3 ms·

Indeed, compared to the number of fusion startups, which IMHO will be many decades if ever to be practical, and will never be economically viable, EGS could be

Indeed, compared to the number of fusion startups, which IMHO will be many decades if ever to be practical, and will never be economically viable, EGS could be operating economically, and deep/supercritical geothermal could be proven, in a decade or less.

b112 3y ago
and will never be economically viable While I do not disagree that it will be a ways off, never is a very long time. And the last century has seen so many things turn profitable, with scientific advances, presumption about the future seems inadvisable.
- jacknews 3y ago
  Yes you are probably right, but still, IMHO compared to the alternatives, I think 'never' is reasonable for the currently envisaged, highly complex technologies and the still-unaddressed issues of fuel processing (eg tritium generation) etc, for mainstream power generation. I mean I can envisage solar being as cheap as dirt, roof shingles that are basically as cheap as slates. I can envisage geothermal getting cheap, it's just a hole in the ground. I can envisage fission getting cheap, eg the traveling-wave reactor is basically an enclosed lump of uranium. But rings of superconducting magnets and their controllers, along with radioactive lithium blankets that have to be renewed and reprocessed regularly, or gigajoule banks of lasers and little ultra-precision gold-wrapped fuel pellets? None of this stuff is ever going to be cheap, compared to the alternatives. It might find niche military, and of course, research use etc. And we might have a breakthrough in low-energy fusion or whatever, but the current crop are either scams or are simply never going to be viable.
  - nwiswell 3y ago
    > But rings of superconducting magnets and their controllers, along with radioactive lithium blankets that have to be renewed and reprocessed regularly, or gigajoule banks of lasers and little ultra-precision gold-wrapped fuel pellets? None of this stuff is ever going to be cheap, compared to the alternatives. Are you familiar with how computer chips are made? There are hundreds of steps involving plasmas, ultra-high vacuums, ultraviolet lithography systems, and robotic handling throughout. And yet you can get a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for $15. That much processing power would have cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in the early 90s, when I imagine someone might naively have said something similar about the prospects of it ever costing $15. Or suppose suggesting after Kitty Hawk in 1903 that one day an international plane ticket could be had for (the equivalent of today's) ~$1000: preposterous, if they can even get it to work! Of course, nobody really knows how this will shake out. You could ultimately be correct that fusion won't ever be cost-competitive with other sources of energy. But "that sounds complicated" is absolutely not a reliable heuristic for price, because over time complicated things become mundane, and whence mundane, cheap.
    - XorNot 3y ago
      Also frankly that a nuclear reactor isn't simple - neither is a coal power plant really. Serious, large engineering is always complicated: argument from incredulity is a fallacy for a reason. Solar panels are cheap because the supply line of ultra-pure silicon is incredibly well-developed to service the computing industry (it basically runs on discards from it). You have to do the actual engineering before you'll know whether or not a thing is viable, and you're likely to find some surprises - i.e. a lot of advanced capability these days has become possible due to things like cheap, fast computing power or ubiquitous high-accuracy GPS systems (differential GPS can get ridiculously accurate).
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        PV was made from discard Si from the IC industry for a while, but today poly-Si is going into PV directly. They grew beyond working on discards more than a decade ago.
    - jacknews 3y ago
      Yes modern fabs are almost a miracle, but there's a large market for compute aka microchips that can't be made any other way, and of course flight has some unique benefits. In contrast there are myriad other ways of making electricity that will be much cheaper than fusion ever will. IMHO. I get what you're saying, never say never, etc, and fusion research is still worthwhile, as research, but there is just no economic case to spend billions to develop these current technologies for mainstream power generation. If there's some major breakthrough in LENR, or muon-catalysed reactions, or whatever, that might be different. Many technologies are only enabled as spin-offs from other tech, and there are plenty of examples of technologies that seem possible/plausible etc, but get cut off in development when it's clear the economics can't work or the unique capabilities are not compelling enough.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
weberer 3y ago
Nuclear fusion is a big project. You're not going to see it with startups. ITER is joint effort from half the world governments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
- pfdietz 3y ago
  The large size of ITER is a serious defect, not something to justify government involvement. "At $5B ITER is a good idea. At $25B+ ITER is a bad idea. The huge cost increases from ITER’s initial to present value are leading to a savaging of the base fusion program which puts the US on the fast track to disaster for the future of fusion research. More important, even if ITER works as expected, but does indeed cost $25B, this is essentially a proof of principle that tokamak fusion will never be an economical source of electricity." -- Jeff Freidberg, KEPCO Professor Emeritus, MIT, Nuclear Science and Engineering

b112 3y ago

and will never be economically viable While I do not disagree that it will be a ways off, never is a very long time. And the last century has seen so many things turn profitable, with scientific advances, presumption about the future seems inadvisable.

