Excluding all the ancillary services, including the lasers that maintained the plasma, which was the principle part of this latest test.
Factoring everything in, they’re at about 15% return.
This is still very good for this stage, but the publications are grossly misleading.
If anything has been consistent about fusion its always them desperately trying to spin babysteps and monumental leaps forward and trying to make themselves seem super clean and safe especially compared to fission.
If anything has been consistent about fusion its always them desperately trying to spin babysteps and monumental leaps forward
That’s usually the media outlets sensationalising the results to the point where the articles are grossly misleading.
trying to make themselves seem super clean and safe especially compared to fission.
That’s just a fact, no need to try. The Fusion process is inherently safe the radioactive byproducts are generally short lived and easier to handle.
Fusion is not inherently safe. It has significantly higher rate of neutron discharge for the enegy produced which can damage the reactor vessel and potential to cause nonfuel material to become radioactive.
Ontop of any power disruption of the system has the potential for radioactive plasma to escape with nothing even remotely equivalent of a SCRAM to bring it back under control.
The only reason fusion appears safe right now is because its all still developmental phase and any issues are being handwaved as prototyping issues and not treated like the actual potential catastrophes they are.
Sigh, here we go, the propaganda is already starting lol
The total mass of reactants in the fusion chamber is below milligram, some of which is bound in stable isotopes. Even if all of it escaped, it would be far from catastrophic.
The reaction itself cannot run away on its own because it requires a delicate balance in temperature and density, which will be immediately disturbed if there was a breach in containment.The walls will be activated by neutrons, but short of blowing the reactor up, there’s not much chance of materials escaping in a significant amount to pose a danger.
Just for comparison: The nuclear safety requirements of a fusion reactor are ballpark those of the radiology department in your local hospital: An accident will give you, if you’re unlucky, a dose on the order of a dental x-ray. Decommissioning involves letting it sit there for 100years until it has cooled down to ambient radioactivity levels, if you’re cheeky you could send it to a place where the natural radiation levels are higher and declare it cool much faster.
Why does noone talk about those ludicrously strong magnet fields and gigantic vacuum vessels? You’re standing right next to a massive volume of practically nothing and are worried that something leaks out?
If publications keep misreporting your work, stop talking to them, and see different publications with a stronger commitment to the truth.
but the publications are grossly misleading.
I think you’re only referencing the headline, the article itself clearly states what you said
Is the headline not part of an article?
When I see “publication” I assume it’s the actual scientific paper and not the article reporting on said paper.
That’s a great point. I absolutely agree with you on that.
It’s easier to nitpick than it is to interact with the actual argument.
I agree with you. The headline is misleading, and I think it devalues the article.
What was your question? I only read “is the” and thought I could base my response off of only that.
Generally no
Lol ok
When one says a publication is grossly misleading, it certainly implies the entire publication
Often the author doesn’t write he headline. Not sure it matters but most a bit of info.
You’re not wrong, but we also should stop excusing, normalizing, and accepting wildly exaggerated for sales purposes titles of articles.
Why have we accepted the standard of misleading headlines? “Oh well you didn’t read the article, I guess you and 90% of eyeballs get to be fundamentally misinformed” is an unhinged take.
I never said a misleading headline was acceptable. I said the publication is not misleading and that it covers the criticisms dude up above was leveling.
The headline is part of the publication though.
No, this is a popular science article, not an actual publication.
It is misleading, for someone to be misleading they must mislead, and the headline misleads.
“article” vs “publication”
Two different things.
The link takes you to an article. Publications are in actual scientific journals, not intended for popular consumption.
That’s what I came to the comments to find. Thank you. Would have been much bigger news if it was net energy positive.
15% return is still net energy positive isn’t it? Or is that not 15% above the input?
From another article: “In an experiment on 5 December, the lab’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) fusion reactor generated a power output of 3.15 megajoules from a laser power output of 2.05 megajoules – a gain of around 150 per cent. However, this is far outweighed by the roughly 300 megajoules drawn from the electrical grid to power the lasers in the first place.”
That’s worded strangely (powering the lasers takes both 300 and 2.05 megajoules?) but oof
Powering the laser takes 300 MJ but the actual laser power (the energy in the light) is only 2.05 MJ. The rest of the energy is lost to heat and other inefficiencies. If the laser could be created with 100% efficiency then the input energy would also be 2.05 MJ.
Energy can be measured as occurring in different physical phenomena. There is energy in sound waves/packets, energy in light waves/packets, energy in matter, etc.
The 300 MJ number refers to the electrical energy in the form of electromagnetic fields carried specifically through solid conductors via electron movement along the conductors.
The 2.05 MJ number refers to the radiative energy in the form of electromagnetic fields sent specifically through free space/a vacuum (I presume; I didn’t read the article, so maybe the laser medium was a vacuum or something else) via photons/waves. No electrons, aside from those in the lasers that create the photons in the first place.
So there is a conversion from electric to radiative energy here.
Start Edit:
And as another commenter said, in this conversion there are losses because materials aren’t perfect.
:End Edit
If the 3 MJ radiant energy from the nuclear material was then converted back into electric energy via steam processes, we’d get a comparable number compared to the 300 one.
This is also why you see nuclear/CSP plants quoted in MWt and MWe: there is a conversion that takes place from thermal energy (vibrations of atoms/compounds) into electric energy.
I can’t read the full article (paywalled for me) but it references the National Ignition Facility so the way it goes is super lasers blast a tiny hydrogen thing and that creates a tiny bit of fusion that releases the energy. The energy of the laser blast is what’s being called the input and the fusion energy released the output. What is misleading is that a greater amount of energy was used create the laser blast than the laser blast itself outputs. If you consider the energy that went into creating the laser blast the input (rather than the laser blast itself), then it’s usually not a net positive energy release.
