Unfortunately, last I heard ITER building has halted: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/02/21/french-regulator-h...
It's impossible for fusion to be a significant source of energy in the time left to avert catastrophic global warming. Even with the most optimistic estimates, we will at best have a handful of small plants, nothing comparable to a fission power plant.
We can't just be thinking about what we'll do to stem the tide, we have to keep working on how we're going to push it back.
We definitely want to be looking at technologies that have a high ROI for emission reduction in the next 10 year span, mixed with longer term projects.
Fission is a longer term project. Simple as that.
This... is my point? So I think you do see it. "Fusion can't save us now so we shouldn't invest in it at all" is short-sighted. This is not an either-or proposition, and frankly people have completely out of whack ideas of the scale of money that's been invested in fusion. Tens of billions of dollars are nothing in what's going to be a trillions of dollars problem.
We need to be building out renewables, and ideally fission too, now. We need to get to carbon zero asap. And then comes the project of getting things back to where we need to be, and we are just not ready for the energy we're going to need to do that.
People thing 10 billion dollars is a lot of money.
My view is that 10 billion dollars is nothing.
My view is that the total OECD investment in fusion R&D should be 10 billion. A year. For the next 50 years.
The investment in the high ROI technologies, principally solar R&D and overnight energy capacity projects like water pump batteries, should be 100 billion (across the OECD). And the investment in CapEx, installing new panels, 200 billion.
Our investment in STEM R&D, as a society, is just pitiful across the Western world.
The portion of our tax dollars that go to long term R&D, the primary driver of productivity growth and progress in our nation's, is scrap.
Certainly, the fact that solar and wind are sure things right now warrants massive investment. Just throwing endless gobs of money at a problem that's as-yet unsolved doesn't necessarily lead to good outcomes, it also takes directed goals and all that. That's in theory what ITER is all about, though I think the slowness with which it got started will hamper it and we'll see success on other projects before it even gets to the testing phase. It was an attempt to create a moonshot that kinda failed, but the private sector seems more interested now so it might not matter.
That said I'd actually be surprised if there isn't already much more than $200bil going into building out solar capacity worldwide. It's just not easily enumerated because it's not special anymore, and a lot of it is on small scales (ie. I'm gonna install about $20k of solar panels to my home this spring and I'm not alone, but it's hard to tell how much that adds up to).
It is well worth keeping focus on fusion energy, especially if there are theoretical reasons to think it works.
Even if it's too late to avoid it completely, it still makes very much sense to work on not making it even worse.
Suggesting to abandon efforts in something because it will anyway not be ready in time, or to stop restrictions because "anyway it's too late" is just the next step in the strategy of the deniers - or, rather, their agitators, motivated by immense profit.
A dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on solar panels or turbines that would displace fossil fuels immediately. And, it would be a dollar wasted, because the fusion work will never produce any commercially competitive power, anyway. So, it is a choice between buying something that contributes to a solution, or just pissing it away.
I see this claim a lot, but what makes this true? Why would money allocation be so inelastic, and why can't it become flexible?
Or am I missing something?
No one knows the future but with the way things have gone so far, fusion in its current form looks like a giant waste of time and money.
Few lack that experience.
Anyways, at the scale of international project budgets, "killing fusion to increase money spent on other green projects" is, at this point, like not buying a daily coffee so you can afford a car.
Even pessimistic estimates of ITER's cost are still under $100B for a 5 decade long project. Or, put another way, less than $2 billion dollars a year. There are highway interchanges that have cost that much. And the EU and the US alone of ITER's contributors have a combined GDP of $35 trillion.
I'm a big believer in wind and solar, although their intrinsically intermittent operation causes me to also worry about baseload power options, and nuclear fusion is the most attractive and promising development in that field.
I think it's stupid to look at one part of the solution and not at the other(s).
It's good to have fusion power in our back pockets, but we shouldn't be relying on it for our energy plans quite yet.
SPARC won't have a turbine either, but with a construction time of four years, it brings us a lot closer to the next reactor which will.
Which may be the core explanation for its failure.
Fusion will have to, maybe, compete with solar/wind/storage in 20-30 years, and beat the prices for that 20-30 years from now. With solar+storage being cheaper than many fossil fuels today, fusion is going to have to be extremely cheap to be able to be a competitive terrestrial energy source with 20-30 years more of solar and storage improvements.
That said, there are significant grid scale batteries coming online. The largest of these in California is 1.2GWh. By comparison the UK has about 30GWh of pumped storage.
https://ambri.com/ (liquid metal battery)
https://www.hydrostor.ca/ (compressed air)
https://www.energy-storage.news/battery-storage-at-us20-mwh-...
It seems that we are at the turning point.
Hydrogen, anhydrous ammonia, and liquified air all produce a valuable industrial product once the tanks are full. Used to be their round-trip efficiency was considered too low, but with solar panels getting dirt cheap, just putting up more panels accommodates almost any conceivable loss. Likewise for long-distance high-voltage transmission lines; China is even building cables to Chile (!) for winter power from desert panel farms.
