Nuclear Fusion Startup Raises $100 Million To Design and Build a Demo Power Plant (bloomberg.com) 141
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A nuclear fusion start-up backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos raised more than $100 million to help design and build a demonstration power plant. The company lined up $65 million in Series E financing led by Singapore's Temasek Holdings Pte, and is getting another $38 million from Canada's Strategic Innovation Fund, General Fusion Inc. said in a statement Monday. It's now attracted more than $200 million in financing.
Canada-based General Fusion is one of about two dozen companies seeking to commercialize nuclear fusion technology. It relies on the same process that powers stars, generating huge amounts of energy by fusing small atoms into larger ones. While it holds out the promise of cheap, carbon-free energy, researchers have been working for decades to overcome significant technical hurdles. Firms pursuing such designs are hoping they can start generating power sooner than the 35-nation, $25 billion Tokamak fusion reactor known as ITER. Collaborators on that facility -- the largest research project in history -- have been laboring on a gigantic demonstration reactor in France since 2010.
Canada-based General Fusion is one of about two dozen companies seeking to commercialize nuclear fusion technology. It relies on the same process that powers stars, generating huge amounts of energy by fusing small atoms into larger ones. While it holds out the promise of cheap, carbon-free energy, researchers have been working for decades to overcome significant technical hurdles. Firms pursuing such designs are hoping they can start generating power sooner than the 35-nation, $25 billion Tokamak fusion reactor known as ITER. Collaborators on that facility -- the largest research project in history -- have been laboring on a gigantic demonstration reactor in France since 2010.
IMPORTANT: Fusion doesn't generate poison. (Score:2)
Fusion doesn't generate poison, as do coal and nuclear power plants.
Fusion could generate cheap power that helps solve the problem of global warming caused by humans. All cars will eventually be electric; electric cars are far easier to maintain.
Re:IMPORTANT: Fusion doesn't generate poison. (Score:5, Informative)
Fusion doesn't generate poison, as do coal and nuclear power plants.
Could. Or might not. It's going to depend on the actual design (which there are no commercially-viable ones yet). Last I heard (and this was years ago), they were concerned about the affect of all the neutrons on the reaction chamber, turning it either brittle or toxic. But that was for old (at this point) designs, perhaps they have a way to address it.
Until we have something close to working, it's all going to be "could", "might", and "ought". Nothing is a given.
Re:IMPORTANT: Fusion doesn't generate poison. (Score:5, Informative)
DT fusion emits neutrons. Just a lot fewer than fission reactors.
Most plans have a lithium blanket to absorb the neutrons, absorb the heat, and generate tritium to sustain the reaction.
There are aneutronic fusion reactions, including He3+D, He3+He3 and Boron+D. All of these require far higher ignition energy than DT.
Aneutronic fusion [wikipedia.org].
Bottom line: DT fusion is the only plausible reaction for now. It produces neutrons, but not much. There is very little long term waste. There is no danger of meltdown. Keeping a fusion reaction going is like keeping a candle lit in a category five hurricane.
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Bottom line: DT fusion is the only plausible reaction for now. It produces neutrons, but not much.
Define "not much"?
It is enough that the reactor building needs to be evacuated when an experiment is run ... are you trying to step into blindseers steps?
toxicity of fission (Score:5, Insightful)
The neutrons themselves are less important in inducing radioactivity. DT fusion isn't completely clean but far better than fission. Which itself is far better than combusting coal.
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> Which itself is far better than combusting coal.
So long as it stays contained, which usually happens - but not always.
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Indeed - in fact most of the energy from a D-T reaction is released as a high-speed neutron (14MeV) while only 3.5MeV are imparted to the He4 nucleus. The big problem with fusion reactors is going to be capturing those neutrons safely.
Fortunately, lithium has some good potential as a shielding material, as it has a relatively high cross-section to high-energy neutrons, and fissions into helium and tritium on impact, with the tritium being recoverable as future fuel. I believe the Lockheed Martin reactor i
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Might not want to do that in the long term, as lithium is quite useful in its own right
The oceans contain 230 billion tonnes of lithium.
Compared to that, the amount consumed by fusion reactors is utterly negligible, even if we use it for 100% of our power.
The oceans contain about 25 trillion tonnes of deuterium, so the lithium is the bottleneck. But we have enough of either to last for a million years.
Re:IMPORTANT: Fusion doesn't generate poison. (Score:4, Informative)
> The oceans contain 230 billion tonnes of lithium.
