5 ms·

Fusion power is getting closer

36 points by doener 2y ago

tromp 2y ago
https://archive.is/yLYGv https://archive.is/yLYGv
theappsecguy 2y ago
It’s been getting closer for what, two decades now?
- croes 2y ago
  Time for Musk to announce fusion powered self driving cars for next sear
  - esskay 2y ago
    Honestly surprised he's not bought/started a company to work on it so he can proudly proclame they've cracked it and it's coming next year on repeat.
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    If you mean fusion powered from the sun by the means of solar panels installed on roofs that charge your car, he's already achieved that. Far cheaper and more practical.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  > It’s been getting closer for what, two decades now? No reason for pointless cynicism, this is also against the guidelines. Fusion power is like childbirth - yelling at 9 months that it has been 9 months, and is therefore never arriving, would be delusional.
  - mort96 2y ago
    Weird analogy but to work with it: if someone has been shouting that they're about to give birth any moment now since the 1950s, forgive me for being a bit skeptical when they say "but no really I mean it this time".
  - bitcharmer 2y ago
    [dead]
- zabzonk 2y ago
  since the late 1950s
  - acidburnNSA 2y ago
    Very true. The 1958 Atoms for Peace conference prominently featured big fusion exhibits expecting breakthroughs soon.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > It’s been getting closer for what, two decades now? This is low effort. Are you arguing we haven’t made material progress in the last twenty years? Material science advances in magnets alone should raise your curiosity to not have to wait for a packaged consumer product to notice advancement.
  - wongarsu 2y ago
    Tbf, the title is kind of low effort too. Of course fusion is getting closer. We all know that at least some people are working on it, the default assumption is that they make some progress. This has been the state of fusion for the last couple decades. Arguably there has been a time when fusion got further away (compared to predictions) because of reduced interest and funding. But I'd agree that for the last two decades you could print the headline "fusion is getting closer" at any time, and it would always be true. Maybe that's just me ranting about how titles have shifted from trying to inform you and distill the essence of a news article to just trying to get you to read the article. It's really a comment on journalism rather than fusion.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > We all know that at least some people are working on it, the default assumption is that they make some progress This is a terrible assumption when it comes to basic research. > that for the last two decades you could print the headline "fusion is getting closer" at any time, and it would always be true What are you basing this on?There have been a few discrete steps forward. In between, ideas and experiments. > really a comment on journalism rather than fusion Can you quote the line from the article that renders the title misleading?
      - wongarsu 2y ago
        > This is a terrible assumption when it comes to basic research. Even trying out things that don't work is progress, since it narrows the space of possible solutions. The only ways to really set back progress would be by getting others to believe something that's untrue, for example by faking research. You could manage to not advance the field by not publishing a finding and leaving the field. You can slow progress for example by popularizing a path that doesn't lead anywhere, discouraging people from going down the right path, or just reducing popularity or funding of the field. But slowing progress doesn't erase progress. If you do genuine work and at least talk about it with colleagues on a conference that's advancing the field. > What are you basing this on? The classic graph everyone uses would be 1, which shows consistent progress over ~40 years. It's a bit out of date now, but I assume the trend has held since then. > Can you quote the line from the article that renders the title misleading? I didn't call it misleading, I called it lazy and uninformative. A (mild) form of clickbait, because it merely hints at information without providing any. My English teacher would have deducted points for that title. 1: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Progress-to-Date-in-Achieving-Conditions-Required-for-Fusion-Energy_fig1_335586712 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Progress-to-Date-in-Achi...
- adastra22 2y ago
  It’s been 30 years away for half a century. Then it was 20 years away for the last few decades. Now it is 10 years away. We’re making progress!
leephillips 2y ago
And remains irrelevant: https://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-fusion-energy-180313/ https://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-fusion-...
- ikrenji 2y ago
  fusion is the ultimate clean energy source. we shouldn't give up on it just because it's a difficult problem
- stuart73547373 2y ago
  looks like that article didn't read this article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42221756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42221756
  - kiba 2y ago
    2 billion dollars over 5 years? That's peanuts! If anything I would increase spending to a billion dollars a year. Would still dedicate most of the budget to accelerating the energy transition, which is trillion of dollars worth of stuff.
TheMagicHorsey 2y ago
It's always been close. But now, finally, I think it's really close. As in, I think I may still be alive when the first fusion power comes into the grid, even if I probably won't be alive to see the full dream of infinite cheap energy come true. Its interesting to think about how our economies will change if the price of energy drops by one or two orders of magnitude. Desalination could then be used for agriculture and industry. Coastlines could become more valuable. We could make huge amounts of aluminum for almost nothing. We'd probably end up with aluminum packaging for everything as it's much easier to recycle than plastic if you don't have to worry about electricity.
