Fusion power: a new hope
July 28, 2016 10:47 AM Subscribe
"Fusion is fifty years away, and always will be? I hate that joke. I'm really trying to get it out of the English language." Dennis Whyte, director of MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and winner of the 2013 Nuclear Fusion prize, may get his wish, as his talk (1h38 YT) demonstrates.
Nuclear fusion powers the Sun, our biggest bombs and one day - perhaps - our planet. With the promise of enormous amounts of clean, carbon-free energy from fuel derived from water and lithium, billions of dollars and decades of work have nevertheless not delivered. The current major research project, ITER (previously), is one of the biggest international science and engineering efforts but is badly behind schedule and over budget. Other projects, such as Lockheed Skunkwork's compact reactor (previously) are not meeting initial milestones.
But Whyte says his projects, the ARC and SPARC reactors, are true gamechangers. Coming from teams of student designers at MIT, their key innovation is the use of the latest REBCO (rare-earth barium copper oxide) high-temperature superconducting tape. A recent - and still rapidly improving - technology, this can generate much higher magnetic fields than previously, and is regularly smashing records (and perhaps researchers' wristwatches).
The result, Whyte argues, will be far smaller, more stable and more practicable reactors, able to reuse tested techniques from fission reactors, generate their own fuel, creatie negligible contamination, while being intrinsically safe. The bottom line: $100 million and ten years to a working, over-unity prototype.
Nuclear fusion powers the Sun, our biggest bombs and one day - perhaps - our planet. With the promise of enormous amounts of clean, carbon-free energy from fuel derived from water and lithium, billions of dollars and decades of work have nevertheless not delivered. The current major research project, ITER (previously), is one of the biggest international science and engineering efforts but is badly behind schedule and over budget. Other projects, such as Lockheed Skunkwork's compact reactor (previously) are not meeting initial milestones.
But Whyte says his projects, the ARC and SPARC reactors, are true gamechangers. Coming from teams of student designers at MIT, their key innovation is the use of the latest REBCO (rare-earth barium copper oxide) high-temperature superconducting tape. A recent - and still rapidly improving - technology, this can generate much higher magnetic fields than previously, and is regularly smashing records (and perhaps researchers' wristwatches).
The result, Whyte argues, will be far smaller, more stable and more practicable reactors, able to reuse tested techniques from fission reactors, generate their own fuel, creatie negligible contamination, while being intrinsically safe. The bottom line: $100 million and ten years to a working, over-unity prototype.
I know, I know, skepticism, jokes, etc.. But I'm still sitting here hoping.
posted by happyroach at 10:51 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by happyroach at 10:51 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
100 million? For the price of half the budget of one lousy Transformers sequel, we can have clean fusion power? What the hell are we waiting for, people?
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:59 AM on July 28, 2016 [25 favorites]
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:59 AM on July 28, 2016 [25 favorites]
Never a bad time to link to my favorite thing humans ever made, the National Ignition Facility
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:59 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:59 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't think it is a wild exaggeration to say that fusion power is the only thing that can save humanity from extinction.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:00 AM on July 28, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:00 AM on July 28, 2016 [5 favorites]
I've always heard the joke as fusion being consistently twenty years away.
Which, given that we're looking at ten years to a prototype, is still spot-on.
posted by MrVisible at 11:01 AM on July 28, 2016 [7 favorites]
Which, given that we're looking at ten years to a prototype, is still spot-on.
posted by MrVisible at 11:01 AM on July 28, 2016 [7 favorites]
Ten years. OK. And then another ten to deploy? By then we will have a largely low carbon electric grid using existing technologies. That's not to say we shouldn't pursue fusion, but if you're looking to switch off fossil fuels, we have the tools, we just need the will.
posted by gwint at 11:03 AM on July 28, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by gwint at 11:03 AM on July 28, 2016 [6 favorites]
So 10 is the new 50. Okay.
posted by mygoditsbob at 11:11 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by mygoditsbob at 11:11 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm on a streetcar and can't watch this right now. Someone please summarize. Please end your summary with "and, within a decade or so, warp drive."
I don't know exactly what this is, but I'm practically squealing with excitement anyway.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:19 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't know exactly what this is, but I'm practically squealing with excitement anyway.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:19 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
That is the frightening thing isn't it - that we are prepared to throw away more money in just one film than we are in securing future clean, safe power for mankind.
posted by Burn_IT at 11:19 AM on July 28, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by Burn_IT at 11:19 AM on July 28, 2016 [10 favorites]
It might not be Transformers money, but a fair bit has gone on fusion projects over the years.
posted by Artw at 11:27 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 11:27 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't think it makes much long term sense to count on large-scale, centralized power systems. I'd love to see distributed, overlapping nodes. Solar paints, panels, and shingles. I bet 100 million over 10 years towards that end would also vastly improve the power situation.
Both paths should definitely be persued though, obviously! Imagine one of those on a spaceship!
posted by mrjohnmuller at 11:28 AM on July 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
Both paths should definitely be persued though, obviously! Imagine one of those on a spaceship!
posted by mrjohnmuller at 11:28 AM on July 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
If you hate the joke, Poindexter, make with the fusion reactor
posted by thelonius at 11:31 AM on July 28, 2016 [22 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 11:31 AM on July 28, 2016 [22 favorites]
That is the frightening thing isn't it - that we are prepared to throw away more money in just one film than we are in securing future clean, safe power for mankind.
David Graeber wrote something on this - Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
"The question struck me as I watched one of the recent Star Wars movies. The movie was terrible, but I couldn’t help but feel impressed by the quality of the special effects. Recalling the clumsy special effects typical of fifties sci-fi films, I kept thinking how impressed a fifties audience would have been if they’d known what we could do by now—only to realize, “Actually, no. They wouldn’t be impressed at all, would they? They thought we’d be doing this kind of thing by now. Not just figuring out more sophisticated ways to simulate it.”"
posted by knapah at 11:39 AM on July 28, 2016 [12 favorites]
David Graeber wrote something on this - Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
"The question struck me as I watched one of the recent Star Wars movies. The movie was terrible, but I couldn’t help but feel impressed by the quality of the special effects. Recalling the clumsy special effects typical of fifties sci-fi films, I kept thinking how impressed a fifties audience would have been if they’d known what we could do by now—only to realize, “Actually, no. They wouldn’t be impressed at all, would they? They thought we’d be doing this kind of thing by now. Not just figuring out more sophisticated ways to simulate it.”"
posted by knapah at 11:39 AM on July 28, 2016 [12 favorites]
That is the frightening thing isn't it - that we are prepared to throw away more money in just one film than we are in securing future clean, safe power for mankind.
There is quite a long history of excessive optimism in this area. Every group working on fusion (and there are a lot of them) says "We just need ten million (fifty million, one hundred million) and then we'll have a working system" and they keep being wrong.
OTOH, with the amount of money spent on ITER ($15 billion so far. 3x the original estimate), you'd figure that they could take some of the spare change left over and fund these new projects.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 11:41 AM on July 28, 2016 [6 favorites]
There is quite a long history of excessive optimism in this area. Every group working on fusion (and there are a lot of them) says "We just need ten million (fifty million, one hundred million) and then we'll have a working system" and they keep being wrong.
