I worked in fusion research in the late 80's. Funding dried up and I moved on. I still miss it.

Great primer on topic and a good capitulation of current state of research and hardware design. Gladly shared. Thanks for posting, RI.

It’s been ten years away for the past 60 years

@georgesealy4706

2 жыл бұрын

I was told 20 years, 50 years ago. But who is counting anyway? LOL. But instead of focusing on new technology and what it can do, we get mandates instead. It is far easier.

@hughkelly9073

2 жыл бұрын

Actually it is. The fundamental truth is that energy will heat the earth. Talk about climate change whoa. Mind if there was one on the moon that is not a problem.

@peterbarabas9358

Жыл бұрын

I remember my physics teacher saying: ‘Nuclear fusion is just 50 years away. Just like it was 50 years ago.’ :) Great video!

@hughkelly9073

Жыл бұрын

@@peterbarabas9358 the joke amongst the Plasma physicists is that yes it is just 50 years away and always will be. But I say so much progress has been made it is just ten years away and always will be.🥲

@Kangaroojack1986

Жыл бұрын

Well its 60 years closer

Very engaging and well presented - thankyou! !

Kudos to all the people that are actively trying to make the world a better place!

@jamesbranton222

Жыл бұрын

You really should draw the distinction between Qtotal and Qplasma. The .67 Q value achieved at JET was Qplasma. The Qtotal of energy generated in that 1997 test was than .01. Qplasma only accounts for energy introduced into the plasma and not the total of energy consumed in the creation of the plasma and then introduced into the plasma. You shouldn't find it surprising that the massive amount of energy used to create the magnetic field (and cool all the equipment performing this mammoth amount of work) is typically about 10X that of the energy introduced into the plasma.

If they're looking for a denser state of matter, they can just read the comments here :) Very interesting talk RI.

@SuperNewf1

2 жыл бұрын

lol

@simonstyles4536

2 жыл бұрын

Ha ha,you funny my brudda

@gavinhind1433

2 жыл бұрын

Hahahah

@ddr8215

2 жыл бұрын

I don’t get it?

@nosuchthing8

2 жыл бұрын

I resemble that remark

Thanks so much for updating and broadening our minds on artificial fusion. Quantum leaps in the wide world of physics over the last 60+ yrs, thanks to global efforts. Your in-depth explanation and data/facts compilation are much appreciated. Keep up with the good work and let us know more in future.

@TheDavidlloydjones

2 жыл бұрын

Fantastic progress. Any day now! We report once again...

@kimberlylebel693

2 жыл бұрын

👁 concur 🌬👰‍♀️🌪🔥🤯🌈💎🥳

@kimberlylebel693

2 жыл бұрын

@@TheDavidlloydjones PORT RE PORT AUTHORITY

Absolutely superb viewing. Many thanks.

Fantastic Arthur ,Even a layman like me could follow what you are saying , This mind boggling stuff , we are truly working at the very cutting edge of our scientific knowledge regarding nuclear fusion, but I can see that with further research and development Nuclear fusion would have profound positive advantages for all humanity .

Excellent presenter with wonderful analogies, graphics and enthusiasm. I hope to see him again on Ri. And he knows how to use his media with good audio and movement of his image to match the graphics. Great job.

Arthur, I had a question: why try to jump from fusion bombs, to controlled fusion reactions for electrity; when the logical mid-step would be fusion ROCKETS, which produce a semi-controlled reaction? This will produce not only essential space-travel needs, but also the research can be used toward the final step of sustained fusion reactions for energy. If all fusion research was focused in rockets, then it could be achieved much more quickly, than jumping straight to fusion powerplants.

@WESMITH91

2 жыл бұрын

Take a look at Quantized Inertia by Prof Mike McCullough of PlymouthU

I am listening about 50 years without results, I would like to see an efficiency graph of the different current experiments

@gungadin1389

2 жыл бұрын

ya Jackson , that and flying cars!!!

@Gomlmon99

2 жыл бұрын

Google triple product over the years

@spwolfbrandt

2 жыл бұрын

Me too. Fifty years of waiting. It’s always just 20 years out in the future. I hope they’re finally getting there.

@mikenewtonninja9379

2 жыл бұрын

your efficiency graph would be a flat line, it's a long line of experiments which all deliver nothing. no results equals no efficiency.

