More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade(growthbusiness.co.uk)
growthbusiness.co.uk
More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
https://www.growthbusiness.co.uk/more-invested-in-nuclear-fusion-in-last-12-months-than-past-decade-2560528/
663 comments
A friendly reminder that the idea posed by a pioneer of nuclear energy of just dumping big bombs in a hole and harvesting the heat energy with steam/plasma has never been invalidated and remains the most efficiently-simple solution immediately viable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER
If containment is your concern (though underground blast effects are decently understood, and blast chambers could be constructed with still strongly net economic/energy positive) - this does not need to be built around any population centers. At a cost of 1.5% efficiency loss per 1000 km, UHV power lines can direct it from a single write-off location anywhere on earth. That single location can likely be scaled to supply well beyond the total current global energy production.
https://en.geidco.org.cn/aboutgei/uhv/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER
If containment is your concern (though underground blast effects are decently understood, and blast chambers could be constructed with still strongly net economic/energy positive) - this does not need to be built around any population centers. At a cost of 1.5% efficiency loss per 1000 km, UHV power lines can direct it from a single write-off location anywhere on earth. That single location can likely be scaled to supply well beyond the total current global energy production.
https://en.geidco.org.cn/aboutgei/uhv/
Where is this $1.9 billion over the last decade figure coming from? ITER alone has surely burned through more than double that.
Edit: Sounds like it might only be counting investment in private companies.
Edit: Sounds like it might only be counting investment in private companies.
Crazy to imagine what would’ve happened if in the past it had been more than sub-fusion never.
http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fus...
http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fus...
There's a huge amount of hype in fusion these days. Companies are getting big investments just by saying "we're over unity." None of their investors will recoup any money.
Getting above unity is important but it's still a very long way from systemic over unity of the entire lifecycle of the process that turns fusion into electricity on the grid. And that simply won't happen in my lifetime or most of your lifetimes.
What will likely happen during our lifetimes is we develop large-scale electricity storage mechanisms. Together with decentralized microgrids, storage will enable most of the world's electricity to be generated by renewables. The sun is a giant fusion engine, and it's the only fusion engine that will be practical for us during at least the next 50 years.
Getting above unity is important but it's still a very long way from systemic over unity of the entire lifecycle of the process that turns fusion into electricity on the grid. And that simply won't happen in my lifetime or most of your lifetimes.
What will likely happen during our lifetimes is we develop large-scale electricity storage mechanisms. Together with decentralized microgrids, storage will enable most of the world's electricity to be generated by renewables. The sun is a giant fusion engine, and it's the only fusion engine that will be practical for us during at least the next 50 years.
The article doesn't seem to mention why exactly but I'm guessing it's some combination of 1) visible climate change (extreme heat, wildfires, drought, etc.) so people want better energy sources and 2) the mayhem Russia started seeing as it is one of the bigger energy providers.
Or has there been anything else?
Or has there been anything else?
I am genuinely surprised that there is so much interest in the comments here and excitement about fusion energy powering the future. Yet I see surprisingly few numbers or physics being discussed. Kind of disappointed for a forum that is supposedly technically-minded and able to speak mathematics.
There was this great MIT paper [1] published a while back that's still to be rebuked, talking about the serious technical challenges. Furthermore, there's Maury Markowitz's blogs that have been around for more than a decade showcasing why economically future can never work competitively on the grid [2].
Fusion is great science, it may eventually return a net positive in energy, but it has so many problems that make it impossible to use commercially.
[1]: http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trou...
[2]: https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/why-fusion-wi...
There was this great MIT paper [1] published a while back that's still to be rebuked, talking about the serious technical challenges. Furthermore, there's Maury Markowitz's blogs that have been around for more than a decade showcasing why economically future can never work competitively on the grid [2].
Fusion is great science, it may eventually return a net positive in energy, but it has so many problems that make it impossible to use commercially.
[1]: http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trou...
[2]: https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/why-fusion-wi...
I don't believe the hype. From what I can see fusion still isn't anywhere near being a viable source of energy, other than in the form or solar power.
Scientists have been futzing around with fusion energy since I was a schoolboy in the 70's, and undoubtedly before. Maybe they'll be a breakthrough, but I think the odds are heavily against them.