- ahoka 2y ago
  Probably we will just burn the world with the free energy.
  - yawpitch 2y ago
    Probably? Oh ye of little faith.
  - afh1 2y ago
    Even if that was literally done, it would still be a better home than Mars :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GjOuqAlFEk#t=6m45s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GjOuqAlFEk#t=6m45s (not trying to make any kind of point, just a fun fact / video)
    - adastra22 2y ago
      That video is full of widely discredited claims.
- Anarch157a 2y ago
  > won't be alive to see the full dream of infinite cheap energy come true. You won't. Sorry for being cynical, but the true cost of energy is the capital invested in the equipment to harvest it. A fusion reactor would be at the minimum, as expensive as a fission one, which means all that capital will have to be amortised over the years. This doesn't even take into account the cost of extracting deuterium from sea water or producing helium 3 and tritium from lithium. Fusion doesn't even solve the problem of nuclear waste, since it will create radioactive isotopes by bombarding components of the reactor with neutrons. You want cheaper, cleaner energy ? Solar and wind with battery storage is the best option, and it's already here, no need need to wait for fusion magic that may or may not happen in our lifetimes.
zabzonk 2y ago
"no really" is about right. even if you have managed to produce sustainable fusion with a good bit of output energy (a very big if), you still have the problem of producing useable electricity from it, which as I understand it is one of the things that ITER was supposed to prototype.
- thrw42A8N 2y ago
  Steam. The actual problem is reaction vessel wall ablation.
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    This is one of the reasons General Fusion, mentioned in the article, uses a liquid metal reaction vessel, spinning to create a cavity. (I think a mixture of molten lead and lithium?)
    - thrw42A8N 2y ago
      Yes, incredible idea. I really hope it works out.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Steam is uneconomical versus solar power. If all the fusion is doing is heating water it will always lose on cost even if the fusion was free. c.f. coal. The bulk of the cost of a coal power plant is the steam turbine etc. And coal is not economical.
    - thrw42A8N 2y ago
      My city has a steam/hot water distribution network. No need to convert to electricity for quite a lot of residential energy usage.
- Thegn 2y ago
  Well, we could always just set up solar panels and use it to capture output from the massive fusion reaction 8.5 light minutes away from us. Does that count as a successful utilization of fusion?
yawpitch 2y ago
Fusion power has been getting closer — no really — for a long time. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ll be ecstatic when / if it arrives, especially if it does so with sufficient lead time to be relevant within my lifetime, but no number of “we’ve halved the distance to the wall again” articles will get me excited (or us there).
- hiddencost 2y ago
  A comparison to Zeno's paradox isn't quite apt, because fusion power can (in this metaphor) go very far beyond the wall. I think it's better to think of it this way: are you a lay person not in the field? Then most of this work doesn't matter to you. But you should keep funding it.
  - yawpitch 2y ago
    The wall, in this case, is power positive sustained (and contained) reaction. Fusion power doesn’t exist and can’t do a damned thing until that wall is reached. Once it’s reached I’ll admit we’ve no practical idea where the next wall is going to be. And yes, absolutely, fund baby fund, keep making those Zeno steps… just don’t write another article promising me that fusion / Jetson cars / AGI / Unobtanium is nearly here.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > power positive sustained (and contained) reaction. Fusion power doesn’t exist and can’t do a damned thing until that wall is reached Did we read the same article? Helion's entire design strategy is to sidestep sustaining fusion plasmas. It's unclear if it will work. But it's theoretically sound. Your wall is a chain-link fence.
thrance 2y ago
Comparing the very optimistic deadline given by Commonwealth Fusion, concerning a prototype that has not even began construction versus the latest postponing of the first firing of ITER is kind of meaningless. As underlined in the article, ITER is already 9 years behind schedule. Not because they're incompetent or underfunded, but because fusion is hard. I don't expect a private company with much less funding to do any better. That said, I'd like to be wrong and see one of these companies crack commercial fusion in their basement.
- moomin 2y ago
  The Economist always phrases articles to imply that private investment is a magical elixir that will make problems go away.
- IanCal 2y ago
  The fundamental thing behind SPARC is (iiuc) to do this far faster by being drastically smaller. Iter was designed a long time ago based on materials available at the time. SPARC can be much smaller with much stronger magnets. The argument from SPARC wasn't that iter was incompetent but that being so vast and expensive requires multiple nation states cooperating which is inherently slow. Slow things being more risks as thing a change too (9 years is probably 3 governments here). Making it smaller makes it cheaper, a d cheaper means a smaller collaboration (or single company).
baq 2y ago
imagine if fusion research could consistently get 1% of the pentagon's accounting hole.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  [flagged]
- YZF 2y ago