And there's 1,600 billion tonnes of gold in the Earth's core, but nobody seems to be trying to mine that.
The problem isn't how much there is, it's extracting it. At a generous high estimate 0.2 ppm, you would have to process 10,000 kilograms of sea water to get 1 kilogram of lithium. That is extremely time consuming, expensive, and difficult as you would have to deal with all the other crap that would be in that 10,000 kg of sea water.
Even extracting deuterium has the same problem, despite being much more abundant.
=Smidge=
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Lithium would be extracted from seawater as a by-product of desalination.
Lithium is currently extracted from brine. The waste stream of desalination is brine.
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Lithium would be extracted from seawater as a by-product of desalination
That's the expensive part. I get that there are processes being worked on to bring down the cost, but at the moment it's pretty dang expensive way to get Lithium compared to just simply mining it from salt flats. Long term speaking (next five decades or so), there's nothing wrong with what you are saying, just that if we're looking to build a reactor that heavily depends on that right now, then we have to look at how we get it and how much it cost, right now.
You both have great points, what differs is tha
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expensive
Mostly because of the energy costs.
That part goes away when you have your own fusion reactor.
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You must have missed the part where I said it's more expensive EVEN IF THE ENERGY WAS FREE
Okay great, you're not paying for the energy to distill the water. That cuts costs by 45%... but you're still paying over 15 times the price for the finished product vs. more traditional sources.
=Smidge=
Fusion generates LESS poison? (Score:5, Informative)
Agreement: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be. [thebulletin.org] (April 19, 2017)
"... neutron streams lead directly to four regrettable problems with nuclear energy: radiation damage to structures; radioactive waste; the need for biological shielding; and the potential for the production of weapons-grade plutonium 239 — thus adding to the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, not lessening it, as fusion proponents would have it."
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In the case of General Fusion [generalfusion.com] - the company referenced in the article* - their fusion chamber is made from a spinning blanket of molten metal. The metal absorbs the radiation and heat, and gets circulated through a heat exchanger to generate steam. This also presents an opportunity for continuous refinement and purification of the metal mix, to sepa
Fusion: Is there some new understanding? (Score:2)
New idea about creating fusion: Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists [theguardian.com] (Mar. 9, 2018)
Quoting from that story:
"The project, a collaboration between scientists at MIT and a private company, will take a radically different approach to other efforts to transform fusion from an expensive science experiment into a vi
Re:Fusion: Is there some new understanding? (Score:4, Informative)
CFS is magnetic confinement fusion, essentially a tokamak, but using a new generation of superconducting magnets that are stable in higher field strengths than before. The physics and scaling of the plasma in these conditions is rather well understood. Fusion is continuous. If the magnets can be built to specification and cost, then success is highly probable.
General Fusion is using cyclical fusion: magnetic confinement of a plasma followed by compression with acoustic pistons. The physics and scaling is much newer and less understood than the tokamak. That's a disadvantage and an advantage----more chance to fail far below necessary power range with novel misconfinement problems being discovered upon scaling, mostly likely turbulent fluid mechanical problems (this is what hurt conventional fusion for decades, new problems turning up). OTOH as it's less explored, if there are no problems then the scale-up might turn out to be much easier.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Using atoms to try to push nuclei together is innmerate. The forces that hold a mostly empty space atom together aren't a patch on what's required to push two nuclei together far closer than any two atoms ever are in any state of matter yet known. The nuclei are just going to squirt between the lead atoms with ease before they even get close. Not that magnetics are for sure the answer. The neutron activation problem is very real, and it's kind of hard to find new entries on the well established periodic
close but no cigar (Score:2)
Using atoms to try to push nuclei together is innmerate. The forces that hold a mostly empty space atom together aren't a patch on what's required to push two nuclei together far closer than any two atoms ever are in any state of matter yet known. The nuclei are just going to squirt between the lead atoms with ease before they even get close.
They're not using atoms to push nuclei together. They're
* using atoms of a metal
* to carry their conduction-band electons
* (which form a contin
Re: Fusion: Is there some new understanding? (Score:2)
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The lasers ionize the hohlraum (enclosing metallic object) which make x-rays. In the H-bomb these would be provided as blackbody radiation from the very hot primary a moment aft
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Actually it generates radioactive poison (Score:4, Informative)
Fusion doesn't generate poison, as do coal and nuclear power plants.