OTOH, with the amount of money spent on ITER ($15 billion so far. 3x the original estimate), you'd figure that they could take some of the spare change left over and fund these new projects.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 11:41 AM on July 28, 2016 [6 favorites]
Imagine one of those on a spaceship!
Now imagine you're a passenger on that spaceship—a spaceship traveling 66,000 miles per hour through the vacuum of space.
A spaceship with of surface area of 197,000,000 square miles and weighing 6.6 sextillion tons.
And upon that spaceship are 7 billion other passengers to keep you company on your long voyage through the stars...
. . .
I'm referring to Earth, goddamn it! The spaceship is Earth!!
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:46 AM on July 28, 2016 [14 favorites]
Now imagine you're a passenger on that spaceship—a spaceship traveling 66,000 miles per hour through the vacuum of space.
A spaceship with of surface area of 197,000,000 square miles and weighing 6.6 sextillion tons.
And upon that spaceship are 7 billion other passengers to keep you company on your long voyage through the stars...
. . .
I'm referring to Earth, goddamn it! The spaceship is Earth!!
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:46 AM on July 28, 2016 [14 favorites]
If humanity ever acquires limitless free energy, it's game over for all other species and for wild nature. Look at what we've done with the energy we have.
posted by crazylegs at 11:49 AM on July 28, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by crazylegs at 11:49 AM on July 28, 2016 [9 favorites]
I'm referring to Earth, goddamn it! The spaceship is Earth!!
Seen that one. The special effects are great, but the plot frankly, sucks.
posted by happyroach at 11:52 AM on July 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
Seen that one. The special effects are great, but the plot frankly, sucks.
posted by happyroach at 11:52 AM on July 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
What ever happened to the Lockheed Martin reactor?
posted by humanfont at 11:56 AM on July 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by humanfont at 11:56 AM on July 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
Look at what we've done with the energy we have.
That's because we're restricted to only one biosphere.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:57 AM on July 28, 2016
That's because we're restricted to only one biosphere.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:57 AM on July 28, 2016
There's an awful lot in that video, and I couldn't summarise it in the fpp, but one thing that struck me was how many of the real problems that fusion has had are directly addressed by the design - as you'd hope from someone who really knows his onions. Many of them are engineering, but many of them are more general.
One of the things Whyte majors on towards the start, though, is scaling out at speed. He compares the time taken to get nuclear power from drawing-board to working reactor to significant contributor with the speed fusion's going at, and says 'we have to do it like they did it'.
What I can summarise about the engineering: by generating much stronger magnetic fields, the reactor can be made much smaller; it can be made modular; it can be made simpler - especially in the design of the blanket that contains the coolant/shield liquid (he's proposing to use a liquid lithium salt, circulated through a 3D-printed network). It also confines the plasma far more forcefully, which reduces instability and reduces the real problem of it concentrating in hotspots and damaging the containment system.
I'm not easily impressed, least of all by 'gamechanging' claims for power generation, and as someone comments in the Q&A at the end 'that was a really impressive pitch deck' (it was). But I think he's got enough to justify being given the money and people he wants to take it to the next stage, because while (as he admits) there are plenty of questions yet to be answered, it really does look like he's taken things from a fundamental level up to a plausible model and thought about it in terms of risk-reduction, evolution and working from what we know.
Plus, those REBCO superconductors are genuinely amazing and have lots of other applications, and they're getting better all the time. I tried to research how they work last night, but I can't yet get my head aroudn the physics. Looks a bit like they're part of a new model of superconductivity, and it's advancing as they are.
(ETA for humanfont - not sure, but they were promising working prototypes for 2017 when they started and the latest I can find is that they're still working on the fundamentals. Hard to say, there's a lot of razzmatazz.)
posted by Devonian at 12:01 PM on July 28, 2016 [6 favorites]
One of the things Whyte majors on towards the start, though, is scaling out at speed. He compares the time taken to get nuclear power from drawing-board to working reactor to significant contributor with the speed fusion's going at, and says 'we have to do it like they did it'.
What I can summarise about the engineering: by generating much stronger magnetic fields, the reactor can be made much smaller; it can be made modular; it can be made simpler - especially in the design of the blanket that contains the coolant/shield liquid (he's proposing to use a liquid lithium salt, circulated through a 3D-printed network). It also confines the plasma far more forcefully, which reduces instability and reduces the real problem of it concentrating in hotspots and damaging the containment system.
I'm not easily impressed, least of all by 'gamechanging' claims for power generation, and as someone comments in the Q&A at the end 'that was a really impressive pitch deck' (it was). But I think he's got enough to justify being given the money and people he wants to take it to the next stage, because while (as he admits) there are plenty of questions yet to be answered, it really does look like he's taken things from a fundamental level up to a plausible model and thought about it in terms of risk-reduction, evolution and working from what we know.
Plus, those REBCO superconductors are genuinely amazing and have lots of other applications, and they're getting better all the time. I tried to research how they work last night, but I can't yet get my head aroudn the physics. Looks a bit like they're part of a new model of superconductivity, and it's advancing as they are.
(ETA for humanfont - not sure, but they were promising working prototypes for 2017 when they started and the latest I can find is that they're still working on the fundamentals. Hard to say, there's a lot of razzmatazz.)
posted by Devonian at 12:01 PM on July 28, 2016 [6 favorites]
I'll have to look around for the article, but according to one economist who sat down and did the math, even without the greenhouse gasses associated with carbon fuels, the waste heat from fusion reactors (figuring in for future energy demands) will raise the earth's surface to boiling temperatures within 400 years. So there's that. :/ But for off-world uses and space propulsion, sure, let's build them. Just don't count on fusion power as a magic bullet for mankind's energy needs.
posted by sexyrobot at 12:04 PM on July 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by sexyrobot at 12:04 PM on July 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
sexyrobot - yes, if you're going to pump more energy into a system then you're going to heat it up. It doesn't matter where it comes from. But this will buy us more time, during which we can continue to learn how to use less energy and consider other mitigation strategies. Thermodynamics, boy. I dunno.
More options and more time - I'll take those alongside climate stability and non-acidic oceans.
posted by Devonian at 12:17 PM on July 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
More options and more time - I'll take those alongside climate stability and non-acidic oceans.
posted by Devonian at 12:17 PM on July 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
First of all, I have no knowledge of this particular model for achieving fusion.
However, I know a decent amount about inertial confinement, a la the National Ignition Facility, where they are (or were) fond of saying "We know fusion works. Just look up at the sun!" as a way of trying to convince you that achieving fusion on earth amounts to nothing more than an engineering problem. If it can happen on the sun, then by golly we can make it happen on earth.
But fusion only happens in the very core of the sun--that's the only place where the pressure (and thus confinement) is great enough to fuse hydrogen. The sun weighs 4,385,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds. It takes that tremendous an overburden to create the environment in which 1) fusion can occur and 2) not blow the whole system apart.