What other energy are you referring to? Like warming up the laser?
pixelscript@lemmy.ml got it, but basically lasers are pretty inefficient. The article I just found said (in a different run of this facility) they put 400MJ into the laser to get 2.5MJ out of it. So that makes the whole firing system what, 0.6% efficient? Your fusion reaction would have to give more than 400MJ to truly be in the positive for this particular setup/method, but again this facility is a research one and not meant to generate power - there isn’t even a way to harness/collect it here.
Oh so the laser’s generating mostly heat and a little coherent radiation, and they’re only referring to the coherent radiation as the “energy input” to the process.
Hmm. Kinda sketch.
Especially because that’s not trivial. If we have no way of obtaining laser light other than that process, and the laser is the only way to feed the fusion reactor, then that’s 100% on the balance books of this process.
Remember when incandescent light bulbs were the norm? They worked by sending full line voltage through a tiny tungsten wire that would get so hot that it glows, making some light, but 95% of the energy that gets consumed is frittered away as heat? The high-power lasers needed to make fusion happen are a lot like that.
I believe all this article is saying is that 15% more energy than what came out of the lasers as useful laser light was liberated in the reaction.This completely ignores the energy it took to power those massively inefficient lasers.
I think it also ignores the fact that the 15% more energy liberated wasn’t actually, like, harnessed by a generator. I believe (and I may be wrong) this was testing only the reaction itself. Actually hooking that up to a turbine and using it to create energy that is cost competitive with contemporary sources is still a completely unsolved problem.
Thx. Rip tho
The publications are not misleading, just these headlines.
I want to add that experimental reactors used for scientific research might never become net energy positive and that would be fine. Their purpose isn’t to generate profit, it’s to learn more about the physics, so it will be more valuable for them to be adaptable than efficient.
However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t take a configuration that has been shown to have potential and make a reactor that is more efficient than adaptable and use that to generate power for the electrical grid.
Basically, they have two different purposes.
Absolutely. Also, the fact that the reactor was only running for a short time plays a part. Usually there is a significant energy cost in starting and stopping, which is offset by running for a long time. However, these reactors are not designed for continued running.
It’s all a process of development, and even though the article is perhaps a little sensationalist, they’re making good progress.
We’ll probably be able to harvest solar power from space then beam it to Earth in a practical way first, than nuclear fusion becomes practical.
What?
Basically, the idea is to build orbital solar farms (where is always sunny), then beam the energy produced back to the ground with microwave transmitters and ground recievers. It’s technically feasible, unlike fusion we have all the technology needed to do it right now. However, it’s cost and resource prohibitive. The US government studied building such a system in the 1970-80’s after the energy crisis. We could do it, but building it would take a generation to get running and about double the US’s current military annual budget. Launch costs are coming down since then, but the industrialization of space and the moon will take generations and would need to be an international effort to have any chance of success.
You know, for a bunch of people who crave power, politicians sure don’t seem too keen on harnessing it.
I’m not sure what comment to reply to, but I feel obligated to remind people that the sun is a fusion reaction.
solar powergravity confinement fusion
There is a very efficient way to beam solar power from space. It is called light.
no stop
The nice thing about space is that there isn’t any weather up there to make the solar panels dirty etc. There’s also a lot of space, which solar panels need a lot of.
The nice thing about space is that there isn’t any weather up there to make the solar panels dirty etc.
There’s a lot of junk though can that can damage those panels.
Not at the legrange point! Yet, anyway
Not at the legrange point! Yet, anyway
Actually, that’s not true. The latest telescope we sent up there has been getting damaged from the junk at that point.
Space Lane cleaner was going to become a thing at some point anyway…
And we can position a bunch over the poles to help stave off climate change.
The poles aren’t really the place that need that the most.
You wouldn’t think so but them staying super cold helps stabilize a large chunk of our climate. Also throwing shade on arable land isn’t great for food production.
They’re already really reflective and don’t get much light.
They’re losing reflectiveness as they lose ice and it’s one of the major drivers of climate change.
How would you move the power down to earth?
Microwave transmission is what’s usually said, then someone says anything in the beam’s path will get zapped, then it’s pointed out the energy density isn’t that high. Just wanted to shortcut that for ya
But what if I want to zap anything in the beam’s path?
Then a meddlesome British agent will interfere.
Well at least I still have my cat.
And my moon laser
Funny thing is, no matter how you arrange to do that it becomes a de-facto death ray. Stick a terawatt of solar panels in space, use the power to shine a laser/maser down to earth, then build a station to turn the laser power back to electricity? Great, until some hacker figures out how to control where the laser is pointed. Then you get Dr. Evil holding the world for ransom.
Nah it’s not really bad at all:
The use of microwave transmission of power has been the most controversial issue in considering any SPS design. At the Earth’s surface, a suggested microwave beam would have a maximum intensity at its center, of 23 mW/cm2 (less than 1/4 the solar irradiation constant), and an intensity of less than 1 mW/cm2 outside the rectenna fenceline (the receiver’s perimeter). These compare with current United States Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) workplace exposure limits for microwaves, which are 10 mW/cm2,[original research?] - the limit itself being expressed in voluntary terms and ruled unenforceable for Federal OSHA enforcement purposes.[citation needed] A beam of this intensity is therefore at its center, of a similar magnitude to current safe workplace levels, even for long term or indefinite exposure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power?wprov=sfla1
Lasers
Long cable
Or just charge up car batteries and drop them.
Isn’t there already a tesla up there?
Checkmate, Elon haters
We need to make sure we knot it at the joins so it doesn’t get accidentally disconnected.
How would you move the power down to earth?
Last time I read up on it it was via converting the energy into microwaves and beaming it down.
