this might be important. Is fusion important?

[AeroHorn 755]

On 12/12/2022 at 8:34 PM, wild_turkey said:

 

With our current technologies, it seems our clean energy sources in order of potential capacity are nuclear (fission), wind, solar, hydro. Unfortunately, the world can’t figure out what to do with nuclear because too many people have been scared into thinking it’s unsafe or bad for the environment. And the other sources are inadequate to completely replace fossil fuels.

So we need to either change the minds of policy makers regarding nuclear and rapidly scale that up, or innovate new technologies that don’t currently exist.

And yeah, keep developing solar and wind, but we can’t keep our heads in the sand and think those things will be enough.

 

Solar and wind are cheap (cheapest?), easily deployable and can be scaled from a power plant to powering a calculator. The only thing needed is storage, which is incrementally improving. If some of the many battery alternatives for large energy storage become mainstream, all other energy options become mostly strategic and for ancillary reasons rather than economic ones.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13528]

Could led to some interesting bedfellows as both O&G and green sides would not like fusion to be on the scene no matter how logical it would be.

[Buzzrock 14950]

6 hours ago, AeroHorn said:

Solar and wind are cheap (cheapest?), easily deployable and can be scaled from a power plant to powering a calculator. The only thing needed is storage, which is incrementally improving. If some of the many battery alternatives for large energy storage become mainstream, all other energy options become mostly strategic and for ancillary reasons rather than economic ones.

It’s not just the storage capacity. Batteries are hard to make, bad for the environment and they all die. On demand fusion would easily trump wind and solar. 

[Bateshorn 9942]

8 hours ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

I believe you are referring to transparent aluminum.  

This Star Trek 4 deep cut, I approve.

[ChickenSandwich 9856]

[BabaYaga 15331]

10 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

This is stupid. I’ve been fishing for many years and never had a meltdown or seen nuclear waste, just yucky worms.*

You've obviously never had a 7lb bass get off your lure after a night of chili and drinking 

Edited December 14, 2022 by BabaYaga

[Hermanator 7183]

Hope this doesn't become another Pons and Fleischmann. 

For the foreseeable future need to invest heavily in high capacity storage and transportation for wind and solar. Also in streamlining processing lithium from ocean salt solving the evaporation issue. Then combine with scaling up fission use  We're a lot closer to those than we are to scaled economical fusion and we don't have time to waste. Sure some aspects of those arent great for the environment either, but they buy us a lot more time as their negative environmental impacts aren't as pressing on fucking us over as carbon emissions. 

Edited December 14, 2022 by Hermanator

[elfenix 34341]

7 hours ago, Buzzrock said:

It’s not just the storage capacity. Batteries are hard to make, bad for the environment and they all die. On demand fusion would easily trump wind and solar. 

"battery alternatives"

shit doesn't need to be lithium.  that's only really needed for mobile batteries.  for fixed installs there's a lot of other solutions in the works. 

[Samson's Wig 3195]

I can't think of another topic where there are so many varying opinions all equally certain of their infallibility.  Oh wait, sports, politics, religion, never mind carry on. 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21968]

Lithium-sulphur batteries could solve a lot of the downside to lithium-ion batteries 

[High Plains Drifter 11052]

 

this fusion experiment had one purpose: to get a single burst of high energy that was more than what was used to generate or ignite the burst. In those terms the experiment was a success. BUT!!! To power the grid, we need a continual output that is greater than the input--IOW, a self-sustaining reaction.

This particular case was different in that it used lasers to generate enough energy to fuse hydrogen ions, instead of magnetic fields. When those hydrogen ions fuse, they release tremendous amounts of energy by converting mass to energy. (Do you even E= mc^2 bro?) A "breakthrough" yes, but not one applicable in any way to generating green energy.

Unfortunately, fusion as a source of energy ain't happening anytime soon enough to have any effect on global warming. I'd bet your life savings on it.

 

 

Edited December 14, 2022 by High Plains Drifter

[Bevo 13602]

1 hour ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

this fusion experiment had one purpose: to get a single burst of high energy that was more than what was used to generate or ignite the burst. In those terms the experiment was a success. BUT!!! To power the grid, we need a continual output that is greater than the input--IOW, a self-sustaining reaction.

This particular case was different in that it used lasers to generate enough energy to fuse hydrogen ions, instead of magnetic fields. When those hydrogen ions fuse, they release tremendous amounts of energy by converting mass to energy. (Do you even E= mc^2 bro?) A "breakthrough" yes, but not one applicable in any way to generating green energy.

Unfortunately, fusion as a source of energy ain't happening anytime soon enough to have any effect on global warming. I'd bet your life savings on it.

 

 

I have an idea, but I'll need some money.

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

Einstein wrote FDR in 1939 about uranium’s potential.  In 1945 we had a bomb.  JFK said we gotta get to the moon in this decade, 8 years later we did.  We should be serious about this. 

[Parliament 14344]

So can we weaponize this new way of fusion?  ie, make a thermonuclear bomb that doesn't need a fission trigger?  Would make nuclear war WAY more environmentally safe.

[Victorious1 167]

let me know when it's capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts with the flux capacitor in our cars.

[Brisketexan 105457]

43 minutes ago, Parliament said:

So can we weaponize this new way of fusion?  ie, make a thermonuclear bomb that doesn't need a fission trigger?  Would make nuclear war WAY more environmentally safe.

If a technology can be used to either 1) kill people or 2) disseminate porn, rest assured, it will get fast-tracked.

[Dahobbs 17703]

On 12/14/2022 at 12:41 AM, AeroHorn said:

Solar and wind are cheap (cheapest?), easily deployable and can be scaled from a power plant to powering a calculator. The only thing needed is storage, which is incrementally improving. If some of the many battery alternatives for large energy storage become mainstream, all other energy options become mostly strategic and for ancillary reasons rather than economic ones.

