Fusion Power, in our lifetime?

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#3309207 14-Nov-2024 21:49

elpenguino: Limitless energy would not encourage efficiency or moderation. And with inefficiencies of systems, how much heat would be generated to add to global warming?

See "Jevons paradox".

And while you're at it, look up "Roko's basilisk", which is why many otherwise non-Trump people came out in support of him.

sir1963

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#3309221 15-Nov-2024 07:12

TwoSeven:

I think it was one of those scifi things that was good in the 1960s but these days sustainable and renewable energy is kind if making it redundant.

i think there are nearly a dozen countries now that are on the verge of having excess renewables. I know Germany recently had net export of electricity.

ONLY so long as you ignore the energy required for cars...

In NZ, about 80% of our energy demands are met with fossil fuels.
We already have the (laughably late) concern that all these "heat pumps" that have been installed will be used during summer, thus our hydro lakes will not be full for winter.
And guess what...as the earth warms....

cddt

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#3309223 15-Nov-2024 07:37

elpenguino:

And with inefficiencies of systems, how much heat would be generated to add to global warming?

Minimal. Remembering that the additional heat trapped in the atmosphere through the greenhouse effect by X amount of fossil fuels is between 80 (gas) and 180 (coal) times the heat you actually get from burning them in the first place.

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#3309229 15-Nov-2024 08:04

elpenguino:

I agree. Limitless energy would not encourage efficiency or moderation. And with inefficiencies of systems, how much heat would be generated to add to global warming?

And even if the power was free you're still going to pay a fortune in line charges :-)

Classic Jevons paradox.

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#3309247 15-Nov-2024 09:07

kingdragonfly:The phrase "fusion is always 30 years in the future" has been echoed by many researchers and critics over the decades. It's often attributed to the physics community in general, rather than a specific individual. The sentiment reflects the long-standing challenges and slow progress in achieving practical, sustainable nuclear fusion energy.

fusion power is net energy loss. UNLESS, we can harness quantum physics. aka magic.

you see, the sun shouldn't be shining if you apply the law of classical physics. but it shines anyway, ignoring everything we know about science.

i think it's going to be easier for humans to find god than for the brightest on the planet to figure out quantum stuff.

so my answer is ... quite unlikely in my lifetime.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/quantum-reason-sun-shines/

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#3309249 15-Nov-2024 09:22

TwoSeven:

I think it was one of those scifi things that was good in the 1960s but these days sustainable and renewable energy is kind if making it redundant.

i think there are nearly a dozen countries now that are on the verge of having excess renewables. I know Germany recently had net export of electricity.

https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity

That might be true, but they are still generating ~45% of their power from Coal, Gas and Oil,

Germany "net exporting" simply means it was cheaper for other countries in Europe to buy from Germany than generate it them selves, it has no relevance to excess renewables when circa 1/2 their supply is fossil fuel based..

TwoSeven

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#3309417 15-Nov-2024 17:16

One drawback I understand with fusion is its dependency on lithium which isn’t such a great product when it comes to digging up the environment to get at it.

Also, in regards to Germany, 45% sounds like energy supply, I believe electrical supply is close to 60% from the renewable grid. That should climb pretty high in the next few years when the new pipeline comes into play.

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#3310717 19-Nov-2024 16:52

TwoSeven: One drawback I understand with fusion is its dependency on lithium which isn’t such a great product when it comes to digging up the environment to get at it.

I wouldn't get hung up on that:

1) One of the attractions of fusion and fission is the minuscule amounts of fuel required, vs conventional fuels.

2) Earth has 10x more lithium than uranium and we're not running out of uranium.

2) Most lithium isn't even "mined" but is pumped out of dry lake beds as a salty brine and concentrated via sun powered evaporation. They're also started filtering lithium out of geothermal power station fluids. The "bad lithium mines" is an overstatement promoted by anti-EV/pro-oil people. Coal is responsible for vastly more damaging holes in the ground than lithium.