If we can find a way to do this safely, it could be a huge game changer for everyone… Thank you so much for putting this wonderful presentation together.

Dr. Turrell makes a 'tskt' sound whenever he starts a new breath of statements. I DO THE EXACT SAME THING. Hashtag relatable, from across the pond.

Exceptional presentation. Please do more.

Fusion has been that big leap that has perpetually been 'just around the corner' for decades as countless billions are poured into it. It's a fascinating topic but a bit of honesty in the way its handled by the media would be refreshing, it won't be ready by 2030, and saying it's good by 2050 is optimistic at best.

@Krithalith

2 жыл бұрын

@@aural_escape Humans weaponized fusion over 60 years ago. It's actually much easier to make a fusion bomb than a fusion power plant.

@cconnors

8 ай бұрын

You're talking about different points of a project 20 years apart. ITER -> 2030 Construction is complete ITER -> 2032 First plasma ITER -> 2035 First self-heating plasma DEMO -> 2035 Construction starts DEMO -> 2045 Construction is complete DEMO -> 2050 Places first power onto the grid with Plasma Fusion 2050+ -> Each country in the project builds their own reactors over the next 50 years. So by 2100 the entire world will be using Plasma reactors as their primary energy source. So that will be just under 200 years for humanity to discover fusion power, study it, learn enough to harness it, and then use it for power. That's a pretty good turn around considering we knew about electricity hundreds of years before we had power in our homes. :)

there are so many ways to describe this experience, but the best way and simplicity to describe it is to be able to replant another planet

This was great, good job for putting this together in a way that even I understood

@vijayvictorious4986

2 жыл бұрын

Agreed, very good job

@gottogo8675

2 жыл бұрын

Earth is not a spinning ball

@donaldduck830

2 жыл бұрын

Pity that he made a few crucial mistakes. you should get some more info froma different source.

Great video 👍 very well done

I still say they should clear the lecture hall and do the webcam video from the desk just to keep the scene feeling closer to normal. Or use green-screen with picture of the lecture hall behind the presenters... What? We're a few years too early for Holodecks to demand they record it that way... lol

@alexburke1899

2 жыл бұрын

It does feel like less of an honor for the speakers when you take away the historical significance of the famous desk and the hall. Instead of a lecture filmed professionally it’s now basically a zoom call and definitely feels different to watch. I think the empty lecture hall would be better too that’s what sports teams did just play without the fans and put some cardboard cutouts in there:)

@plasmaburndeath

2 жыл бұрын

@Alex Burke exactly. They could even take one other idea from sports and do the cutouts of people in chairs* for audiences, maybe be a little geeky, and use nothing but famous scientists.

@TheRoyalInstitution

2 жыл бұрын

It's at hand! We've been doing a staggered return since September. Omicron slowed us down a bit but we're back on track again from February. It's likely that we will still do livestreams from home with certain speakers that would find it difficult to travel, but most of our talks will be back in the theatre before you know it.

@dermotmccorkell663

2 жыл бұрын

@@TheRoyalInstitution bla bla. Do your due diligence. Data comes from myriad sources.

The thing I want to know is how you can change infrared light into Ultraviolet light with a crystal, What are the processes?

Good microphone is a must for such videos! Other than that great content.

How do laser amplifiers work? And why is it important to start with such a tiny impulse?

This should have really started at around 38:16 which is where it starts to get interesting. You have my attention.

Great. Where was the Q&A?

It would have been nice to mention Dr. Lancaster in the video description.

very good professor. he teaches very well. Thanks from Brazil

@teekanne15

2 жыл бұрын

He is not a professor as far as I know

@dantio3195

2 жыл бұрын

@@teekanne15 The name on the first slide with just Dr to it supports that notion, yeah.

@andrewsaint6581

2 жыл бұрын

@@teekanne15 a professorship is an academic grade. Having a Doctorate helps with that.

This presenter and subject battery is truly worthy of the RI wonderful

I really love this, I have a book about this.

Dr Turrell’s statement that for a practical power plant one would need to get 30 times the energy out compared to the energy put in (i.e. Q = 30), is commendable for its honesty. However, with ITER predicted to only reach Q = 1, how will it be possible to increase this by a factor of 30?

