Eh, I'll doubt until I here more info. The rule has always been that Fusion is the energy of the future, and always will be, with other fakes before.
United States Biden administration policies and actions - megathread
- Thread starter Tyzuris
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Yep.
I choose to remain skeptical about what will literally be one of the biggest breakthroughs in human history, until we get more info.
I'll wait until this info is verified to get excited.
No, it's about economic return on investment. Massive centralized power stations are a hard ask for capitalists, too much money sunk in for too long before return, too easy to disrupt by NIMBYs and Greens after decades of accumulated regulation. Fusion being successful does not mean it will be any more profitable than fission (almost certainly less for many years or decades), though there is the possibility of Democrats dumping in gigantic sums of government money. Unlikely though, because what Greens really want is reducing populations and lifestyles, not making existing or higher consumption clean.
Not by itself. There are perfectly good investment tools to get around the long return problem. It's the other issues that put a question mark on whether there will be much of a return at all that are the real problem. Energy market regulation, nuclear regulation, and all the green\esg stuff for fossil fuel power plants. No shortage for investment even in large scale "green" projects as those have the political winds behind them and are offered favorable terms due to it.
You all forget the Navy exists, and really would love fusion for carriers and subs.
There are even patents out for 'plasma containment devices' small enough to mounted on B-52s.
Plus, well, some industry would really like fusion power for on-site energy production. Heck, the oil industry would benefit, because oil is still needed for industrial feedstocks, not just energy generation, and an on-site fusion generator would be great for drilling/cementing rigs.
There are even patents out for 'plasma containment devices' small enough to mounted on B-52s.
Plus, well, some industry would really like fusion power for on-site energy production. Heck, the oil industry would benefit, because oil is still needed for industrial feedstocks, not just energy generation, and an on-site fusion generator would be great for drilling/cementing rigs.
The news is making a mountain out of a foothill. NIF has no real path to power production. "Net gain" here just means they priced more energy in fusion than they dumped in with the lasers. But they did not harvest that energy, and really don't even have a method to.
Internal confident fusion is basically for research and weapons development, and maybe spacecraft propulsion, not power generation.
Yeah, the domestic global political issues with nuclear power would be solved with that, however, it would need to get compact and reliable enough for that, and neither of these are close.
Those aren't the ones that work.
Same as Navy except even further away.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
The hardware for that has to get into the reactor, thus being in the way of maximizing the efficiency of the systems, so it's extremely pointless for experimental designs that are in no way net positive. Now that a theoretically net positive fusion reactor has been created, it's worth looking into making the next test model have that to start working on feature-complete designs which, in theory, only require raw iterations to become useful generators.
History Learner
Well-known member
That it's for research is the entire point; it took over a decade after the first atomic bomb test to get the first commercial nuclear power plant. Once you get the research figured out, it becomes possible to do Fusion for energy production. We see the same track with fission, in that it was first used by the military and then was moved into the civilian market. Most PWRs today in use owe their lineage to Rickover's projects in the 1940s and 1950s, after all.
The reason for my optimism is this is the first time I can ever recall the sitting DOE secretary holding a press conference over a Fusion milestone. All the others in the past basically got 10 minutes of fame in the news and then people moved on, without senior leadership having anything to say. That she sees fit to do so might be telling.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
If you were familiar with Granholm's history regarding competence, it would make you cynical, not optimistic.
History Learner
Well-known member
I have no doubt she is a partisan pick unqualified for her position, it's that the team at LLNL is emphasizing this to the extent the DOE staff chose to break precedent and hold a high profile press conference on the subject that is important. To my knowledge, at the very least going back the past decade, this has never happened before; we had some breakthroughs last year that didn't want warrant such a high level engagement, for example.
mrttao
Well-known member
Someone Wrote a Bad Fusion Article. Again.
As promised: A general rebuttal to every fusion hype article.
gammafactor.wordpress.com
Who wants to be the one to tell all those excited liberals that fusion reactors produce radioactive waste too?
faq9
www.ipp.mpg.de
Doomsought
Well-known member
There are two types of nuclear waste- spend fuel and old reactor housing. The former is what you can recycle into all sorts of useful things, the latter is what both fusion and fission reactors generate.
History Learner
Well-known member
Even if it takes a century of work its worth it thats how game changing fusion is.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
And not just from a power generation POV
Also useful for making long range sleeper/generational starships viable
mrttao
Well-known member
Is it? where are all the nuclear reactors giving cheap, plentiful, pollution free energy to all people of the world?
fission will eventually run out, but we are talking tens of thousands of years from now. Fusion can then pick up the slack when it does (assuming we don't get space mining for more fissile material).
It is a nice upgrade over fission. now if only we used fission properly.
Blasterbot
Well-known member
it represents a long term investment and should be treated as such. it will likely take decades to hit a point where we can put commercial reactors anywhere and have some teething issues. we still need to expand our short term energy production as well. but it is not something to be ignored. it is something to be watched closely.