Fission, OTOH, seems an interesting bet. The problem with old-style reactors is that there's basically no ESD (Emergency Shutdown) that you can perform. Those radioactive rods are going keep radiating heat no matter what. Newer styles seem a much saner approach, were two different materials must be in contact for a reaction to occur. In an emergency you just let one of them drain out, thereby stopping the reaction.
Coal is an abundant source of fuel with a proven track record. The big problem is with pollution. But there's no rule that says you have to puke out the waste into the atmosphere. It can be processed. After all, oil is pretty shitty when it comes up out of the ground, and needs a lot of processing. This is a costly exercise, of course, but one that we willingly undertake. The question now is one of economics: will the cost of waste processing mean that coal burning is feasible? It's a question that nobody seems interested in asking. We just seem to have the default assumption that coal energy was shitty in the past and must be shitty in the present. "Eww, coal".
Fission, OTOH, seems an interesting bet. The problem with old-style reactors is that there's basically no ESD (Emergency Shutdown) that you can perform. Those radioactive rods are going keep radiating heat no matter what. Newer styles seem a much saner approach, were two different materials must be in contact for a reaction to occur. In an emergency you just let one of them drain out, thereby stopping the reaction.
Coal is an abundant source of fuel with a proven track record. The big problem is with pollution. But there's no rule that says you have to puke out the waste into the atmosphere. It can be processed. After all, oil is pretty shitty when it comes up out of the ground, and needs a lot of processing. This is a costly exercise, of course, but one that we willingly undertake. The question now is one of economics: will the cost of waste processing mean that coal burning is feasible? It's a question that nobody seems interested in asking. We just seem to have the default assumption that coal energy was shitty in the past and must be shitty in the present. "Eww, coal".
Something I wondered about fusion is, where does all that 'excess energy' go?
I mean don't understand me wrong, it is obvious that is a much better form of energy release than all the other forms of energy production we have; but let us consider we manage to gain energy from fusion, the electricity released still releases heat, so how does it dissipate, if we have near-infitite energy, and anyone can spend as much as they want?
I mean don't understand me wrong, it is obvious that is a much better form of energy release than all the other forms of energy production we have; but let us consider we manage to gain energy from fusion, the electricity released still releases heat, so how does it dissipate, if we have near-infitite energy, and anyone can spend as much as they want?
I love the concept of fusion from a scientific point. I’d love to see even more money put into this.
But for real world deployment, we can have decentralized systems that have an ROI of 6yrs (Solar) and 10 yrs (Wind), - i think that’s the thing we should be doubling down on NOW. [https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/145C...]
But for real world deployment, we can have decentralized systems that have an ROI of 6yrs (Solar) and 10 yrs (Wind), - i think that’s the thing we should be doubling down on NOW. [https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/145C...]
Fusion is generally touted by many as an energy "Holy Grail." Indeed, it appears to have similar qualities, being both perpetually elusive and miraculous, able to solve all mankind's problems. Media reporting tends to discuss the benefits of fusion with misleading and false statements and no discussion of fusion’s negative attributes. The financial and practical perspective of fusion based power is missing. I've written a post about this here: https://lvenneri.com/blog/ConFusion. I cover fusion's issues compared to fission. In particular: far worse neutron and gamma damage, 10x more demanding heat transfer, parasitic power draws, 50-100x larger radiological waste volume, higher financial and nuclear accident risk compared to new new micro reactors, higher cost by any metric, similar or worse proliferation characteristics, etc. My aim was to add a dissenting perspective on the practicality of near-term fusion energy systems.
You could say the same thing about Bitcoin. Fusion is in the VC hype cycle but there are no new developments that suggest it can become cheaper and more predictable than fission, which itself is dying, primarily because of financial uncertainties and risks.
On the contrary, physics suggest that performance scales with size, so even the extraordinary expensive ITER project is way too small to achieve engineering break even, let alone financial break-even. You will only hear about scientific break-even, which is a useless milestone because, yes, you get more energy than you put it, but you put electric energy and get fast neutron energy, only you need an order of magnitude more of that to get back the electricity you put in.
Understanding different types of break-even would be an obligatory primer to anyone navigating hyped fusion claims: https://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/04/08/fusion-q-values-a...
On the contrary, physics suggest that performance scales with size, so even the extraordinary expensive ITER project is way too small to achieve engineering break even, let alone financial break-even. You will only hear about scientific break-even, which is a useless milestone because, yes, you get more energy than you put it, but you put electric energy and get fast neutron energy, only you need an order of magnitude more of that to get back the electricity you put in.