I think masers (microwave lasers) are the new theory for achieving this, previously it was beaming microwave down much like your microwave oven beams your food.
It’s not that new. Sim City 2000 included a power plant that was just a receiving dish for a maser
We dont need to collect it in space, just direct more of it to certain ground based collectors?
Increasing solar incidence will increase the planet’s temperature.
So will any other space collection of power.
what if we burn the co2 away
We might be able to burn this atmosphere away yet!
It’s not efficient, a huge amount of it gets diffused or absorbed
It doesn’t need to be efficient. Capture all the light that hits earth for 5 minutes and that’s the world energy demand for a year.
How would you store it though?
Black hole
solar george
Solar Robert
Usually In plants and algae.
Wow, you’re right! We should just build a Dyson sphere around the sun. 100% efficiency achieved. What could possibly go wrong?
Did you understand the person you respond to as saying its inefficient because the sun shines in other directions than the array proposed?
I’m pretty sure the person talked specifically about the beam from the array to earth being inefficient.I was joking, but apparently nobody picked up on my snarky sarcasm. Disregard.
Where did I say that?
It’s not efficient, a huge amount of it gets diffused or absorbed
The amount that’s left over though is more than enough, especially with today panels which only convert a very small percentage of that remaining energy.
As the panels improve even more they’ll be a very large energy surplus, even with how much solar light actually gets through the atmosphere.
We’ll probably be able to harvest solar power from space then beam it to Earth in a practical way first, than nuclear fusion becomes practical.
You mean solar panels?
Wait… Beam solar energy from space? That’s what the sun does?
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Not me, but I think fusion is not a 1:1 equivalent to the hyperloop.
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Just say what you want to say instead of riddling us with your smug responses.
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Nobody’s going to look for another top level comment that’s further down
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The reason is your comment was shortsighted and contrarian with no backing for the claim.
It was doomed from the beginning, but it was just meant to delay or supercede the HSR proposal in California. But what does that have to do with this post?
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Ehhhh, not really. This is a pretty common belief about the Hyperloop. A couple of years ago, someone released a book claiming they had private interviews with Musk back in the early 2010’s where he admitted to trying to delay HSR. Here’s an article explaining it: https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460
The reason this is not conspiratorial thinking is that automakers have a long history in the US of dismantling, lobbying against, and even physically preventing railways from being developed. Elon Musk, especially at that time, was an automaker making claims in order to directly counter proposed high speed rail.
Yes, it was in California, but the intended reasoning is that if it succeeds in California it may be expanded upon elsewhere, meaning there would be less reliance on cars.
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I’m not making the claim myself, just explaining it is a bit different than engaging in what we colloquially understand to be conspiratorial thinking. I would argue it falls under that category in the most broad, objective sense, but I would also argue that the common belief about conspiratorial thinking is that it is when someone believes demonstrably false information.
The difference is that most conspiratorial thinking is believing something despite overwhelming evidence of the contrary while this situation is believing something despite a lack of conclusive, objective evidence (that being no official statement from Musk or investigation into him about this). There is a lack of overwhelming evidence in support of Musk.
You seem to be implying that fusion is a gimmick of an idea by comparing it to Hyperloop which was nothing but that.
Fusion is a mechanism which has been providing humanity with energy from the first moments in the form of the sun. It’s a well known functional form of energy generation. The struggle isn’t whether or not it could possibly work, but just to make it practical enough to make it work.
This isn’t even necessarily about a single company promising that they have an idea that may work, this is an example of it functioning in some capacity.
Your comparison is simply arbitrary.
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I didn’t miss it, I just didn’t search through your comment history to find your own arguments for you. Consider editing the actual top level comment if you want to use these arguments without retyping them.
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Lol what? This is a crazy take. I’m not reading you’re comment history to make sense of a single comment
It’s not my job to do either of those things. It may have been in your interest to make a comprehensible point though.
Nobody’s at work here.
To me it’s not so much about it being your job, as the fact you aren’t willing to just say it again indicates you don’t really enjoy this topic.
What in tarnation? You literally did no such thing in this thread. You expect people to go find your comments?
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While you’re at it, figure out how a thread works. And maybe tack on some social awareness.
I think it won’t be in our lifetimes, if ever. Its a cool idea though
Fusion reactor SLAMS surprised scientists with it’s INCREDIBLE output
Scientists RIP stubborn atoms for bad faith energy negotiation policy.
You’ll never believe what they do next!
The end 😂😂😂
What happens in the reaction at the 69th microsecond will shock you!
Fusion engine stuns EV industry!
With this weird little device you can do that at home I’m 90 seconds!
No, really, you can.
Why are so many people talking about nuclear fission waste here?
We already got plenty of nuclear fusion output with no energy input on our part. But folks dont want solar panels
*minus the energy needed to make, maintain, and replace solar panels.
I support more solar installations, just calling out it isn’t free power.
As more solar is installed, the less power input we need to provide. There will be a point where all solar power required to make a solar panel will be produced by solar panels
Right so
No energy input on our part
Is clearly false
I give the comment a pass because it’s pretty obvious hyperbole
As more solar panels are installed, more material and maintenance are required. They deteriorate over time, and require large physical areas.
I guess at that point, each panel needs to be extremely efficient to limit the space, extremely durable, made of cheap materials, easily recyclable into another panel.
Solartards don’t realise that the problem with solar is storage and sun availability. It’s a fantastic idea on paper but unless you’re in an tropical country, good luck surviving winters.
There are plausible technical designs to make huge batteries out of dirt / dirt cheap materials (e.g. liquid metal battery but there are others). I wonder how that compares to building other power plants. The problem is that humanity is just too stupid to live.
