Fusion development
Discussion
Looks like the long lived ‘in 30 years’ might be getting closer. Huge potential and surely worth the investment for the (potential) reward? Proof of concept, and also less tritium contam with new fusion concepts…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-603...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-603...
We're going to need to crack fusion if we're going to survive as a species. Fossil fuels are going to effectively run out. If we switched to Uranium, it would last maybe 100 years unless we can crack breeders (so far a dismal failure), and renewables are unreliable. We still have absolutely no solution to providing reliable power at a societal scale with renewables.
The only game in town in 2100 has to be fusion. Right now, we should be throwing everything at it, forget the billions on stupid net zero projects, invest the lot in fusion.
Say in 30 years (hah) we have properly engineered fusion systems - we would literally have all the energy we could use, and more besides. If you had water (and not very much of it), you can have fusion. Who needs complex and expensive heating systems when you have fusion and you can just run a resistive element because it doesn't matter. All the inefficiencies of hydrogen count for nothing, you've got unlimited energy, who cares about the efficiency. Pretty much every resource intensive "green" solution just gets thrown away at this point.
Net zero and similar b
ks will get us a tiny bit further forward, but we end up in a dead end. Fusion is the only option we have.
The only game in town in 2100 has to be fusion. Right now, we should be throwing everything at it, forget the billions on stupid net zero projects, invest the lot in fusion.
Say in 30 years (hah) we have properly engineered fusion systems - we would literally have all the energy we could use, and more besides. If you had water (and not very much of it), you can have fusion. Who needs complex and expensive heating systems when you have fusion and you can just run a resistive element because it doesn't matter. All the inefficiencies of hydrogen count for nothing, you've got unlimited energy, who cares about the efficiency. Pretty much every resource intensive "green" solution just gets thrown away at this point.
Net zero and similar b
ks will get us a tiny bit further forward, but we end up in a dead end. Fusion is the only option we have.rxe said:
We're going to need to crack fusion if we're going to survive as a species. Fossil fuels are going to effectively run out. If we switched to Uranium, it would last maybe 100 years unless we can crack breeders (so far a dismal failure), and renewables are unreliable. We still have absolutely no solution to providing reliable power at a societal scale with renewables.
The only game in town in 2100 has to be fusion. Right now, we should be throwing everything at it, forget the billions on stupid net zero projects, invest the lot in fusion.
Say in 30 years (hah) we have properly engineered fusion systems - we would literally have all the energy we could use, and more besides. If you had water (and not very much of it), you can have fusion. Who needs complex and expensive heating systems when you have fusion and you can just run a resistive element because it doesn't matter. All the inefficiencies of hydrogen count for nothing, you've got unlimited energy, who cares about the efficiency. Pretty much every resource intensive "green" solution just gets thrown away at this point.
Net zero and similar bks will get us a tiny bit further forward, but we end up in a dead end. Fusion is the only option we have.
There's more uranium than that, but there's also enough thorium on earth to run humanity for thousands of years. Fusion would be nice but it's certainly not necessary and current forecasts imply it will be very expensive so you would still be seeking energy efficiency.The only game in town in 2100 has to be fusion. Right now, we should be throwing everything at it, forget the billions on stupid net zero projects, invest the lot in fusion.
Say in 30 years (hah) we have properly engineered fusion systems - we would literally have all the energy we could use, and more besides. If you had water (and not very much of it), you can have fusion. Who needs complex and expensive heating systems when you have fusion and you can just run a resistive element because it doesn't matter. All the inefficiencies of hydrogen count for nothing, you've got unlimited energy, who cares about the efficiency. Pretty much every resource intensive "green" solution just gets thrown away at this point.
Net zero and similar b
ks will get us a tiny bit further forward, but we end up in a dead end. Fusion is the only option we have.Thorium and cool things like pebble bed reactors are great, but we don’t have any commercial designs, and we really still haven’t solved the problem of reprocessing - we can do it, but it is a filthy, dangerous and expensive business. Hardly anyone is building new fission today, in most places, they’re busy closing them down. I don’t agree with that, but it is the political reality. That may change when the lights go out, but at that point we have to train a new generation of nuclear engineers, build the reactors, and we still haven’t solved the (rather intractable) problems underlying the technology. I don’t see any material “breakthroughs” in reprocessing unless we manage to change some laws of physics.
The engineering cost falls away with time. If you went back to the 1900s and showed them an oil fired powerstation from the 70s, they’d look at the tubines and suck their teeth at the engineering costs of build and maintenance. Roll on a few decades, and the the only material cost of operation is the fuel. We’re quite good at this sort of thing as a species.
The engineering cost falls away with time. If you went back to the 1900s and showed them an oil fired powerstation from the 70s, they’d look at the tubines and suck their teeth at the engineering costs of build and maintenance. Roll on a few decades, and the the only material cost of operation is the fuel. We’re quite good at this sort of thing as a species.
We know how to build fission plants, they work and they're safe; the main reason for the expense is not building any for 30 years, exacerbated by a safety framework predicated on LNT, which is at best deeply flawed. Current reprocessing tech is expensive and a bit rubbish, high time the move to molten salt processes was made. We don't know how to build a fusion plant and we've no idea what it will cost or when it will be available; that's no choice at all.
