3 ms·

I think a line from the end of the article - part of the bear case - "fusion is just another in a long line of energy technologies that boil water to drive a tu

by derriz 2y ago

I think a line from the end of the article - part of the bear case - "fusion is just another in a long line of energy technologies that boil water to drive a turbine" - should be at the start. The entire premise of fusion generation is based on world view where the limiting factor for generating electricity was the cost of providing fuel for combustion to generate heat. This thinking was pretty natural if you looked around the world in the first half of the 20th century when coal and steam engines were still kings of energy. This was a pre-semiconductor and pre-plastic age. That's why they ended up using long of fairly primitive technologies: a chemical (combustion) process to generate heat, a heat capture process to boil a tank of water, a mechanical process to convert the steam pressure into mechanical energy, and an electro-magnetic process to extract usable electricity. But in an age of advanced materials and semiconductors, it feels more and more that fusion is an attempt to solve a problem that is no longer really relevant. Working towards a "better" heat source for an electricity generation process which still involves steam-age tech is akin to trying to breed faster/cheaper horses to improve modern transport. The cost of fuel is almost negligible for fission - non-fuel operating costs are killing off perfectly functioning nuclear plants like at Indian Point[1] - so the problem that fusion will "solve" is not actually a significant problem. I'm convinced that we have moved beyond boiling water and generating heat, etc. in electricity generation. We no longer need massive steam engines to generate electricity. Modern technologies like wind, solar and batteries dispense with all this cost and complexity and the shackles of Carnot efficiency. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center

vincvinc 2y ago
Would be relevant criticism but here’s fusion startups skipping the “boiling water” step - see Helion Energy (Sam Altman funded)
- tuatoru 2y ago
  On paper.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    This is why I call them the "least dubious" fusion effort. Sure, things have to break right for them to succeed, but at least they have a chance, unlike tokamaks.
walleeee 2y ago
Neither semiconductors nor plastics shift the energy generation paradigm. "Advanced materials"- alright, well, which ones? And do they give us a better return than good old steam? Wind, solar and batteries are products of combustion-fueled industry. The extent to which we have electrified the world industrial base is minimal, and to do so at the current scale on the basis of wind and solar would take a larger quantity of several metals than is available in the crust, to set aside the consequences of a massive expansion in mining, the poor recycling rates for most of the relevant materials, and the fact that, even with a much-improved recovery rate, this would only buy us on the order of several hundred years. A more promising energy production system for a resource-limited world is thorium molten salt, which is comfortably Carnot in spirit, relatively cheap and easy to build, fuel and operate, no danger of meltdown, no "dual-use" for weapons, can consume existing nuclear waste... And we would do well to explore alternative battery chemistries as lithium is neither unique nor optimal, simply popular, and our hunger for it at present seems to be motivating some unpleasant political machinations.
- derriz 2y ago
  You really believe it would have been possible to construct a modern wind turbine with the materials available in 1950? Yes they do give a much better return than any thermal source according to any recent study of LCOE I've come across. Reflected in investment numbers - renewables account for 70% of new global capacity added last year. Wind, solar and batteries are products of an energy intensive process NOT a combustion based process. The shift to electricity as the primary energy source is well underway in multiple industries and sectors. Growth appears slow because industrial equipment is built to last decades. In transport (equally as energy hungry as industry), it's happening a lot faster as with domestic (induction cooking and heat pump sales). Thorium molten salt, promising? You mean they were back in the 1950s/1960s in Oak Ridge? The first experimental molten salt reactor ran for a few days before springing a leak and being decommissioned. Or the later one in the 1960s which ran for 4 years (only managing to operate for 40% of the time)? There's a whole bunch of reasons that the PWR emerged as the dominant nuclear generation tech from forest of experimental reactor designs in the mid 20th century.
  - 2y ago

by derriz 2y ago

vincvinc 2y ago

Would be relevant criticism but here’s fusion startups skipping the “boiling water” step - see Helion Energy (Sam Altman funded)

tuatoru 2y ago
On paper.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  This is why I call them the "least dubious" fusion effort. Sure, things have to break right for them to succeed, but at least they have a chance, unlike tokamaks.

walleeee 2y ago

Neither semiconductors nor plastics shift the energy generation paradigm. "Advanced materials"- alright, well, which ones? And do they give us a better return than good old steam? Wind, solar and batteries are products of combustion-fueled industry. The extent to which we have electrified the world industrial base is minimal, and to do so at the current scale on the basis of wind and solar would take a larger quantity of several metals than is available in the crust, to set aside the consequences of a massive expansion in mining, the poor recycling rates for most of the relevant materials, and the fact that, even with a much-improved recovery rate, this would only buy us on the order of several hundred years. A more promising energy production system for a resource-limited world is thorium molten salt, which is comfortably Carnot in spirit, relatively cheap and easy to build, fuel and operate, no danger of meltdown, no "dual-use" for weapons, can consume existing nuclear waste... And we would do well to explore alternative battery chemistries as lithium is neither unique nor optimal, simply popular, and our hunger for it at present seems to be motivating some unpleasant political machinations.

derriz 2y ago
You really believe it would have been possible to construct a modern wind turbine with the materials available in 1950? Yes they do give a much better return than any thermal source according to any recent study of LCOE I've come across. Reflected in investment numbers - renewables account for 70% of new global capacity added last year. Wind, solar and batteries are products of an energy intensive process NOT a combustion based process. The shift to electricity as the primary energy source is well underway in multiple industries and sectors. Growth appears slow because industrial equipment is built to last decades. In transport (equally as energy hungry as industry), it's happening a lot faster as with domestic (induction cooking and heat pump sales). Thorium molten salt, promising? You mean they were back in the 1950s/1960s in Oak Ridge? The first experimental molten salt reactor ran for a few days before springing a leak and being decommissioned. Or the later one in the 1960s which ran for 4 years (only managing to operate for 40% of the time)? There's a whole bunch of reasons that the PWR emerged as the dominant nuclear generation tech from forest of experimental reactor designs in the mid 20th century.
- 2y ago