"Wright Brothers" moment in nuclear fusion

[jtr1962]

With all the horrible news for the past 18 months it's nice to hear about something positive.

A national lab just achieved a 'Wright Brothers moment' in nuclear fusion

The results make "a significant step toward ignition," the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced on Tuesday.

www.cnbc.com

However, the fusion energy generated was about 5 times the energy absorbed by the capsule and about 70% of the laser energy shot at the target – these are the significant aspects.

While this doesn't mean you'll be able to get a Mr. Fusion™ any time soon, it puts us one step closer to commercial fusion. There's still a lot of work to do. In the meantime we can and should continue harnessing that big fusion reactor in the sky. Commercial solar now generates less expensive electricity than any other power source.

 

[Olumin]

Hope first commercial reactors go online in the 40s. fission the way we do it is not sustainable. they gonna have to burry that trash kilometres beneath the south pole and keep it there for 10 million years.

 

[jtr1962]

fission the way we do it is not sustainable. they gonna have to burry that trash kilometres beneath the south pole and keep it there for 10 million years.

Yeah. Or once it gets inexpensive enough to launch into space send it on a trajectory into the sun.

 

[Olumin]

Background radiation is and will continue to be dramatically heightened for thousands more years. cancer rates have shot up all over the world in the past 70 years. They gonna build some big concrete pyramid over that trash heap and engrave warning messages in all languages on all 4 sides. Then 10 thousand years later some archaeologists are gonna dig it back up wondering what they will find cause thats how humans are. good times.

People scream that its clean but this sort of thinking is shortsighted and dangerous. Nothing about this is clean just because what comes out of the cooling towers is water vapor.

 

[jtr1962]

The life cycle cost of fission once you count cleaning up the mess is rather high. So much for the power source that was supposed to generate "electricity too cheap to meter". I hope we get to commercial fusion by the 40s.

 

[idleprocess]

fission the way we do it is not sustainable. they gonna have to burry that trash kilometres beneath the south pole and keep it there for 10 million years.

The problem of nuclear waste is not so pronounced as it's often made to seem.

• By failing to reprocess 'spent' fuel (or use breeder reactors, largely obviating the need for reprocessing) we throw out a huge percentage of the remaining energy
• The truly dangerous hot waste has a short half-life thus becomes safer within less than the span of a human lifespan. The infamous elephant's foot used to emit radiation that would be fatal in 30 seconds; today it would take 300 seconds.
• For lack of a Yucca Mountain-like facility, fission plants have been using dry cask storage of the hotter wastes without much fanfare for decades
• While some radioactive waste will require long-term storage, much of it will be at a sufficiently low level that we could simply bury it under a giant pile of uninteresting rubble

Even with the various well-known and not so well-known nuclear accidents, nuclear fission kills orders of magnitude fewer people than nearly all other major sources of electricity. As an added bonus there's but tons of material involved in producing gigawatt-hours as opposed to the megatons of fuel that thermal plants consume.

Now I don't think this means everything is just fabulous with the existing fleet of plants and we should merrily build dozens of BWRs with Mark I containment structures. But commercial fusion reactors have been just around the corner for the better part of 50 years, climate change is still happening, and while the likes of solar/wind/tidal/geothermal do make good energy sources they're not apt to prove sufficient for the needs of industry transitioning from burning gas and coal for process heat to electric heat or 'green' hydrogen. In terms of prospects that could be realistically acted upon soon, NuScale's SMR has gained initial NRC approval and I feel that the gas-cooled reactor deserves another look.

 

[Olumin]

All other sources of electricity dont contaminate the entire planet for generations if something goes wrong. Outdated generator designs are still operating world wide. Many nations with much laxer safety regulations. Penny pinching causes corners to be cut in maintenance and construction to somehow make fission profitable. It takes decades for reactors to turn profit, initial investment is enormous. The damage is already done. The after effects of nuclear energy together with atomic weapons testing will be with us for eons. Mining and processing of uranium fuel is another major contributor to this. It is not clean. If they would have put a world wide ban on all of this in the early 60s the impact would have been greatly lessened. But we cant even get Europe to federalize, much less the world to agree on something. One can only hope future generations will look at us like the naive primitives we are and not make the same shortsighted mistakes. But history tends to repeat itself.

 

[idleprocess]

All other sources of electricity dont contaminate the entire planet for generations if something goes wrong.

We're already doing this burning coal, oil, and gas for the bulk of our energy needs operating as expected.

Outdated generator designs are still operating world wide.

As are horrendously unsafe dams, industrial facilities, agricultural operations, power stations, mining operations that have killed orders of magnitude more people than nuclear powder.

For what it's worth I'm all for the swift decommission of the likes of RBMK-1000 reactors and BWRs in Mark I containment facilities.

Penny pinching causes corners to be cut in maintenance and construction to somehow make fission profitable.