  It'd get nowhere. The problem isn't money. One could say there's even too much money thrown at fusion research that could have better use elsewhere. There are just too many incredibly hard problems to solve.
- esskay 2y ago
  As nice as that would be, if we think about it logically it's not at all in the US governments interests for Fusion to work. Suddenly that massive pot of money from natural resources (e.g Oil) vanishes.
  - alwa 2y ago
    …vanishes, presumably, because the work that it used to do is now done by this fusion technology instead. Surely the US would like to be the nation to dominate that tech should the moment come, right? Could sure shake up some of the US’ geopolitical relationships, in which the US spends an awful lot to maintain influence over the way oil gets made and sold. That pot of oil money sure creates its share of headaches, and probably means a lot more to smaller nations than it does to the US.
    - esskay 2y ago
      I guess the question would be that assuming the US was to dominate the technology, is that more profitable than a steady stream of revenue from oil exports? Building fusion plants would be a massive money maker initially as everyone races to adopt it, but is it a long term money maker when no doubt other nations will be trying to cash in on it themselves.
znpy 2y ago
lovely, we only need warp drive now :)
- alganet 2y ago
  If we're talking Star Trek humanity cosplay, our best bet would be to sort out communicators first. We're almost there. It already works reliably, just needs to be made to respect privacy and be completely free.
  - znpy 2y ago
    I think it could be made free as long as we lower our expectations. If you want anybody to be able to make calls for free, that’s one thing and i think it could be feasible (probably already feasible by now). If on the other hand you want everyone to be able to make 4k60fps group video calls that’s unlikely, at least for now.
    - alganet 2y ago
      I'm fine with just voice calls. Or maybe 360p30fps calls, I don't mind. As long as the communicator is free (I don't have to pay to have it or replace it for the newer version) and private (I can be sure no one will listen or record). If we slow it down, I think humanity can manage without 4k, with a 50% cut in digital entertainment, and without buying new expensive useless communicators each couple of years.
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
The Economist as scientific harbinger of the fuuuuture! Even if good net-energy happens, even if they solve neutron flux irradiating the reactor vessel, even if they can sustain power generation for commercial periods, if they can safely operate the superhot plasma ... it comes down to, ECONOMIST, the cost. As someone that hammers fission power for being currently infeasibly expensive, fusion has a long road to economic viability. I suppose the public will at least not NIMBY it to the same degree as a fission reactor
bastloing 2y ago
But fusion doesn't produce any waste does it?
- Permik 2y ago
  Technically the helium produced is the waste product, but fortunately we have tons of uses for helium.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  It doesn't have reaction byproducts, if you don't count the reactor itself, which gets lots of neutrino bombardment and ends up glowing scrap metal.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > which gets lots of neutrino bombardment and ends up glowing scrap metal One, neutron. Two, doesn't glow. Three, aneutronic fusion is real.
- amluto 2y ago
  The actual intended products of the fusion reactions are generally not radioactive and are rather harmless. But most proposed fusion reactions produce neutrons. Neutrons, unfortunately, can hit other nuclei and “activate” them, transmuting them into other isotopes that can be quite nasty. So fusion is far from perfect.
acidburnNSA 2y ago
I'm happy to see lots of investment in fusion. As a fission guy, I know that plenty of challenges remain even after you get your first net energy out, such as getting it out economically. In fission, there were more than 20 years between these milestones (first chain reaction in 1942 from CP-1, first competitive power in 1965 from Oyster Creek). As such, some skepticism in people's timelines is always warranted. I'm reminded of the voodoo fusion article. https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  I have a relative who commented one time about how in 1960 year the fusion power was only 10 years away. I'm pretty sure he was talking about sustainable electric grid usable power. He spent some time with a key in an underground silo though...
gandalfian 2y ago
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=fusion%20in%20years&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
pjerem 2y ago
Fusion is cool and all but it will not save us from anything. We already have enough tech to make emission free and cheap electricity. "All" we need is political action to build more clean power plants (nuclear, solar …) and continuation of research to electrify more sectors. Fusion will not solve any of those important issues. It will only be the cherry on the cake if it become deployed globally anytime in the future. But we are far from it and we shouldn’t be that excited or hope for it to make a better world. I very much see fusion as going to the moon : it’s not going to solve any short time issue but it can be a milestone in human advancement if we manage to survive until it becomes our primary source of energy.
- mrkandy 2y ago
  The main challenge is to ensure a sustainable 10-x increase in energy production over the next 10-20 years with at least support current level of prices. All other problem will be solvable, I we archive this goal
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > "All" we need is political action to build more clean power plants We’re building solar about as quickly as we can, and without cannibalising EV battery supply chains are also maxed out on batteries. Fission power remains uncompetitive with natural gas; you’d have to convince Western consumers to bear higher prices for reduced emissions which nobody is willing to do.
