5 ms·

There are three main hurdles here First, actually getting fusion to positive energy ROI. That's step zero and we're not even close. Second, scaling the produc

There are three main hurdles here First, actually getting fusion to positive energy ROI. That's step zero and we're not even close. Second, scaling the production of fusion in an safe and economical way. Given the utter economic failure of fission nuclear power (there has never been a profitable one), my priors are that the fusion advocates are vastly underestimating, if not willfully ignoring, this part. Finally, even if we do get to "too cheap to meter" energy, what then? Limitless electricity is not the same thing as limitless stored energy. Only 20% of our energy needs are supplied by electricity. To wit, the crucial industrial processes required to build the nuclear power plant in the first place can only be accomplished with combustible carbon. A power plant cannot generate the energy to build another power plant. Please let that sink in. We're already seeing countries with photovoltaic and wind hitting $0/kW on sunny windy days - the grid is nearly saturated for daytime load. There isn't enough demand! This makes the economic feasibility of fusion even less attractive. No one is going to make money from it.

Vanclief 1y ago
Where did you get the data that there has never been a profitable one? Not calling you out, but curious of where you are getting this data. I would expect that there have been multiple nuclear power plants that provide a net positive return, specially on countries like France where 70% of their energy is nuclear.
- shitpostbot 1y ago
  [dead]
- Retric 1y ago
  France lost an incredible amount of money on nuclear through capacity factor issues. The numbers are so bad they don’t want to admit what they are. However a reasonable argument can be made the public benefited from externalities like lower pollution and subsidized electricity prices even if it was a money pit and much of the benefit was exported to other countries via cheap off peak prices while France was forced to import at peak rates.
  - amenhotep 1y ago
    Regulatory burdens on fission account for negative externalities to an arguably overzealous degree, whereas fossil fuel energy has been until recently allowed to completely ignore them. Doesn't seem like a fair comparison.
    - Retric 1y ago
      Regulatory burdens on fission result from the inherent risks and negative externalities. You’re never going to see huge long term exclusion zones with coal, but nuclear has two of them right now (Ed: Overkill though the current size may be) which also have massive government funded cleanup efforts. So while regulations may be overkill it’s not arbitrary only hydro is really comparable but hydro also stores water and reduces flood risks most years. Fusion sill had real risks, but there’s no concern around $500+ Billion cleanup efforts.
      - pfdietz 1y ago
        I wonder how bad the property value damage would be from widespread tritium contamination of ground water.
        Retric 1y ago
        Depends on if anyone uses wells in the area. Probably not that much outside of some sci-fi movie extreme as piping water from in contaminated regions wouldn’t be particularly expensive, but the question is assuming something I’m not sure is possible. How exactly would you get meaningful widespread tritium contamination of groundwater? IE not just the trace amounts you see from existing nuclear reactors. Groundwater doesn’t flow quickly from a point source and tritium has a fairly short half-life. 60 years later you might be looking at a larger though still small area, but 97% of the stuff will have decayed and what remains is now diluted and doesn’t bioaccumulate. It’s not going to concentrate around some site after entering the atmosphere the way heavier than air particulate pollution would.
        1y ago
- bpfrh 1y ago
  Not really in the sense that the owning company has managed to survive without the state stepping in and give them money. Most reactors are old and in need of repair, most of these earlier than planned afaik. There is also the bigger issue that some reactors are shut down in the summer because cooling water would leave the reactor so hot that it would be a danger to the animals living in the river.
- jmyeet 1y ago
  Not a single one of the ~700 nuclear power plants has been built without significant government subsidies [1][2]. Additionally, the industry as a whole is shielded from the liability that would otherwise have bankrupted it multiple times. Notably, the clean up from Fukushima will likely take over 100 years, requires tech not yet invented and will likely cost as much as a trillion dollars [3]. In the US, there is a self-insurance fund paid into by the industry, which would've been exhausted 10-20 times over from a Fukushima level disaster. Plus, Congress severely limits liability from nuclear accidents, both on a per-plant and total basis ie the Price-Anderson Act [4]. Next, it seems like it's the taxpayer who is paying to process and store spent nuclear waste, a problem that will persist for centuries. Even with all this the levellized-cost-of-energy ("LCOE") of fission power is incredibly expensive and seemingly going up [5]. Some want to reduce costs by using more off-the-shelf tech and replicating it for scale, most notably with small modular reactors ("SMRs") but this actually makes no sense because larger fission reactors are simply more efficient. [1]: https://theecologist.org/2016/jan/04/after-60-years-nuclear-power-industry-survives-only-stupendous-subsidies https://theecologist.org/2016/jan/04/after-60-years-nuclear-... [2]: https://www.ucs.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-viable-without-subsidies https://www.ucs.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-viable... [3]: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-will-approach-one-trillion-dollars-just-for-nuclear-disaster/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-... [4]: https://www.yuccamountain.org/price_anderson.htm https://www.yuccamountain.org/price_anderson.htm [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
psunavy03 1y ago
I won't dispute that fission power has enormous capital costs. But how much of its alleged "failure" has been the utter FUD that's been pushed for the past 50+ years about how we'd all be glowing if nuclear power was widespread? I mean sure, waste disposal is a serious issue that deserves serious consideration. But fission waste contaminates a discrete area. Fossil fuels at scale cause climate change that contaminates the entire freaking planet. It's a travesty we haven't had a nuclearized grid for 20-30 years at this point.
bryanlarsen 1y ago
That's not quite right: 20% of our energy supply comes from electricity. But over 50% of the energy we consume gets wasted as heat, and fossil fuel energy wastes a lot more of its energy as heat. So the real number is closer to 40%. If we switch ground transport to EV's and heating to heat pumps we can get up to ~75%.