Technically this design will since it uses a spinning spherical shell of molten lead and lithium to compress the plasma, trigger fusion and absorb the energy and neutrons produced. It's an extremely clever design that I really hope they can get working but it is going to make the already toxic lead radioactive. However, you can use the lead over and over again and it is easily contained since, without lots of heat it will become solid so unlike coal or fission plants there is little to no risk to the environment.
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However, you can use the lead over and over again and it is easily contained since, without lots of heat it will become solid so unlike coal or fission plants there is little to no risk to the environment.
That's true. Now tell that to the knuckleheads that want to ban lead based ammunition. Elemental lead is quite inert, it's the lead oxides and salts that occur naturally and in consumer products like batteries and old paint (or new paint from China) that are toxic. Highly divided elemental lead, such as what might occur in an industrial setting that recycles or refines lead, or in bullet fragments in game meat, will raise the bio-availability of lead. This can be addressed with removal of the contaminat
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That's true. Now tell that to the knuckleheads that want to ban lead based ammunition. Elemental lead is quite inert
Not quite enough. And lost bullets are also a problem. And I don't understand why improvements in environment cause Republicans' such angst. Is it insecurity? Fear? Small penis?
Especially since copper bullets work perfectly fine.
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Not quite enough. And lost bullets are also a problem. And I don't understand why improvements in environment cause Republicans' such angst. Is it insecurity? Fear? Small penis?
It's the realization that the goal of the lead bans was not environmental protection, but to discourage firearm ownership.
The evidence of the use of lead bullets causing the poisoning of, wild birds and wild mammals, (or people that eat them) is inconclusive unless the animal was actually shot. This was shown with wild birds showing up with lead poisoning long after bans on lead ammunition were enforced.
I'm having trouble finding a good source right now but there have been studies showing lead poisoning in
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I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
BTW, you are free because brave people in Deep State work hard to keep it that way. Your pathetic penis extender does nothing to keep you free.
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In the Eldorado national forest near me, in many areas the entire floor of the forest is covered in shotgun shells every couple of inches. The reason ammunition needs extra regulation is that gun owners are utterly irresponsible and don't care what they do to society. Call me when people litter pennies and wires in that kind of quantity and we'll talk about doing something about those.
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In the Eldorado national forest near me, in many areas the entire floor of the forest is covered in shotgun shells every couple of inches.
That's irrelevant to the discussion of lead in the environment.
The reason ammunition needs extra regulation is that gun owners are utterly irresponsible and don't care what they do to society.
Ammunition is already highly regulated. And littering is illegal. What do you propose? Making this already illegal behavior "more illegal"?
Call me when people litter pennies and wires in that kind of quantity and we'll talk about doing something about those.
I'll do that. Then you can explain how passing more laws against litter is supposed to stop people that are breaking existing laws on littering.
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I see, instead of using logic to make your case you lowered yourself to just spouting insults.
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There's also evidence of the people doing these studies lying about the lead they found. Followed by studies showing that the lead poisoning is not from ammunition.
http://www.huntfortruth.org/fo... [huntfortruth.org]'
Don't read just that page, look at more from the same site.
http://www.huntfortruth.org/ [huntfortruth.org]
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Correlation is not causation. At the same time of the lead ammunition ban there's been considerable effort in cleaning up old mines that have been leaching lead into the water.
https://www.redding.com/story/... [redding.com]
From the start I pointed out that there are no unbiased sources here. What has been shown experimentally is that metallic lead is of little risk unless finely divided. A shotgun pellet does not pose near the same hazard as lead oxides and salts as seen in paints, batteries, and other sources be they
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What we do know is that people have been shot with lead bullets, had some of those bullets left in their body, and they aren't seeing any symptoms of lead poisoning.
Unless the bullet fragments or gets stuck in a joint cartilage. Both are likely to happen with big game and typical lead rounds. It also doesn't take into account lead leaching into the environment from bullets. And naturally lead is not at all common, with many natural water sources and soils having no detectable lead at all.
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At the same time of the lead ammunition ban there's been considerable effort in cleaning up old mines that have been leaching lead into the water.
Five posts above, you told us lead does not dissolve in water.
How do you plan to weasel out of this one?
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The reports of lead in birds are unbiased.
They have to be biased because my unbiased sources tell me that those reports of higher lead in the blood of birds didn't do their studies correctly.