  - catskull 2y ago
    Exactly this. If we drop the cost per kWh by half, the market will respond. The market doesn’t ultimately care about the planet which is why we need govt but bringing the price per kWh with clean fusion kills two birds with one stone.
    - pjerem 2y ago
      That’s why I talk about political action. Public is exactly here to act when the market doesn’t care about something important.
gmuslera 2y ago
It is getting late to the party. Clean enough energy alternatives are being deployed everywhere. And we might be already running out of time, the climate system could had surpassed a point of no return by now, we keep adding fossil carbon to the system and if, or by when, this became practical enough to start deploying power plants based on it will be too late for a meaningful change.
jbotz 2y ago
Fusion is irrelevant as a practical energy source here on earth. The simple reason is that we already have all the "fusion energy" we'll ever need from that big fusion reactor in the sky... modern photovoltaics convert this energy to electricity at close to the same efficiency that you could convert the heat from a controlled fusion reactor to electricity. OK, yeah, photovoltaics still don't work at night, but there's a battery revolution underway that is solving that problem, and the two, photovoltaics + batteries, are already vastly cheaper than fusion can ever hope to be. Fusion will be important for the future of humanity, especially in deep space, so we should keep researching and developing it. But it's not relevant to the climate crisis... the already existing technologies have that covered, we only need to deploy them faster.
- steelbrain 2y ago
  While I admire your optimism, this is not realistic. The earth is big and not all parts get the same amount or intensity of sunlight. Nordic countries cannot rely on Solar with batteries, for example.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > it's not relevant to the climate crisis... the already existing technologies have that covered, we only need to deploy them faster Going all in on solar and batteries either requires nuclear energy, thereby raising power costs, or natural gas, which means we can’t make our 2050 goals. We simply can’t manufacture the panels and batteries fast enough, the latter especially if we also want to decarbonise transportation. Fusion won’t come fast enough for the climate crisis. But it may be relevant for complete decarbonisation, e.g. replacing the natural gas plants we’re spinning up as quickly as we’re deploying solar.
- CELLOPHANET 2y ago
  No, b/c we really need it as a weapon. Fusion lasers will finally provide the death ray of sci-fi. If you think "practical energy source" is what fusion research is really about then you've been bamboozled.
  - 2y ago
johnea 2y ago
Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a giant free fussion reactor! Close enough to get the energy, but far enough away to allow isolation of the reaction. Maybe the energy could just beam down on us from space? That'd be awesome...
- hackeraccount 2y ago
  Be better if it was available 24/7. And if you didn't have to cover an area the size of Michigan to power the U.S. Nothing's perfect I suppose.
  - johnea 2y ago
    Actually, it is available 24/7. Now, wouldn't be awesome if there was a global power grid that could provide power anywhere on the planet? (still cheaper than fusion) No need to cover all of Michigan, the area available on flat roofed buildings everywhere is enough. Of course, a distributed power source, locally generated and consumed, is anathema to the capital motive of concentrating the most wealth in the fewest hands...
joak 2y ago
I think comments are missing the point: one of the companies listed in article, Helion, is about to switch on a machine to demo net electricity production from fusion. Why would that be possible? Because they don't go on yet another fancy way to boil water to run a steam engine. They do direct energy conversion. In a fusion reaction energy is mostly released as kinetic energy of particles. Their fusion reaction is aneutronic, ie with few neutrons. That means that the energy is released as movement of charged particles. By definition this is an electric current. This current is directly captured by induction in the coils and sent to grid. If their 2025 experiments go well, in 2028 they will start selling electricity to Microsoft which whom they have a power purchase agreement. Thanks to the simplicity of their machine, they aim at a cost of 10$/MWh, competitive with solar. Their 50MW generator is shipping container size and be built in a factory by the dozens. Ok, they may fail, they could also succeed though. Worth watching.
- orwin 2y ago
  Ah, so it's not charged plate conversion (which seems impossible with pulsed plasma if the plate spacing is too high). Hopefully it works, because I'm _not_ reading another 40 page study/whitepaper on direct energy conversion.
orwin 2y ago
Creating a plasma isn't hard, keeping it is: containment and breeding will be expensive. And absorbing electricity from it will be too. Charged plate conversion system require the plate spacing be lower than the Debye radius of the plasma. So it's out for most tech (especially pulsed fusion) And a lead-lithium blancket (the only mature tech to capture neutrons rn) is unwieldly, only capture neutrons (so already between 20 and 25% losses, let's say 20), and will loose more energy via reaction (creating deuterium-tritium, so not useless, but still, lost energy, 25% losses). Then between the heat exchangers and the steam engine, let's say 65% losses (and i think i'm generous). So you'll get at best 21% of the generated energy as electricity (and i'm being _Very_ generous. imho if you have more than 15% it's a success). With that, you'll have to contain and breed the plasma. Good luck.
more_corn 2y ago
Still only twenty years away. As it has been for the last forty.