Is there a possible combination of materials that can achieve a similar regime of pressure and confinement on earth? It doesn't seem pessimistic (imho) to say, Maybe not.
Good luck to all the fusion researchers out there.
posted by Zerowensboring at 12:33 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
However, I know a decent amount about inertial confinement, a la the National Ignition Facility, where they are (or were) fond of saying "We know fusion works. Just look up at the sun!" as a way of trying to convince you that achieving fusion on earth amounts to nothing more than an engineering problem. If it can happen on the sun, then by golly we can make it happen on earth.
But fusion only happens in the very core of the sun--that's the only place where the pressure (and thus confinement) is great enough to fuse hydrogen. The sun weighs 4,385,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds. It takes that tremendous an overburden to create the environment in which 1) fusion can occur and 2) not blow the whole system apart.
Is there a possible combination of materials that can achieve a similar regime of pressure and confinement on earth? It doesn't seem pessimistic (imho) to say, Maybe not.
Good luck to all the fusion researchers out there.
posted by Zerowensboring at 12:33 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
What ever happened to the Lockheed Martin reactor?
The skunks aren't scaling well.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 12:44 PM on July 28, 2016 [5 favorites]
The skunks aren't scaling well.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 12:44 PM on July 28, 2016 [5 favorites]
I'll have to look around for the article, but according to one economist who sat down and did the math, even without the greenhouse gasses associated with carbon fuels, the waste heat from fusion reactors (figuring in for future energy demands) will raise the earth's surface to boiling temperatures within 400 years. So there's that. :/ But for off-world uses and space propulsion, sure, let's build them. Just don't count on fusion power as a magic bullet for mankind's energy needs.
That sounds like an extrapolation of trends that don't necessarily extrapolate for 400 years and aren't specific to fusion power? Like Devonian says there are physical limits to the amount of energy use that could ever be sustained by humans on Earth, but those aren't what we're worried about running into just right now.
posted by atoxyl at 12:51 PM on July 28, 2016
That sounds like an extrapolation of trends that don't necessarily extrapolate for 400 years and aren't specific to fusion power? Like Devonian says there are physical limits to the amount of energy use that could ever be sustained by humans on Earth, but those aren't what we're worried about running into just right now.
posted by atoxyl at 12:51 PM on July 28, 2016
~I'm referring to Earth, goddamn it! The spaceship is Earth!!
~Seen that one. The special effects are great, but the plot frankly, sucks.
Stick with it. Things really pick up after season 5.5 billion.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:59 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
~Seen that one. The special effects are great, but the plot frankly, sucks.
Stick with it. Things really pick up after season 5.5 billion.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:59 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
And, of course the D-T fusion they're working on is a reaction that produces neutrons. Which means radioactive waste.
I'm a fan of fusion, I love the idea, but D-T fusion isn't going to solve all of our problems. It'll produce less waste than fission does, which makes the storage and disposal problem simpler, but the problem still exists.
posted by sotonohito at 1:06 PM on July 28, 2016
I'm a fan of fusion, I love the idea, but D-T fusion isn't going to solve all of our problems. It'll produce less waste than fission does, which makes the storage and disposal problem simpler, but the problem still exists.
posted by sotonohito at 1:06 PM on July 28, 2016
"Fusion is fifty years away, and always will be? I hate that joke."
Well, the source of the joke (usually "20 years away") is over-optimistic fusion scientists promising a working plant in a decade or two. (*cough* 10 years? *cough*)
It's not lack of funding that's the fundamental cause of these missed deadlines, as much as the domestic fusion people would like to say it is. There's been like $40 billion spent in the US alone on fusion over the years... and many of the biggest failures had all the money they asked for and more. (A whole lot more.) The ITER agreement was signed nearly a decade ago with a first-plasma date of 2016 -- ten years away. Where are we now? An (optimistic!) first-plasma date of 2025 -- nine years away.
What ever happened to the Lockheed Martin reactor?
Vaporware, start to finish. Classic BS. I could rant, but I already did.
posted by cgs06 at 1:07 PM on July 28, 2016 [6 favorites]
Well, the source of the joke (usually "20 years away") is over-optimistic fusion scientists promising a working plant in a decade or two. (*cough* 10 years? *cough*)
It's not lack of funding that's the fundamental cause of these missed deadlines, as much as the domestic fusion people would like to say it is. There's been like $40 billion spent in the US alone on fusion over the years... and many of the biggest failures had all the money they asked for and more. (A whole lot more.) The ITER agreement was signed nearly a decade ago with a first-plasma date of 2016 -- ten years away. Where are we now? An (optimistic!) first-plasma date of 2025 -- nine years away.
What ever happened to the Lockheed Martin reactor?
Vaporware, start to finish. Classic BS. I could rant, but I already did.
posted by cgs06 at 1:07 PM on July 28, 2016 [6 favorites]
The way fusion works in the standard magnetic confinement model, as opposed to in the Sun, is that the temperatures are much higher (around 10x that of the fusion areas in the sun) and the pressure a lot lower. The necessary pressure is maintained by a very strong magnetic field acting on the plasma, because it's not practicable to build something that is in contact with 100 million degree stuff. If you could, or you could build something that allows very high pressure plasma at a lower temperature (which is what gravity does in stars), then that would be a way to go.
The video goes into the issue of neutron shielding and activated waste - tl;dw it's not a problem, apparently. Whyte says that the activation-contaminated components at the end of the reactor's life will be decade-timescale shallow burial disposal of around 4 cubic metres of stuff. It doesn't have a solid shield, which helps, and the liquid shield thermalises most of the neutrons, but there's more in the video (which has a 30 minute Q&A; lots of these questions get asked there. It's where I got the 50 year joke from, practically verbatim.).
posted by Devonian at 1:20 PM on July 28, 2016
The video goes into the issue of neutron shielding and activated waste - tl;dw it's not a problem, apparently. Whyte says that the activation-contaminated components at the end of the reactor's life will be decade-timescale shallow burial disposal of around 4 cubic metres of stuff. It doesn't have a solid shield, which helps, and the liquid shield thermalises most of the neutrons, but there's more in the video (which has a 30 minute Q&A; lots of these questions get asked there. It's where I got the 50 year joke from, practically verbatim.).
posted by Devonian at 1:20 PM on July 28, 2016
(oh, and Zerowensboring? Someone from NIF was in the audience and asked a question about plasma burning, so reprazent...)
posted by Devonian at 1:28 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Devonian at 1:28 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm with Devonian on the cautious optimism front. The first several generations of fusion power will rely more than any other one thing on superconductivity. Stronger, warmer (less super-cold, really), more efficient. Containment is the name of the game.