Yes, as evidenced by humans not living
WHAT? This is completely new information that nobody has filled journals with papers working out solutions.
Or bombs. They have fusion versions of those with a great deal more output than input but they’re not really fond of those either.
True, but that’s not reliable source of energy though, specially during short and cloudy winter days when it’s most needed. Look what happened in Germany and how they became on if the biggest European polluters. The key ingredient missing is energy storage. Once that’s solved, solar panels would become much more useful.
We could massively subsidize home battery storage and this wouldn’t be an issue at all. Microgrids are the future anyway. The only reason why storage is an issue now is because it needs to be centralized. Once we get away from that tons of new possibilities open up.
Home batteries are expensive and take a lot of place. Also they won’t last more than a day. Imagine winter time with short cloudy days. Realistically you need at least a month worth of energy storage and even then you need sun to recharge it. They would distribute energy consumption better though by charging during night.
We have all the technology for energy storage we need, it just needs to be built. Theres gravity storage like pumped hydro, pressure storage, thermal storage, flywheels.
Well, no. Sadly we don’t. At least not in the range needed. All of these require either specific geographic relief, something really huge, too expensive or combination. Perhaps the most promising is the green hydrogen, but then again, we have yet to see it at such scale. I’d love to be wrong, though.
something really huge
yeah, we use a lot of energy, absolutely every form of energy production we have involves really huge things. Massive mines, dams, pipelines, oil rigs, nuclear cooling towers, fossil fuel power plants, oil tankers. They just have to be built. we can excavate dams, build solid weight lifting facilities, molten salt storage, make arrays of flywheels. There’s a ton of answers to energy storage already, they dont involve resources with any kind of scarcity, they just have to be built.
Big construction involves environmental concerns, that’s why we don’t have many new dams nowadays
Boi i better see you raising a fuss over that infrastructure bill
What is with peoples insistence that we only ever use one kind of power generation?
Wind, solar, fusion, fission, hydro, they all have their uses. Why limit yourself like some kind of console fanboy?
Fusion is self sustained and highly scalable.
If it was practical we wouldn’t need the other forms, except for places not serviced by electrical grids.
Fission takes a long time to build and finance. It hasn’t been invested enough in. We need more green energy to replace fossil fuels faster than governments can get fusion plants up. That’s why wind, solar and hydro are and should be the preference.
Hydro needs the right geography. Solar and wind need the right local weather. Solar great in a California desert, but terrible in Scotland where wind and hydro are very effective.
There some cases where a specific technology is the best and clearest option. But when fission becomes reliable, it will cover the vast majority of use cases in the highly Industrialised nations. Everything else will be niche.
Well as soon as I can get a fission reactor in my house I’ll give up on energy independence then.
That’s fair. Im big solar fanboy but if more people were fusion researchers the world wouldnt be a worse place.
Why limit yourself like some kind of console fanboy?
Propaganda by solar bros.
It’s only the solar bros doing this because you can sell solar to the average idiot. Most people can’t own other forms of clean energy generation directly.
I also have a suspicion that a lot of the renewables vs nuclear debate is stoked by fossil fuel interests
I hope it is not too late for the dawn of this new technology
If there was a working lab design with constant, net positive output announced tomorrow, then it would take ten years before we saw a commercialized version.
Still worth pursuing, but it’s not going to be our savior.
To need a savior we would need saving.
If you look at the UN predictions on climate change it’s gonna alter like 2% of our world, slowing us down slightly. It’s not going to kill us.
I saw the headline and thought “In what reality is that newsworthy? That actual seems really low for Fusion Power” and then I saw the actual return was closer to 15% and I thought “Now That is News. That’s incredible how little yield we’re getting from the most destructive force on earth. Should have made that the headline.”
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Nope
Awesome put a solar farm next to a nuclear fusion plant
That’s not how nuclear power works
I believe the general principal is giving such a device “seed energy” to get it started, then just feeding the power it produces back into itself. The only time you’d ever need that solar farm is to get it started.
You could also pump that energy into other fusion reactors to get “unlimited energy” so to speak.
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I think you’re wrong and furthermore, that your attitude is unsavory.
Shallow, and pedantic.
Shallow is debatable but what have I said that’s even remotely pedantic?
They were agreeing with you
Pretty sure they were not talking about you, but riffing on what you were saying.
Specifically, a Family Guy reference
Mmm, yes, shallow and pedantic.
Sounds like solid reasoning to me
ITER will probably work. It’ll be a long and expensive process, but it’ll work. Question is if something else gets there sooner and cheaper.
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I dunno. How do you get through life completely missing the point while getting hung up on minor issues?
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It already has?
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I mean … the article is literally what it’s about.
You’re being downvoted because you’re being a cynical contrarian.
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Saying nothing will ever work ever and nothing is ever good is not being skeptical.
The article you’re commenting on is the citation, you’re being cynical and acting in bad faith.
People disagree with you, I’d wager if you used a little more tact you might have more reasonable discussion.
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That’s because your comment is on a post that is literally one of the sources you’d get. More efficiency, overcoming total input, making it a generator, etc are all ancillary.
The technology exists. There’s huge funding going into it recently. Europe’s ITER project is working towards it also, but in a different way.
The only major issue faced right now is how to increase the efficiency.
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Citation?
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No, just the rate of improvement in efficiency of fusion reactors.
It is being surmounted now. Slowly but surely, it’s happening. And progress is accelerating also.
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November 1, 1952. Enewetak Atoll.
I mean, it’s what the whole article is about. If you mean successfully generating sustainable electricity from fusion then yeah, maybe. Maybe not. People said flight was impossible too, you never know.
We’ve harnessed the power of fusion in nuclear weapons for decades already.
We’ve literally put it in a small container.