36 points by doener 2y ago

tromp 2y ago

https://archive.is/yLYGv https://archive.is/yLYGv

theappsecguy 2y ago

It’s been getting closer for what, two decades now?

croes 2y ago
Time for Musk to announce fusion powered self driving cars for next sear
- esskay 2y ago
  Honestly surprised he's not bought/started a company to work on it so he can proudly proclame they've cracked it and it's coming next year on repeat.
- ChocolateGod 2y ago
  If you mean fusion powered from the sun by the means of solar panels installed on roofs that charge your car, he's already achieved that. Far cheaper and more practical.
gjsman-1000 2y ago
> It’s been getting closer for what, two decades now? No reason for pointless cynicism, this is also against the guidelines. Fusion power is like childbirth - yelling at 9 months that it has been 9 months, and is therefore never arriving, would be delusional.
- mort96 2y ago
  Weird analogy but to work with it: if someone has been shouting that they're about to give birth any moment now since the 1950s, forgive me for being a bit skeptical when they say "but no really I mean it this time".
- bitcharmer 2y ago
  [dead]
zabzonk 2y ago
since the late 1950s
- acidburnNSA 2y ago
  Very true. The 1958 Atoms for Peace conference prominently featured big fusion exhibits expecting breakthroughs soon.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> It’s been getting closer for what, two decades now? This is low effort. Are you arguing we haven’t made material progress in the last twenty years? Material science advances in magnets alone should raise your curiosity to not have to wait for a packaged consumer product to notice advancement.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  Tbf, the title is kind of low effort too. Of course fusion is getting closer. We all know that at least some people are working on it, the default assumption is that they make some progress. This has been the state of fusion for the last couple decades. Arguably there has been a time when fusion got further away (compared to predictions) because of reduced interest and funding. But I'd agree that for the last two decades you could print the headline "fusion is getting closer" at any time, and it would always be true. Maybe that's just me ranting about how titles have shifted from trying to inform you and distill the essence of a news article to just trying to get you to read the article. It's really a comment on journalism rather than fusion.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > We all know that at least some people are working on it, the default assumption is that they make some progress This is a terrible assumption when it comes to basic research. > that for the last two decades you could print the headline "fusion is getting closer" at any time, and it would always be true What are you basing this on?There have been a few discrete steps forward. In between, ideas and experiments. > really a comment on journalism rather than fusion Can you quote the line from the article that renders the title misleading?
    - wongarsu 2y ago
      > This is a terrible assumption when it comes to basic research. Even trying out things that don't work is progress, since it narrows the space of possible solutions. The only ways to really set back progress would be by getting others to believe something that's untrue, for example by faking research. You could manage to not advance the field by not publishing a finding and leaving the field. You can slow progress for example by popularizing a path that doesn't lead anywhere, discouraging people from going down the right path, or just reducing popularity or funding of the field. But slowing progress doesn't erase progress. If you do genuine work and at least talk about it with colleagues on a conference that's advancing the field. > What are you basing this on? The classic graph everyone uses would be 1, which shows consistent progress over ~40 years. It's a bit out of date now, but I assume the trend has held since then. > Can you quote the line from the article that renders the title misleading? I didn't call it misleading, I called it lazy and uninformative. A (mild) form of clickbait, because it merely hints at information without providing any. My English teacher would have deducted points for that title. 1: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Progress-to-Date-in-Achieving-Conditions-Required-for-Fusion-Energy_fig1_335586712 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Progress-to-Date-in-Achi...
adastra22 2y ago
It’s been 30 years away for half a century. Then it was 20 years away for the last few decades. Now it is 10 years away. We’re making progress!

leephillips 2y ago

And remains irrelevant: https://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-fusion-energy-180313/ https://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-fusion-...

ikrenji 2y ago
fusion is the ultimate clean energy source. we shouldn't give up on it just because it's a difficult problem
stuart73547373 2y ago
looks like that article didn't read this article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42221756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42221756
- kiba 2y ago
  2 billion dollars over 5 years? That's peanuts! If anything I would increase spending to a billion dollars a year. Would still dedicate most of the budget to accelerating the energy transition, which is trillion of dollars worth of stuff.

