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'Now Fusion Has a Chance': New MIT Research Claims Fusion Power's 'Practicality' Has Been Proven (futurism.com) 90

Posted by EditorDavid from the getting-a-reaction dept.
An anonymous reader shared this article from Futurism: More than two years since MIT claimed its scientists achieved a breakthrough in fusion energy, the university is claiming that new research "confirms" that the magnet-based design used in those tests isn't just impressive in a lab setting, but is practical and economically viable, too.

These findings come from a comprehensive report which features six separate [peer-reviewed] studies published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity this month, assessing the feasibility of the superconductor magnets used by MIT scientists in their landmark test conducted in September 2021.
"Together, the papers describe the design and fabrication of the magnet and the diagnostic equipment needed to evaluate its performance," MIT announced, "as well as the lessons learned from the process.

"Overall, the team found, the predictions and computer modeling were spot-on, verifying that the magnet's unique design elements could serve as the foundation for a fusion power plant." The successful test of the magnet, says Hitachi America Professor of Engineering Dennis Whyte, who recently stepped down as director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was "the most important thing, in my opinion, in the last 30 years of fusion research." Before the [2021] demonstration, the best-available superconducting magnets were powerful enough to potentially achieve fusion energy — but only at sizes and costs that could never be practical or economically viable. Then, when the tests showed the practicality of such a strong magnet at a greatly reduced size, "overnight, it basically changed the cost per watt of a fusion reactor by a factor of almost 40 in one day," Whyte says.

"Now fusion has a chance," Whyte adds
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'Now Fusion Has a Chance': New MIT Research Claims Fusion Power's 'Practicality' Has Been Proven More

'Now Fusion Has a Chance': New MIT Research Claims Fusion Power's 'Practicality' Has Been Proven

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  • Now, with this breakthrough, commercial fusions only 50 years away!

    hawk

    • It's always been a certain dollar amount of research effort away. A dollar amount that was cancelled in the 1970s. In fact, the progress made given the amount of cancelled money is amazing. It's not like there hasn't been progress.
      References:
      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EF... [twimg.com]
      https://www.reddit.com/media?u... [reddit.com]

      • Keep in mind that today's most highly funded effort -- ITER .. is a scaled down version of what was planned to be built in the 80s.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chaset ( 552418 )

        I read an article that explained it as "X years away if Y% of GDP was spent every year." If that Y number were maintained since the beginning of fusion research to now, we would already have it. The Y number has been cut in terms of absolute terms, not to mention in terms of GDP, so of course X has increased. Also, if funding was cut a little, it may slow down research, but if you cut a lot, you cause labs to shut down, researchers to move to other fields, etc. so the crippling effects are compounded. T

    • Re:Now only . . . (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Sunday March 10, 2024 @06:10PM (#64305243) Homepage

      These comments are so predictable, from people who have no understanding.

      The origin of this notion of "fusion is always said to be close, but it never shows up!" dates back to the progression leading up to, and past, ZETA in 1957. Russia had just launched Sputnik, embarrassing the west, in this ideological war of civilizations. But ZETA offered hope from a PR perspective: "Oh, sure, you launched a satellite, but we just invented limitless power!"

      The problem was that the early ZETA numbers turned out to be wrong due to measurement errors. At the time, there was literally no way anyone could hope to model fusion on a computer, and very little understanding of what they were doing in general beyond a basic particle physics standpoint. The steady increasing understanding of what went wrong was then compounded over the next couple decades by more projects which increasingly showed that the barriers to overcome for different fusion mechanisms were much greater than expected.

      We now understand all this, and since the advent of modern computing, we can model it all readily (except for some edge cases, not applicable to e.g. tokamaks). And that's what's being discussed here: bog standard tokamak fusion. This isn't new ground. We know how tokamaks work. We know that if you build them big enough, you can get sufficiently net-energy-positive fusion. It's that "big enough" - and doing so economically - that's always been the barrier.

      However, in recent decades - well after the start of ITER (and thus not employed in its design) - there was a massive change on the scene: the commercial bulk availability of room temperature superconducting films. These allow for magnets with double the field strength, which basically lets you scale down the size of a commercially viable reactor by an order of magnitude. And not only that, but they offer a whole host of other advantages, including easier / cheaper cooling, easier ability to open up the reactor to get inside to replace the liner, and so forth.