You want to keep going around in circles?
It also doesn't take into account lead leaching into the environment from bullets.
And your studies didn't take into account the lead from old paint.
Around and around we go.
Lead poisoning is a non-issue since we stopped putting lead in gasoline and paint. Go find some other windmill to tilt.
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Five posts above, you told us lead does not dissolve in water.
How do you plan to weasel out of this one?
No weasel words required. Look again. I pointed out that the metallic, or elemental, lead used in bullets does not dissolve in water. It's lead in certain non-metallic forms that dissolves in water. It's this non-metallic lead that is (or was) used in batteries, lead glass (or crystal glass), and paint.
Bullets made of copper coated lead can reduce the near nonexistent risk of lead leaching into the environment even more, this is still considered unacceptable by the enviro-ninnies. To attempt to satisfy
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If it is dangerous in pipes depends on the water "quality", aka what already is dissolved in the water, e.g. ph-level, saltiness, level of oxygen/air and particulary CO2.
And that is the reason why it is banned in most places.
The story of blindseer is simply not true, every lead can dissolve ...especially if it is a bullet that hit something, probbaly fragments or it is pellets. Because the thin oxydated layer will be damaged, and the fragments - if it is fragmented - have no oxydated layer.
You could argue t
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lead is so 'inert' that it is used for water pipes around the countryside of America
That's right. Are people in the USA, outside of Flint, seeing any lead poisoning? No, that's because lead is inert enough in hard water to be safe for drinking. Put soft, chlorinated, and oxygenated water in lead pipes without treating it with corrosion inhibitors and the lead will leach out. So don't do that.
Church roofs (Score:2)
Elemental lead is quite inert
In fact, it is so inert that it is actually used as flashing on church roofs in Europe. Some of it has been there for centuries.
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But it is not inert when it gets into your body ... people should try to learn the differences between A and B and not always proclaim it is just A.
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Now tell that to the knuckleheads that want to ban lead based ammunition.
If I can't throw out an old CRT TV or monitor because they say that lead might leach out of the glass tube in a sealed sanitary landfill, then damned straight they should ban people from spraying lead bullets and pellets willy-nilly all over the landscape.
This can be addressed with removal of the contaminated portion of meat from a hunted animal, enforcement against leaving killed vermin where scavengers could consume them, and proper construction of firing ranges.
Given the number of stop signs and other roadside targets out in the boondocks that have already been turned into Swiss cheese by the not-so-well regulated militia, I don't think trying to enforce anything after distributing lead ammunition to the average
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If I can't throw out an old CRT TV or monitor because they say that lead might leach out of the glass tube in a sealed sanitary landfill, then damned straight they should ban people from spraying lead bullets and pellets willy-nilly all over the landscape.
That's lead oxide in the glass, it's soluble in water. Lead in ammunition is in metallic form, which is not soluble in water. This insolubility is demonstrated in the use of lead weights for fishing.
Given the number of stop signs and other roadside targets out in the boondocks that have already been turned into Swiss cheese by the not-so-well regulated militia, I don't think trying to enforce anything after distributing lead ammunition to the average Joe would have much benefit.
That sounds like a local problem. I don't see that around here. It's also irrelevant to the issue at hand, the threat metallic lead poses to the environment. Banning lead bullets won't stop people from shooting at road signs, or prevent any other illegal behavior you can think up to pin on gun owners.
If you
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That's lead oxide in the glass, it's soluble in water.
But it leaches out of glass slowly enough so that they still use it to make tableware.
Lead in ammunition is in metallic form, which is not soluble in water. This insolubility is demonstrated in the use of lead weights for fishing.
Lead is a reactive enough to form soluble compounds in the environment. That's why lead fishing weights have already been banned in some areas.
Banning lead bullets won't stop people from shooting at road signs, or prevent any other illegal behavior you can think up to pin on gun owners.
But it will prevent people from shooting *lead* at road signs.
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But it leaches out of glass slowly enough so that they still use it to make tableware.
Um, no.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Lead is a reactive enough to form soluble compounds in the environment. That's why lead fishing weights have already been banned in some areas.
One stupid ban on lead doesn't mean we need another stupid lead ban.
But it will prevent people from shooting *lead* at road signs.
Right, so they will then be shooting bullets made of a material more likely to create sparks and start wildfires. On the balance I'm thinking that using lead is still preferable.
https://wildfiretoday.com/2013... [wildfiretoday.com]
Shooting at road signs is bad enough, shooting at road signs and starting wildfires only makes this worse.