TheMagicHorsey 2y ago

It's always been close. But now, finally, I think it's really close. As in, I think I may still be alive when the first fusion power comes into the grid, even if I probably won't be alive to see the full dream of infinite cheap energy come true. Its interesting to think about how our economies will change if the price of energy drops by one or two orders of magnitude. Desalination could then be used for agriculture and industry. Coastlines could become more valuable. We could make huge amounts of aluminum for almost nothing. We'd probably end up with aluminum packaging for everything as it's much easier to recycle than plastic if you don't have to worry about electricity.

ahoka 2y ago
Probably we will just burn the world with the free energy.
- yawpitch 2y ago
  Probably? Oh ye of little faith.
- afh1 2y ago
  Even if that was literally done, it would still be a better home than Mars :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GjOuqAlFEk#t=6m45s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GjOuqAlFEk#t=6m45s (not trying to make any kind of point, just a fun fact / video)
  - adastra22 2y ago
    That video is full of widely discredited claims.
Anarch157a 2y ago
> won't be alive to see the full dream of infinite cheap energy come true. You won't. Sorry for being cynical, but the true cost of energy is the capital invested in the equipment to harvest it. A fusion reactor would be at the minimum, as expensive as a fission one, which means all that capital will have to be amortised over the years. This doesn't even take into account the cost of extracting deuterium from sea water or producing helium 3 and tritium from lithium. Fusion doesn't even solve the problem of nuclear waste, since it will create radioactive isotopes by bombarding components of the reactor with neutrons. You want cheaper, cleaner energy ? Solar and wind with battery storage is the best option, and it's already here, no need need to wait for fusion magic that may or may not happen in our lifetimes.

zabzonk 2y ago

"no really" is about right. even if you have managed to produce sustainable fusion with a good bit of output energy (a very big if), you still have the problem of producing useable electricity from it, which as I understand it is one of the things that ITER was supposed to prototype.

thrw42A8N 2y ago
Steam. The actual problem is reaction vessel wall ablation.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  This is one of the reasons General Fusion, mentioned in the article, uses a liquid metal reaction vessel, spinning to create a cavity. (I think a mixture of molten lead and lithium?)
  - thrw42A8N 2y ago
    Yes, incredible idea. I really hope it works out.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Steam is uneconomical versus solar power. If all the fusion is doing is heating water it will always lose on cost even if the fusion was free. c.f. coal. The bulk of the cost of a coal power plant is the steam turbine etc. And coal is not economical.
  - thrw42A8N 2y ago
    My city has a steam/hot water distribution network. No need to convert to electricity for quite a lot of residential energy usage.
Thegn 2y ago
Well, we could always just set up solar panels and use it to capture output from the massive fusion reaction 8.5 light minutes away from us. Does that count as a successful utilization of fusion?

yawpitch 2y ago

Fusion power has been getting closer — no really — for a long time. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ll be ecstatic when / if it arrives, especially if it does so with sufficient lead time to be relevant within my lifetime, but no number of “we’ve halved the distance to the wall again” articles will get me excited (or us there).

hiddencost 2y ago
A comparison to Zeno's paradox isn't quite apt, because fusion power can (in this metaphor) go very far beyond the wall. I think it's better to think of it this way: are you a lay person not in the field? Then most of this work doesn't matter to you. But you should keep funding it.
- yawpitch 2y ago
  The wall, in this case, is power positive sustained (and contained) reaction. Fusion power doesn’t exist and can’t do a damned thing until that wall is reached. Once it’s reached I’ll admit we’ve no practical idea where the next wall is going to be. And yes, absolutely, fund baby fund, keep making those Zeno steps… just don’t write another article promising me that fusion / Jetson cars / AGI / Unobtanium is nearly here.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > power positive sustained (and contained) reaction. Fusion power doesn’t exist and can’t do a damned thing until that wall is reached Did we read the same article? Helion's entire design strategy is to sidestep sustaining fusion plasmas. It's unclear if it will work. But it's theoretically sound. Your wall is a chain-link fence.

thrance 2y ago

Comparing the very optimistic deadline given by Commonwealth Fusion, concerning a prototype that has not even began construction versus the latest postponing of the first firing of ITER is kind of meaningless. As underlined in the article, ITER is already 9 years behind schedule. Not because they're incompetent or underfunded, but because fusion is hard. I don't expect a private company with much less funding to do any better. That said, I'd like to be wrong and see one of these companies crack commercial fusion in their basement.

moomin 2y ago
The Economist always phrases articles to imply that private investment is a magical elixir that will make problems go away.
IanCal 2y ago
The fundamental thing behind SPARC is (iiuc) to do this far faster by being drastically smaller. Iter was designed a long time ago based on materials available at the time. SPARC can be much smaller with much stronger magnets. The argument from SPARC wasn't that iter was incompetent but that being so vast and expensive requires multiple nation states cooperating which is inherently slow. Slow things being more risks as thing a change too (9 years is probably 3 governments here). Making it smaller makes it cheaper, a d cheaper means a smaller collaboration (or single company).

