4 ms·
Yeah, no. That's not going to happen even if we discovered room-temperature superconductors. The simple reason is that few of humanity's "ills" have to do with
by bmer 3y ago
Yeah, no. That's not going to happen even if we discovered room-temperature superconductors.
The simple reason is that few of humanity's "ills" have to do with scarcity of anything but knowledge, motivation, and kindness.
- bordercases 3y agoUncentralizable energy overproduction would help.
- bawolff 3y agoNot a physicist but my understanding is superconductors have max amount of current you can put through it, so its not clear it can be used for free energy distribution at scale even if it is a super conductor.
- roarcher 3y agoEven if it allowed infinite current, the only thing that would become "free" is what we currently lose to inefficiencies in the conductors. There's still the cost of generating electricity, maintaining the distribution infrastructure (which would likely be far more expensive than what we have), etc.
- kuschku 3y agoRoom-temp superconductors would make magnetic confinement fusion a looot cheaper and smaller, in turn making energy production easier as well.
- roarcher 3y agoCheaper and smaller than what? All the existing fusion power plants? We have to make it work before we can optimize it. Fusion still poses many engineering challenges that have nothing to do with the quality of our superconductors. How to not melt the reactor walls and what to do with all those angry neutrons, for starters.
- kuschku 3y agoCheaper and smaller than all the existing experimental fusion reactors such as Wendelstein 7X or the under construction reactor ITER. The vast majority of their size, weight, and cost is related to maintaining extremely low temperatures for the superconductors right next to the angry neutrons. If you could use a regular coolant loop with heat pumps and only needed to maintain, say, -20°C, it'd be much easier to keep the superconductors cool and transport away the neutrons' heat.
- roarcher 3y agoThe neutrons are an issue because they slowly destroy the reactor materials [1]. Point is, even with better superconductors we'd still be a long way from practical fusion power. They'd be a step forward, but they're not the key that's going to unlock a world of cheap clean energy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_embrittlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_embrittlement