US Teases 'Major' Science News Amid Fusion Energy Reports
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Good work, but IMHO we're still a long way from using fusion for energy, if ever, even if only because it will be so expensive to build and run these ultra-high-tech plants. But also because of all the downsides of D-T fusion, like, where is the tritium, and that most of the energy comes of as fast neutrons, etc.
Consider that even too much water can kill a person and the original computers filled buildings.
The cynicism serves as a mental balance to the hype that might otherwise tempt you to spend more time on this than it merits.
And it's easily reversed. If this turns out to be useful, you'll get many more chances to re-evaluate.
skepticism is requiring facts, cynicism is a generally negative outlook.
You can change skepticism by producing facts, you cannot change cynicism that way.
confusing the two is a very common mistake.
That is like using lasers to start a fire and then saying: Look the fire is producing energy in the form of heat! But the heat has to be turned to electricity to power the lasers. And then the fire better produce enough heat to produce enough electricity to power the lasers...
But there are also some engineering challenges to work out in employing heat generated like this to drive a heat engine, at least with somethings decent like 30% efficiency.
In this experiment 2.1 units of input energy produced 2.5 units of output energy. That energy has to be converted to electricity. Conversion looses like 40% of energy (escapes unsused) – so you have produced 1.5 units of electricity from 2.1 units of electricity input.
Thanks for distilling this into one three simple sentences, I know from my brief career in science policy how hard that can be. (You should write 1 pagers for the US Congress :-))
To get back on topic:
So basically, if I'm understanding you correctly: this is an increase in efficiency but not one such that it makes sense economically to generate power in this way?
Is this a large jump in efficiency from previous attempts?
The reason I ask is that I know physics can be incremental, so I don't want to detract from the contributions of the authors... and by all means, it's the type of thing I'd expect to see on HN if so and I'm glad it was shared.
I was just surprised to see many more mainstream sites, geared towards a more general audience, running stories about what I'd expect to be more of a niche discovery.
(Possibly as more of a geopolitics thing -- much like if someone is arrested no one recalls with equal vigor when the charges are dropped, a PR-y article about a minor but important discovery can influence public opinion and be a tool of geopolitics.)
Fusion isn’t and won’t be solved in the immediate future. There is a long path towards commercial viability and a lot of milestones along the way… and not really a great method of associating them in a popular science sort of way that doesn’t seem like “we’ve solved fusion!”
Real significant progress is indeed being made and is expected to continue, people are going to be excited then disappointed by milestones being announced because we’re closer but not there.
Fusion isn’t just always thirty years down the road though, we can see the destination getting closer.
Since the ChatGPT can't perform empirical experiments and update it's suggestions based on those experiments it has no way to tell a "bad" idea from a "good" one.
Energy costs might drop an order of magnitude, which is significant, but isn't going to cause any sort of systemic change.
See: https://reneweconomy.com.au/why-god-parity-will-be-the-end-o...
short haul to Singapore via an undersea cable,
long haul to Germany via cracked Hydrogen reformed as Ammonia (Larger molecule, easier to handle, harmless Nitrogen byproduct).
Supposedly this would be done by a heat engine, with can normally extract 60% of energy input. So 2.5 * 0.6 = 1.5, so it is yet again not producing any surplus energy.
Nothing could be further from the truth: with any half-way plausible design today, fusion power will be the most expensive form of power generation known to man. While some of the fuel is nearly free (deuterium and to some extent even the tritium), it's more realistic to think of the reactor itself as the fuel - since the reactor will be under constant very high energy neutron bombardment, it won't last for more than a few years, maybe a decade at best.
And since a fusion energy reactor will be one of the most highly advanced engineering accomplishments in human history (it requires extraordinary structural resistance to hold up the necessary equipment in the presence of the gigantic magnetic fields, extraordinarily advanced magnets, a blanket of liquid lithium and boron that gets pumped continuously and somehow recycled etc.), having to rebuild one every 10 years will be extraordinarily expensive (and we should expect something closer to 2-5 years for the initial designs, even assuming no explosions).
In contrast, a fission reactor is already extremely expensive, but has similar output to any contemplated fusion plant, has been proven to be able to be continuously operated for >50 years once built, and requires only slightly more expensive fuel (uranium is really not that expensive compared to its energy density - certainly nowhere near as expensive as gas or coal).
Edit: oh, and this seems to be related to a breakthrough at the NIH, presumably on their inertial-confinement fusion experiment, which (despite some rosy rhetoric) is a weapons research program, with no realistic possibility of ever being transformed into a fusion power plant.
Let's talk about fission - I used to say I'd build 70,000 nuclear reactors if I was in charge of a rich country. Would I have enough fuel to power them all?
Your third paragraph painted a pretty vivid picture in my head, good writing.
A tenth might be ~zero (for certain values of zero) for certain kinds of people.
[1] https://matt-rickard.ghost.io/content/images/2022/01/image-1...