baq 2y ago

imagine if fusion research could consistently get 1% of the pentagon's accounting hole.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
[flagged]
YZF 2y ago
It'd get nowhere. The problem isn't money. One could say there's even too much money thrown at fusion research that could have better use elsewhere. There are just too many incredibly hard problems to solve.
esskay 2y ago
As nice as that would be, if we think about it logically it's not at all in the US governments interests for Fusion to work. Suddenly that massive pot of money from natural resources (e.g Oil) vanishes.
- alwa 2y ago
  …vanishes, presumably, because the work that it used to do is now done by this fusion technology instead. Surely the US would like to be the nation to dominate that tech should the moment come, right? Could sure shake up some of the US’ geopolitical relationships, in which the US spends an awful lot to maintain influence over the way oil gets made and sold. That pot of oil money sure creates its share of headaches, and probably means a lot more to smaller nations than it does to the US.
  - esskay 2y ago
    I guess the question would be that assuming the US was to dominate the technology, is that more profitable than a steady stream of revenue from oil exports? Building fusion plants would be a massive money maker initially as everyone races to adopt it, but is it a long term money maker when no doubt other nations will be trying to cash in on it themselves.

znpy 2y ago

lovely, we only need warp drive now :)

alganet 2y ago
If we're talking Star Trek humanity cosplay, our best bet would be to sort out communicators first. We're almost there. It already works reliably, just needs to be made to respect privacy and be completely free.
- znpy 2y ago
  I think it could be made free as long as we lower our expectations. If you want anybody to be able to make calls for free, that’s one thing and i think it could be feasible (probably already feasible by now). If on the other hand you want everyone to be able to make 4k60fps group video calls that’s unlikely, at least for now.
  - alganet 2y ago
    I'm fine with just voice calls. Or maybe 360p30fps calls, I don't mind. As long as the communicator is free (I don't have to pay to have it or replace it for the newer version) and private (I can be sure no one will listen or record). If we slow it down, I think humanity can manage without 4k, with a 50% cut in digital entertainment, and without buying new expensive useless communicators each couple of years.

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

The Economist as scientific harbinger of the fuuuuture! Even if good net-energy happens, even if they solve neutron flux irradiating the reactor vessel, even if they can sustain power generation for commercial periods, if they can safely operate the superhot plasma ... it comes down to, ECONOMIST, the cost. As someone that hammers fission power for being currently infeasibly expensive, fusion has a long road to economic viability. I suppose the public will at least not NIMBY it to the same degree as a fission reactor

bastloing 2y ago

But fusion doesn't produce any waste does it?

Permik 2y ago
Technically the helium produced is the waste product, but fortunately we have tons of uses for helium.
jvanderbot 2y ago
It doesn't have reaction byproducts, if you don't count the reactor itself, which gets lots of neutrino bombardment and ends up glowing scrap metal.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > which gets lots of neutrino bombardment and ends up glowing scrap metal One, neutron. Two, doesn't glow. Three, aneutronic fusion is real.
amluto 2y ago
The actual intended products of the fusion reactions are generally not radioactive and are rather harmless. But most proposed fusion reactions produce neutrons. Neutrons, unfortunately, can hit other nuclei and “activate” them, transmuting them into other isotopes that can be quite nasty. So fusion is far from perfect.

acidburnNSA 2y ago

I'm happy to see lots of investment in fusion. As a fission guy, I know that plenty of challenges remain even after you get your first net energy out, such as getting it out economically. In fission, there were more than 20 years between these milestones (first chain reaction in 1942 from CP-1, first competitive power in 1965 from Oyster Creek). As such, some skepticism in people's timelines is always warranted. I'm reminded of the voodoo fusion article. https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf

readthenotes1 2y ago
I have a relative who commented one time about how in 1960 year the fusion power was only 10 years away. I'm pretty sure he was talking about sustainable electric grid usable power. He spent some time with a key in an underground silo though...

gandalfian 2y ago

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=fusion%20in%20years&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

pjerem 2y ago

Fusion is cool and all but it will not save us from anything. We already have enough tech to make emission free and cheap electricity. "All" we need is political action to build more clean power plants (nuclear, solar …) and continuation of research to electrify more sectors. Fusion will not solve any of those important issues. It will only be the cherry on the cake if it become deployed globally anytime in the future. But we are far from it and we shouldn’t be that excited or hope for it to make a better world. I very much see fusion as going to the moon : it’s not going to solve any short time issue but it can be a milestone in human advancement if we manage to survive until it becomes our primary source of energy.

mrkandy 2y ago
The main challenge is to ensure a sustainable 10-x increase in energy production over the next 10-20 years with at least support current level of prices. All other problem will be solvable, I we archive this goal
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> "All" we need is political action to build more clean power plants We’re building solar about as quickly as we can, and without cannibalising EV battery supply chains are also maxed out on batteries. Fission power remains uncompetitive with natural gas; you’d have to convince Western consumers to bear higher prices for reduced emissions which nobody is willing to do.
- catskull 2y ago
  Exactly this. If we drop the cost per kWh by half, the market will respond. The market doesn’t ultimately care about the planet which is why we need govt but bringing the price per kWh with clean fusion kills two birds with one stone.
  - pjerem 2y ago
    That’s why I talk about political action. Public is exactly here to act when the market doesn’t care about something important.