This certainly caused problems at the likes of Chernobyl, but it's hardly unique to nuclear plants. Privatizing things has certainly had issues in the United States, but it's neither inevitable nor irreversible.

It takes decades for reactors to turn profit, initial investment is enormous.

This is true of numerous other large-scale infrastructure such as dams, water projects.

Specific to nuclear - at least in the United States - the lack of a reasonably standardized plant design, the irregularity of construction, the endless litigation, and the fact that there's a lot of on-site construction drives up costs. A number of generation II/III designs are also expensive in ways that don't specifically make them more resistant to accidents nor improve their economic efficiency.

Mining and processing of uranium fuel is another major contributor to this. It is not clean.

While there are indeed specific problems associated with uranium mining, extraction of natural resources is itself inherently destructive and damaging to the environment. There are Roman mines that are causing groundwater problems some 2000 years since their 'retirement'.



My sense is that practical commercial nuclear fusion is still some ways off. Far enough off that we need to bridge a long gap. Renewables - and all the storage technologies in the pipeline - don't seem likely to be able to scale to the point that they can shoulder the load in time to mitigate the impacts of climate change. To wait for viable commercial fusion is to continue the status quo and we know where that is going. When you really get down to it, the industrial economy is not negotiable, but the means of achieving it are - we can reduce pollution and start to close material loops, but that will invariably involve production of more energy.

 

[Olumin]

Claiming fission is not so bad because other plants kill more people is like saying the atomic bomb is safe because they killed far less people then conventional weapons. Its an insane statement IMM. Much of what you say is true. Nothing is black and white and of cause fission has advantages. Its just that its irrelevant. Thats all I really have to say about it.

 

[GoVegan]

I don't see anything nuclear related to be positive news. Fission or even fusion, both have high risks of contamination to the environment for future generations. Fusion is just the lesser of the two evils.
Besides fusion energy is not renewable therefore not sustainable.

The most likely only reason as to why this even made news is because Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory needs continuation with funding and also the people involved in the project want recognition and awards for their work.

Renewable energy is the power for the future. Some argue that renewable energy doesn't produce enough, but this can be solved by having more localized power stations (better for resilience too) and also by reducing our current energy usage. Sadly most people don't think about reducing their own energy requirements, most people will not even consider having less kids, changing their diet and lifestyle and will continue to fly and drive everywhere, mow their lawns in gasoline powered mowers, purchase bottled water/soda, run though 4 alkaline AAs in their Zebralight in a usual work day etc, etc.
(Don't consider this a personal dig at you/anyone, I'm just highlighting the fact that we can all do so much more to reduce our energy consumption if we care).

Finally this video should make it clear why fusion energy is most likely never going to happen.

Watch This Video Every Time You Hear About A 'FUSION BREAKTHROUGH'

 

[WarriorOfLight]

The discussion about fusion is from the 80s. When I was in education around this time there was the true believe that around 2000 the first fusion plants will be build.

Now every few years there are some announcements or scientific articles meaning "we almost have it" And this "we almost have it" game will be done also since ~2000, and every few years an updates, "yes but now we really almost have it" will be published.

Therefore we will see what happened 2030.... my guess is nothing, at least regarding fusion and a commercial usage to create electricity.

 

[Olumin]

Finally this video should make it clear why fusion energy is most likely never going to happen.

Someone should tell all those scientists and engineers across the globe to stop wasting their time already. GoVegan said its impossible. lol. sorry.

 

[Julian Holtz]

They don't waste their time. I am sure they all receive excellent paychecks. It's just a giant scam like the "Human Brain Project". We all know politicians are generally scientific illiterates, but also like to cover this fact up by having group photos taken with actual scientists and have their names mentioned in a science context once in a while. So all you have to do as a scientist is to pitch a "revolutionary project" to some politicians and you end up working in places like this:

Human Brain Project - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Your funds are secured for decades, as no follow-up politician will understand or admid that all previous efforts were in vain, and dare to stop it in fear of being labelled anti-science. "Sunk costs" also play a major role here:

Sunk cost - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The sunk cost fallacy has also been called the "Concorde fallacy": the UK and French governments took their past expenses on the costly supersonic jet as a rationale for continuing the project, as opposed to "cutting their losses".

 

[bykfixer]

My local congressman looks really cool in a long white lab coat. He belongs in a straight jacket but that's for another time……

When human kind became electrified it was a boon. Trouble is no matter how companies produce it there's going to be consequences. Are we polluting the **** out of the planet? You betcha.
But I have yet to meet a single person who says "yeah those folks in the days of Thomas Jefferson sure had it made"……

 

[Olumin]

we would be like ants to advanced aliens. if they would look at earth they would see us and our pollution as just a natural part of the eco system. We would be hardly more clever than any other animal on this world. we dont curse at birds for polluting trees with nets. since humans are natural anything we make is also natural. so perhaps not pollution but a natural change in the ecosystem. food for thought.