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But it leaches out of glass slowly enough so that they still use it to make tableware.
Forbidden in Europe since probably 40 years, because: it is not slow enough. Especially if you drink wine from a lead glass bowl.
Blindseer is just an idiot ...
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not true, any fusion reaction we are likely to use for power produces neutrons which activate things, makes them radioactive. Also, the neutron field causes structural embrittlment.
I'll laugh in the face of anyone who suggests we're going to use aneutronic fusion such as boron -proton, that requires ten times the temperature! (yes, on absolute temperature scale we can say such things, about 6.6 billion kelvin).
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not true, any fusion reaction we are likely to use for power produces neutrons which activate things, makes them radioactive.
Correct but this general fusion design absorbs almost all the neutrons in a spinning sphere of molten lead, laced with lithium. The lithium is an extremely good neutron absorber and has the bonus of generating tritium afterwards which is one component of the fuel needed to run the reactor.
Since the lead is liquid it cannot become brittle and it can also easily be continuously replaced by circulation and the decay products of any activated lead nuclei removed from the mixture (this will have to be done t
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tritium generators themselves are sources of environmental pollutions (e.g. CANDU reactors and also national labs such as Fermilab have run afoul of EPA and state guidlines)
the activated lead (and other products as the lead won't be pure) will be a problem too
In short, DT fusion reactors will make radioactive poisons, just less than a fission reactor
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It's a brilliantly cle
I thought ... (Score:2)
Has climate change warmed it up again?
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Energy sales control much of foreign policy and a good fraction of various economies. The power companies fight solar/wind, and so snacking on that revenue seems to be attractive.
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Cold Fusion [acs.org]
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> No point in being subtle. Slashdot ain't what it used to be.
Oh, we get it just fine, it just wasn't as clever or funny as you thought it was.
=Smidge=
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It did not. It is just _known_ that a lot of fundamental works is still needed. For progress, look, for example, at the Wendelstein X-7. Prospects are pretty good, but this is decidedly long-term prospects as in 30-50 years and maybe more.
But this scam here is just to separate the clueless rich from their money.
YESS... just 10 years away! (Score:2)
Yes, nuclear fusion power is now just 10 years away... as it has been since 1965.
Sigh!
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It could just be delayed stop trying to derail it. It seems you are terribly uninformed, because scientists/engineers have actually made a lot of progress towards fusion between then and now. The yield rates have dramatically improved since the 1960s. We'll get fusion eventually in spite of your efforts to stop it. Your ancestors were the ones saying we'll never have flying machines too. Remember that? How did that work out?
If we were making zero progress, you may have some cause for skepticism .. but the m
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As with perpetual motion... we are 95% of the way there so... any day now :-/
Re: YESS... just 10 years away! (Score:2)
Results (Score:3)
I lost interest in this topic a decade ago, so I'm not up to date. Has anyone built a fusion reactor that produces more energy than you put in to it?
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Yes Q>1.0 was achieved some time ago (if you use Tritium). The problem is that to close the loop (use the energy from the fusion to generate the power need to keep the fusion going) Q needs to be much larger than one. You need a Q=5 for the plasma to become self heating and even more if you are going to generate electricity. ITER is shooting for a Q of 10, and DEMO would be Q=25.
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Judging by his user name, he might be skeptical of modern physics.
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"It seems you are terribly uninformed"
Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. I, however, could not be accused of that.
"The yield rates have dramatically improved since the 1960s"
Let's say you wanted to put man on the Moon. So you think, maybe I'll build a ladder.
So you make a 10 foot tall ladder. Unfortunately, you find the Moon is more than 10 feet away.
So you build a 20 foot tall ladder.
Now, you can say, with all honesty, that you are twice as close to the Moon as you used to be. AMAZING PROGRESS!
"If we were makin
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There is significant progress. There is also a massive amount of things to still find out in plasma physics, material sciences, and some other relevant tech. For example, the Wendelstein X7 hat to wait for computer to become fast enough to allow the design simulations needed for its magnetic field design.
Working, efficient, ready-to-be-industrialized fusion is not going to materialize in the next few decades, but it is pretty clear that if research continue it will eventually get there.
10 years is better than 40 (Score:2)
Yes, nuclear fusion power is now just 10 years away... as it has been since 1965.