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Reminds me of the Librarian in W40K, “An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.”
Combined with actual progress and scientific methods “you never know” is how you fly helicopters on other planets too.
I’m all for skepticism but, like, how are you gonna hoodwink someone into nuclear fusion power? Can that even happen?
You’re calling the US National Ignition Facility at LLNI snake oil salesmen?
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Bro 😭
the reactor exist, isn’t comercially viable but it exist
Those crazy sons of bitches actually did it!
Can’t drink it though, tastes like burning.
Got 'em
No, using a bottle would be ridiculous, they use a reactor of course!
Tokamak is Russian for magnetic bottle and is one method being explored for thermonuclear fusion containment.
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I’ll bite. What problems are insurmountable?
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I read the whole thread and didn’t see you mention it. Anyways, there were some promising improvements on that a while ago with new shapes for the plasma to hold that are easier to contain. That’s also only an issue for reactors that use sustained plasma instead of short-fire bursts.
Yeah, but it’s not a literal bottle.
Well that depends what you think defines a bottle
You do understand ‘lifetime of man’ is the larger of those time frames, right?
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There was an article in 1902 about how ridiculous powered flight was and that humans would never be able to fly,
The next year the wright brothers achieved the first powered flight.
There was also an article in The mid 1960s that reaching the moon was at least a century away and that NASA wouldn’t achieve it’s goal until the late 21st century,
We had boots on the moon before the end of that decade.
We will “bottle the sun”, and we’ll do it before the turn of the century.Removed by mod
You fall under the former though. Have you actually looked into this at all or do you just feel that fusion is impossible and then bother all of us with that?
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The g-force problem is unimprovable-- humans themselves have a limit. The containment problem is not.
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Perhaps you didn’t understand me. I’m saying there’s a difference between a problem which cannot be reasonably solved (humans can only sustain X amount of g-force) and a problem which is merely difficult (plasma containment).
We’re actually closer than ever. If people like you ruled the world we would still have rock tools and would still be wearing animal skins.
Firstly, the energy output falls far short of what would be needed for a commercial reactor, barely creating enough to heat a bath. Worse than that, the ratio is calculated using the lasers’ output, but to create that 2.1 megajoules of energy, the lasers draw 500 trillion watts, which is more power than the output of the entire US national grid. So these experiments break even in a very narrow sense of the term.
It’s so refreshing to see an article at least mention the way these tests are measured are based on the energy just in the laser itself and not the total energy used.
Still, from an acorn grows a massive tree.
That, is not an illusion, Master Oogway.
Exactly. These tests aren’t meant to create a practical solution, but to provide knowledge and insight that a) it is possible and b) exactly what is necessary to make it happen, at a physical level. Before this, it (more out than in) was all theory, but now we’re got some hard data to work with.
That’s a big step we’ve been chasing for a long, long time.
Yeah, and a good sign is that the countries with money to invest in the race all seem to be convinced we’ve got the science right and that the engineering challenges are solvable. There have been so many records broken recently we’re getting towards the end of the mile stones, hopefully soon we’ll start hearing about self sustaining experiments with records for how long they ran
I agree it’s good that the article is not hyping up the idea that the world will now definitely be saved by fusion and so we can all therefore go on consuming all the energy we want.
There are still some sloppy things about the article that disappoint me though…
-
They seem to be implying that 500 TW is obviously much larger than 2.1 MJ… but without knowing how long the 500 TW is required for, this comparison is meaningless.
-
They imply that using more power than available from the grid is infeasible, but it evidently isn’t as they’ve done it multiple times - presumably by charging up local energy storage and releasing it quickly. Scaling this up is obviously a challenge though.
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The weird mix of metric prefixes (mega) and standard numbers (trillions) in a single sentence is a bit triggering - that might just be me though.
Electricity stuff is funny because it combines metric and imperial units sometimes to make bastard measurements
Huh? Whatchu talkin bout Willis?
Watt is a Joule per second
Volts, Amps, kWh, MJ… These are all metric.
Yeah electricity is weird because Americans use metric for it. And it’s that way because metric predates it
In a number of instances where there is not a standard in place already it is not uncommon to see metric measurements mixed with imperial or US customary measurements.
I’m not in any way shape or form claiming that ALL of it is mixed.
However what does actually happen is the a unit of measure might be mixed with a customary one and then that becomes the defacto measurement, you may see wire resistance shown as a mix of Ohms/1000ft.
I am not getting into an argument about the merits of metric, I’m on board, I am with you. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some silly oddballs.
Is their an imperial equivalent to ohm?
It might be the case that imperial resistance is ohm the same as metric. Metric uses ohm as it’s constituent with base units of metric, but imperial doesn’t abide by rules like that.
If you had to make a imperial equivalent to resistance, it would be a fraction of the resistance of the monarchs finger.
Until we actually electrocute a king there probably won’t be
Sssch don’t tell the Americans or they will try to wrangle in BTU in nuclear power plants
WE INVENTED IT AND BUH GAWD, WE WILL MEASURE IT IN MURICA UNITS!
Ignore how nonsensical BTUs are: Gonna shove energy and weight into a single measurement and it changes based on the initial temperature of the water.
Or HVAC uses tons of ice needed to cool something. Euroguys probably don’t have air conditioners, just that tilt window technology.
I do like the obscure AWG scale especially 0000
lol tilt windows
Y’all do know what BTU stands for, right?
British Thermal Units. It’s the energy needed to heat 1 lb of water 1 degree F.
The bad part is that no one bothered to set the starting temp of the water so there’s 5 separate standards for what the hell a BTU actually is, which makes it a really bad standard.
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Maybe one day we will produce a civilization capable of using technology as it comes out instead of one that decided to call it quits decades ago. Oh sure we got cellphones but we are still burning coal. Because nuclear is scary.