There are a ton of other hurdles (what to do with all of the neutrons that bombard the containment vessel in any case, turning them more brittle and more radioactive possibly being Thing #2 I'm more skeptical about), but Thing #1 is containment in a serious freakin' magnetic field.
posted by tclark at 1:32 PM on July 28, 2016
There are a ton of other hurdles (what to do with all of the neutrons that bombard the containment vessel in any case, turning them more brittle and more radioactive possibly being Thing #2 I'm more skeptical about), but Thing #1 is containment in a serious freakin' magnetic field.
posted by tclark at 1:32 PM on July 28, 2016
Someone from NIF
Oh, man, what i'd give to get a roomful of NIF people to speak confidentially about LLNL. (Though i guess http://llnlthetruestory.blogspot.com/ is kind of that, in blog form.)
posted by Zerowensboring at 1:33 PM on July 28, 2016
Oh, man, what i'd give to get a roomful of NIF people to speak confidentially about LLNL. (Though i guess http://llnlthetruestory.blogspot.com/ is kind of that, in blog form.)
posted by Zerowensboring at 1:33 PM on July 28, 2016
That sounds like an extrapolation of trends that don't necessarily extrapolate for 400 years and aren't specific to fusion power?
IIRC, it was specific to fusion power, just because of the enormous amounts of energy, percentage-wise, to maintain fusion. Like for example if it requires 990 kJ to produce 1000 kJ with a fusion reactor, then you only have 10kJ of useful power and yet have 1000kJ of heat going into the environment. Whereas with carbon fuels (which are closer to 90% efficient) it may only require 100kJ (in trucks and pumps and plant-building, etc) to produce 1000kJ of useful power, but also (wah-wah) craptons of greenhouse gases that trap heat. Either way you have an excess of waste heat, one by just creating a huge excess of heat, and the other by producing a by-product that traps the heat that is produced. But (running the numbers with estimates for maximum fusion-power efficiency (the ratio of useful heat vs waste heat) and even extrapolating for future efficiency increases...yeah, unfortunately fusion power ends up making the earth all toasty and crispy and on fire even faster than using fossil fuels...not much faster (maybe a century), but still...fusion power outside of research purposes and off-world uses is looking more and more like a Bad Idea. (I will try to find the article when I get home...I believe it was linked here once)
posted by sexyrobot at 1:38 PM on July 28, 2016
IIRC, it was specific to fusion power, just because of the enormous amounts of energy, percentage-wise, to maintain fusion. Like for example if it requires 990 kJ to produce 1000 kJ with a fusion reactor, then you only have 10kJ of useful power and yet have 1000kJ of heat going into the environment. Whereas with carbon fuels (which are closer to 90% efficient) it may only require 100kJ (in trucks and pumps and plant-building, etc) to produce 1000kJ of useful power, but also (wah-wah) craptons of greenhouse gases that trap heat. Either way you have an excess of waste heat, one by just creating a huge excess of heat, and the other by producing a by-product that traps the heat that is produced. But (running the numbers with estimates for maximum fusion-power efficiency (the ratio of useful heat vs waste heat) and even extrapolating for future efficiency increases...yeah, unfortunately fusion power ends up making the earth all toasty and crispy and on fire even faster than using fossil fuels...not much faster (maybe a century), but still...fusion power outside of research purposes and off-world uses is looking more and more like a Bad Idea. (I will try to find the article when I get home...I believe it was linked here once)
posted by sexyrobot at 1:38 PM on July 28, 2016
My take on this is that fusion already cost a lot of money which will need to be recouped in some way or another. It will not probably be returned in the cost of electricity produced, but rather in dependence on the provider of the fusion electricity.
In this scenario, whoever controls fusion becomes the new oil-rich middle east, or something along the lines of internet/startups/satellites = USA = world control.
So in brief, fusion is a way of cementing the position of rich countries which can finance its development. Just saying.
posted by Laotic at 1:45 PM on July 28, 2016
In this scenario, whoever controls fusion becomes the new oil-rich middle east, or something along the lines of internet/startups/satellites = USA = world control.
So in brief, fusion is a way of cementing the position of rich countries which can finance its development. Just saying.
posted by Laotic at 1:45 PM on July 28, 2016
Like, perfect for terraforming mars as long as you can keep the xenomorphs from nesting in your primary cooling system.
posted by sexyrobot at 1:46 PM on July 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by sexyrobot at 1:46 PM on July 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
Just a few thoughts as someone studying plasma physics, and I wish I remembered enough to have citations, so I apologize if this is more hearsay.
A lot of the more credible claims of 20 years or 40 years for fusion research come from a report in the '70's that looked at the state of fusion progres basically proposed a staggeringly expensive, Manhattan-like project for developing fusion energy. In fact, funding since the Carter administration has been below their projection for 'no appreciable progress towards fusion.'
Now, a report from the '70's needs to be taken with a grain of salt. And I know there are lots of people much smarter than me who would argue vehemently against this, but in my opinion, the U.S. does not have a credible fusion energy program. It has a basic plasma science program that uses "fusion maybe?" as part of the funding justification because that's big and sexy and cells. There are also a fair number of people who, seeing this, decide that they should put the resources they do have toward Hail Mary gambles that have a tiny chance of paying off hugely. ITER, frankly, is the most expensive of these.
That's not to say plasma aren't really awesome and worth researching! Plasma is the fourth state of matter and the least understood. Most of the baryonic (i.e. not dark) matter in the universe is in the form of a plasma. Plasma physics is important to understanding how galaxies form and function, how starts work, how solar flares happen, how the solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field and creates aurora and solar storms that can cause problems for satellites and communication, and just generally how the universe works on a very large scale.
On a more practical level, plasmas are a form of matter that can be shaped and modified directly by electric and magnetic fields really quickly. And I think there's a lot more potential there than is immediately obvious right now. Even so, there are already industrial processes that use plasmas to etch or deposit material, there are ideas for rapidly reconfigurable antennas and direct AC to DC transformers, there are engines to efficiently propel spacecraft through space.
Actually the latter bit is where the most promising proposal I've seen for actually fusion energy comes in. If you have a plasma thruster, and it's already worth it to spend the energy to be confining a plasma and heating it just to shoot it out the back, then it may be much easier to modify it to produce just a bit of fusion and heat up and pressurize the exhaust just that much more. That way, you don't have to worry about the efficiency of converting that energy back into electricity. You're already dumping a bunch of heat and energy into a plasma to make yourself go - if you can end up with a bit of fusion while you're at it, it's basically free energy. Well, for the price of using deuterium and tritium as your reaction mass and having parts that can survive the neutrons.
posted by Zalzidrax at 2:24 PM on July 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
A lot of the more credible claims of 20 years or 40 years for fusion research come from a report in the '70's that looked at the state of fusion progres basically proposed a staggeringly expensive, Manhattan-like project for developing fusion energy. In fact, funding since the Carter administration has been below their projection for 'no appreciable progress towards fusion.'
Now, a report from the '70's needs to be taken with a grain of salt. And I know there are lots of people much smarter than me who would argue vehemently against this, but in my opinion, the U.S. does not have a credible fusion energy program. It has a basic plasma science program that uses "fusion maybe?" as part of the funding justification because that's big and sexy and cells. There are also a fair number of people who, seeing this, decide that they should put the resources they do have toward Hail Mary gambles that have a tiny chance of paying off hugely. ITER, frankly, is the most expensive of these.
