With a powerful laser blast, scientists near a nuclear fusion milestone

[Forbidden Wafer]

1 hour ago, StDragon said:

It also solves the issue of fueling, removing spent fuel while capturing heat to run steam turbines.

Meh. Why would we do that if we can have ***LIQUID METAL*** flowing down through the walls? @__@

 

[Quackers101]

So japan and now california?

anyone got some videos on what they did, anyways cool to see but cooler if it becomes useful.

[tim0901]

7 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

It's only a test Reactor and it wasn't expected to be Net Energy Positive (it's hoped the reaction itself will be but the full cycle won't). At least when they started the designs. Note, I'm pretty sure the project is a solid decade behind schedule, too, though it appears they're getting close to at least having everything built.

 

I really wish more money had gone towards the Polywell. That had promise and looked a lot cheaper to at least scale in a testing program. 

ITER is looking at first plasa in 2025, with full fusion by 2035. Planned Q number is 1.6, so that's producing 60% more energy than is inserted - a definite net-positive. Commercial reactors are expected to need to reach a Q number of ~100 before they become economically viable though, so it's definitely nowhere close to that. It's the equivalent of a torch next to a search light.

 

But as you said - it's a test reactor. It won't even have the capability to harvest that excess power as electricity. Instead we will need to wait for DEMO, the next-generation tokomak that is currently being designed, which aims to start construction in ~2040 for first plasma around 2050. This would be the prototype power station reactor, which would be used for a decade or so for research before other power plant designs begin to be developed. Basically meaning that we shouldn't expect commercial reactors to start coming online before ~2080... If everything runs to schedule...

 

Awesome technology, but it's gonna be a while before things get up and running.

[Forbidden Wafer]

40 minutes ago, tim0901 said:

Basically meaning that we shouldn't expect commercial reactors to start coming online before ~2080... If everything runs to schedule...

This assuming they continue using old designs with 40y planning/manufacturing/assemble cycle.

 

iTER doesn't even incorporate the latest and greatest superconductors developed for MRI machines.

 

Startups hopefully will manage to integrate and iterate designs faster and reach something reasonable by the end of this decade.

[Gohardgrandpa]

So California can use lasers to make a miniature sun but you can't buy a decent pre built pc there? Makes tons of sense

[Bitter]

Word is, this is how Intel is planning to power it's next-gen HEDT CPU's.

[tim0901]

2 hours ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

This assuming they continue using old designs with 40y planning/manufacturing/assemble cycle.

Welcome to publicly-funded civil engineering projects with multi-billion-euro budgets. You must be new here.

A not insignificant amount of that time will be politics about where the money is coming from or delays due to not enough money being spent. If more money was spent on science (and politicians listened to scientists/engineers) then maybe this wouldn’t be a problem.

2 hours ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

iTER doesn't even incorporate the latest and greatest superconductors developed for MRI machines.

That’s pretty irrelevant though. ITER is an experiment and sure you can have fancier new superconductors that are more powerful… but what benefit does that bring? You can’t just crank up the power of the magnets without redesigning the rest of the machine to deal with the consequences of it - they aren’t the kind of component you can just drop in a replacement for. And by the time you’ve done that, the next ‘new hotness’ superconductors have come along.

 

CERN isn’t using the latest and greatest superconductors in the LHC either. Doesn’t stop it conducting world-leading research. Nor are experiments like Hubble or Voyager prevented from producing useful science because of their use of antiquated technology. Science doesn’t care about what technology is used to run the experiment - science cares about data. 
 

At some point you just have to accept that you have a design and run with it, otherwise you will never build anything at all and the science doesn’t get done. This is why the design of ITER looks ‘old’ by today’s standards and doesn’t necessarily use the latest of technologies - it was finalised years ago (and then politics came in). It’s the exact same idea as the age old ‘should I wait for the next gen parts to build a PC’ question, just over larger time scales. There is always something better just over the horizon, but if you always wait for it then you’ll never have anything at all. 

2 hours ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

Startups hopefully will manage to integrate and iterate designs faster and reach something reasonable by the end of this decade.

Never going to happen. We aren’t going to go from not even having a functional, self sustaining reaction to a commercially viable plant in 8 years - that’s delusion, not ambition. If you actually look at what the startups are saying then none of them with any sense are actually proposing this is possible - even the most ambitious are saying 2035 or later (and even those are just parroting phrases and deadlines that have come from politicians who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about *cough*Boris Johnson*cough*). 

