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Is China Pulling Ahead in the Quest for Fusion Energy?
- inverted_flag 2y agoThe answer to "Is China Pulling Ahead in X?" is going to be "yes" for the foreseeable future.
- avmich 2y agoI'm kinda interested in the demographic trends comparison here...
- marssaxman 2y agoChina has pulled very far ahead in the quest for capturing and storing fusion energy from the sun, which is what really matters now. Fusion reactors will be cool if they can ever be made to work, but they won't be able to compete with renewables, and will thus only be useful in niche environments.
- avalys 2y agoWhat do you think is less disruptive for the environment, a 1 GW fusion machine the size of a medium-sized warehouse, or 100 square kilometers of solar panels plus a battery installation? Renewables are cheap at the margins, but they're not economically competitive if your goal is to support a massive growth of total electrical demand (either because you're a developing country that is growing rapidly, or first-world economy which is decarbonizing and electrifying industry and transportation).
- djdjhdjdjdxx 2y ago[flagged]
- marssaxman 2y agoIt's not about the environment, it's about the financing. Who's going to put up the money to build the most complicated machines humanity has ever dreamed up, each one a many-years-long construction project very likely to have schedule slippages and cost overruns, when they could get more megawatts for the dollar building easy, reliable, low-maintenance solar parks which start generating revenue within a year? Some governments will, sure, and perhaps a handful of large, wealthy cities in high latitudes or on small islands, but in general it's difficult to see why an investor would choose to invest in a fusion plant.
- peterlada 2y ago100 square kilometers of panels is the total energy consumption of the world now, two thirds of which is extracting, shipping refining and trucking around hydrocarbons which are stored sunlight.
- avalys 2y agoNope, not at all! That is a roughly correct number for the area of solar panels required to equal a 1 GW baseload power plant.
- nitwit005 2y agoGiven the massive expense on fusion, with nothing close to the desired outcome, I think we should happily let them spend on it instead.
- tuatoru 2y agoThe massive expense is, in the scheme of things, actually quite small. But there's no "there" there with fusion energy: the lower bound on its cost is the cost of fission energy.
- avalys 2y agoThat statement doesn't really make any sense. The expense of producing "fuel" for fusion is much lower than fission, and the improved safety profile means the actual realized engineering costs will also be lower. Yes, in theory, if you could convince the world to accept thousands of new fission plants, you could probably get the cost pretty low, and that low cost would be pretty close to the same outcome for fission. But, good luck with that! Fusion has a much better chance of actually achieving the theoretical long-term economics of fission.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThe cost of fission fuel is already miniscule.
- avalys 2y agoMinuscule sounds like a good lower bound to me! What’s the problem then?
- tuatoru 2y agoThe cost of Ph. D.s to operate the fusion reactor, vs the cost of associate degrees to operate a fission reactor. Also, the short life and disposable nature of the fusion reactor vessel - most proposals deal with neutrons by ablating lithium from the inside wall of the reactor vessel. And disposal costs, much more radioactive material to be disposed of than with fission, and it can't be reprocessed into fuel either. Also, the ancillary equipment needed for startup, and for operation, is much more expensive. The list goes on. The more you look, the worse it gets.
- stefantalpalaru 2y ago[dead]