@RupertReynolds1962

2 жыл бұрын

From other sources, such as Prof. Dennis Whyte's presentation on SPARC at MIT, I'd say that a factor of around 30 is quite small, compared with the factor of thousands that has been achieved already. Also, there is continuing R&D in superconductors, and it seems that any improvement in magnetic field strength pays big dividends in plasma stability and the rate of fusion achieved. Alternatively, if the same design could be built (from memory) 3 times larger with the same magnetic field strength, that would do it, if I remember correctly. For me, these are exciting times :-)

@holz_name

2 жыл бұрын

@@RupertReynolds1962 *I'd say that a factor of around 30 is quite small, compared with the factor of thousands that has been achieved already.* this is an idiotic statement. Like progression is linear. It's like saying that we achieved a thousands factor improvement of flight so we can go to Mars tomorrow. *Alternatively, if the same design could be built (from memory) 3 times larger with the same magnetic field strength, that would do it, if I remember correctly.* And this 3 times larger design would need also 3 times larger super conductive magnets that would consume 100 times more energy. Again, scales are not linear.

This was an excellent lecture, very well presented too!

I was shocked by the ratio of time spent on laser fusion, NIF, type things compared to tokamak systems which, to me, seem a far more sensible approach.

@mal2ksc

Жыл бұрын

We'll see, laser fusion has finally achieved break-even (once at least).

@adrianworley7060

Жыл бұрын

@@mal2ksc One of the problems with NIF is scaling. The plant is VERY large, ie. covers a lot of square metres for the limited results. To scale that up to production level is going to require a LOT of space and a LOT of delicately tuned, expensive parts. Tokamaks need housing that is no larger than a normal nuclear power station. You could replace the reactor(s) in an existing plant without the need for building much larger premises.

Excellent. Thank you.

6:15 when the crystals absorb the infrared light and reemit it as ultraviolet 6:39 the gold absorbs the ultraviolet light and reemits it as x-rays. X-rays (and gamma rays) are seen in nuclear reactions, right? I'm wondering how the lower energy light can cause the crystals and gold to emit higher energy light. Activation energy? My question is: Where is the potential energy stored in the gold? Is it a nuclear reaction?

@HansLemurson

2 жыл бұрын

Photon doubling, I think. Some materials can absorb two photons, and then re-emit a single photon with twice the energy.

@superchuck3259

2 жыл бұрын

@@HansLemurson The hotter and object is, the shorter the wavelength emitted. So the object is 10 million degrees, of course it is emitting a shockwave of x-rays. This is how nuclear fusion bombs are triggered by nuclear fission.

You said that fusion produces about 4 times as much energy per kg as fission. I'm guessing this is basically due to the fact that you need to use heavy elements to get an exothermic reaction from fission, so they just simply weigh more. With fusion, you get an exothermic reaction from light elements, like hydrogen, helium, etc.

@ingridschmid1166

2 жыл бұрын

If that were the simple direct explanation the ratio would be much larger Fission material is in the 230 nucleon range while the fusion materials envisaged is at 2.5

@Knowbody42

2 жыл бұрын

@@ingridschmid1166 So there are probably a bunch of factors working against fusion that makes the ratio smaller.

@ingridschmid1166

2 жыл бұрын

@@Knowbody42 From memory the mass delta varies with the numbers of nucleons the mass defect per nucleon rises until iron 56 and nickel making those very stable elements .

@RupertReynolds1962

2 жыл бұрын

That's one way of looking at it. Another way is to look at the exact mass of atoms to be fused, minus the mass of the new atoms after fusion, minus any other particles emitted. The difference in mass must be released as energy according to e=mc² :-)

Absolutely this is the way to go .

If the name “The Star Builders” inspires your imagination I suggest reading “Star Maker”. Totally not related to this but just reminded me of that my favorite sci-fi book

Kate, what voltage is the mega amps? what is the energy collection mechanism?

Sweet laser dude! Absolutely incredible!

I'm old enough to remember ZETA as a kid, in 1957 - 8. (FYI: 'Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly'). Curiously, the discussions then of the limitations and problems (more out than in, etc) are familiar form all those decades ago! Plus, you never mentioned the process of turning 'energy out' from the plasma fusion into electricity. You can't send plasma down power cables!

Thanks Arthur Turrell... nice presentation and talk well done...