Additionally, there is no particular reason that renewables have to power 100% of the grid. If you get to 70-80%, natural gas + carbon capture is perfectly acceptable and likely the most economical approach.

On 12/14/2022 at 7:37 AM, Buzzrock said:

It’s not just the storage capacity. Batteries are hard to make, bad for the environment and they all die. On demand fusion would easily trump wind and solar. 

The first part is an extreme exaggeration. Any industrial production is going to be bad for the environment on some level. But the negative environmental effects of battery production can be mitigated, and that is actively happening. And on demand fusion trumping wind and solar from an economics perspective is hardly obvious.  When/if we get to the point of being able to create an actual fusion power plant, I guarantee that solar and wind energy will still be cheaper on per mwh generated for decades after that, if not functionally forever. 

Also, see below

19 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

this fusion experiment had one purpose: to get a single burst of high energy that was more than what was used to generate or ignite the burst. In those terms the experiment was a success. BUT!!! To power the grid, we need a continual output that is greater than the input--IOW, a self-sustaining reaction.

This particular case was different in that it used lasers to generate enough energy to fuse hydrogen ions, instead of magnetic fields. When those hydrogen ions fuse, they release tremendous amounts of energy by converting mass to energy. (Do you even E= mc^2 bro?) A "breakthrough" yes, but not one applicable in any way to generating green energy.

Unfortunately, fusion as a source of energy ain't happening anytime soon enough to have any effect on global warming. I'd bet your life savings on it.

Yeah, this is a cool breakthrough. But, it really doesn't bring us any closer to practical fusion powerplants. For this particular experiment what they accomplished is getting more energy out of the fusion reaction than was imparted into the system by the laser. However, the laser itself is incredibly inefficient. The total energy required to run the laser was 100 times more than what was produced by the reaction. Keep in mind, the purpose of the NIF is to allow us to continue researching the physics of nuclear weapons while complying with the test ban treaty. It isn't designed to demonstrate the feasibility of a fusion powerplant, and the inertial confinement method it uses is pretty well acknowledged as a dead-end in terms of creating a powerplant. But, that doesn't mean we can't learn and do cool physics things with it. This is definitely an important scientific moment. But it doesn't mean that fusion power plants are around the corner.

 

[Buzzrock 14950]

OK, deal. I bet you my net worth against yours that when we have actual fusion power plants they will be functionally cheaper than wind and solar sometime short of forever.

[Dahobbs 17703]

19 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

OK, deal. I bet you my net worth against yours that when we have actual fusion power plants they will be functionally cheaper than wind and solar sometime short of forever.

Bet. 

[jeevsie 3740]

22 hours ago, elfenix said:

"battery alternatives"

shit doesn't need to be lithium.  that's only really needed for mobile batteries.  for fixed installs there's a lot of other solutions in the works. 

Get Dr Goodenough on it.  He'll solve it.

[bernorange 8367]

I didn't see this thread when I posted about the topic in the Nerdz forum.

https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/topic/28360-fusion-research-breakthrough/

 

 

 

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

you don't get credits for referrals or anything

[Cacti 191]

11 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

This is definitely an important scientific moment. But it doesn't mean that fusion power plants are around the corner.

Concerning the recent nuclear fusion breakthrough, Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct and a former chief energy technologist at Lawrence Livermore, said:

“This will not contribute meaningfully to climate abatement in the next 20-30 years”....“This the difference between lighting a match and building a gas turbine.”

 

[Guest]

12 hours ago, Cacti said:

Concerning the recent nuclear fusion breakthrough, Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct and a former chief energy technologist at Lawrence Livermore, said:

“This will not contribute meaningfully to climate abatement in the next 20-30 years”....“This the difference between lighting a match and building a gas turbine.”

 

Fusion has so many technical and commercial obstacles to overcome to be a viable grid scale solution that no realistic timeline can be given on when it might be available. All that can be said it that it is still decades away.  Here are two videos that give more details:

 

 

Start at 1:30 on this one:

 

[Post Oak 20295]

60 minutes from last Sunday

 

 

 

[ClubWhatever 12159]

A bunch of hype from the reporter and then at 10:00 he squeezes in a kind of important footnote: oh by the way, the net energy production was actually massively negative.  

[Revolution512 1495]

60 minutes is fucking terrible and has been for years.

[SHOOTER12 8836]

On 12/12/2022 at 11:23 AM, Macanudo said:

Lube.  Don't forget lube.

Yeah, because without it,  someones mom would go up in flames. 

[bernorange 8367]

Quote

... Unlike today's nuclear plants, which split atoms apart, fusing them is many times more powerful, with little long-term radiation. And it's easy to turn off, so no meltdowns. But getting from the first ignition to a powerplant will be hard.

Scott Pelley: How many shots do you take in a day?

Tammy Ma: We take, on average, a little more than one shot per day.  

Scott Pelley: If this was theoretically a commercial power plant, how many shots a day would be required?

Tammy Ma: Approximately ten shots per second would be required. And the other big challenge, of course, is not just increasing the repetition rate, but also getting the gain out of the targets to go up to about a factor of 100.

Not only would the reactions have to produce 100 times more energy, but a power plant would need 900,000 perfect diamond shells a day. Also, the lasers would have to be much more efficient. Remember, December's breakthrough put two units of energy in and got three out? Well, it took 300 units of power to fire the lasers. By that standard, it was 300 in, three out. That detail was not front and center at the Department of Energy's December news conference which fused the advance with an unlikely timeline.
...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nuclear-fusion-60-minutes-2023-01-15/