[Taf the Ghost]

10 hours ago, StDragon said:

I remember Linus visited General Fusion with a video about it. Either it was luck or him and his staff did their homework, but I'm thinking too Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) is the way to go. It's a cheaper hybrid approach that combines magnetic confinement fusion with inertial. It also solves the issue of fueling, removing spent fuel while capturing heat to run steam turbines.

In many ways, MTF is like a nuclear internal combustion engine in that it has cycles to it.

The problem with ITER is that it's a project that started in the 1980s and isn't expected to truly be operational for its full testing dynamics until I think the 2050s. Money needs to be thrown at a lot cheaper approaches to test the scaling. The issue is all engineering not "physics". Which means testing programs have to be scaled up until the really tiny details can be assessed. It'd also be better if Fusion Plants didn't require being even more expensive than Nuclear.

[Taf the Ghost]

4 hours ago, tim0901 said:

ITER is looking at first plasa in 2025, with full fusion by 2035. Planned Q number is 1.6, so that's producing 60% more energy than is inserted - a definite net-positive. Commercial reactors are expected to need to reach a Q number of ~100 before they become economically viable though, so it's definitely nowhere close to that. It's the equivalent of a torch next to a search light.

 

But as you said - it's a test reactor. It won't even have the capability to harvest that excess power as electricity. Instead we will need to wait for DEMO, the next-generation tokomak that is currently being designed, which aims to start construction in ~2040 for first plasma around 2050. This would be the prototype power station reactor, which would be used for a decade or so for research before other power plant designs begin to be developed. Basically meaning that we shouldn't expect commercial reactors to start coming online before ~2080... If everything runs to schedule...

 

Awesome technology, but it's gonna be a while before things get up and running.

It's also notable that absolutely no one has shown a lick of urgency in any of the program. It's like a military weapons program, too much of the time. It's not the JSF, but ITER isn't going to be as far off.

 

I mentioned Polywell because there's been a number of design approaches to have reacted basic engineering testing, but it's pretty clear no one that would be in the decision making processes for funding is really that interested. Without getting into it, there's not a lot of groups interested in Fusion actually working, which is the unfortunate issue.

[leadeater]

10 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Tbh most of our energy concerns can be addressed today with our current nuclear power plant technology. The only issues is that people are scared by misinformation about nuclear power plants thinking that they are super dangerous when they really aren't. The ironic part being that fossil fuels cause alot more radioactive material to enter the environment than a running nuclear power plant simply because nuclear power plants actually take care of radioactive bioproducts safely. 

Can also do nuclear, even with existing reactor technology, in safer ways too. I still prefer the idea of Molten Salt Nuclear Fuel reactors but micro-sized liquid salt cooled reactors looked to be much safer and are already in usage today.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/08/bill-gates-terrapower-is-building-next-generation-nuclear-power.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2020/08/31/bill-gates-nuclear-firm-says-new-reactor-can-backstop-grid-with-molten-salt-storage/?sh=11002a095e65

 

Quote

So TerraPower’s Natrium plant uses a different method, pioneered decades ago: liquid sodium as a cooling agent. (“Natrium” means “sodium” in Latin.) Liquid sodium has a higher boiling point and can absorb a lot more heat than water, which means high pressure does not build up inside the reactor.

 

Quote

Beyond that, TerraPower’s cooling system does not rely on any outside energy source to operate in the event of an emergency shutdown of a reactor. Instead, its system works via the hot air rising from natural circulation within the system, called a reactor vessel air cooling system, or RVACS, says Levesque.

 

[Zodiark1593]

On 8/19/2021 at 5:51 AM, StDragon said:

...or puncture the fabric of spacetime via an artificial singularity (blackhole)  

The more impressive scientific discoveries always start with "oops", followed by "that was interesting". Not sure I'd want to stick around when that happens.

For all of humanity’s meddling, The world will probably meet its end with by a scientist saying “oops”. 

[Forbidden Wafer]

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

Didn't this happen in Spiderman 2?

Yes. Spiderman also happened in spiderman, along with green goblin, doctor octopus, lizard/doctor connors,  sandman, venom, etc.

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

For all of humanity’s meddling, The world will probably meet its end with by a scientist saying “oops”. 

If you ascribe to the Fermi paradox, we probably weren't the first species to say "oops" before their ultimate demise.

Edited August 20, 2021 by StDragon

[Forbidden Wafer]

8 hours ago, tim0901 said:

Never going to happen. We aren’t going to go from not even having a functional, self sustaining reaction to a commercially viable plant in 8 years - that’s delusion, not ambition. 

I'm not expecting a commercial plant to be ready in 8 years, but the tech be ready for commercial use.