KATE as one of the 7 billion humans living on earth, I want to congratulate you for the amazing work you are doing for humanity. I am thoroughly aware of what ENERGY means for the welfare of humanity and all other species in our world. THANK YOU DEEPLY!!!

The guy starts by saying the source of energy can last millions of year - and not forever like many say. 10 Kudos for him!!!!

@bigpike777

2 жыл бұрын

All is BS 🤣

@icemanA84

2 жыл бұрын

@@bigpike777 all is BS? Please share with the world your findings and calculations in disproving everything related to nuclear fusion and it’s possibility in becoming a viable power source, I’m sure your paper would stand well to peer review.

@Vikanuck

2 жыл бұрын

I think you’ve confused people saying that energy can neither be created or destroyed, which is true unless acted on by an opposing force, with him saying that the _source_ of that energy, i.e. a star, can last millions of years, which is also very true, like a car running out of fuel, we all know what occurs when that happens - the car collapses on itself and turns into a Fiat.

My Scienceguy suggestion Theory (2cents) here; We need to start with ä total amount of matter that we need over time. Hope this Helps someone...

just a note... try and avoid using a conjunctive ('and') between most sentences. If you chop those out, you will sound much crisper. You can remove them during the edit phase. They need to be replaced with silence or you will sound really odd.

Fusion - The forever energy of the future. 1975: We will have fusion in 50 years 2000: We will have fusion in 50 years 2020: We will have fusion in 50 years

@DavidFMayerPhD

2 жыл бұрын

XYZ has it RIGHT.

@StevenKrivit

2 жыл бұрын

More like... 1975: We will have fusion in 20 years 2000: We will have fusion in 30 years 2020: We will have fusion in 50 years

@StevenKrivit

2 жыл бұрын

@@dummyemailaddress Oh, wow, I didn't realize how much progress had been made!

Oh my gosh, The Star Builders! That's on my "to read" list! This is definitely pushing me to read it sooner.

what a time to be alive!!!!!!!!!!

I hope that ITER is a success. I hope we can clean up this mess we have created before it is too late.

nice and detailed

Those figures for JET are ambiguous as they don’t include all the input energy. Only the heating component. Substantially lower on the order of 100 below the required energy to break even. For example 11 megawatts of fusion power as opposed to 700 megawatts of total input power. And that doesn’t account for losses for conversion which could be as high as 50%

great that they built the Livermore facility over one of the most active earthquake faults in the world..

If the world's lithium is inside all the car batteries, you don't have access to this non-renewable fuel source. What is the current net energy output accounting for all processes?

Careful: Net energy gain is talking about the energy entering the plasma, and getting out of the plasma. The actual machines in total (pumping lasers, running magnets, converting energy out to electricity) are nowhere near a breakeven point. Basically the energy needed to run the magnets simply gets ignored in the calculation.

@electrospank

2 жыл бұрын

Absolutely amazing to me that the people we're supposed to trust to give us a clear understanding of what makes a viable energy source, are the one's here clearly ignoring all practical evidence to the contrary.

@giles4565

2 жыл бұрын

That really doesn't matter. Net energy gain is completely arbitrary, simply one of the targets. As mentioned in this video you need 100X better than 'net gain' to be commercially viable. So they are a long way off that if you count the magnets or not.

@electrospank

2 жыл бұрын

@@giles4565 Of course it matters in the context of a presentation intended for consumption by the general public. Without the above comment one could easily assume that the energy gain is more substantial than it really is. And in that sense 100 times better isn't even enough. We are being misled to believe this has the potential to be a cost-effective power source. Even with massive increases in technology, it's impossible for DT fusion to be cheaper than something as simple as a solar panel per watt.

@giles4565

2 жыл бұрын

@@electrospank Impossible is a big word, the ideal reactor would simply take in hydrogen, which is abundant, and make electricity on demand. Yes, we are a long way off that. Besides, solar takes massive amounts of real estate on top of that and is not a reliable source of energy. We need a source of electricity that can replace gas, solar and wind cannot do that.

Could you have Kevin Blanch PHD scientist on your show. He is a fan of nuclear also

That was a nice overview of the subject. It would be interesting to do a follow-up presentation on some of the work being done on reverse field configuration approaches. There are commercial projects, like TAE or Helion, that are really worth keeping an eye on.