Oh, I agree that LNT is bks, it is the same maths behind “40,000 people a year are dying of diesel”, and I’ve posted about it loads of times. Unfortunately, fission is a bust. We know how to build the plants, and make them safe, but we’re really struggling with the disposal, and no amount of theoretically better designs (MSRs, Pebble Bed etc) alters the fact that the outputs are radioactive as hell and will remain so for thousands of years.
But the public won’t stand for it or vote for it. This unfortunate, but until the lights start going out, they’re not going to change their mind.
Fusion doesn’t need reprocessing, depending on the containment material, doesn’t leave a massive clean up operation and ideally runs on Hydrogen. We just have to put the investment in to make it happen.
ks, it is the same maths behind “40,000 people a year are dying of diesel”, and I’ve posted about it loads of times. Unfortunately, fission is a bust. We know how to build the plants, and make them safe, but we’re really struggling with the disposal, and no amount of theoretically better designs (MSRs, Pebble Bed etc) alters the fact that the outputs are radioactive as hell and will remain so for thousands of years. But the public won’t stand for it or vote for it. This unfortunate, but until the lights start going out, they’re not going to change their mind.
Fusion doesn’t need reprocessing, depending on the containment material, doesn’t leave a massive clean up operation and ideally runs on Hydrogen. We just have to put the investment in to make it happen.
One may like to consider how wise it is to stop UK research into this at the end of ’23 and start decommissioning the Culham site. It is thought that the science carries across to ITER, but if ITER has problems and the physics doesn’t work as intended, where does one go to do some experiments to find some reasons why?
There’s quite a bit of work going on for potential projects for JET afterwards ’24 and beyond, called, imaginatively enough on site “Jet24”.
However, there is more research going on with MAST https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/research/mast-upgrade/
If you live in the area-ish a visit is always worthwhile if CCFE are going to run them in ’22.
https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/about-ccfe/visit-ccfe/
You may even get to meet me – what a privilege!
There’s quite a bit of work going on for potential projects for JET afterwards ’24 and beyond, called, imaginatively enough on site “Jet24”.
However, there is more research going on with MAST https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/research/mast-upgrade/
If you live in the area-ish a visit is always worthwhile if CCFE are going to run them in ’22.
https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/about-ccfe/visit-ccfe/
You may even get to meet me – what a privilege!
rxe said:
We're going to need to crack fusion if we're going to survive as a species. Right now, we should be throwing everything at it, forget the billions on stupid net zero projects, invest the lot in fusion.
Sounds good, but we'd look rather silly if we spend 30 years trying that and it doesn't work.As regards species survival the energy situation is, I fear, irrelevant. The biggest problem of all is simply going to become too many people on the planet. It's the problem staring us in the face that no amount of clean energy can ever address and that nobody dares to mention.
Panamax said:
Sounds good, but we'd look rather silly if we spend 30 years trying that and it doesn't work.
As regards species survival the energy situation is, I fear, irrelevant. The biggest problem of all is simply going to become too many people on the planet. It's the problem staring us in the face that no amount of clean energy can ever address and that nobody dares to mention.
Really? Nobody has suggested overpopulation is an issue? It's a positive obsession with some, despite the fact that the 'problem' is going to level out of it's own accord in the next few decades.As regards species survival the energy situation is, I fear, irrelevant. The biggest problem of all is simply going to become too many people on the planet. It's the problem staring us in the face that no amount of clean energy can ever address and that nobody dares to mention.
rxe said:
We're going to need to crack fusion if we're going to survive as a species. Fossil fuels are going to effectively run out. If we switched to Uranium, it would last maybe 100 years unless we can crack breeders (so far a dismal failure), and renewables are unreliable. We still have absolutely no solution to providing reliable power at a societal scale with renewables.
The only game in town in 2100 has to be fusion. Right now, we should be throwing everything at it, forget the billions on stupid net zero projects, invest the lot in fusion.
Say in 30 years (hah) we have properly engineered fusion systems - we would literally have all the energy we could use, and more besides. If you had water (and not very much of it), you can have fusion. Who needs complex and expensive heating systems when you have fusion and you can just run a resistive element because it doesn't matter. All the inefficiencies of hydrogen count for nothing, you've got unlimited energy, who cares about the efficiency. Pretty much every resource intensive "green" solution just gets thrown away at this point.
Net zero and similar bks will get us a tiny bit further forward, but we end up in a dead end. Fusion is the only option we have.
What happens if we can't crack fusion?The only game in town in 2100 has to be fusion. Right now, we should be throwing everything at it, forget the billions on stupid net zero projects, invest the lot in fusion.
Say in 30 years (hah) we have properly engineered fusion systems - we would literally have all the energy we could use, and more besides. If you had water (and not very much of it), you can have fusion. Who needs complex and expensive heating systems when you have fusion and you can just run a resistive element because it doesn't matter. All the inefficiencies of hydrogen count for nothing, you've got unlimited energy, who cares about the efficiency. Pretty much every resource intensive "green" solution just gets thrown away at this point.
Net zero and similar b
ks will get us a tiny bit further forward, but we end up in a dead end. Fusion is the only option we have.
Panamax said:
As regards species survival the energy situation is, I fear, irrelevant. The biggest problem of all is simply going to become too many people on the planet. It's the problem staring us in the face that no amount of clean energy can ever address and that nobody dares to mention.
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