Actually the usual number that has been quoted for the past ~60 years is that it is 40 years away. If it is only 10 years away now then perhaps in another 20 we might have it!
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Nah... apparently it's now just 15 years away: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/09/nuclear-fusion-on-brink-of-being-realised-say-mit-scientists
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no, fusion power is 8 minutes away. always has been.
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Yes, nuclear fusion power is now just 10 years away... as it has been since 1965.
Sigh!
When you ask actual scientists, that never was the case. It was always, "We think we will get there, but the time-frame is open" or some variant.
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> Noise.
Yeah, let's also not forget the orders-of-magnitude greater energy use per-passenger-mile.
We do have a climate problem to solve. Cars are one of the main reasons. Making our transit system dramatically more energy intensive is not something we can do right now.
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We do have a climate problem to solve.
It appears that it's been solved. You went to considerable length in another post to show solar + storage is cheaper than natural gas. So, problem solved!
Yeah, let's also not forget the orders-of-magnitude greater energy use per-passenger-mile.
It's not an order of magnitude difference. Not if traveling at speeds and distances comparable to travel by a car down a highway. This becomes even less of a concern now that we solved our global warming problem. There still might be some very minor cost differences but this is a matter of perhaps double the cost, not an order of magnitude. No more w
A Drop in the Bucket for an Impractical Project (Score:2, Offtopic)
Speaking of drops.... (Score:2)
Hydro works too. But there isn't enough of it, and it isn't in all the places we need it to be.
Fusion would be a real game-changer, bringing much of the promise that fission was expected to bring in the mid-20th century. ....maybe.
Not on a calm night (Score:2)
Windmills work. Solar panels work.
Not on a calm night. However, put that proverbial drop of water from the bucket into a fusion reactor and one litre of such drops generates as much energy as 500 litres of petrol at any time of day or night and in any wind condition but without any green house gas emission.... and that's just from fusing the deuterium. If we can ever make a fusion reactor that fuses hydrogen itself (which is a lot harder) that number goes way up.
Re: A Drop in the Bucket for an Impractical Projec (Score:3)
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On the scale of total spending on energy production - hell, even just energy R&D - $100 million is indeed a drop in the bucket. And it's private investor money, for something that might actually have a huge practical payoff. So why the grousing? It doesn't have to become an energy cure-all to still have a useful result. And if it fails, what is the practical loss?
What a load of crap (Score:2)
Do you mean ITER? (Score:2)
Some of the best theoretical physicists and engineers are working on the ITAR project backed by billions of government grants.
Do you mean ITER?
Does anyone really think that a measly 100 million, probably half of it going to travel expenses to find more funding, is ever going to lead to anything?
Obviously they believe the investment is worth the risk, otherwise they would not have done it.
I've seen a lot of different ideas on how to get useful power from a fusion reactor. There was a series of such videos on both TED Talks and Google Talks where many of these fusion power projects were explained. I suggest people seek them out and watch some of them. This and the Polywell Fusor sound far more plausible than the ITER money pit.
This is just a scam based on FOMO and rich assholes are just falling for it.
At least they are doing more about solving global war
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"Obviously they believe the investment is worth the risk, otherwise they would not have done it."
But that assumes the decision-making process is sound. As any number of crypto scams demonstrate, fools and their money remain easily separated due to less-than-sound decision making.
"Maybe it is a scam, but at least they are trying to solve the problem"
If it is a scam, then they are, by definition, *not* trying to solve the problem.
I don't believe it is a scam, but I believe it cannot possibly work for some ver
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But that assumes the decision-making process is sound.
Indeed it does.
If it is a scam, then they are, by definition, *not* trying to solve the problem.
If General Fusion is running a scam that doesn't mean a person they scammed is not interested in solving the problem, and willing to put up their own money to that end. They have every intent on solving the problem, they are concerned enough to invest their own money, they simply didn't have all the data they needed. General Fusion has been around for a while, and they have shown that they are building stuff, if this is a scam then they are doing a poor job of it by spending so much money.
Fusion is a very difficult problem. I think we can safely say it will contribute nothing to solving the climate change problem.
T
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If these investors really cared about saving the world rather than turning a profit from their investments, they'd sponsor government projects.
You assume these government projects are run by people that have better people, better data, and better ideas, than a privately run project. Have you seen the people that run the US federal government? Do you really think these people have all the answers? This is the same government that burned up $125 million in the atmosphere of Mars because someone forgot to convert pounds to newtons.