The sad fact is not enough people are working towards the development of practical fusion power generation. Tokamaks have been around for over 60 years. If we as a species worked toward this end goal, it would already be mature and in use. Great explanation and championing for a more sustainable future. Thank you!

@docjaramillo

Жыл бұрын

Just curious if you’ve followed all the start-ups in fusion. I’m fascinated with a company in Seattle called Helion. They are building their 7th protocol and have publicly set 2024 as a target for net energy production using magnetic confinement and then using the energy to make electricity directly from the confined charged plasma. They are also using deuterium and He3 instead of tritium

@koori3085

Жыл бұрын

@Jason Jaramillo Certainly haven't followed all the startups, but it's refreshing to hear more are coming online. The old US tritium production plant is near me, and so I've always wondered if they would regret closing it. Good to hear it isn't necessarily needed.

It's here guys ❤️

I listened to the audiobook version of The Star Builders twice since the NIF announcement of net energy gain back in December '22. Dr. Turrell's narration was easy to understand for an absolute layman like myself; not to mention timely!

Great and interesting subject Thank you so much dear *Ri*

What about suppression of Thorium Reactors?

Superconductive cooling eliminates electrical resistance, and disrupts magnetic fields. You can't use this property, to manipulate nuclear repulsion, thereby decreasing the energy threshold for fusion?

I really liked your presentation

Good content. The production values are pretty good and the audio is understandable. However, the audio is hollow with bad short reverberations. You really should step this up. There are dozens of YT videos that explain how to do this.

@pudermcgavin4462

2 жыл бұрын

You have 11 videos you can not talk!

@JohnyG29

2 жыл бұрын

Sounded fine to me. It's not worth worrying about Tom.

The video explains everything you need to know about fusion except that "Fusion is always 40 years away."

I'd hoped that this video would be about SPARC, ITER, and planned fusion machines in China and the UK. Instead, it didn't say anything that I didn't already know. :-(

@t5ruxlee210

2 жыл бұрын

I admire your politeness and restraint.

If Hydrogen Fusion is in a race I hope people can still remember where they last saw it all that way back looking down the track. In the Tortoise and the Hare scenario it is still very much the Tortoise. A noisy one full of hope but still plodding along consuming vast amounts of energy, money and brainpower promising the world. Usually in these futuristic scenarios trying to push current technology to the edge the answer is in something nobody has actually thought of yet. It looks as though in the UK the mini nuclear fission generator is the realistic practical solution outside of the dream world.

Knif is way too capital expensive to become a commercial power source. The most likely is tokamak /?stellerator? With high temperature superconducting confinement magnets.

Commonwealth Fusion is building a tokamak with superconducting containment around 30 tesla.

Solar power is in fact Wireless nuclear power, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

@dustinrose361

2 жыл бұрын

The sun is not a 5 billion year long, limited fuel, nuclear reactor. Impossible. It is a ball of lighting. Fed by a galactic electric current in an electric universe. Tesla was correct, Einstein was wrong. We need no power plants. Cue epiphany.

What about cold fusion, is there a chance for this could be a better source?

I saw that fishon was accomplished with a small bead of hydrogen incapulated, yet it will take thousands of these small orbs. Fleischmanns yeast Active Dry Yeast,1292 as anexampl, is able to create millions of small orbs. So if you can contain a hydrogen ball at a certain temperature and spin it in a coating machine, you could have a constant source.

I may have missed something but did you mention the Chinese? They were pretty confident in their machine before COVID.

@vernonbrechin4207

2 жыл бұрын

Read all fusion energy breakthrough announcements with a very critical eye. The vast majority of the achievements just involve plasmas containing normal hydrogen (1-H). They do not involve real fusion fuel, and do not generate fusion energy neutrons. In other words they do not achieve fusion reactions. Many pitches are aimed at attracting supporting funding.

We know that fusion can work, it's really a matter of how to do the engineering right and on what scale.

@anwerbutt2621

2 жыл бұрын

The future of man seems safer with controlled fusion supported by hydrogen storage system and also on control of increasing population. Isn't it wiser humans channelise efforts and resources on these processes and stop waisting money on finding new earth's which are inaccessible..

@alangarland8571

2 жыл бұрын

@Click Bait Sure. but we can't have a solar mass object in the backyard.