That's not to say plasma aren't really awesome and worth researching! Plasma is the fourth state of matter and the least understood. Most of the baryonic (i.e. not dark) matter in the universe is in the form of a plasma. Plasma physics is important to understanding how galaxies form and function, how starts work, how solar flares happen, how the solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field and creates aurora and solar storms that can cause problems for satellites and communication, and just generally how the universe works on a very large scale.
On a more practical level, plasmas are a form of matter that can be shaped and modified directly by electric and magnetic fields really quickly. And I think there's a lot more potential there than is immediately obvious right now. Even so, there are already industrial processes that use plasmas to etch or deposit material, there are ideas for rapidly reconfigurable antennas and direct AC to DC transformers, there are engines to efficiently propel spacecraft through space.
Actually the latter bit is where the most promising proposal I've seen for actually fusion energy comes in. If you have a plasma thruster, and it's already worth it to spend the energy to be confining a plasma and heating it just to shoot it out the back, then it may be much easier to modify it to produce just a bit of fusion and heat up and pressurize the exhaust just that much more. That way, you don't have to worry about the efficiency of converting that energy back into electricity. You're already dumping a bunch of heat and energy into a plasma to make yourself go - if you can end up with a bit of fusion while you're at it, it's basically free energy. Well, for the price of using deuterium and tritium as your reaction mass and having parts that can survive the neutrons.
posted by Zalzidrax at 2:24 PM on July 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
100 million? For the price of half the budget of one lousy Transformers sequel, we can have clean fusion power? What the hell are we waiting for, people?
"We" aren't waiting for anything in particular. Practicable fusion power would render entire industries obsolete, and the loss of oligopolies on energy would drastically transform global geopolitics. In other words, it is not obviously in the interests of any elites, and thus it doesn't get funded in a manner commensurate with its importance.
posted by clockzero at 2:37 PM on July 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
"We" aren't waiting for anything in particular. Practicable fusion power would render entire industries obsolete, and the loss of oligopolies on energy would drastically transform global geopolitics. In other words, it is not obviously in the interests of any elites, and thus it doesn't get funded in a manner commensurate with its importance.
posted by clockzero at 2:37 PM on July 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
He compares the time taken to get nuclear power from drawing-board to working reactor to significant contributor with the speed fusion's going at, and says 'we have to do it like they did it'.
Hopefully not exactly the same, considering how patently crappy the old reactor designs were and are, see: Fukushima, Chernobyl, etc. Maybe if we'd had sane, safe reactor designs first, we wouldn't have had the nuclear disasters we did and we'd have more safe and carbon-lite fission power by now.
posted by BungaDunga at 2:40 PM on July 28, 2016
Hopefully not exactly the same, considering how patently crappy the old reactor designs were and are, see: Fukushima, Chernobyl, etc. Maybe if we'd had sane, safe reactor designs first, we wouldn't have had the nuclear disasters we did and we'd have more safe and carbon-lite fission power by now.
posted by BungaDunga at 2:40 PM on July 28, 2016
Oh, do watch the video... all these things are talked about there - the costs, the amount of energy gain, the neutrons, the funding models, and so on.
I just rewatched it to try and get a few more facts out, but it turns out I misheard a key point - the 10 years and 100 million is actually ten years and 300 million (so a complete Transformers movie, not just half a one) - it came in an answer to a question at the end, surrounded by talk of 100 million degree plasmas, and I got confused. Apologies. But one of the goals Whyte explicitly states is that one of the purposes of the project is to speed up development times to sub-decade cycles "and even that's too long for me". I think one of the really important aspects of the design he's looking at is that it's much simpler than previous ones, and a lot of the hard stuff has been solved.
Certainly, the major step forward - the much more powerful magnetic fields - has been taken. This video was recorded in February, when he mentions that a handful of his researchers had wound a coil in a couple of weeks that had smashed the record for superconducting field strength at 20-something Tesla; the link I provided was from April and another group, who were up to 40. He said that the REBCO technology was improving so quickly that his initial design was already out of date, and that this rate of change was ciontinuing.
He also says that yes, it might not work but it's killing him not to be finding out. Part of his thesis is that you can only get to success by having a much faster-to-fail path, and that with fusion having such environmental possibilities it's time to find ways to do lots of this stuff cheaply and quickly. with non-governmental funding. And. frankly. at $300 million, I'd chip in $300 to a kickstarter and that just leaves 2999999 others to find.
posted by Devonian at 2:41 PM on July 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
I just rewatched it to try and get a few more facts out, but it turns out I misheard a key point - the 10 years and 100 million is actually ten years and 300 million (so a complete Transformers movie, not just half a one) - it came in an answer to a question at the end, surrounded by talk of 100 million degree plasmas, and I got confused. Apologies. But one of the goals Whyte explicitly states is that one of the purposes of the project is to speed up development times to sub-decade cycles "and even that's too long for me". I think one of the really important aspects of the design he's looking at is that it's much simpler than previous ones, and a lot of the hard stuff has been solved.
Certainly, the major step forward - the much more powerful magnetic fields - has been taken. This video was recorded in February, when he mentions that a handful of his researchers had wound a coil in a couple of weeks that had smashed the record for superconducting field strength at 20-something Tesla; the link I provided was from April and another group, who were up to 40. He said that the REBCO technology was improving so quickly that his initial design was already out of date, and that this rate of change was ciontinuing.
He also says that yes, it might not work but it's killing him not to be finding out. Part of his thesis is that you can only get to success by having a much faster-to-fail path, and that with fusion having such environmental possibilities it's time to find ways to do lots of this stuff cheaply and quickly. with non-governmental funding. And. frankly. at $300 million, I'd chip in $300 to a kickstarter and that just leaves 2999999 others to find.
posted by Devonian at 2:41 PM on July 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
According to this article from May Lockheed Martin is still in it. But not much in terms of details beyond "the team has achieved “initial plasma", an important early step for the reactor."
posted by Hairy Lobster at 2:43 PM on July 28, 2016
posted by Hairy Lobster at 2:43 PM on July 28, 2016
To my (very untrained) eye, it looks as if these people have been working on something very similar for several years (small tokamaks based on new high temerature superconductors producing much higher strength magentic fields). Can someone more knowledgeable here tell me what's different?
posted by silence at 2:44 PM on July 28, 2016
posted by silence at 2:44 PM on July 28, 2016
Looks from the best overview I could find that they're got some similarities, as you say, but are otherwise quite different - they haven't addressed the shield yet, the geometry of the tokamak is different, they're operating at lower field strengths (their graph tops out at 9T, Whyte is talking of 10T and higher) and all the HST options they're looking at seem more complicated and less promising than the stuff Whyte has working at the moment (which is a spliced REBCO tape wound in a coil with inter-turn insulation made of... stainless steel. Like whut.
But they're proceeding from the same assumptions and with much the same motivation, but taking differing engineering approaches.
Let a thousand flowers bloom...
posted by Devonian at 3:05 PM on July 28, 2016
But they're proceeding from the same assumptions and with much the same motivation, but taking differing engineering approaches.
