> ITER was designed before the newest generations of superconductors were available. ITER is now succumbing to the escalation of commitment that sunk-costs engender. SPARK [sic] has the advantage of an agile development model and new materials and technology that combined, dramatically shortens the path to breakeven and the reduction in costs to do so.
Just imagine where we'd be if fusion science were given equal footing with other investment endeavors.
The big money holders only think about incrementing some integers in their bank account. Yeah, yeah, I know why. It's just so... lame. Build a moon colony! Cure cancer! Create free energy! Make experimental cities! Push the limits of human civilization! No, let's instead dump the fruits of society into optimizing ads and making our phones 20 microns thinner and bombing some poor people.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/07/united-states-will-be-a-net-...
it is unknown! but we certainly shouldn't make long term 10-20-50 year plans on the assumption that the USA will be energy independent due to oil.
Initial production after fracking is high, but drops off fast.
Yes, be careful what you wish for.
Because you don't want your only options for dealing with other countries to be "do nothing" and "start a nuclear war".
Now let's say you don't have conventional weapons.
China invades all South East Asia progressively. Would you nuke them? Russia invades Eastern Europe. Would you nuke them? If yes why hasn't the US nuked Russia yet?
Then all your allies suddenly switch side after being overthrown by dictators who are in favor of your enemies. Would you nuke them?
Another one: you are terrorists associations preparing attacks against you in camps all across middle east. Who do you nuke to defend yourself?
Conventional weapons are actually the only useful tools nowadays, because war is much more sneaky than it used to be, and it is much more about fighting for influence than really invading countries or defending you territory.
On the other hand let's say all had the bomb but are reluctant to use it. The nation's fight it out with conventional weaponry until the axis powers, realizing they have lost and with invasion in progress finally feel they have no other choice and commit mutually assured destruction. I think it would be hard to claim that wouldn't have happened given the temperament of some of their leaders. Perhaps in this case the allies would have showed restraint and not invaded to end the war - perhaps they would have been willing to negotiate terms.
I think basically my idea is a terrible one. But I also think the world war II scenario would end in nuclear exchange - the only way to avoid that is not push any power to the point of last resort, and negotiate an unsatisfying agreement that leaves the aggressors in power, no matter what horrible things they do. Would all have shown such restraint, would cooler heads have prevailed amid the terrible atrocities of total war? I'm not particularly optimistic of the chances.
What if the invaders are non-nuclear armed?
There is a wide range of responses between nothing and total nuclear annihilation, even without world police status.
You deliver an ultimatum, wait for the invader to withdraw. If they call your bluff, you level them. Just a city at a time if they don't have nukes. Wholly if they do. I mean if your going to rely on a nuclear self defense, when someone attacks you, you have to be willing to use it.
Sometimes doing nothing is the best response. I didn't say it never was. I just said you don't want that or nuclear war to be your only options.
> What business is of the US what happens in the rest of the world?
Do you use anything not made in the US? If you do, then you care what happens in the rest of the world. Even if you personally don't, enough other people in the US do that you need to care what happens in the rest of the world, because you depend on those other people in the US and they use things from the rest of the world. The world is highly interconnected.
I think this was addressed quite well 32 years ago -- when everybody was thinking a lot harder about it due to the Cold War -- by the wonderful British comedy series "Yes, Minister":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y-yyaWCgiQ
I considered a TLDW, but I don't think I can do it justice.
In any given encounter, they'll steal a minority of your stuff unopposed, and you'll refrain from the murder-suicide button because staying alive with majority of your stuff is still a better outcome for you.
The pattern will continue until someone acts irrationally and then you've got a lot of people dead for reasons that have more to do with pride than logic.
- It is not viable yet, and probably won't be for decades, if at all
- Funding necessary to explore fusion energy's viability is at least order of magnitude $10^10
- The 'steady-state' economics of fusion energy, should it become viable, cannot presently be estimated with any real fidelity
Not only will each commercial reactor, should anybody attempt one, be extremely complex and therefore non-robust, but there's still the issue of neutron contamination, making the whole thing brittle and ready for the nuclear waste disposal team to rip out most of it in a few years time.
Production systems would likely have much higher gas contamination for example and operate at a steady state for months.
Also, ITER is actually rather small from a power production standpoint, 500MW thermal power ~= 150MW of electricity where we have plenty of fusion reactors several times that size. Luckily things get much easier when you scale fusion power.
As you scale up the power of a fusion reactor, the volumetric power density goes DOWN. This is because it becomes limited by the power/area through the first wall. Square/cube law in action.
ITER has full remote handling as it's expected to get extremely radioactive. Scaling reactors up does not really mean increasing the neutron load on the walls as you want to keep that fairly steady per surface area.
Tritium production has ~zero impact on operation. The breeding blankets are really simple, you take lithium and enclose it in a metal of some type. Replace after a few months.
Also, a ~10x device is unlikely to be 50-50 DT as while hard to operate on pure DD fusion it's not that hard to get when you have some tritium in the mix.
It's not designed to replace everything, but I doubt commercial designs would go that far either.
They've already tested joints in the REBCO tape, and found that they introduce very little electrical resistance.
These failings have been known for 35 years or more, and yet still they're largely ignored. If there is a thing called "pathological technology" (in analogy with pathological science) then fusion must qualify.
That's only 10 billion dollars. Far more than that has already been spent on fusion.