I've grown tired of empty promises made by tech firms (Theranos comes to mind) that exist solely to make the founders obscenely rich.
Did you consider that people with money are more likely to invest in research if success means they get "obscenely ric
Actually, it does work (Score:2)
The original design was done here at the UW and then moved for a variety of reasons.
Commercial rollouts are 2030 at the earliest.
False Summary Statement (Score:3)
While it holds out the promise of cheap, carbon-free energy...
It does not hold the promise for cheap energy, and hasn't since about the end of Project Sherwood in the mid 1950s. Project Sherwood was a highly classified military project to produce fusion power, at a time when it was thought to be easy. They found that it wasn't, shut the program down, and declassified the research since they had discovered that it was going to be very difficult. That was the end of the notion that it might be cheap.
As research proceeded it got harder and harder which means more and more expensive. Literally hundreds of approaches have been studied now with the Tokamak the only one that currently has a strong case for feasibility, but the cost of that power when they are ready to build power plants will be about 10 times current market cost (which has been stable, adjusted for inflation, for 60+ years now).
Maybe some clever new tweak of prior approaches or (very unlikely) a totally new approach will cut that cost - but since the fuel breeding and recovery part of fusion power -- which all approaches must deal with -- is more that 10% of the cost, none of them will be cost competitive with existing power sources.
So "cheap" does not apply.
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Fusion is and always has been a possible, practical stable power source. We call the prime example of it "The Sun".
The issue is downsizing it down it to something that fits in a square mile. That issue has proved MUCH tougher to do than we thought.
But the reason people keep saying it is 10 years away is that the science is already there, just not the engineering.
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Wellllll......maybe. But there might be some science that hasn't been discovered, or noticed, that would change what engineering is needed. Say some easy way to generate particles that would catalyze the reaction.
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> Maybe you could elaborate what their idea actually is and why it's regarded as a joke
The approach GF is using is a variation on MAGLIF, which, in turn, is a subtype of the ICF approach. General information here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetized_Liner_Inertial_Fusion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion
The goal of any fusion approach is to hold together a plasma just long enough for enough reactions to complete to make it worthwhile. That "long enough" varies inversely with de
Re: Actual plasma physicist here (Score:2, Insightful)
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That reactor has been provided absolutely free of charge.
The problem is in the cost of collecting that energy.
If the matter was simply how "free" this energy is then that applies to just about anything. Petroleum oil is free, all we have to do is drill for it. Coal is free, we just need to dig it from the ground. Uranium and thorium is free, we just need to build a reactor.
Some people just go looking for problems eh? :-)
Nobody has to look for it, the relative costs will become apparent in time. How much does that solar power cost at local midnight? That's not looking for a problem, it's not being able to
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Much of the materials you provided show capital expenses for storage not rates paid for electrical service. While both are measured in $/kWh there was no explanation on how one correlates to the other.
The articles you linked to didn't give many numbers and read more like a corporate press release than any kind of rigorous economic analysis. Also, where prices were given this was for a single project and may not be representative of the industry. This is like the people that point to the perpetually over
Re: Ablegen, JUDEN! (Score:5, Informative)
On being close in fission, not really. Despite the Nazis' juvenile fascination with wonder weapons, their fission program never got very far. When it was determined that a weapon would likely not be available until after the war, the program pretty much died on the vine. It was hampered from the start by the exodus of politically unacceptable scientists, many of whom ended up working on the Manhattan Project. Many capable physicists remained of course, but they had to fight ideological hostility from the Nazis against theoretical physics, which was seen as decadent and Jewish-influenced.
While the expertise existed in Germany to build a bomb, the Nazi program made very little practical progress. The simpler uranium path to a warhead would require massive industrial facilities vulnerable to relentless allied bombing. The more challenging plutonium path would take an army of top minds diverted from more pressing war work. AFAIK they never built a reactor capable of sustained operation.
The US, safe from significant attacks and flush with refugee brain power, chose to pursue both paths. The Hiroshima bomb was a crude uranium gun type weapon, and the Nagasaki weapon was a much more sophisticated plutonium implosion device.
On a personal note, when I went to engineering school in the 70s, a lot of these refugee scientists were still working. Many of my professors had stories of escaping the Nazis. The Manhattan Project generation is gone now, and along with them the living memory of the key role of refugees in creating postwar US military and economic might.