Let a thousand flowers bloom...
posted by Devonian at 3:05 PM on July 28, 2016
I wish them all the luck in the world. But they're still just a fancy way of boiling a kettle, so you still need all that steam apparatus to turn the generators. Most importantly, you'll need the thermal sink of roughly twice the capacity of the generator, so in a water and water-vapour constrained world (since water vapour's a lovely greenhouse gas) there are only a few places you can put these.
Secondly, the transmission: many countries have under-invested in transmission. A fast global buildout of baseload generation would cause the price of copper and aluminium to skyrocket. Even for solar PV, the good years are tempered by increased cost of wiring. You'd also have to make these reactors dispatchable: it's pure la-la sci-fi to assume we won't have varying loads. Fusion reactors seem about as difficult to light as a balky kitchen geyser, and I'm guessing you'd want to keep these lit as long as possible to avoid thermal cycle stress.
Having non-dispatchable generation is actually more of a problem than having variable sources like wind and solar. You'd have to find a place to buy your power, and you'd need transmission capacity to take all of it to your buyers. This adds massively to the cost.
As I said, good luck. Hope they find a place in the already busy carbon-free generation market. But don't be too disappointed if Messrs Carnot & Smith fuck up the plans.
posted by scruss at 3:19 PM on July 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
Secondly, the transmission: many countries have under-invested in transmission. A fast global buildout of baseload generation would cause the price of copper and aluminium to skyrocket. Even for solar PV, the good years are tempered by increased cost of wiring. You'd also have to make these reactors dispatchable: it's pure la-la sci-fi to assume we won't have varying loads. Fusion reactors seem about as difficult to light as a balky kitchen geyser, and I'm guessing you'd want to keep these lit as long as possible to avoid thermal cycle stress.
Having non-dispatchable generation is actually more of a problem than having variable sources like wind and solar. You'd have to find a place to buy your power, and you'd need transmission capacity to take all of it to your buyers. This adds massively to the cost.
As I said, good luck. Hope they find a place in the already busy carbon-free generation market. But don't be too disappointed if Messrs Carnot & Smith fuck up the plans.
posted by scruss at 3:19 PM on July 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
If something like Fusion can come in under the price of Hydro you could use the Fusion to supply your base load and then service your variable load with the Hydro. Cheap enough Fusion would make reverse flow Hydro even with the poor efficiency (or that rail car storage for places unsuitable for hydro generation) a possibility. Not a solution set for everywhere but here in BC we have lots of Hydro power being used to smelt aluminum.
posted by Mitheral at 3:33 PM on July 28, 2016
posted by Mitheral at 3:33 PM on July 28, 2016
IIRC, it was specific to fusion power, just because of the enormous amounts of energy, percentage-wise, to maintain fusion. Like for example if it requires 990 kJ to produce 1000 kJ with a fusion reactor, then you only have 10kJ of useful power and yet have 1000kJ of heat going into the environment. Whereas with carbon fuels (which are closer to 90% efficient) it may only require 100kJ (in trucks and pumps and plant-building, etc) to produce 1000kJ of useful power, but also (wah-wah) craptons of greenhouse gases that trap heat. Either way you have an excess of waste heat, one by just creating a huge excess of heat, and the other by producing a by-product that traps the heat that is produced. But (running the numbers with estimates for maximum fusion-power efficiency (the ratio of useful heat vs waste heat) and even extrapolating for future efficiency increases...yeah, unfortunately fusion power ends up making the earth all toasty and crispy and on fire even faster than using fossil fuels...not much faster (maybe a century), but still...fusion power outside of research purposes and off-world uses is looking more and more like a Bad Idea. (I will try to find the article when I get home...I believe it was linked here once)
But when we talk about the "energy required to maintain fusion" aren't we mostly talking about energy that is actually used as an input to the reaction, to heat plasma to the point that fusion can occur? Which in a self-sustaining reaction is by definition fed back from the output. So it seems like the claim is either that there are massive and inefficient external energy expenditures required (to make fuel or what have you) or that the percentage of the net excess energy that can actually be captured usefully is very low. Can either of these things fairly be assumed to be inevitable (as a limitation of technology that doesn't actually yet exist?)
So yeah I'd appreciate if you do find it because I think I'm still missing something here.
posted by atoxyl at 3:40 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
But when we talk about the "energy required to maintain fusion" aren't we mostly talking about energy that is actually used as an input to the reaction, to heat plasma to the point that fusion can occur? Which in a self-sustaining reaction is by definition fed back from the output. So it seems like the claim is either that there are massive and inefficient external energy expenditures required (to make fuel or what have you) or that the percentage of the net excess energy that can actually be captured usefully is very low. Can either of these things fairly be assumed to be inevitable (as a limitation of technology that doesn't actually yet exist?)
So yeah I'd appreciate if you do find it because I think I'm still missing something here.
posted by atoxyl at 3:40 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
→ If something like Fusion can come in under the price of Hydro you could use the Fusion to supply your base load and then service your variable load with the Hydro
It would have to come in hella cheap; to your BC example for Spring Freshet, the fusion generators would have to pay to keep delivering power, as the hydro power running through 40+ year old fully depreciated plants is effectively zero. Some hydro plants have really crude control built in, so they're designated must-take (ie, everyone else has to curtail for them). Unless you want to have flooding and erosion, your fusion would have to curtail.
Remarkably few hydro facilities can do pumped storage, and the reason BC has smelters is because it also has the transmission. Transmission planning is non-trivial. New large power lines take decades to plan and build.
posted by scruss at 4:06 PM on July 28, 2016
It would have to come in hella cheap; to your BC example for Spring Freshet, the fusion generators would have to pay to keep delivering power, as the hydro power running through 40+ year old fully depreciated plants is effectively zero. Some hydro plants have really crude control built in, so they're designated must-take (ie, everyone else has to curtail for them). Unless you want to have flooding and erosion, your fusion would have to curtail.
Remarkably few hydro facilities can do pumped storage, and the reason BC has smelters is because it also has the transmission. Transmission planning is non-trivial. New large power lines take decades to plan and build.
posted by scruss at 4:06 PM on July 28, 2016
waste heat from fusion reactors will raise the earth's surface to boiling temperatures within 400 years
Galactic-Scale Energy is the one I remember, and it does mention 400 years and fusion power. It's just demonstrating that really bad things happen if you keep increasing power generation at 2.3% a year for only a century or three from now. At 400 years we'd be well into the totally doomed if not already extinct phase, if that much power was somehow generated on this little planet.
It's got little to do with fusion power, except that "even a dream source like fusion makes for unbearable conditions in a few hundred years if growth continues."
posted by sfenders at 4:22 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
Galactic-Scale Energy is the one I remember, and it does mention 400 years and fusion power. It's just demonstrating that really bad things happen if you keep increasing power generation at 2.3% a year for only a century or three from now. At 400 years we'd be well into the totally doomed if not already extinct phase, if that much power was somehow generated on this little planet.