gmuslera 2y ago

It is getting late to the party. Clean enough energy alternatives are being deployed everywhere. And we might be already running out of time, the climate system could had surpassed a point of no return by now, we keep adding fossil carbon to the system and if, or by when, this became practical enough to start deploying power plants based on it will be too late for a meaningful change.

jbotz 2y ago

Fusion is irrelevant as a practical energy source here on earth. The simple reason is that we already have all the "fusion energy" we'll ever need from that big fusion reactor in the sky... modern photovoltaics convert this energy to electricity at close to the same efficiency that you could convert the heat from a controlled fusion reactor to electricity. OK, yeah, photovoltaics still don't work at night, but there's a battery revolution underway that is solving that problem, and the two, photovoltaics + batteries, are already vastly cheaper than fusion can ever hope to be. Fusion will be important for the future of humanity, especially in deep space, so we should keep researching and developing it. But it's not relevant to the climate crisis... the already existing technologies have that covered, we only need to deploy them faster.

steelbrain 2y ago
While I admire your optimism, this is not realistic. The earth is big and not all parts get the same amount or intensity of sunlight. Nordic countries cannot rely on Solar with batteries, for example.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> it's not relevant to the climate crisis... the already existing technologies have that covered, we only need to deploy them faster Going all in on solar and batteries either requires nuclear energy, thereby raising power costs, or natural gas, which means we can’t make our 2050 goals. We simply can’t manufacture the panels and batteries fast enough, the latter especially if we also want to decarbonise transportation. Fusion won’t come fast enough for the climate crisis. But it may be relevant for complete decarbonisation, e.g. replacing the natural gas plants we’re spinning up as quickly as we’re deploying solar.
CELLOPHANET 2y ago
No, b/c we really need it as a weapon. Fusion lasers will finally provide the death ray of sci-fi. If you think "practical energy source" is what fusion research is really about then you've been bamboozled.
- 2y ago

johnea 2y ago

Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a giant free fussion reactor! Close enough to get the energy, but far enough away to allow isolation of the reaction. Maybe the energy could just beam down on us from space? That'd be awesome...

hackeraccount 2y ago
Be better if it was available 24/7. And if you didn't have to cover an area the size of Michigan to power the U.S. Nothing's perfect I suppose.
- johnea 2y ago
  Actually, it is available 24/7. Now, wouldn't be awesome if there was a global power grid that could provide power anywhere on the planet? (still cheaper than fusion) No need to cover all of Michigan, the area available on flat roofed buildings everywhere is enough. Of course, a distributed power source, locally generated and consumed, is anathema to the capital motive of concentrating the most wealth in the fewest hands...

joak 2y ago

I think comments are missing the point: one of the companies listed in article, Helion, is about to switch on a machine to demo net electricity production from fusion. Why would that be possible? Because they don't go on yet another fancy way to boil water to run a steam engine. They do direct energy conversion. In a fusion reaction energy is mostly released as kinetic energy of particles. Their fusion reaction is aneutronic, ie with few neutrons. That means that the energy is released as movement of charged particles. By definition this is an electric current. This current is directly captured by induction in the coils and sent to grid. If their 2025 experiments go well, in 2028 they will start selling electricity to Microsoft which whom they have a power purchase agreement. Thanks to the simplicity of their machine, they aim at a cost of 10$/MWh, competitive with solar. Their 50MW generator is shipping container size and be built in a factory by the dozens. Ok, they may fail, they could also succeed though. Worth watching.

orwin 2y ago
Ah, so it's not charged plate conversion (which seems impossible with pulsed plasma if the plate spacing is too high). Hopefully it works, because I'm _not_ reading another 40 page study/whitepaper on direct energy conversion.

orwin 2y ago

Creating a plasma isn't hard, keeping it is: containment and breeding will be expensive. And absorbing electricity from it will be too. Charged plate conversion system require the plate spacing be lower than the Debye radius of the plasma. So it's out for most tech (especially pulsed fusion) And a lead-lithium blancket (the only mature tech to capture neutrons rn) is unwieldly, only capture neutrons (so already between 20 and 25% losses, let's say 20), and will loose more energy via reaction (creating deuterium-tritium, so not useless, but still, lost energy, 25% losses). Then between the heat exchangers and the steam engine, let's say 65% losses (and i think i'm generous). So you'll get at best 21% of the generated energy as electricity (and i'm being _Very_ generous. imho if you have more than 15% it's a success). With that, you'll have to contain and breed the plasma. Good luck.

more_corn 2y ago

Still only twenty years away. As it has been for the last forty.