resource consumption of fusion comes from burying the 10000t reactor with 100s of tonnes of materials much more exotic than lithium for 100 years after running 100kg of fuel through it