It's got little to do with fusion power, except that "even a dream source like fusion makes for unbearable conditions in a few hundred years if growth continues."
posted by sfenders at 4:22 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
These new designs rely on putting superconductors very close to a plasma that's kicking out neutrons. Shit loads of neutrons.
What's going to happen to those superconductors under neutron flux? I haven't seen anyone address this question yet.
Here's my guess - all high-temperature superconductors rely on their crystal structures, that's what makes them superconductors. Neutrons kick the crap out of crystal structures by literally kicking atoms out of place. In metals that becomes embrittlement, dislocations, Frenkel defects, voids, and swelling. In ceramic superconductors, they just stop superconducting and then your reactor stops.
So if I was an investor, I'd want to see solid proof that they've solved or avoided this problem before putting in a penny.
posted by happyinmotion at 4:46 PM on July 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
What's going to happen to those superconductors under neutron flux? I haven't seen anyone address this question yet.
Here's my guess - all high-temperature superconductors rely on their crystal structures, that's what makes them superconductors. Neutrons kick the crap out of crystal structures by literally kicking atoms out of place. In metals that becomes embrittlement, dislocations, Frenkel defects, voids, and swelling. In ceramic superconductors, they just stop superconducting and then your reactor stops.
So if I was an investor, I'd want to see solid proof that they've solved or avoided this problem before putting in a penny.
posted by happyinmotion at 4:46 PM on July 28, 2016 [4 favorites]
happyinmotion: That shouldn't be a hard thing to test, either. Just dunk it in a research reactor designed to have a large amount of neutron flux (McMasters was, I bet plenty of other places were too), or take it someplace like Chalk River that does Nu diffraction, and measure the crystal structure over and over and watch if it changes.
posted by Canageek at 4:52 PM on July 28, 2016
posted by Canageek at 4:52 PM on July 28, 2016
There's been a lot of work on HTS behaviour at high neutron flux. This is a typical report, but I haven't had time to get up to speed on this aspect so can't really comment. The ARC design doesn't let many high speed neutrons get to the magnets; the SPARC small-scale testbed does and its lifetime is limited by HTS neutron damage/heating effects, but they reckon around 10k shots of 10s fusion, which is enough for their purpose.
scruss has, as usual, many cogent points which I may return to tomorrow...
posted by Devonian at 5:39 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
scruss has, as usual, many cogent points which I may return to tomorrow...
posted by Devonian at 5:39 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
ten years and 300 million
Having that figure in mind before watching the video, it was a slight disappointment when they got to the point where it's explained that the $300 million is for a reactor that's 5% the size of the full-scale useful one, works for only 10 seconds at a time, and even if it could run continuously would not generate more electricity than its input, if it could somehow be used to generate useable power instead of just heat and research papers.
Those superconducting coils look seriously cool, though. At this point I'd bet on MIT ahead of ITER, at least.
posted by sfenders at 7:39 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
Having that figure in mind before watching the video, it was a slight disappointment when they got to the point where it's explained that the $300 million is for a reactor that's 5% the size of the full-scale useful one, works for only 10 seconds at a time, and even if it could run continuously would not generate more electricity than its input, if it could somehow be used to generate useable power instead of just heat and research papers.
Those superconducting coils look seriously cool, though. At this point I'd bet on MIT ahead of ITER, at least.
posted by sfenders at 7:39 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't think it is a wild exaggeration to say that fusion power is the only thing that can save humanity from extinction.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:00 PM on July 28
Well, in that case, humanity is fucked, as are many other life forms on Earth. I don't think fusion is happening at any time before catastrophic climate change outruns it. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to me that we're already past the point of no return. I'm sad, of course, but I'm also glad that I was born when I was, and I have never had any children. Selfish behavior? Certainly. But it's also realistic.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:46 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:00 PM on July 28
Well, in that case, humanity is fucked, as are many other life forms on Earth. I don't think fusion is happening at any time before catastrophic climate change outruns it. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to me that we're already past the point of no return. I'm sad, of course, but I'm also glad that I was born when I was, and I have never had any children. Selfish behavior? Certainly. But it's also realistic.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:46 PM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I was really into fusion as a kid, and still am to some degree, but in undergrad I took a fusion class in the NucE department that was pretty depressing. Basically, we've made tremendous progress, but we still don't understand some fundamentals, and when we do get to net power production it's not going to be the long-promised "too cheap to meter". There is a long road ahead; don't believe anyone who tells you that fusion is right around the corner.
I haven't looked at the latest MIT stuff, but I thought there was a fundamental trade-off between field strength and plasma density? i.e. you can get your plasma more stable with stronger fields, but you don't generate as much power due to the lower density.
posted by Standard Orange at 12:12 AM on July 29, 2016
I haven't looked at the latest MIT stuff, but I thought there was a fundamental trade-off between field strength and plasma density? i.e. you can get your plasma more stable with stronger fields, but you don't generate as much power due to the lower density.
posted by Standard Orange at 12:12 AM on July 29, 2016
Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist by Tom Murphy is kinda a rejection of claims that "fusion power is the only thing that can save humanity from extinction [here on Earth]". We make energy "too cheap to meter" only by making more efficient usage of the solar energy already landing on this planet. We may want fusion for interstellar travel of course, but one should expect those to be our AI eventual descendants, not biological humans.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:07 AM on July 29, 2016
posted by jeffburdges at 1:07 AM on July 29, 2016
yes, if you're going to pump more energy into a system then you're going to heat it up.
One of the neat things about renewable technologies is that they tap into energy flows that were already on their way to heating something up, and just make that very same energy flow take a more useful detour along the same journey.
The worst effect thermal effects that renewables could possibly have is altering local heat equilibria. For distributed renewables like rooftop solar PV, the point of energy extraction will be physically close enough to that of energy employment that the net effect is zero for quite small values of "local". Large-scale grid-tied wind energy might be a little more disruptive. But no renewable technology could possibly come anywhere near the amount of new heat added to the system by adopting mass-to-energy converters at scale.
Fortunately, renewables are already well down the road of becoming cheaper to make than anything else. By the time fusion power is technically close to being ready for commercialization, there will be nowhere on Earth where deploying it looks like the economical option.
posted by flabdablet at 2:30 AM on July 29, 2016 [2 favorites]
One of the neat things about renewable technologies is that they tap into energy flows that were already on their way to heating something up, and just make that very same energy flow take a more useful detour along the same journey.
The worst effect thermal effects that renewables could possibly have is altering local heat equilibria. For distributed renewables like rooftop solar PV, the point of energy extraction will be physically close enough to that of energy employment that the net effect is zero for quite small values of "local". Large-scale grid-tied wind energy might be a little more disruptive. But no renewable technology could possibly come anywhere near the amount of new heat added to the system by adopting mass-to-energy converters at scale.