Vanclief 1y ago

Where did you get the data that there has never been a profitable one? Not calling you out, but curious of where you are getting this data. I would expect that there have been multiple nuclear power plants that provide a net positive return, specially on countries like France where 70% of their energy is nuclear.

shitpostbot 1y ago
[dead]
Retric 1y ago
France lost an incredible amount of money on nuclear through capacity factor issues. The numbers are so bad they don’t want to admit what they are. However a reasonable argument can be made the public benefited from externalities like lower pollution and subsidized electricity prices even if it was a money pit and much of the benefit was exported to other countries via cheap off peak prices while France was forced to import at peak rates.
- amenhotep 1y ago
  Regulatory burdens on fission account for negative externalities to an arguably overzealous degree, whereas fossil fuel energy has been until recently allowed to completely ignore them. Doesn't seem like a fair comparison.
  - Retric 1y ago
    Regulatory burdens on fission result from the inherent risks and negative externalities. You’re never going to see huge long term exclusion zones with coal, but nuclear has two of them right now (Ed: Overkill though the current size may be) which also have massive government funded cleanup efforts. So while regulations may be overkill it’s not arbitrary only hydro is really comparable but hydro also stores water and reduces flood risks most years. Fusion sill had real risks, but there’s no concern around $500+ Billion cleanup efforts.
    - pfdietz 1y ago
      I wonder how bad the property value damage would be from widespread tritium contamination of ground water.
      - Retric 1y ago
        Depends on if anyone uses wells in the area. Probably not that much outside of some sci-fi movie extreme as piping water from in contaminated regions wouldn’t be particularly expensive, but the question is assuming something I’m not sure is possible. How exactly would you get meaningful widespread tritium contamination of groundwater? IE not just the trace amounts you see from existing nuclear reactors. Groundwater doesn’t flow quickly from a point source and tritium has a fairly short half-life. 60 years later you might be looking at a larger though still small area, but 97% of the stuff will have decayed and what remains is now diluted and doesn’t bioaccumulate. It’s not going to concentrate around some site after entering the atmosphere the way heavier than air particulate pollution would.
        1y ago
bpfrh 1y ago
Not really in the sense that the owning company has managed to survive without the state stepping in and give them money. Most reactors are old and in need of repair, most of these earlier than planned afaik. There is also the bigger issue that some reactors are shut down in the summer because cooling water would leave the reactor so hot that it would be a danger to the animals living in the river.
jmyeet 1y ago
Not a single one of the ~700 nuclear power plants has been built without significant government subsidies [1][2]. Additionally, the industry as a whole is shielded from the liability that would otherwise have bankrupted it multiple times. Notably, the clean up from Fukushima will likely take over 100 years, requires tech not yet invented and will likely cost as much as a trillion dollars [3]. In the US, there is a self-insurance fund paid into by the industry, which would've been exhausted 10-20 times over from a Fukushima level disaster. Plus, Congress severely limits liability from nuclear accidents, both on a per-plant and total basis ie the Price-Anderson Act [4]. Next, it seems like it's the taxpayer who is paying to process and store spent nuclear waste, a problem that will persist for centuries. Even with all this the levellized-cost-of-energy ("LCOE") of fission power is incredibly expensive and seemingly going up [5]. Some want to reduce costs by using more off-the-shelf tech and replicating it for scale, most notably with small modular reactors ("SMRs") but this actually makes no sense because larger fission reactors are simply more efficient. [1]: https://theecologist.org/2016/jan/04/after-60-years-nuclear-power-industry-survives-only-stupendous-subsidies https://theecologist.org/2016/jan/04/after-60-years-nuclear-... [2]: https://www.ucs.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-viable-without-subsidies https://www.ucs.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-viable... [3]: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-will-approach-one-trillion-dollars-just-for-nuclear-disaster/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-... [4]: https://www.yuccamountain.org/price_anderson.htm https://www.yuccamountain.org/price_anderson.htm [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

psunavy03 1y ago

I won't dispute that fission power has enormous capital costs. But how much of its alleged "failure" has been the utter FUD that's been pushed for the past 50+ years about how we'd all be glowing if nuclear power was widespread? I mean sure, waste disposal is a serious issue that deserves serious consideration. But fission waste contaminates a discrete area. Fossil fuels at scale cause climate change that contaminates the entire freaking planet. It's a travesty we haven't had a nuclearized grid for 20-30 years at this point.

bryanlarsen 1y ago

That's not quite right: 20% of our energy supply comes from electricity. But over 50% of the energy we consume gets wasted as heat, and fossil fuel energy wastes a lot more of its energy as heat. So the real number is closer to 40%. If we switch ground transport to EV's and heating to heat pumps we can get up to ~75%.