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There have been such articles my whole life yet fusion never seems to get nearer. From the MIT press release: > It is designed to achieve a Q factor — a key pa
by mike_hearn 3y ago
There have been such articles my whole life yet fusion never seems to get nearer. From the MIT press release:
> It is designed to achieve a Q factor — a key parameter denoting the efficiency of a fusion plasma — of at least 2, essentially meaning that twice as much fusion energy is produced as the amount of energy pumped in to generate the reaction. That would be the first time a fusion plasma of any kind has produced more energy than it consumed.
I didn't realize until recently that such statements from physics researchers have to be read very carefully. These aren't statements about the actual net power output of a theoretical power station, even though they read that way. They "define out" huge power draws that are physically necessary.
The MIT PR is hardly better than the MSN article in this regard. The subhead says it "paves the way for practical, commercial, carbon-free power". They've done no such thing. The challenges faced by a real power plant are still far larger than usually gets reported.
The biggest practical challenge facing fusion isn't even generating sufficient power or being cheap enough, IMO. It's that it's still nuclear technology and the claims about it being "clean" are invariably only talking about carbon (and ignoring the CO2 in the construction). The operation of the plasma irradiates the power plant itself and generates large quantities of low-grade nuclear waste that must still be buried somewhere. It's not as dangerous as the stuff from fission but there'd be more of it, it can still leak causing biohazards, and you still need scary stuff like robots to work with the reactor. Fusion plants also need to be really big to be practical, and they would consume way more water as a consequence.
Given that the Greens have been shutting down nuclear plants due to general fear of nuclear technology, would something that looks just like it get a free pass? Despite the radioactive waste problem, the water consumption, the need for huge subsidies?
There's also the issue of where to get tritium for reactor designs that need it. You have to get it from fission reactors! In theory it can be recycled but the practical challenges for that are themselves enormous.
- piokoch 3y ago"Given that the Greens have been shutting down nuclear plants due to general fear of nuclear technology" - so true... Something that Greens do not want to admit today. For long, long years they were fighting nuclear, thanks to them people who wanted to work in the are of nuclear energy field were treated like Holocaust deniers. Maybe one day someone will calculate how much money was spent on fighting nuclear energy (all those grants, donations, etc.) that led us to only one outcome: today exactly the same people are taking again grants and donations. This time to fight global warming (sorry, now we should say "climate catastrophe" as warming does not sound scary enough).
- Climato 3y agoIt's actually climate change because people kept saying 'oh I like warmer weather's. And while you sound a little bit negative about it: without heat pumps and evs your nuclear power plants are worthless anyway. It would have needed a lot more left and right to really reap in CO2 savings from 100% nuclear.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoEven if positive sustainable fusion is developed, unfortunately at this point it is very unlikely it will be economically competitive, possibly it will not be competitive with even "new nuclear" fission, and it's almost guaranteed to be many times more expensive than wind and solar. But it is cool!
- bamboozled 3y agoWind and solar do seem to be underrated in what they’ve been able to achieve. It’s remarkable really. I don’t think the energy companies wanted us to celebrate it so the success story has been suppressed. The fact I can buy a 550W panel for less than $200 is a wonderful thing. I can install 8 of them on my roof, 8 wall mounted type on my south facing wall , backed by a battery and hardly have to pay for electricity again. In fact I can sell electricity and make money from it. That is nothing short of incredible, unimaginable even 10 years ago at that price point. The sun is the best and cleanest reactor we will ever know! We just have to understand how to harness that energy better.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoSorry for the tangent, but it sounds like you're somewhat up on current pricing... How much does the additional equipment (batteries, inverters, tie-ins to existing house power) and installation labor tend to cost?
- MrSkyNet 3y agoUnfortunate, for professional labor you pay double. But modern houses just plan those in anyway and the battery storage i'm aware of, they are only 10kWh which costs not that much anyway.
- MrSkyNet 3y agoAre you talking about the green party in germany or other green party in the USA (i'm not aware of?) or are you talking about 'green people'? Because if you mean the green party, it wasn't them it was the CDU/CSU shutting down nuclear power plants. And with germany, Tschernobyl was a generational experience and at least for my mother frightning. I also did a presentation about it and watched Tagesschau from that time: People didn't know how to handle hidden rays and it was very unclear what it meant. And still today, for certain regions of woods, you need to test your meat for radio activity because we still have issues with this. Nonetheless, while i'm not particularly against it, the last big projects have failed, the amount of global unifed investment and knowledge needed is apparently not able to form. With fusion, lets see. If PV and batteries are getting even cheaper and easier to use, you will potentially prefer to put PV onto everything instead of paying for fusion energy but we are way to far awai to tell
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]