      It's a complete game changer for the industry. That doesn't mean "viable nuclear power overnight". Heck, it doesn't even prove economic viability at all - you can't predict that really well in advance. But what it does mean is that, yes, at a reasonable scale, we can build productive electricity-genereating fusion reactors. This isn't some exotic, "This One Weird Trick Lets You Make A Great Fusion Reactor" thing - this is well established, well researched physics here. Just with better magnets. And those better magnets makes a *huge* difference.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        (To be fair, it's not JUST the magnets that have advanced - liners, cooling/breeding blankets, and basically everything have advanced over the years. But the magnets are the really big deal)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Shag ( 3737 )

        However, in recent decades - well after the start of ITER (and thus not employed in its design) - there was a massive change on the scene: the commercial bulk availability of room temperature superconducting films. These allow for magnets with double the field strength, which basically lets you scale down the size of a commercially viable reactor by an order of magnitude. And not only that, but they offer a whole host of other advantages, including easier / cheaper cooling, easier ability to open up the reactor to get inside to replace the liner, and so forth.

        It's a complete game changer for the industry. That doesn't mean "viable nuclear power overnight". Heck, it doesn't even prove economic viability at all - you can't predict that really well in advance. But what it does mean is that, yes, at a reasonable scale, we can build productive electricity-genereating fusion reactors. This isn't some exotic, "This One Weird Trick Lets You Make A Great Fusion Reactor" thing - this is well established, well researched physics here. Just with better magnets. And those better magnets makes a *huge* difference.

        You meant to say "high-temperature" superconducting, not "room temperature" -- we're still talking 100 Kelvin, give or take. But being able to use cheap, easily-produced liquid nitrogen for cooling rather than liquid helium is a big deal, yes.

      • At the time, there was literally no way anyone could hope to model fusion on a computer, and very little understanding of what they were doing in general beyond a basic particle physics standpoint.

        That, in a nutshell, describes my father's career. He went from programming an IBM 704 in the 50s/60s simulating particles zipping around an accelerator at UW to simulating fusion machines at ORNL in the 60s/70s/80s.

  • I look forward to my fusion powered jet pack and flying car.

    Maybe another 10 years.

  • Fusion had "a chance" for quite some time. But this result here is based on simulation and theory and basically an educated guess, not much more. We will know when the first real-sized prototype has produced energy for 10 years or so. That is still quite some time (50 year or more) away.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Shag ( 3737 )

      Fusion had "a chance" for quite some time. But this result here is based on simulation and theory and basically an educated guess, not much more.

      if the tech being talked about is ReBCO high-temperature superconducting tape, and the person talking about it is from MIT? They're well beyond simulation and theory. They built a full-scale magnet back in 2021 and generated a 20 Tesla field - and kept it at that strength for over 5 hours.

  • Not to worry -- this "breakthrough" and all fusion breakthroughs are always 10 years away. And 10 years from now it will STILL be 10 years away. So no reason to buckle up for a sea change.

    • Several companies are claiming to have commercial fusion reactors on the way by 2030-2031. One company has already signed a contract to provide Microsoft with power from a fusion reactor by 2028.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shubus ( 1382007 )
        We've been hearing a similar song and dance for decades. Believe it when you see it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by evanh ( 627108 )

          We are seeing it, right now. The magnets were always the limiting factor. Just like batteries are the limiting factor for EVs.

          • Also keep in mind that one of the leaders in the fusion space - Commonwealth Fusion - collaborates with MIT. It is definitely something Commonwealth will use in the future, and it may well be an iteration on work that Commonwealth has already done in the recent past.

          • We are seeing it, right now.

            By seeing it we mean a working economically feasible reactor, not promises that will magically extend by 10 years and billions of dollars.

            Bill gates was supposed to have some advanced reactor in Wyoming, now dead. Plenty of time for this Fusion project to get cancelled.

            There are lots of issues beyond magnets.

          • hahaha no. Having no means to contain a plasma of sufficient temperature for a sufficient time using less energy than the plasma produces continues to be the issue.

            • And that's where these MIT magnets come in. Now proven on fullscale size to actually be able to use in an economically viable way. And research doesn't sit still, with this new insight it's possible to improve those magnets even further.

              • No, MIT magnets have done nothing of the sort. No fusion in plasma at temperature sustained producing net power has been done. All hand waving theorectical B.S.

    • When I was young people derisively said that fusion was always 25 years away. In the last 10 years people have been saying similarly that fusion is always 10 years away. That suggests that progress has happened, but not as fast as proponents predicted/hope.

  • Shrink it until it can fit in a 17.5 meter tall bipedal robot, use it to power such robot and make sure it is green and mono-eyed, because having two eyes would be too expensive.