 

I do expect faster iteration from startups.

 

And update from the ARC reactor:
https://youtu.be/h8uYNhevRtk

[FakeATF]

17 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Tbh most of our energy concerns can be addressed today with our current nuclear power plant technology. The only issues is that people are scared by misinformation about nuclear power plants thinking that they are super dangerous when they really aren't. The ironic part being that fossil fuels cause alot more radioactive material to enter the environment than a running nuclear power plant simply because nuclear power plants actually take care of radioactive bioproducts safely. 

I do agree, but the stigma around fission is too damaged for it to ever be deployed on the scale that we need.

 

Interesting tidbit about the fossil fuels

[Mark Kaine]

21 hours ago, Caroline said:

This is great, nuclear power is nice but uranium is expensive and, well, there's radiation.

true, but they arent using uranium?

 

Quote

The main fuels used in nuclear fusion are deuterium and tritium, both heavy isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium constitutes a tiny fraction of natural hydrogen, only 0,0153%, and can be extracted inexpensively from seawater. Tritium can be made from lithium, which is also abundant in nature

 

 

21 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

With that said, it is not going to be able to produce any power 

i thought that was the point of ITER specifically (originally planned to be functional in… 2021…) afaik

 

 

21 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

at the same time human error of operating it in a way that it wasn't designed for

yep, they pulled out *all* rods (except 2 or so) absolute madness, and easily avoidable disaster… 

 

[tikker]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

true, but they arent using uranium?

You describe fusion reactors. Fission reactors use Uranium or related.

[Forbidden Wafer]

1 minute ago, Caroline said:

These researchers aren't but most reactors around the world do, some use Uranium and other Plutonium.

That is the point: you want fusion rather than fission. It still generates radioactivity and radioactive trash, but it does not produce high-level waste.
t also generates way more energy per unit of fuel, so you need less fuel.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

You describe fusion reactors. Fission reactors use Uranium or related.

which is the topic of course

Quote

near a nuclear fusion milestone

= )

 

38 minutes ago, Caroline said:

These researchers aren't but most reactors around the world do, some use Uranium and other Plutonium.

Right, but thats not the problem of fusion, the problem of fusion is that its always "just 20 years away" since the 50s… they are basically the original inventors of "soon™"

[Forbidden Wafer]

30 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Right, but thats not the problem of fusion, the problem of fusion is that its always "just 20 years away" since the 50s… 

 

[Bitter]

3 hours ago, FakeATF said:

I do agree, but the stigma around fission is too damaged for it to ever be deployed on the scale that we need.

 

Interesting tidbit about the fossil fuels

Basically anything that comes out of the ground is radioactive. If you want a mind blower read up on tabacco/cigarettes and radioactivity. Spoilers, Alpha emitters are extra bad INSIDE your body.

[tikker]

29 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

which is the topic of course

Yeah, but with nuclear they were referreing to fission and that it was a less attractive option compared to fusion, because of the fuel and waste.

  

17 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

 

They are correct that fusion always has been XX years away. It's the running joke of fusion as we never seem to get a working thing except for "soon". If anything this slide corroborates that. We clearly have no working fusion reactors so this increasing line is nice, but practically represents nothing more than a theoretical increase in efficiency / output until we actually build one that can run. That has always been the problem with lab progress and real world progress, just like these super solid state batteries or different types of exotic transistors.

[Forbidden Wafer]

21 minutes ago, tikker said:

It's the running joke of fusion as we never seem to get a working thing except for "soon". If anything this slide corroborates that. We clearly have no working fusion reactors so this increasing line is nice, but practically represents nothing more than a theoretical increase in efficiency / output until we actually build one that can run. 

Here is their other slide. They hit a ceiling due to the magnetic confinement, that is why they went bigger with ITER.
It is no longer that big of an issue due to new superconductors.
If they're not wrong (and they have already tested a bunch of stuff, including magnets), they should get up and running along with ITER and beat it in 2025, for a fraction of the cost with much smaller reactor.
 

 

[tikker]

13 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

If they're not wrong (and they have already tested a bunch of stuff, including magnets), they should get up and running along with ITER and beat it in 2025, for a fraction of the cost with much smaller reactor.

I'm all for it and I'd be glad if it did, but this is the point multiple people have made Always the "by <insert 5-20 years in the future>". I'm still just as excited to see another milestone being set, but fusion is on my I'll believe it when I see it list.

[Bitter]

We'll have fusion power plants before Michelin gets that Tweel out for retail sale. That thing has been "1-2 years away' for the last 20 years.