Fusion - breakthrough or another false dawn

[Kawasicki]

Wayoftheflower said:

Mr Whippy said:

hucumber said:

Dr Jekyll said:

Because they disapprove of cars and of energy production.

No they don't, they disapprove of fossil fuels and stuff that creates carbon dioxide. I don't think anyone would have an issue with cars if they were clean

Cars will never be clean, just as humans themselves aren’t clean.

Micro rubber particulates off the tyres.

Killing bugs as you drive through the air.

Noise!

Screen-wash water pollution.

It’s a never ending battle against complainer personality types.

Why do people feel the need to derail threads with dribble?

I'm sure there's plenty of threads on Nimbyism, Eco-terrorist conspiracy, UFO, mind control and alike, fill your boots and leave the interesting science alone.

It’s not really dribble. Banning electric cars from urban areas is being legitimately discussed.

[Wayoftheflower]

Kawasicki said:

Wayoftheflower said:

Mr Whippy said:

hucumber said:

Dr Jekyll said:

Because they disapprove of cars and of energy production.

No they don't, they disapprove of fossil fuels and stuff that creates carbon dioxide. I don't think anyone would have an issue with cars if they were clean

Cars will never be clean, just as humans themselves aren’t clean.

Micro rubber particulates off the tyres.

Killing bugs as you drive through the air.

Noise!

Screen-wash water pollution.

It’s a never ending battle against complainer personality types.

Why do people feel the need to derail threads with dribble?

I'm sure there's plenty of threads on Nimbyism, Eco-terrorist conspiracy, UFO, mind control and alike, fill your boots and leave the interesting science alone.

It’s not really dribble. Banning electric cars from urban areas is being legitimately discussed.

SQUIRREL! Cars banned from city centres! Creeping eco-mentalists closing London's roads since 1822, IT'S A CONSPIRACY!

Mods need to do a thorough cleanup of this thread. Conspiracy nutbags have plenty of space to dribble in NP&E.

[shalmaneser]

Well I've been enjoying reading this thread and watching the ITER stuff on YouTube. Some insane engineering going on there. Will be exciting to see where it goes.

Hopefully this thread can avoid being derailed by the strawman types.

[Wayoftheflower]

shalmaneser said:

Well I've been enjoying reading this thread and watching the ITER stuff on YouTube. Some insane engineering going on there. Will be exciting to see where it goes.

Hopefully this thread can avoid being derailed by the strawman types.

ITER sounds like an absolute monster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KEwkWjADEA
Watching this interesting piece though there's some promising developments in far smaller (and hopefully quicker to construct) models.

[hidetheelephants]

hucumber said:

Dr Jekyll said:

Because they disapprove of cars and of energy production.

No they don't, they disapprove of fossil fuels and stuff that creates carbon dioxide. I don't think anyone would have an issue with cars if they were clean

A significant portion of the environmental lobby do think that way, abundant energy is not desirable to them as they perceive that it encourages waste, they argue that energy shortage is good as their brains have absorbed a particularly stupid form of marxism. The same applies to private cars.

[annodomini2]

Wayoftheflower said:

shalmaneser said:

Well I've been enjoying reading this thread and watching the ITER stuff on YouTube. Some insane engineering going on there. Will be exciting to see where it goes.

Hopefully this thread can avoid being derailed by the strawman types.

ITER sounds like an absolute monster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KEwkWjADEA
Watching this interesting piece though there's some promising developments in far smaller (and hopefully quicker to construct) models.

ITER is a white elephant IMO it's sucking up resources for fusion research, it's already stated that Q-plasma is expected to be iro 10 after the research program has completed, i.e. 2035-2040.

This would result in a Q-power of about 1.2.

They would then need to build an even bigger reactor, with steam generation, you need a Q-power of about 50 to make a commercial fusion power plant financially viable, you're looking at ~30yrs min before anything remotely practical as a power plant.

If this was a private project, the investment would have been put into alternative solutions.

[Flooble]

I remember JET was well established and reading about the initial planning for ITER when I was at school. I'm closing in on retirement.

I don't know if it's the usual issues with an international project (20 ish years for the ISS to get going) or going slowly at the rate the funding comes through (like all the paper rockets that NASA designed in the 90s and 00s).

But it certainly doesn't strike me as likely to deliver much - perhaps it is just a problem that is too hard for humans to solve.

[hidetheelephants]

It's a really good way of churning out physics PhDs though.

[Toltec]

It is all gradual steps to solve specific issues-

https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-major-advance-to...

[Beati Dogu]

"Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy"

The experiments produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power).

"The JET experiments put us a step closer to fusion power," said Dr Joe Milnes, the head of operations at the reactor lab. "We've demonstrated that we can create a mini star inside of our machine and hold it there for five seconds and get high performance, which really takes us into a new realm."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-603...

[CraigyMc]

annodomini2 said:

Until they hit unity or net gain, it's all for naught.

Large reactors using magnetic confinement are on a road to nowhere.

Inverse Square Law

For commercial use, unity isn't even the target. For something that outputs power like a commercial powerplant, the actual goal is somewhere north of 30:1.

[Kawasicki]

Why not throw eleventy billion trillion at the problem?

[CraigyMc]

Kawasicki said:

Why not throw eleventy billion trillion at the problem?

Okay, but your eleventy billion trillion.

[Toltec]

Kawasicki said:

Why not throw eleventy billion trillion at the problem?

Feel free, but you'll get less than 1% back.

[Kawasicki]

Toltec said:

Kawasicki said:

Why not throw eleventy billion trillion at the problem?

Feel free, but you'll get less than 1% back.

Not my money, are you nuts? Taxpayer funded!

[Toltec]

Kawasicki said:

Toltec said:

Kawasicki said:

Why not throw eleventy billion trillion at the problem?

Feel free, but you'll get less than 1% back.

Not my money, are you nuts? Taxpayer funded!

[Dr Jekyll]

Toltec said:

Kawasicki said:

Why not throw eleventy billion trillion at the problem?

Feel free, but you'll get less than 1% back.

I was on a tour round the fusion research centre at Culham a few years back, and the staff did whinge a bit about the size of their budget compared with what oil companies spend looking for supplies. I'm not sure they really considered that the oil companies are paying for their own research out of what they find, not getting government grants in the hope of something useful in 50 years time.

[CraigyMc]

Honestly?

Someone needs to convince Musk to dedicate his life to this. The rate of progress would pick up irrespective of failures.

[Beati Dogu]

Exactly; There's enough rent-seeking as there is. It's time all this was results orientated.

[annodomini2]

CraigyMc said:

annodomini2 said:

Until they hit unity or net gain, it's all for naught.

Large reactors using magnetic confinement are on a road to nowhere.

Inverse Square Law

For commercial use, unity isn't even the target. For something that outputs power like a commercial powerplant, the actual goal is somewhere north of 30:1.

Commercial D-T steam turbine based reactors need somewhere between 2-300:1 to be commercially viable.

Because they would be massive and hugely expensive.

They still have the nuclear waste mess to deal with at the end as most of the system will have been bathed in neutrons for it's operating life. Obviously not as bad as fission, but still significant.