  • The company’s device is a six–by-40-foot barbell-shaped “plasma accelerator.” It uses powerful magnets to heat a gas mixture to the point that the atoms break apart, creating rings of an ultra-hot state of matter known as plasma on either end of the device. The magnets then propel those rings at each other at a million miles per hour, and further compress them in the middle of the device, which creates those temperatures of more than 100 million C, the company says. That triggers fu

  • For 50 years we've been "on the doorstep" to fusion plants and now there's just "a chance" to it? That would by nice but as long as we don't have some magic material that can deal with the massive neutron radiation I don't see any. Call me when we're back to "on the doorstep" so I can remind you to the neutron problem - there's not the slightest chance it will ever be solved. We'll see electricity from pertuum mobiles before that.

  • The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for solar and wind has been dropping for years and will continue to drop. Fusion using high tech devices and then thermal conversion of heat to electricity is never going to compete unless you can't use wind or solar.

    About the only way fusion is going to compete economically against increasingly cheap solar and wind is if they use a fusion reaction that allows direct conversion of fusion to electricity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      The cost of nuclear is cheaper and simpler in the long term https://www.iea.org/reports/pr... [iea.org] But the major concern is power when the sun doesn't shine and wind doesn't blow good luck trying to run industry of any sort of Battery that includes pumped hydro and other schemes to store power.

      • The cost of nuclear is cheaper and simpler in the long term

        Sure, as long as you don't account for the impact of emissions, or the cost of cleaning them up. If you do a complete cradle to grave analysis, that isn't true at all, and that's the only kind of analysis that matters. IOW, nuclear is neither cheaper nor simpler and you're parroting lies.

  • Now fusion energy has a chance? This sounds like good news to me.

  • This research is fantastic...but it is still being done in a university lab.

    To prove that it's practical and economically viable, it will be necessary to build actual fusion reactors and start generating electricity at a cost that can compete with existing methods. It's not enough to "prove" that it "could" be viable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      This research is fantastic...but it is still being done in a university lab.

      The attribution is a bit squishy in this case. There's a significant component coming from MIT - academia. But that goes hand-in-hand with a private spin-off company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems [cfs.energy], who is actually building the demonstration reactor [cfs.energy].

      • This is a common scenario. The "practicality" will be demonstrated *only* after this company moves past the startup phase and becomes self-sustaining financially, without funding from outside sources.

  • To power the USA, we'd need 3.7 metric tons of tritium a year. Right now CANDU reactors all together make 100 grams a year rhat can be actually reclaimed though 8.5 kg produced.. There won't even be enough to power experimental reactors that can't and won't make breakeven in next 25 years. The world's 20 kg will be eaten up by ITER, NIF and all the rest... and then the fusion research opportunity is gone.

    And then there are Helion who claim they won't need tritium because they'll do D-D at five times the t

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mbunch ( 1594095 )
      Once you have a working fusion reactor, you can breed all the tritium it needs using a lithium blanket. ITER will be testing various designs. You can also breed tritium from lithium using neutrons from a fission reactor. Our current production is low just because there is little demand.

      • That idea of using a lithium blanket is starting to look like baloney with serious engineering analysis showing only 5 percent the yield of what was imagined.

        Can't breed from lithium in our existing civilian power plants for a long list of reasons, not set up for it and tritium would be into the environment. The puny amount of tritium the nuclear weapon primaries need for boosting fission is met by reactors but nothing like the metric tons needed for plants.

        The whole thing is an ill thought out fiasco, we

  • The actual breakthrough (Score:5, Informative)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Monday March 11, 2024 @07:47AM (#64306175) Journal
    The summary, breathless in style, actually didn't explain what the breakthrough was. It's this: they have successfully demonstrated one of the superconducting toroidal magnets that MIT/CFS wants to put into their SPARC reactor design. There are two things that make this magnet special:

    1) it uses high-temperature (relatively speaking: 20 K) superconducting wire (tape [ieee.org], actually) that only recently became commercially available. Typically, such magnets would have used niobium-based alloys [iter.org] and required colder operating temperatures, and
    2) they achieved a field strength of 20 T, which is pretty awesome on its own, but especially for a magnet this compact.

    Demonstrating the toroidal is an enabler of the SPARC reactor design. Now they can build the rest of it [aip.org] (copies of this toroidal coil, plus about a dozen other superconducting magnets of other configurations, and another dozen copper-based coils), and see if any of their simulations bear out.

  • Last year, Scientific American reported that the "break through" did not really generate more power than it consumed. The surge of power lasted only seconds and destroyed the equipment that generated it. More important, the power released was far less than the power required to create that equipment.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      Last year, Scientific American reported that the "break through" did not really generate more power than it consumed. The surge of power lasted only seconds and destroyed the equipment that generated it. More important, the power released was far less than the power required to create that equipment.

      Different entity. You're thinking of the laser-based inertial confinement fusion being done at the National Ignition Facility. This article is about a milestone towards a magnetic-confinement device spun out

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