Factories for industrial amounts of iron-air batteries are already under construction, and will be in full production by end of next year.
It turns out that pumped hydro, the most mature and efficient current method, has far more potential than generally assumed. A regular hydro power dam has to be in a river valley with a big watershed area. But for hydro storage, all you need is a penstock up to a depression in the hills, no watershed or river needed. There are millions of those. Even if you build a dam along one end, it's cheap. And you can float solar panels on it, where they will reduce evaporation and also run more efficiently.
Storage is a solved problem. We don't have much of it yet just because a renewable dollar is today better spent on a panel or turbine, and because cost for storage is falling even faster than for solar panels. Wait a bit, get more for the same money.
Where did you read this? China is 18000 km from Chile, so this seems really unlikely.
> One growing solution to this, Bolinger said, is the addition of batteries to utility scale solar projects. While adding storage can increase the PPA price from $5-$20/MWh depending on the size and duration of the battery, Bolinger said, they are growing in popularity. Of 460 GW of solar projects in queues around the nation as of 2020, 160 GW included a battery.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/developers-increasingly-pai...
We are right at the inflection point of deployment, where projects are cheaper with storage than without, so the amount of projects with storage is going to skyrocket very soon. The thing that makes it cheaper to include storage is lowering of prices during peak production hours, or even curtailment. So after a state gets > ~10% or so of their energy from solar you will see far more storage.
Standalone, for-profit batteries are also becoming common these days, especially on highly-renewable grids that are purely profit driven, like Texas' ERCOT grid. And ERCOT is purely pay-for-energy, so deploying a battery there requires analysis of the arbitrage opportunities, and understanding the grid congestion, etc.
Here's a small battery deployment, but the interesting thing was this current analysis of arbitrage market depth:
> According to John Hancock’s Andrew Mazze, the first hour of energy arbitrage is the most valuable in ERCOT’s market construct and adding extra hours of storage does not justify the extra capital cost required. “I don’t need four hours to maximise the value of the battery [in Texas], you can get 90% of the value with much less capital cost, with a one or two-hour battery [system],” he said.
https://www.energy-storage.news/texas-broad-reach-power-brin...
Obviously there are alternative locations such a roofs of commercial buildings and over the top of car parks. But that bring some of there own problems, structural problems with old roofs and cost to modify car parks.
The UK have done a brilliant job of offshore wind, that works well.
My point is traditional Nuclear and Fusion use a lot less land and that is an important factor to consider long term.
There is also a reasonable chance that solar panel efficiency could practically double. That would definitely make things interesting.
First, the amount of land used for fossil fuel extraction today is less than the total needed to park all the power generation equipment we will need. All of that land will soon be unused.
Second, putting up solar over existing farm and pasture land increases yield and reduces water needs. Solar over canals and reservoirs cuts evaporation loss. Solar over parking lots keeps off sun and rain, making cars last longer. There is no need to devote any land exclusively to energy production.
Finally, wind also coexists nicely with agriculture. A wind turbine not connected to the grid can be synthesizing ammonia whenever the wind blows, for local use as both fertilizer and fuel, much more cheaply than central industrial production that then must be trucked in.
Quite right you can graze sheep (and other cattle) under solar. You cannot grow crops though, which is what I was suggesting by “agricultural” land, should have made that more clear.
I live about two miles from what is proposed to be the UKs largest solar farm [0], I believe it will be 8.7x the size of the next largest by area [1]. The local community largely don’t want it [2], personally I would not be unhappy if it happed. However I can see and understand the arguments about placing it on such fertile land that should be used for growing crops - their main argument against it. But there is also a NIMBY sentiment too.
There are good reasons for placing it in that location, there is a significantly large substation there and it’s either side of a major railway line.
The point is, we in the UK need to be growing as much of our own food as possible. Solar is a potential threat to that under the current incentives. The government absolutely should be incentivising solar but in other locations, all that you have listed, but currently farmers can get a better return from solar than crops.
0: https://www.mallardpasssolar.co.uk/
1: https://www.deegesolar.co.uk/uks_biggest_solar_farms/
2: https://www.mallardpassactiongroup.com/
See also:
https://www.stamfordmercury.co.uk/news/amp/aerial-video-show...
https://www.stamfordmercury.co.uk/news/amp/clock-is-ticking-...
The panels do not cover every square inch of farm; 50% is common. Most plants, including the most productive crops, will only do a certain maximum of photosynthesis in a day; insolation after that just adds heat stress.
Fully support it if it can be made to work, but I'm sceptical.
Certainly pasture and row crops most easily coexist with elevated solar, but there is a lot of pasture. The yield benefits for row crops are attractive, though. In water-stressed areas, the reduced irrigation need might be the main benefit, but they all add up.
Walmart figured that out years ago: https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/sustainability/201405...
The US has plenty of room for solar. And that's before you even consider vertical space. Several companies have solar power generating windows in the market already. Nice if you are building a new skyscraper.