Understanding different types of break-even would be an obligatory primer to anyone navigating hyped fusion claims: https://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/04/08/fusion-q-values-a...
[deleted]
Maybe it is only 19 years in the future this time
I believe that there might be a way to have a compact and efficient fusion reactor which we just don't know yet (and a time traveller would be able to "hold my beer" us into it)
For example, there's this plasma-producing microwave + cut grape trick, what if you use something like this to supply really hot deuterium plasma?
For example, there's this plasma-producing microwave + cut grape trick, what if you use something like this to supply really hot deuterium plasma?
One novel approach to clean energy deployment would be to spend some of this money to deploy enough solar, wind and batteries to provide the enormous amounts of energy needed for all these sub-breakeven fusion experiments. Then, whether we get a viable fusion reactor or not, we all win.
Hmm I suspect that this isn't accurate but if it is, also relevant is that in the last 12 months we were at the top of the crazy money market so people were handing out cash and desperate for something with a seeming return to it. Seems like a click-baity title to me.
Such a controversial topic these days. I got one am happy billions are being poured into fusion. Yes, massive investments in fission, solar and wind are required.
But one by one the technical obstacles are being overcome for fusion. I say give fusion a chance
It means we are closer to success when we see a lot more VC funding of nuclear fusion versus government (taxpayer) funding. VCs don't have the timeline or ability to lose money without much consequence or blame like the government does.
This is great news.
That said, what the literal fuck -- we've previously been investing 1/850,000th of global GDP in one of 4-5 truly promising energy technologies while the world burns before our eyes?
That said, what the literal fuck -- we've previously been investing 1/850,000th of global GDP in one of 4-5 truly promising energy technologies while the world burns before our eyes?
For a technology that has the promise of clean energy for humanity, I am shocked it's receiving that small amount of funding, while we have been distributing literally trillions globally during the pandemic...
So much more funding now. That will getting it working twenty years from now, just like it has been 'working twenty years from now' for the last fifty years.
There is a gigantic stable fusion reaction from which we just need to convert energy into electricity - our sun. Bring out the dyson sphere.
Deady epidemic - let’s work from home!
Russians attack Europe - let’s invest in nuclear!
What is the next disaster that will make another common sense thing happen ?
Russians attack Europe - let’s invest in nuclear!
What is the next disaster that will make another common sense thing happen ?
I’m glad, but I hope we still invest in Plan-B’s because we are literally betting our civilisation on moving away from carbon.
[deleted]
Good news. But let's not forget that fission is the present and near future of nuclear energy. And it just works.
We already have clean energy - its called Fission, all we need is to start doing it at scale
> There was also a breakthrough in late 2021, when researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET) facility in Oxford managed to release a record-breaking 59 megajoules of fusion
59 megajoules in useful units is 16kWh, less than 2 days use of my house. That's the biggest fusion reaction ever.
59 megajoules in useful units is 16kWh, less than 2 days use of my house. That's the biggest fusion reaction ever.
[1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf
I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors.
Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) not have the same stigma as fission is kind of weird in my mind.
For example, there are leaks of tiny amounts of tritium at some fission plants and people lose their minds. Fusion reactors will have many orders of mag more tritium. Will people not lose their minds just the same? Tritium is notoriously hard to contain since it's so small. It can permeate through metal like a hot knife through butter.
Also, lots of people worry about fission and nuclear weapons proliferation. So does fusion get around this? Not really. In fact it's worse. Did you know that the two materials you need to make thermonuclear weapons are tritium and plutonium? Tritium breeding is required by almost all practical fusion power plants (the other reactions are 100s to 1000s of times harder, I don't care what x random fusion CEO says, they're in it for the sweet billionaire side project money).
Plutonium is made by irradiating natural uranium from the dirt with neutrons. Practical fusion reactors have lots of neutrons. Really high energy ones too.
Anyway let's just do fission you guys. It's way easier. It has been working fine since the 1950s. It's zero carbon. Waste problem is solved (see Onkalo, and reprocessing). It net saves millions of lives by displacing air pollution. It runs 24/7 on a tiny land and material footprint. We have enough uranium and thorium to run the whole world for 4 billion (with a b) years using breeder reactors (demonstrated in 1952 in Idaho). Get the Koreans over here to build some ARP1400s or the Chinese to build some Hualong Ones until we figure out how to project manage again and then call it good.