Fortunately, renewables are already well down the road of becoming cheaper to make than anything else. By the time fusion power is technically close to being ready for commercialization, there will be nowhere on Earth where deploying it looks like the economical option.
posted by flabdablet at 2:30 AM on July 29, 2016 [2 favorites]
The waste heat from nuclear power wrecking the global climate is not exactly an immediate concern. It's a thing that happens surprisingly soon if you accept the ridiculous premise that exponential growth in energy consumption will continue for centuries. If you try to do it with solar PV instead, you'll wreck the climate by making too much of the planet's surface black with solar panels.
posted by sfenders at 3:58 AM on July 29, 2016
posted by sfenders at 3:58 AM on July 29, 2016
One thing I've been curious about, but never had the time to really research is wind turbines.
I read a study about wind turbines being potentially useable to blunt hurricane force winds, and reduce their power.
So that got me to thinking about how wind fits into the energy flows of the earth.
(bear with me, this is nowhere near anything I know about)
So, global warming increases the energy in the system, right? Potentially causing more hurricanes and major weather effects.
So, would a massive deployment of wind turbines take energy out of the system, and maybe start to reduce the impact of global warming?
I haven't seen a study suggesting it, and maybe the numbers are just too small?
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:19 AM on July 29, 2016
I read a study about wind turbines being potentially useable to blunt hurricane force winds, and reduce their power.
So that got me to thinking about how wind fits into the energy flows of the earth.
(bear with me, this is nowhere near anything I know about)
So, global warming increases the energy in the system, right? Potentially causing more hurricanes and major weather effects.
So, would a massive deployment of wind turbines take energy out of the system, and maybe start to reduce the impact of global warming?
I haven't seen a study suggesting it, and maybe the numbers are just too small?
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:19 AM on July 29, 2016
Ten years. OK. And then another ten to deploy? By then we will have a largely low carbon electric grid using existing technologies. That's not to say we shouldn't pursue fusion, but if you're looking to switch off fossil fuels, we have the tools, we just need the will.
"We" for any reasonable value of "we" are not remotely on track to have a largely low carbon electricity grid in twenty years nice though that might be.
I don't think it makes much long term sense to count on large-scale, centralized power systems.
Why not? Almost everything else humanity has done is cheaper and easier when done that way. Do you think power production is different or are you expressing an aesthetic preference?
posted by atrazine at 5:34 AM on July 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
"We" for any reasonable value of "we" are not remotely on track to have a largely low carbon electricity grid in twenty years nice though that might be.
I don't think it makes much long term sense to count on large-scale, centralized power systems.
Why not? Almost everything else humanity has done is cheaper and easier when done that way. Do you think power production is different or are you expressing an aesthetic preference?
posted by atrazine at 5:34 AM on July 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
So, would a massive deployment of wind turbines take energy out of the system, and maybe start to reduce the impact of global warming?
Wind turbines don't really add or remove energy from the atmosphere, they just convert relatively organized kinetic energy (wind) into less unorganized kinetic energy (heat). The overall amount of energy in the atmosphere remains unchanged, since the input (the sun) and output (radiation into space) aren't affected. The only thing that's being changed is the path that energy takes as it moves through the system.
posted by dephlogisticated at 8:28 AM on July 29, 2016
Wind turbines don't really add or remove energy from the atmosphere, they just convert relatively organized kinetic energy (wind) into less unorganized kinetic energy (heat). The overall amount of energy in the atmosphere remains unchanged, since the input (the sun) and output (radiation into space) aren't affected. The only thing that's being changed is the path that energy takes as it moves through the system.
posted by dephlogisticated at 8:28 AM on July 29, 2016
I'd love to hear updates on some of the fusion projects already underway, for example there is one in Burnaby, BC (basically Vancouver. If Vancouver were Toronto it would have eaten it in the 90s.) that I'd love an update on. But existing projects aren't sexy: New theories are.
posted by Canageek at 9:42 AM on July 29, 2016
posted by Canageek at 9:42 AM on July 29, 2016
Almost everything else humanity has done is cheaper and easier when done that way.
On the contary. Almost everything else humanity has done is cheaper and easier when mass-produced.
In mass production's corner we have the most expensive distributed generation option: rooftop solar photovoltaic. According to Solar Choice, as of May 2016 the average price of a fully installed 10kW solar system in Australia is around AU$1.42 per watt. That's about US$1/watt of peak capacity, or under US$8/watt of real-world performance on a roof in cold and rainy Hobart; less elsewhere.
In concentrated centralized generation's corner we have the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, originally estimated to cost £18B but now heading for at least £30B, roughly US$40B. Its peak output rating is 3.2GW. Even if it were to run permanently flat-out with zero downtime, that already works out to over $12/watt. Fuel, maintenance, security and eventual decommissioning could easily push that to over $20/watt over the life of the project.
Solar PV costs less each year as Chinese production rates ramp up. Like all distributed systems, it fails soft; there is no chance that a burnt-out pump bearing or crashed airliner might suddenly remove 3.2GW from the grid. Weather forecasting also makes its output nicely predictable.
It seems likely to me that even quite expensive silicon is going to be costing less per installed watt than fusion well before fusion generators are technically viable, let alone on offer commercially.
posted by flabdablet at 10:01 AM on July 29, 2016 [3 favorites]
On the contary. Almost everything else humanity has done is cheaper and easier when mass-produced.
In mass production's corner we have the most expensive distributed generation option: rooftop solar photovoltaic. According to Solar Choice, as of May 2016 the average price of a fully installed 10kW solar system in Australia is around AU$1.42 per watt. That's about US$1/watt of peak capacity, or under US$8/watt of real-world performance on a roof in cold and rainy Hobart; less elsewhere.
In concentrated centralized generation's corner we have the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, originally estimated to cost £18B but now heading for at least £30B, roughly US$40B. Its peak output rating is 3.2GW. Even if it were to run permanently flat-out with zero downtime, that already works out to over $12/watt. Fuel, maintenance, security and eventual decommissioning could easily push that to over $20/watt over the life of the project.
Solar PV costs less each year as Chinese production rates ramp up. Like all distributed systems, it fails soft; there is no chance that a burnt-out pump bearing or crashed airliner might suddenly remove 3.2GW from the grid. Weather forecasting also makes its output nicely predictable.
It seems likely to me that even quite expensive silicon is going to be costing less per installed watt than fusion well before fusion generators are technically viable, let alone on offer commercially.
posted by flabdablet at 10:01 AM on July 29, 2016 [3 favorites]
a fully installed 10kW solar system in Australia is around AU$1.42 per watt [peak].
Did that not strike you as an implausibly low price? Like maybe you're not getting the whole story? The government there contributes anywhere from $3000 to $10000 for a 10kW system, depending on your postcode and the state of some kind of market-like mechanism I don't understand. That is not counted in the price you saw.
Be skeptical of claims about energy, people, even if it's a technology you really really like.
posted by sfenders at 10:35 AM on July 29, 2016
Did that not strike you as an implausibly low price? Like maybe you're not getting the whole story? The government there contributes anywhere from $3000 to $10000 for a 10kW system, depending on your postcode and the state of some kind of market-like mechanism I don't understand. That is not counted in the price you saw.
Be skeptical of claims about energy, people, even if it's a technology you really really like.
posted by sfenders at 10:35 AM on July 29, 2016
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posted by lalochezia at 10:49 AM on July 28, 2016 [1 favorite]