And of course you can use good old fashioned copper cables to transport energy around. E.g. California has some nice salt lakes and deserts close to where millions of people live (e.g. LA). After all, you wouldn't put a nuclear plant in the middle of a city either. Nimby's wouldn't allow that. Solar is a lot less controversial.
I agree that fusion is important to research, but comparing it to the Manhattan Project or the Space Race is to forget that the world was at war when the atomic bomb was delivered from theory to reality in, what, 27 months?
The world was locked in the grip of paranoia about nuclear armageddon and the US/Russia both felt the same existential need to establish a space presence to avoid losing ground or giving so much as a hint that either side might be technologically less capable of catastrophically second striking the other.
Fusion is a notion that has been actively researched and experimented with in a time of relative peace. There's less pressure on the world because no one sees climate change in the same light as nuclear war.
The world still has conflicts, but in the minds of the West, the nations that are in conflict are always in conflict, it's just how it is out there. Obviously this view is absolutely ethnocentric and absurd, but that's the mindset.
War's just something to report on, something people almost expect to see on breakfast TV when they go to work. It would almost be eerie for them not to see or read about a war somewhere.
Thus, I would argue in the absence of existential crisis, and in the presence of the climate change narrative where words like "renewable" and "green" are easily distinguished over "less waste than fission", fusion power ultimately just lost as a business prospect to renewable energy.
In the short and medium term, it's obvious that wind and solar are going to help us avoid the worst of the climate crisis. In the long term, we might need something more to reverse climate change.
Existing nuclear fission energy capacity might be a short term stopgap. It's just clearly not sustainable because inherently too risky:
- military/terror/nuclear proliferation risk
- uninsurable accident risk
- long-lived waste risk
- uranium sourcing geopolitical risk
Nuclear fusion however should be able to avoid most of these risks.
All of this could be moot of course if dangerous idiots like Vladimir decide to solve the problem by killing a sufficiently large fraction of humanity. I'm cautiously optimistic though that a better solution is possible.
> Wir vollenden den Atomausstieg und bekennen uns zum verabredeten Pfad der Endlagersuche mit höchsten Sicherheitsstandards bei größtmöglicher Transparenz und Beteiligung der Bevölkerung. Der Rückbau der bestehenden Atomkraftwerke muss schleunigst und ohne Zeitverzögerung auf höchstem Sicherheitsniveau erfolgen. Die Atomfabriken in Gronau und Lingen wollen wir schnellstmöglich schließen Auch in der EU werden wir den Einstieg in den Atomausstieg vorantreiben.
https://www.gruene.de/themen/energie
Google Translation:
> We are completing the nuclear phase-out and are committed to the agreed path of searching for a repository with the highest safety standards and the greatest possible transparency and participation of the population. The dismantling of the existing nuclear power plants must be carried out as quickly as possible and without any delay at the highest level of safety. We want to close the nuclear factories in Gronau and Lingen as quickly as possible. In the EU, too, we will promote the phase-out of nuclear power.
I believe it is misguided. Fission is a great intermediary technology, which killed way less people than coal, oil, and gas per energy produced, including the nuclear accidents.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#nuclear-...
Shutting down fission before finding a solution for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing is nuts, and results in emergency fuel burning (gas and coal).
I believe they've spoken against it in the EP.
Non of the things you suggest are even remotely true.
- Fusion are as big a proliferation risk, and existing fusion reactors and GenIV reactors that are being built are very small proliferation risk.
- Fusion would be equally uninsurable. Practically speaking a accident that leaves the exclusion zone is less likely with a modern GenIV reactor that are currently in regulatory approval.
- Nuclear waste of modern reactors (and past reactors) can be broken down burned up. The outcome is waste that needs only a few 100 years of storage and isn't really all dangerous in that time. Its not actually a big practical issue. No deep Geo-1000000 year storage needed.
- Literally every country has practically unlimited thorium in the ground. Isolating thorium pretty easy and its a by product of rare earth mining. Non supply of fertile material is a non issue. So once you have actual nuclear reactors running there is no chance of supply issue.
And all of this could have been done 40+ years ago as well. Fusion is not needed.
You either don't understand fusion or proliferation.
That how we could have solved the while issue decades ago.
France had green energy for literally 40 years and nobody cares. Because 'nuke = evil' attitude, specially in Germany.
As for Germany, maybe it would make more sense not to hastily shut down nuclear reactors, in favor of coal and gas, or at least until the equivalent capacity of renewable energy is online, if they really cared about the environment?
I think the burden of proof should be on the scientist, it just doesn't seem plausible to me that fusion progress is so fungible, especially not at timescales less than what it takes to train a fusion researcher.
Unfortunately, it's from 2012, if I understand correctly. Can anybody recommend a similarly braod discussion of the big questions for the 'simple (wo)man'?
Only the certification has been suspended. I bet it resumes before the next winter season. All in good faith ofc - to overcome the inevitable energy crisis. Which in turn results from lobbying to shutdown so many nuclear plants so quickly.