3) Just because they're attempting to use lithium now doesn't mean they will in the future since they haven't even got fusion figured out yet. Part of the problem could be the choice of fuel - the wrong fuel was one of the barriers in the early days of fission. Nuclear power was though to be impossible for years (was dismissed by Lord Rutherford himself). People were using the wrong method (and wrong fuel) to spit atoms (shooting electrons at atoms instead of neutrons). Once they figured out uranium + neutrons, the technology progressed a lot more rapidly than we're seeing the lithium.

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#3310718 19-Nov-2024 17:01

The lithium is used to breed tritium which is required because tritium/deuterium fusion is the only one we currently have a hope of achieving. Bang a lithium nucleus with a neutron and get a tritium nucleus out. We’re pretty clear on the maths of that now. When they got it wrong the first time they nuked some Japanese fisherman with Castle Bravo.

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TwoSeven

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#3310727 19-Nov-2024 17:21

SaltyNZ: The lithium is used to breed tritium which is required because tritium/deuterium fusion is the only one we currently have a hope of achieving. Bang a lithium nucleus with a neutron and get a tritium nucleus out. We’re pretty clear on the maths of that now. When they got it wrong the first time they nuked some Japanese fisherman with Castle Bravo.

The point I was really making was that there is a huge lithium shortage due to a demand for batteries - lithium takes 10 years roughly to produce and most countries are very reluctant to allow that mining to occur (it is quite messy and produces a bucket load of C02).

As compared to sunlight mining which is kind of a bit cleaner on producing electricity and water.

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#3324397 25-Dec-2024 14:01

The presenter Sabine Hossenfelde does a LOT of videos. She is a legit physicist in quantum gravity, but she tends to speak on a lot of subjects where she's obviously not an expert.

It gets real technical real quick, but for all practical purposes, Sabine expertise in quantum gravity does not give insights into nuclear fusion, as they are at completely different scales and energies. Nuclear fusion involves interactions between atomic nuclei, which are governed by the strong nuclear force. The gravitational interaction between these tiny particles is extraordinarily weak and negligible compared to the strong nuclear force.

I'm not saying she's right or wrong. Frankly I don't know enough. But just take her enthusiasm with a grain of salt.

This Firm Says It’s 6 Years Away From Making Energy From Fusion

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#3324412 25-Dec-2024 16:08

kingdragonfly: The presenter Sabine Hossenfelde does a LOT of videos. She is a legit physicist in quantum gravity, but she tends to speak on a lot of subjects where she's obviously not an expert.

You don't need to be an expert on everything to be able to smell bulls**t, just enough knowledge of the field is sufficient.

In fact arguably in cases where things are overhyped you need a combination of (a) an ability to follow a line on a graph and see that it's linear or even decaying, not geometrically growing, and (b) not enough in-depth involvement/knowledge that the bulls**t captures you.

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#3324430 25-Dec-2024 17:16

For a NZ company of this size and scale.
Even selling/licensing technology, plasma research devices and instrumentation is probably a tasty business.

No matter if it scales to generation or not there is probably value created and money to be made along the way. If there is a realistic shot it will get bought out by overseas interests very quickly.

On power plants.
Thing that seems to get lost is that there are neutrons flying about, and over life of plant ?
All your delicate, precise, dancing on the edge of failure, control mechanisms are near this ?
Supercooled superconducting magnets fairly close to superhot plasma.
Next to hot steam ( or other medium ) pipes to take heat away to generate your electricity too.

From practical point of running and maintaining an actual plant, vs a physics experiment.
Seems a lot more engineering issues than just getting a sustained controlled plasma of right temperature.

Makes a Fission reactor look very simple and easy to manage through its operational life by contrast.

TwoSeven

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#3324436 25-Dec-2024 17:54

. Its been ‘just around the corner’ for since at least the 50s. While there has likely been some beneficial technology spin-offs, I think the need for it has mostly been superseded by the development of modern sustainable energy solutions at a much cheaper price point.

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neb

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#3324437 25-Dec-2024 18:05

We actually currently have in the low terawatts of installed fusion-based power, it's just that it's proton-proton fusion and the process takes place at a safe distance.

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