Because nuclear is scary.
Nuclear isn’t scary. It’s waste, on the other hand, is.
But you know, it’s not like we’ve not had multiple examples of nuclear power plants failing catastrophically and destroying things around them for miles, and for decades/centuries.
Having said that, if they did come out with new technology version of a nuclear power plant that is safe and that with a catastrophic failure does not harm the environment around itself then I would be all for it. I just don’t think the technology is there for that. I hear they’re working on it though.
Funnily enough, coal plants waste is infinitely more harmful than nuclear waste because the general public doesn’t see it as scary, so it’s barely regulated.
Funnily enough, coal plants waste is infinitely more harmful than nuclear waste because the general public doesn’t see it as scary, so it’s barely regulated.
Well part of it comes down to The China Syndrome versus the boiling the toad in a slowly boiling pot syndrome.
But most would agree coal dust is less harmful to a human body then radioactive dust. Yes, they’re both unhealthy, but one will kill you a lot faster than the other one will. People triage potential danger/harm to themselves on a daily basis.
And just to repeat myself…
My hopes are on fusion and solar/battery.
Nuclear fusion does make this prospect potentially real. The only thing they emit is neutron radiation, and a mean lifetime of free neutron is 14 minutes 47 seconds.
As per current fission technology, while nuclear waste is real issue, nuclear power is historically one of the most ecological ways to produce power. Catastrophes are now less and less likely, with many lessons learned from Chernobyl and Fukushima - lessons that are now implemented in all reactors around the world.
I live in a city powered by a reactor of the same model there was in Chernobyl, but modified following the incident. I fully trust it.
Catastrophes are now less and less likely, with many lessons learned from Chernobyl and Fukushima
I swear I do not mean this as a disrespect on you, as your comment was well written/said, but I’ve been hearing that kind of phrasing from companies that run power plants that catastrophically fail for many decades now. I’m definitely in a once-bitten twice shy mode at this point.
I’ll leave it at this, I hope you’re right, but I can believe you, or my lying eyes (to quote a comedically philosophical man).
I live in a city powered by a reactor of the same model there was in Chernobyl, but modified following the incident.
I live nearby a nuclear plant (not Chernobyl design) as well, though now all three of its reactors has been decommissioned because of age.
I fully trust it.
You’re not trusting that Chernobyl style design (that’s flawed) you’re trusting it’s operators do not f up and trigger the flaw like they did last time with Chernobyl, and humans are never 100% perfect 24/7. Also, Mother Nature tends to have some input as well.
By “lessons learned” I don’t mean just operators acting differently. The very reactors are built another way, as to physically not allow what happened on either station. It’s not that my city is powered by unaltered Chernobyl reactor - it was modified as to not allow the graphite rods to be dropped so late, and made automatic on a mechanical level.
Fukushima-style disaster is simply not possible in my area, but then again, for reactors that are endangered, measures were taken.
I love Kyle Hill/subbed. It’s fair to say though that he’s very pro-nuclear. Not discrediting what he says, just saying he definitely has a certain perspective on it.
And my primary criticism is on the catastrophic failure problem, and while I think the storage problem is a negative as well, I think it’s less so than the catastrophic problem.
And my primary criticism is on the catastrophic failure problem
That’s the weaker argument in your original post. Modern designs are nowhere near as bad as older ones designs (aka soviet, we all know you mean Chernobyl) and even the older non soviet ones aren’t bad at all
Fukushima is nowhere near Chernobyl levels of damage (didn’t destroy things for miles for centuries), and no other major plant failures that I can think of would match “catastrophic failure”
That’s the weaker argument in your original post.
Well I mentioned waste first as I did that as a tongue-in-cheek response, but then I immediately mentioned in the very same comment the catastrophic issue, and my recent comment is just me elaborating on the fact that I gave one more weight than the other. It doesn’t discredit what I’m saying.
Fukushima is nowhere near Chernobyl levels of damage (didn’t destroy things for miles for centuries), and no other major plant failures that I can think of would match “catastrophic failure”
Fukushima exclusion zone is not large enough for you to consider that a catastrophic wide area failure? Really?
Modern designs are nowhere near as bad as older ones designs
I’m already commented on this, but just to quickly repeat myself, there’s a difference between being on the design board and being in existence in production.
There already is tech that’s safer and tech for reprocessing the waste. The fact that we haven’t used it speaks volumes. It’s not profitable and never will be. So unless we move energy production back to government owned, it’s not going to happen. So yeah if it’s nuclear waste that lasts millions or billions of years vs spending some money on battery tech to compliment renewables until we get something like fusion tech, yeah, it makes no sense to invest in dirty energy.
In other words you want special pleading. All other energy techs are allowed to have problems and produce waste except for one.
All other energy techs are allowed to have problems and produce waste except for one.
The other ones don’t fail catastrophically like nuclear does.
The other ones don’t produce waste that is the worst kind of toxicity for Humanity that lasts for hundred of years.
Solve those problems, and I’ll get on board that train.
Those problems literally HAVE been solved. You’re talking about a disaster from 50 years ago. Nuclear is quite literally one of the safest forms of energy production we have. And the waste is really not much of an issue. Not only is most of it recycled into new fuel, the entire United States hasn’t even made enough fuel to fill a football field since we started using nuclear power.
Those problems literally HAVE been solved.
And are those designs in production today, or still on the drawing board?
What percentage of reactors today have this new design that you speak of?
Yes those designs are already in use today. Modern reactors are incredibly safe. The only modern disaster was Fukushima and that didn’t even cause any deaths and was brought on by a tsunami.
And here is your source. And this is for ALL nuclear waste in the world.