@altrag

2 жыл бұрын

@Click Bait That one only works if you happen to have a sun's worth of mass to generate sufficient gravitational pull. Not really something we can utilize here on earth. Before you say "solar power!", keep in mind that we absorb a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the energy the sun puts out. And I don't just mean the stuff we convert to electric power via solar panels and parabolic focusing and the like. I mean that the sun radiates spherically in all directions and the entire earth is a tiny pinprick against that sphere. Heck we only absorb ~1/730 of the energy released just along our orbital plane, never mind taking the third dimension into account (ie: the length of one day relative to one year year, then divided by 2 to account for the half the earth facing away from the sun at all times). We need to do a _lot_ better than what the sun can accomplish. We need to harness its power, but in a tiny volume with a tiny, tiny fraction of its mass and also be able to harness a significant amount of the resulting energy.

@daarom3472

2 жыл бұрын

I'd say we're about 10 years away.

@anthonybrett

2 жыл бұрын

@@altrag Great reply, although judging by the daft simplicity of Click Baits comment, my guess is it was wasted on an ideologue.

Please attempt to debunk John Searl"s antigravity zero point machine. Thanks .

Do you think fusion happens natrually inside Earth or elsewhere in the solarsystem? Does nuclear fusion create a magnetic field? Help me.

so by lighting a match we have "in effect" built a volcano on Earth?

That proposal business sounds a bit like what astronomers have to go through to gain time on facilities.

Excellent presentation, but the problem with the recent big breakthrough in nuclear fusion is the miniscule amount of energy produced for a huge cost. The net gain is 1 megajoule of energy, with 2 going in and 3 coming out. But a megajoule of electricity costs a nickel and the pellet used to produce the energy costs $10,000. Also, the electricity to power the laser, the confinement device, and everything else in this system is not counted toward the 2 megajoules of energy going in. Could nuclear fusion power an average home? Well, there would need to be 1,000 of these systems costing billions to do so. Is this commercially viable? You tell me.

Study Projectile Fusion from First Light Fusion. Improve it with 5 projectiles striking and compressing at same time.

Question: When Humans are finally able to Economically use Fusion, how will it affect the World?

What your really looking to do is build a black hole so they are kt really fused together o ly compresed causing the reactions to become more violent and then due to the compression. Applied allows for the lifespan of the decompression of the sun.

Might be easier to build a Dyson Sphere around the Sun.

That laser blinded me now i cant see.

Even after they have proven it works it would be years before the first reactor goes online if we could get the money the spend on global warming we would greatly reduce the threat of fuels end.

Multiple choice question was impossible to get "fully correct" the sun is not "fire". Fire is an electrochemical reaction that involves oxygen. The sun does not contain much oxygen at all and oxygen is not reacting in a combustion (fire) reaction. The other two answers (except all of the above) we correct but were basically the same thing.

"and tonight i'm going to take you on a journey of discovery" Well the journey won't discover much as the guy won't even leave the room he's in! So in fact we're all going nowhere!

Uranium mines will always be insidious sources of radionuclides, and waste from nuclear reactors will always be a hazard. Also nuke plants will always be vulnerable to wars, earthquakes, and solar flares.

@vernonbrechin4207

2 жыл бұрын

Nuclear fission power generation engineering is based upon the assumption that advanced human infrastructure will remain for a lengthy span of time to manage the spent unclear fuel after the reactors are shut down. That includes keeping external power flowing to the spent nuclear fuel pool circulation pumps during the 10-year cool-down period, having trained nuclear technicians operate the systems and it includes a robust supply chain to service the systems. Without that the spent nuclear fuel pools will dry out and the zirconium fuel rods will catch fire causing the spread of extremely radioactive spent nuclear fuel particles to travel downwind from the over 100 nuclear power plants on this planet. Typically, nuclear power proponents are blind to the following statement that readers can search for. UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change'

the graph showing energy use (coal, nuclear, oil, solar, wind) is in accurate, when you consider that everything was powered by the sun, and still is.

What do you think of the aneutronic fusion efforts, especially Tri-Alpha Energy? Possible? Or just a scam?

I'm confused ? isn't fusion taking Hydrogen and converting it to Helium? you said they start with Helium ?

And I wonder, when does the law of unintended consequences comes into play.

He wants to pull a Spider-Man 2. Got it. Just gotta get robot arms to control the magnetic flares.