jacknews 3y ago
Yes you are probably right, but still, IMHO compared to the alternatives, I think 'never' is reasonable for the currently envisaged, highly complex technologies and the still-unaddressed issues of fuel processing (eg tritium generation) etc, for mainstream power generation. I mean I can envisage solar being as cheap as dirt, roof shingles that are basically as cheap as slates. I can envisage geothermal getting cheap, it's just a hole in the ground. I can envisage fission getting cheap, eg the traveling-wave reactor is basically an enclosed lump of uranium. But rings of superconducting magnets and their controllers, along with radioactive lithium blankets that have to be renewed and reprocessed regularly, or gigajoule banks of lasers and little ultra-precision gold-wrapped fuel pellets? None of this stuff is ever going to be cheap, compared to the alternatives. It might find niche military, and of course, research use etc. And we might have a breakthrough in low-energy fusion or whatever, but the current crop are either scams or are simply never going to be viable.
- nwiswell 3y ago
  > But rings of superconducting magnets and their controllers, along with radioactive lithium blankets that have to be renewed and reprocessed regularly, or gigajoule banks of lasers and little ultra-precision gold-wrapped fuel pellets? None of this stuff is ever going to be cheap, compared to the alternatives. Are you familiar with how computer chips are made? There are hundreds of steps involving plasmas, ultra-high vacuums, ultraviolet lithography systems, and robotic handling throughout. And yet you can get a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for $15. That much processing power would have cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in the early 90s, when I imagine someone might naively have said something similar about the prospects of it ever costing $15. Or suppose suggesting after Kitty Hawk in 1903 that one day an international plane ticket could be had for (the equivalent of today's) ~$1000: preposterous, if they can even get it to work! Of course, nobody really knows how this will shake out. You could ultimately be correct that fusion won't ever be cost-competitive with other sources of energy. But "that sounds complicated" is absolutely not a reliable heuristic for price, because over time complicated things become mundane, and whence mundane, cheap.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Also frankly that a nuclear reactor isn't simple - neither is a coal power plant really. Serious, large engineering is always complicated: argument from incredulity is a fallacy for a reason. Solar panels are cheap because the supply line of ultra-pure silicon is incredibly well-developed to service the computing industry (it basically runs on discards from it). You have to do the actual engineering before you'll know whether or not a thing is viable, and you're likely to find some surprises - i.e. a lot of advanced capability these days has become possible due to things like cheap, fast computing power or ubiquitous high-accuracy GPS systems (differential GPS can get ridiculously accurate).
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      PV was made from discard Si from the IC industry for a while, but today poly-Si is going into PV directly. They grew beyond working on discards more than a decade ago.
  - jacknews 3y ago
    Yes modern fabs are almost a miracle, but there's a large market for compute aka microchips that can't be made any other way, and of course flight has some unique benefits. In contrast there are myriad other ways of making electricity that will be much cheaper than fusion ever will. IMHO. I get what you're saying, never say never, etc, and fusion research is still worthwhile, as research, but there is just no economic case to spend billions to develop these current technologies for mainstream power generation. If there's some major breakthrough in LENR, or muon-catalysed reactions, or whatever, that might be different. Many technologies are only enabled as spin-offs from other tech, and there are plenty of examples of technologies that seem possible/plausible etc, but get cut off in development when it's clear the economics can't work or the unique capabilities are not compelling enough.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

weberer 3y ago

Nuclear fusion is a big project. You're not going to see it with startups. ITER is joint effort from half the world governments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

pfdietz 3y ago
The large size of ITER is a serious defect, not something to justify government involvement. "At $5B ITER is a good idea. At $25B+ ITER is a bad idea. The huge cost increases from ITER’s initial to present value are leading to a savaging of the base fusion program which puts the US on the fast track to disaster for the future of fusion research. More important, even if ITER works as expected, but does indeed cost $25B, this is essentially a proof of principle that tokamak fusion will never be an economical source of electricity." -- Jeff Freidberg, KEPCO Professor Emeritus, MIT, Nuclear Science and Engineering