The volume of high-level radioactive waste (HLW) produced by the civil nuclear industry is small. The IAEA estimates that 392,000 tonnes of heavy metal (tHM) in the form of used fuel have been discharged since the first nuclear power plants commenced operation. Of this, the agency estimates that 127,000 tHM have been reprocessed. The IAEA estimates that the disposal volumeb of the current solid HLW inventory is approximately 29,000 m3.1 For context, this is a volume roughly equivalent to a three metre tall building covering an area the size of a soccer pitch.
This is a good video to learn more about nuclear power and how many people misunderstand it.
Fair enough, thanks for sharing.
So like I said, the catastrophic failure effects are my primary concern, though I am concerned about dealing with the waste product.
Having said that, that’s still a lot of waste that your documentation is talking about, and it’ll be around for centuries. I don’t think it makes your point as well as you think it does.
Better to have other forms of energy that doesn’t generate that sort of waste, or make sure we have one hell of a foolproof (not verified by biased corporations) of preventing that waste from getting into the environment either accidentally or on purpose/terrorism.
The other ones don’t fail catastrophically like nuclear does.
BP gulf oil spill.
The other ones don’t produce waste that is the worst kind of toxicity for Humanity that lasts for hundred of years.
Fracking, contaminated ground water
BP gulf oil spill.
Fracking, contaminated ground water
Oil is second worse after nuclear. I’m not advocating for oil.
My hopes are on fusion and solar/battery.
No form of energy generation is 100% perfect.
My hopes are that goalposts don’t keep moving in this thread.
My hopes are that goalposts don’t keep moving in this thread.
Well, then stop moving them. /shrug
The coal industry emits magnitudes more unvetted radiation than any nuclear power plant will in it’s whole lifetime; as in, radiation is undetectable around a modern nuclear plant.
Plus coal and oil extraction has it’s own problems with radiation. Nuclear produces stable, storable waste that if handled and buried correctly will never become an ecological issue.
They’re built to a modern standard where it’s practically foolproof. Fukushima held up to an enormous earthquake followed by several tsunamis; that’s despite the poor operation of the plant.
The damage we would have to cause to compromise and get rid of any nuclear reliance is far more immediate and concerning.
Nuclear isn’t actually as complicated nor unpredictable as you’d think. They’ve solved ways to avoid melt downs such as the fuels being improved, the amount they process at one time, their cooling and the redundancies. The physical design of a modern station takes into account the worst situations that any given amount of fuel can give in a meltdown such as deep wells that are situated under a reactor to melt into. You won’t likely ever see in our lifetimes a station reaching critical meltdown and it not be because a government or private company cut corners.
Scientists are doing this work, they know what they know and they know what they’re doing, it’s not really for everyone to politically involve ourselves with when no one ever does any valid research or basic knowledge of science without fear mongering.
So that’s a wall of text, and it’s ignoring the points I made, but I’ll just say I’m not anti-nuclear, I’m just anti-nuclear in its current design form.
You give me a design that can protect the environment from catastrophic effects and with a waste product that can be safely handled, and I’ll get on board.
I had read there is some salt based designs kicking around that seem to start going in that direction, but I don’t know if they’ve been moved forward or not.
Generally when a fact is established it does become the “standard counterpoints” people use.
You personally said “Nuclear waste is scary” - that’s why I said people fearmonger. If you’re informed you’d actually understand it’s a very safe form of waste
Also you said it wasn’t due to poor operation, but then state an example of a plane being poorly operated. If those were obvious and established problems that they already should have been able to account for, then someone dicked it up. Nuclear is only dangerous when it’s irresponsibly used. We already have accounted for the mayor pitfalls. It’s not worth saying it’s dangerous, bad for the environment, or scary in terms of waste.
Nuclear energy isn’t some half theory or some risky experiment, it’s pretty well established and understood at this point.
I also said people in general shouldn’t be so politically involved when they’re not informed, I actually said that because I shared and hoped you would be able to agree on that. I wasn’t demeaning you.
You personally said “Nuclear waste is scary” - that’s why I said people fearmonger.
The point I was trying to make was that the plants operation was one risk, while it’s waste output was a second risk.
That wasn’t fear-mongering, that was stating facts.
But to be blunt, if an area is destroyed because of nuclear waste then that is kind of scary, a land that can’t be lived in anymore (or for a very long time) it’s something right out of a fiction story (Mordor-ish).
Expressing that is not fear mongering, its a real possibility, we see that today around nuclear reactors that have catastrophically failed. We humans rarely ‘salt the Earth’ so we can’t live in a place anymore, it’s anathema to what we believe in.
Nuclear is only dangerous when it’s irresponsibly used.
Which always happens sooner or later because human beings are involved. The current designs can’t cope for humans being humans (especially for those who love profits) and their flaws are exaggerated to catastrophic proportions.
I also said people in general shouldn’t be so politically involved when they’re not informed, I actually said that because I shared and hoped you would be able to agree on that. I wasn’t demeaning you.
Well since you were replying to me directly in an argumentative tone, I could only assume that point was directed at me. And that statement is that I’m commenting uninformed, which is not correct, and hence why I pushed back.
What I do usually to avoid that misunderstanding is that I explicitly state something along the lines of “not you directly, but generally” when I’m trying to make a general comment in response to a specific individual.
I do appreciate you clarifying, and hope that was an honest clarification, and not just trying to avoid the pushback of the criticism that was initially correct.
And finally, I do agree, people should be informed when they comment, but as long as they’re not being obstructive there’s nothing wrong with also just expressing oneself to others, your fears and hopes, without knowing all the facts. This is supposed to be a conversation, and people can learn new facts while the conversation is happening, versus having to know everything before they enter the conversation.
