6 ms·
Nobody is screaming. Even presuming usable structural materials can be discovered (not worked on in 3 decades) and tritium at PPB concentration can be extracte
by ncmncm 4y ago
Nobody is screaming.
Even presuming usable structural materials can be discovered (not worked on in 3 decades) and tritium at PPB concentration can be extracted from thousands of tons of blanket material every day (never worked on at all), a working plant would cost more than an order of magnitude more on every axis than fission.
But fission is already not competitive. Fission falls farther behind better methods each day.
So, no one will build a fusion power plant, and there will be no fusion power. "Pursuing avenues" with no possibility of desirable results is wasted effort and wasted money. We have valid reasons to avoid waste.
- Apocryphon 4y agoIf no one is building fusion power plant, what money or effort is being wasted? Also, do you think all of these nuclear physicists are able to pivot to working on renewable energy, as if they are Silicon Valley tech startups? From what point of view of action are you even operating from?
- Schroedingersat 4y agoDoing science is fine. It's the thousands of scam artists that will divert resources from actual solutions as soon as their lies are plausible to rubes that are not. If we're busy paying for 100s of victoria county stations that will never open, the coal plants will remain on.
- Apocryphon 4y agoBut that has literally never happened nor is likely to happen, given the political marginalization of nuclear power. The previous poster is ranting against a tiny threat, if even that, to wind and solar while the fossil fuel lobby reigns supreme. Just a completely disproportionate response.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoSo to pick one of hundreds of examples, the money that SCE&G's customers are forced to pay for infrastructure that will never be turned on while the contractors make out like bandits was always going to be scammed out of them by the nuclear industry? Props for honesty I guess.
- ncmncm 4y agoThere is no such "threat". Investors are being defrauded. Money that could be going for important, useful research is being diverted to pockets of fraudsters promising sky castles.
- Apocryphon 4y agoThere's no telling that that money would be going to renewable research anyway. So why all of this concern? There is no imminent decision between the two. Those investors would not be spending the money on endeavors you care about. If it is a fraud, then let that money be wasted to prove the concept a fraud once and all. You should welcome that, as that would further your position in a definitive way before the public.
- arbitrandomuser 4y ago>" If it is a fraud, then let that money be wasted to prove the concept a fraud once and all. You should welcome that, as that would further your position in a definitive way before the public." No Fraud does damage , it's not money wasted to disprove a fusion is viable , its resources and time just wasted. Just because "oh that money will never be used for other stuff anyways" doesn't mean one shouldnt voice for better utilisation of it. Theranos was Fraud , doesn't mean we've proved minitiarized blood tests are impossible
- Apocryphon 4y agoThat is an excellent point conveyed excellently and I agree with it.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago> The previous poster is ranting against a tiny threat, if even that, to wind and solar while the fossil fuel lobby reigns supreme. The current tirade of nuclear shilling serves the fossil fuel industry. As does directing funding (often including public money) to all the 'fusion' startups like helion with massive, obvious, unpatchable deal breakers in their plans. A billion going to general fusion could fund tens or hundreds of hysatas or natrons, a non-zero proportion of whom are making real progress towards actual solutions. Vogtle, Hinkley, VC Summer... the list goes on and on. The people wind up paying for decades even if no power is ever produced. There has never been a commercially viable fission reactor even with the free unlimited insurance. The fission industry has been burning enough public money every few years for decades to have kick started the renewable economy. A large portion of the massive cost reductions we saw in the last ten years have been technologically available for a very long time -- the only thing needed was investment in the engineering. There are still problems and technologies best served by primary research that will help and have a far better chance of paying off than more money down the fission toilet or towards snake oil fusion scams. The same tired lines get rolled out every time and they're always wrong. Every discussion about the actual solution gets derailed by some combination of fission shilling, fud about variability or 'don't invest in renewables, fusion will save us'.
- pfdietz 4y agoWhat is Helion's showstopper? I mean, they're a longshot, but as far as I know there's nothing that guarantees their effort doesn't work.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoTwo things. 1) World helium-3 reserves mean they can only be an irrelevant amount of total energy. Otherwise it's just D-D or D-p fusion with extra steps (and all the neutron problems involved). 2) The magnetic energy recovery can at best reach parity with the thermal, which makes it yet another solar freakin' roadways if not a theranos. They play sleight of hand with this in all their marketing materials which indicates they know it's a show stopper but do not want anyone paying attention to it. The slick marketing, the sexy story, the massive hole in their story, and the startup posturing put them with every other scam startup that promises the world and then folds after an IPO with VCs disappearing with a the later investors' money.
- mmazing 4y agoI wonder how many people said the same thing about airplanes, or electricity, or any of the countless other amazing things we have accomplished as a species. Maybe the current trajectory of fusion is unlikely to bear fruit, but we'll learn from it. We may learn something that makes it far easier to implement. A discovery here or there and you change trajectory to something that IS worthwhile. If you never try, you never get there, you can't see that?
- ncmncm 4y agoIf you do try, you never get there. But you also never get to the other thing that actually has some prospect of working. Look up "opportunity cost", "sunk cost fallacy", and "good money after bad". Victorians believed in fairies, very strongly. Their heirs believe as strongly in fusion energy.
- Apocryphon 4y agoArthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. Then those who believe in fusion are in good company.
- ncmncm 4y agoIf by "good company" you mean bad company, sure.
- Apocryphon 4y agoA Moriarty man, I see.