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> could be ready for use in a decade. That's the standard issue joke. "Nuclear fusion has been just ten years away for the last fifty years" It is so common a

> could be ready for use in a decade. That's the standard issue joke. "Nuclear fusion has been just ten years away for the last fifty years" It is so common as a joke I'm surprised the article didn't mention it.

dragonwriter 12y ago
The usual form I've seen for several decades now is 15 years, not 10, but, yeah...
DennisP 12y ago
No, the standard joke is "thirty years away." Or at least it was. Strangely enough the number keeps decreasing with the passage of time.
- z92 12y ago
  Plotting a "Year vs Years away" graph would then give us a good estimation on when we can expect to meet that expectation.
  - willvarfar 12y ago
    If xkcd hasnt made that chart yet, it should!
  - Terr_ 12y ago
    Hmm, although every successive year would contain (most) of the previous year's results, so there'll be a certain inertia.
  - crazypyro 12y ago
    Although this is related to artificial intelligence, http://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf http://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf is an interesting study on expert predictions of future technology.
- zimbu668 12y ago
  Google Results: fusion "x years away" 10 - 765,000 results 15 - 9,730 results 20 - 793,000 results 25 - 8,750,000 results 30 - 709,000 results 35 - 4,700,000 results 40 - 472,000 results 45 - 10 results 50 - 493,000 results Definitely not 45 years away.
- mjevans 12y ago
  Remembering that there's no possible way we could know how many years away a thing is; the numbers are clearly a guesstimate. They're more of a rounded (hence the clustering at or away from given numbers) measure of the remaining 'effort' versus 'difficulty'. Very likely there is some absolute time required (experiments take time to run), but throwing more people (and more importantly, more resources to run experiments and gather data) at the problem /would/ get to an end result faster (though how much faster is open to debate; it's sort of like asking how much effort does it take to win a top 30th percentile prize from a lottery).
regularfry 12y ago
What's different this time (yeah, I know, I know) is that, if what they and EMC2 are separately claiming is true, it's gone from being a fundamental physics problem to relatively tractable engineering, with well-understood risks and timelines. Compare this with ITER, where they still don't know what material some fairly critical components can even be theoretically made of. It's just night and day.
- trhway 12y ago
  >Compare this with ITER, where they still don't know what material some fairly critical components can even be theoretically made of. It's just night and day. the Skunk Works and EMC2 haven't even reached the stage where they would face the same issue of material - all of them would ultimately have to contain the same type of fast neutrons and there is no good known material to do it.
  - darkmighty 12y ago
    What part of the reactor degrades so quickly? Can't it be replaced continuously? Why isn't the shielding done with some non-degradable matter, like water or some oil?
    - db48x 12y ago
      If the shielding is made of matter, then the nuclei of the atoms in that matter will absorb neutrons and become radioactive. Clearly the solution is to make it out of the many materials which are not composed of matter.
    - regularfry 12y ago
      As an example of the problem, anything made of metal will become brittle. For why this might be a problem, take a look at what's in the middle of the ITER toroid: you've got a stack of magnetic coils, which have to be physically braced against a colossal magnetic repulsion by a great big pre-stressed metal core. I'm sure someone at ITER has done the maths and figured out how long that core can last under operation before it becomes too brittle to keep the coils together, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was one of the reasons why ITER isn't designed for long-term power generation.
FiatLuxDave 12y ago
My favorite form of the old joke is: "Nuclear Fusion is the energy of the future, and always will be."
Igglyboo 12y ago
The fusion guys should have a meetup with the desktop linux guys.
drjesusphd 12y ago
It's not mentioned because it's tired, played out, and has no intellectual merit.
- lovemenot 12y ago
  Aren't you being rather too hard on fusion there? I heard it could be just a decade or two away.
  - drjesusphd 12y ago
    I was referring to the joke.

dragonwriter 12y ago

The usual form I've seen for several decades now is 15 years, not 10, but, yeah...

DennisP 12y ago

No, the standard joke is "thirty years away." Or at least it was. Strangely enough the number keeps decreasing with the passage of time.

z92 12y ago
Plotting a "Year vs Years away" graph would then give us a good estimation on when we can expect to meet that expectation.
- willvarfar 12y ago
  If xkcd hasnt made that chart yet, it should!
- Terr_ 12y ago
  Hmm, although every successive year would contain (most) of the previous year's results, so there'll be a certain inertia.
- crazypyro 12y ago
  Although this is related to artificial intelligence, http://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf http://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf is an interesting study on expert predictions of future technology.
zimbu668 12y ago
Google Results: fusion "x years away" 10 - 765,000 results 15 - 9,730 results 20 - 793,000 results 25 - 8,750,000 results 30 - 709,000 results 35 - 4,700,000 results 40 - 472,000 results 45 - 10 results 50 - 493,000 results Definitely not 45 years away.
mjevans 12y ago
Remembering that there's no possible way we could know how many years away a thing is; the numbers are clearly a guesstimate. They're more of a rounded (hence the clustering at or away from given numbers) measure of the remaining 'effort' versus 'difficulty'. Very likely there is some absolute time required (experiments take time to run), but throwing more people (and more importantly, more resources to run experiments and gather data) at the problem /would/ get to an end result faster (though how much faster is open to debate; it's sort of like asking how much effort does it take to win a top 30th percentile prize from a lottery).

regularfry 12y ago

What's different this time (yeah, I know, I know) is that, if what they and EMC2 are separately claiming is true, it's gone from being a fundamental physics problem to relatively tractable engineering, with well-understood risks and timelines. Compare this with ITER, where they still don't know what material some fairly critical components can even be theoretically made of. It's just night and day.

trhway 12y ago
>Compare this with ITER, where they still don't know what material some fairly critical components can even be theoretically made of. It's just night and day. the Skunk Works and EMC2 haven't even reached the stage where they would face the same issue of material - all of them would ultimately have to contain the same type of fast neutrons and there is no good known material to do it.
- darkmighty 12y ago
  What part of the reactor degrades so quickly? Can't it be replaced continuously? Why isn't the shielding done with some non-degradable matter, like water or some oil?
  - db48x 12y ago
    If the shielding is made of matter, then the nuclei of the atoms in that matter will absorb neutrons and become radioactive. Clearly the solution is to make it out of the many materials which are not composed of matter.
  - regularfry 12y ago
    As an example of the problem, anything made of metal will become brittle. For why this might be a problem, take a look at what's in the middle of the ITER toroid: you've got a stack of magnetic coils, which have to be physically braced against a colossal magnetic repulsion by a great big pre-stressed metal core. I'm sure someone at ITER has done the maths and figured out how long that core can last under operation before it becomes too brittle to keep the coils together, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was one of the reasons why ITER isn't designed for long-term power generation.

FiatLuxDave 12y ago

My favorite form of the old joke is: "Nuclear Fusion is the energy of the future, and always will be."

Igglyboo 12y ago

The fusion guys should have a meetup with the desktop linux guys.

drjesusphd 12y ago

It's not mentioned because it's tired, played out, and has no intellectual merit.

lovemenot 12y ago
Aren't you being rather too hard on fusion there? I heard it could be just a decade or two away.
- drjesusphd 12y ago
  I was referring to the joke.