The other ones don’t fail catastrophically like nuclear does.
take a look some excerpts:
December 1952: The Great Smog of London caused by the burning of coal, and to a lesser extent wood, killed 12,000 people within days to months due to inhalation of the smog.[18]
The Vajont Dam in Italy overflew. Filling the reservoir caused geological failure in valley wall, leading to 110 km/h landslide into the lake; water escaped in a wave over the top of dam. Valley had been incorrectly assessed as stable. Several villages were completely wiped out, with an estimated between 1,900 and 2,500 deaths.
as /u/afraid_of_zombies said:
All other energy techs are allowed to have problems and produce waste except for one.
As far as the smog goes that was before catalytic converters and improved laws to reduce smog, and as far as the dam goes yeah you build any dam in a bad place and it’s going to break, it’s kind of actually another metaphor for what I’m talking about, which is nuclear is more risky because it’s more dependent on humans being more perfect to Implement / operate it.
As far as the smog goes that was before catalytic converters and improved laws to reduce smog
Then take into account modern nuclear reactors, as other commenters said. Nuclear is the way to go for safest and cleanest energy of all energy sources we have. Things that are stopping it are coal/oil lobby, nuclear scare and capitalists and politicians scared other countries might make nuclear bomb out of it.
I’d love to have a nuclear powerplant in my country, we are choking here because of coal and coal lobby just makes things worse by supporting energy sources sold as “renewable clean sources” that need batteries to work on and as a fallback, when there is less sun or wind always go back to coal.
Then take into account modern nuclear reactors, as other commenters said.
I definitely will, when they’re in production. I haven’t had anyone tell me that they are yet, just on the drawing book. I’m all for salt based small reactors that are a lot safer to deal with.
The other ones don’t fail catastrophically like nuclear does.
Comparing (some) other forms of energy’s deaths to nuclear is like comparing mosquito bites to shark bites. A sharks kill a lot less people than mosquitoes, but a mosquito bite won’t make the news.
Well, we all die at some point, be it from malaria, nuclear fallout, cancer, car accidents, heart failure, stupidity, etc.
There are more mosquitoes on the planet than they are nuclear reactors, So I’m not sure what you think you’re trying to show with that graph.
The point is a nuclear reactor failing catastrophically, yeah it’s a more rare event than dying from malaria, but we seem to treat malaria treatment better than we do reactor designs and operations, especially when profits are involved.
And a person dying for malaria, doesn’t put a pox of the lands around them for centuries making it unusable to anyone else. The risk versus reward calculation is much different, it’s not strictly just a quantity of deaths issue.
And even if you want to talk just about the odds of failure/death, I’m sure all the dinosaurs scoffed at the idea of being killed by an asteroid, until one fateful day (how’s that for a non-sequitur example!). Or flying by plane is the safest form of travel, unless you’re in a 737 Max, then safety be damned.
Does climate change caused by the coal industry not fall under the “pox of the lands” category?
Does climate change caused by the coal industry not fall under the “pox of the lands” category?
Eventually, yes, but a lot slower. And you can definitely put one as an S tier threat and the other one as an A tier threat.
And as I stated, if we have fusion and solar/battery then we don’t have to worry about that from either of them anymore.
The graph is per terra-watt hour. My point is that watt for watt nuclear is actually one of the safest forms of energy.
Many deaths over a period of time aren’t necessarily better than less deaths in an instant.
My point is that watt for watt nuclear is actually one of the safest forms of energy.
And flying is the safest form of travel, which makes the Boeing 737 Max the Chernobyl of planes I guess.
The point is the chance of failure, even if they haven’t happened in a higher quantity so far, is very high, higher in nuclear power plants as they are currently designed or have been designed in the past, than other forms as you have described or supposedly newer ones that are on the designing boards as we speak. And when they fail, they fail too catastrophically, to horrendous for Humanity to have too many of those.
Just one more time, because I don’t want to keep the conversation up, but I’m not anti-nuclear, just anti-old and current nuclear. Get those new smaller salt based low risk of catastrophic failure easier to operate by humans and handles human errors more gracefully reactors out there and I’ll be just fine with those.
If companies can’t be trusted to dispose of coal waste properly, what’s the likelihood they’ll dispose of nuclear waste properly? And reactors that don’t produce dangerous waste, don’t produce enough energy to be worth the cost unless you add the cost of proper disposal of the waste. And since they don’t have to do that, they just store it in temporary storage pools indefinitely, the cost is much cheaper to stick with current tech. So fission will never be safe.
I think nuclear energy is a great idea in theory, but I have absolutely zero trust in companies handling nuclear waste responsibly. It’s not like they have a great track record.
Well, that’s why you put well funded, independent organizations in charge of setting and enforcing the rules around this kind of stuff
And you don’t just give them the power to fine the companies exploiting the reactors, you give them the power to unilaterally decide to shut down the reactors if they deem it necessary
I thought because of the law of conservation of energy you couldn’t get more energy out of something you put in.
I’m getting troll vibes, but I’ll bite lol. Fusion reactions are the exception since you’re turning some mass into energy according to:
E = mc^2
There’s many quality videos on YouTube that can provide a better explanation than I ever could.
They’re not an exception to conservation of energy, it’s just that matter is energy in another form. Fusion reactors just harness that energy.
True, thanks for the clarification!
You can think of the material being fused as fuel. More energy is produced by burning the fuel than in the spark it took to ignite it.
That doesn’t include the change in mass tho
Should quit wasting time with this tech that’s always 30 years and many billions of dollars away and focus our efforts on building as many new fission plants as possible.
Should quit wasting time with this tech that’s always 30 years and many billions of dollars away and focus our efforts on building as many new fission plants as possible.
Are you aware of how long people were working on flight before the Wright brothers finally got it working?