Surely the label 'Holy Grail' would also include it being affordable? There's little value in a technology that will never be economic. Fission energy in the form of Molten Salt Reactors achieve most of what Fusion achieves, and also has virtually unlimited fuel supplies. It's also capable of using our existing stockpile of Nuclear Waste as fuel, since the current reactors use barely 4% of the available energy in the fuel. In my opinion, Fusion is a White Elephant. It's fascinating, but simply not practical to do at any scale economically when it's going to face Molten Salt Reactors as competition.

My biggest question is about your very last point. I am confident the engineering problems will be solved over the next twenty years such that fusion power plants can be made, but at what cost? Let's suppose it will cost $100m (just a number) to build a small fusion power plant in 20 years. Let's put aside the cost of fuel and cost of replacing and disposing the parts that become radioactive from neutron exposure. However much power that fusion plant produces, it has to be greater than spending $100m in other fuel-less power plants, such as wind, solar and geothermal, or no one with put up the investment to build. Twenty years from now, all of the renewable costs will be lower than today, so fusion has to target an ever dropping cost. My question is: do you know of work looking at projecting power plant cost curves to see when fusion could beat conventional sources in the future, especially, geothermal which is projected to provide cheap 24/7 power anywhere in the world?

@jimgraham6722

2 жыл бұрын

Trouble is wind and solar is not available everywhere, nor at the time and energy levels required. It is true that solar panels and even wind turbines are relatively cheap, but add in the complex networks needed to get it where it is required, the back up and storage, gas, pumped hydro etc it starts to get very expensive. One of the reasons wind and solar have been cheap so far is because mainly coal plants have provided the spinning reserve to make them so. Remove the coal plants and a different picture emerges.

@Ken00001010

2 жыл бұрын

@@jimgraham6722 Coal power plants are not being built, anymore, because no one will invest in a project that can't make payback. Wind and solar have gotten so cheap that even needing storage to smooth out the loads they still win, and geothermal (as I mentioned above) can be done anywhere and runs 24/7 without storage. That is not the point, though, the point is that current fusion reactor designs are so expensive that, even if they could produce output power, it could not be sold at a price that would pay that investment back. Those in the industry know that when it does start working, there will be several generations of prototype plants designed and tested on the road to getting the cost of production lower. In the mean time, the vast rollout of renewables that we are witnessing *today* keeps making it harder for fusion (and new fission) to get to a commercial viability crosspoint. I believe that will happen some day; my question is when are projections setting that crosspoint?

@jimgraham6722

2 жыл бұрын

@@Ken00001010 Problem is the roll out of renewables is not that vast. It has been just adequate to cover increased year on year energy needs. Meanwhile coal continues to be mined at a rate of about 8 billion tons per year. Oil continues at around 90 million barrels per day and natural gas 4,000 bcm per year (with a strong upward trend). While it is possible renewables have slightly curtailed market growth for some fossil fuels, there is little or no evidence the rollout of renewables at the current pace is making any significant dent in existing fossil fuel consumption, indeed increased consumption of natural gas suggests the opposite.

@Ken00001010

2 жыл бұрын

@@jimgraham6722 Again, that is not the point. I am looking for information about when projected grid fusion power plants will be cheaper to build than other forms of fuel-less power plants for the same output.

@jimgraham6722

2 жыл бұрын

@@Ken00001010 I can only guess, but I have seen no evidence at all, it is within easy reach. Sabine Hossenfelder did a good piece debunking any idea fusion power is a near term prospect. So my guess is not less than fifty years from now. The basic physics make it likely the initial plants will be very large and costly, suitable only for huge markets such as northeast US, northern Europe, northeast China and perhaps Japan. Outside of such markets, short of some near miraculous breakthrough, I expect fusion will have little or no impact on global power supplies within the next 100 years.

What ever happened to the Lockeed fusion reactor that would fit on a semi-trailer and power a small city ? Another pipe dream ?

@Gomlmon99

2 жыл бұрын

It never existed, it was just a simple patent application lol

Let me make a wild guess: nuclear fusion as a power provider is 20 years away. Of course, my engineering college professor said those exact words 50 years ago.

Question: Is anyone "harvesting" ocean currents for energy?

If fusing Hydrogen creates Helium will it be radioactive or can it be used to inflate balloons

Each star on the sky is a civilization trying nuclear power...