Americans take US science international preeminence for granted, but it's an unnatural situation for 5% of the world's population to be so dominant. That leadership is only sustainable if great minds want to come here.
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The Hiroshima bomb was a crude uranium gun type weapon
It worked, there's no question about that.
Here's one thing that bothers me when people claim that nuclear power reactors are a risk for nuclear weapon proliferation, what reactor produced the core for "Little Boy"? There was none.
The threat of weapons comes from the enrichment of natural uranium, called natural uranium because it is everywhere in the dirt and as salts in the ocean. We cannot deny a nation access to a material that is so common. Maybe we can do something about enrichment, by denying acces
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Plutonium has a lot of advantages for nuclear weapons over uranium. That's why it's so commonly used. You've managed to hold up as an example one of the only nuclear weapons ever made that didn't use plutonium.
The reason most power reactors aren't much of a proliferation risk is because they're purposely designed that way.
Re: The title of this thread needs changed (Score:2)
ceoyoyo observed:
You've managed to hold up as an example one of the only nuclear weapons ever made that didn't use plutonium.
Mmm ... not really.
A large part of Pakistan's deployed nuclear arsenal [wikipedia.org] is based on implosion-based HEU designs (think a Nagasaki-style spherical implosion device, except using HEU instead of Pu239 - oh, and in the larger-yield variations, the core encloses a couple or three grams of tritium to give the same-sized HEU mass 3-5 times the kick). It also has Pu239-based warheads for delivery by cruise missiles and fighter-bombers, and it has submarine-launched cruise missiles and torpedos eithe
Little boy, enrichment, and medical isotopes (Score:4, Interesting)
You should stop letting that bother you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]... It's not like they just dug it up and stuffed it into a bomb.
It bothers me because the claims of a connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons does not exist. This is like saying we shouldn't have electric cars because people used to execute convicts by the electric chair. See, there's a place to sit in the car. There's a place to connect a high voltage circuit. AN ELECTRIC CAR IS JUST A MEANS TO HAVE MORE ELECTROCUTIONS! This is of course absurd, just as is the claim nuclear power leads to nuclear weapons.
If people want less nuclear weapons then we need a way to destroy the weapons we have. The only way to destroy this material is in a nuclear reactor, and we can get a lot of energy from it in the process.
If people want to reduce the risk of wars in any form then we should reduce the chances of people fighting over resources. From such an ample and reliable energy source as nuclear power, and one that can be used nearly anywhere on Earth, we can get light, heat, cooling, clean desalinated water, clean air, and so much more. This of course won't stop all resource wars, as there will be people that fight over things like warm water ports and land to grow food. It won't stop wars caused by differences in political or religious beliefs either. But it will make wars over oil, water, coal, and natural gas rather pointless.
Here's more on how fear of nuclear power is misplaced.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
You pointing out that Little Boy required enrichment doesn't stop people from connecting nuclear weapons with nuclear power. What has a much stronger connection to nuclear power is nuclear medicine. There's a shortage of radioactive isotopes used for diagnostics and treatment of a variety of illnesses. There may in fact be a cure for a number of cancers we can get from nuclear power. It's going to take a lot of nuclear reactors to get this medicine, and we can get life saving energy and clean water from these reactors as well.
https://energyfromthorium.com/... [energyfromthorium.com]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
You are correct that Little Boy required enrichment, not a reactor. This is unknown to most people though. If a nation is seeking peaceful use of nuclear power then they will enrich deuterium like India, not uranium like Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Using heavy hydrogen isotopes for fusion is, in my opinion, a waste of a valuable commodity. This would be better used for producing safe and abundant power, and medical isotopes, in a heavy water fission reactor.
Re: Close enough to gamble on (Score:2)
Even rich guys are suckers for FOMO.
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I guess VC's think it's close enough to gamble on. Heck, if you can spend 1-2 Billion and lock up the patents that enable economically viable fusion, you'll be able to print money. Never mind the 10's, 100's? of billions spent by governments over the last 80 years, your final contribution will give you a 20+ year monopoly.
I have family members that got patents and I found out what happens to a lot of these patents in real life.
One common outcome is a company buying the patent to keep it others from using it. They will defend it vigorously to protect their other products that don't use this patent. Maybe they work on this a bit, mostly halfheartedly, to make a case that they are actually using the patent should anyone challenge the patent. Most of the time this is to make some new patent based on the old patent so they can