Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

[RussBLib]

Source: BBC News

The UK-based JET laboratory has smashed its own world record for the amount of energy it can extract by squeezing together two forms of hydrogen.

If nuclear fusion can be successfully recreated on Earth it holds out the potential of virtually unlimited supplies of low-carbon, low-radiation energy.

The experiments produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power).

Read more: BBC News: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60312633

---

Fusion could be the answer to our climate problem, but the timeline to development would be decades, not years. Can mankind hold out that long?

[exboyfil]

1. At this point I don't even think bringing fission reactors on line will save us

from having pretty catastrophic environmental impacts. It won't kill the planet or even our species, but I expect the death toll to be in the 100s of millions to a billion with a huge loss in species diversity and subsequent reduction in standard of living for those who remain. Perhaps the oligarchs will be dragged out of their castles to meet la guillotine.

[NurseJackie]

3. Stop.

[ruet]

9. Good Thing This News Isn't About Fission.

Now as far as fusion goes; if a fusion reactor breaks, the reaction stops and reactor is dead. Fusion reactors depends on incredibly strong magnetic containment for the reaction to even start. If the reactor dies, the containment dies, the reaction dies.

[exboyfil]

10. Industrial fusion reactors are 20+ years away

The infrastructure does not exist to bring them online. We could start planning and building new fission reactors tomorrow. My point was it is too late for fusion to make a difference on global warming. The engineering complexities are overwhelming and even with a net surplus in power from the fusion reaction getting it to an industrial scale requires engineering which is more complex than orbiting solar collectors.

[NurseJackie]

2. "Can mankind hold out that long?" --- Certainly. Of course.

Was that a rhetorical question meant to motivate? Or a cynical and pessimistic question meant to impart the belief that if it won't help us RIGHT FUCKING NOW then it's not worth pursuing?

All I'm trying to say is that people who truly believe that we can't achieve great things are the ones holding back progress by encouraging every one to just go ahead and give up without a fight. That seems to be an even more dangerous and insidious problem in the short term.

[exboyfil]

5. I am not saying we can't achieve great things

but I think fusion energy is the answer to other questions not one of the immediate impact of global warming. Fusion will open the way to the outer planets and asteroid belts and possibly the stars. In terms of energy sustainability, orbitting solar collectors seem to make more sense.

[RussBLib]

22. I'm not one of the wholly pessimistic types

But I see so much doom and gloom about climate change, the GOP, poverty, hunger, war, you name it, that it does sink in a little. I think we will get there on fusion, but in the interim, we need to more-fully develop nuclear fission. Fission produces a lot of radioactive waste, yes, but we should be able to store it safely to bridge us to fusion.

I made that question as a bit of a nod to all the doomsayers out there. I feel the doom, but I try not to participate.

You want doomsayers? Check out Arctic News on Facebook. Geez.

[NurseJackie]

23. No thanks!

You want doomsayers?

No thanks! I use facebook for fun and love and joy... for hobbies, pastimes nostalgia and TV/movies... not politics or news. Ugh!

That's like going to Youtube for legal advice.

[RussBLib]

25. well, you know what to stay away from

I never get Trumpers in my Facebook feed, and I use it as you do. But sometimes, I can't help but take a peek at how much people are freaking out.

[PoliticAverse]

4. Minor breakthrough. n/t

[Phoenix61]

18. I'm curious why you say that.

The scientists claim otherwise.

[PoliticAverse]

19. Fusion scientists tend to be overoptimistic, which is why fusion has been....

"10 years away" for the past 40 years.

[Phoenix61]

20. This sounds pretty big.

"It's a landmark because they demonstrated stability of the plasma over five seconds. That doesn't sound very long, but on a nuclear timescale, it's a very, very long time indeed. And it's very easy then to go from five seconds to five minutes, or five hours, or even longer."

[PoliticAverse]

24. I wish them success but as I have been following fusion progress announcements for over 40 years...

I will remain skeptical.

[Phoenix61]

29. I've wondered over the years what will be the

next big breakthrough. I watched the first moon walk with my grandparents. My grandfather, as a child, hitched a horse to a wagon to go into New York City. I can only imagine what he thought. For one lifetime to cover that big of a leap is amazing. But since that moon walk there hasn’t been a big technology breakthrough/paradigm shift. I think fusion could be that.

[Phoenix61]

41. AI is based on 0's and 1's. It's pushing the envelope

of old technology. CRISPER is definitely exciting.

[Phoenix61]

44. Microprocessors were new technology that

replaced vacuum tubes. They were a brand new technology. The first Commodore 64 computer used 0’s and 1’s as do the current ones. They have gotten smaller and faster but they are still based on microchips that process 0’s and 1’s.

[Gore1FL]

45. I wrote what an 8th grader would call a "research paper" on the "Elmo Bumpy Torus" in the 8th grade.

It was a lot of work. We had field trips to the University Library to actually get credible research done, while learning to use periodical guides and so on.

I wanted to update it a couple of years later and use it for a high school paper and there was no more I could find on it. It was all obsolete.

That was all over 40 years ago. I hope this is a real break-though. Nonetheless, I share your skepticism.

[Calista241]

6. That's not even the first step of addressing the climate crisis and its implications.

Society is going to change drastically as cars move away from oil. it's really going to be an inflection point in humanity's development, and carries great risk.

As more and more electric cars are developed and they start replacing the internal combustion engine, the demand for oil is going to drop. Oil that's cheap and easy to produce will always be needed for antique vehicles, lubricants, plastics, and other applications, but on a much reduced level that is required today.

Oil that is harder to extract, or more expensive to refine, like oil from Russia, Venezuela, Africa, Canada, and much of the northern US will cease to be developed, and will have a significant impact on those country's economies. In the US and Canada, there may be some mild hardship, but the overall results won't be terrible. But for Africa, Russia, Venezuela, and parts of the Middle East, it will be an economic cataclysm of epic proportions. Without diversifying their economies, they will collapse as oil revenue goes away. Most of those countries have shown little effort or success in the needed diversification.

We're less than 10 years before significant numbers of electric vehicles are on the road which will begin this unstoppable process.

[exboyfil]

14. So what is going to power all those electric vehicles

It sure ain't going to be renewables unless we are talking orbital solar collectors.

[Calista241]

32. It doesn't have to be clean energy plants to have a disastrous economic effect on petro-states.

The US, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Russia could satisfy the whole world's requirements for natural gas. I imagine it'll be some combination of nuclear, natural gas and renewables that adds the majority of the new power generation here in the US to satisfy demand for electric cars. That's easily accomplished in the next 10-20 years. And that power combo will likely be replicated in other developed countries around the world.

In any case, the price of oil will still plummet, and many petro-states would suffer the for it. And who knows what'll happen as those countries and economies go bankrupt.

[Woodwizard]

34. for the last 6 years 80 percent of our power

Has come from solar panels I put up on my shop it is a grid tie system putting excess on during the day and drawing grid power at night if more did this the peak power periods would have a drastically reduced generation load from fossil fuel power plants this is not in the future it is now I will be adding more to bring us to 100 percent next year.

More need to do something on their own waiting for big changes is not realistic without a public real effort.

[hunter]

48. An economy powered by renewables would look nothing like the economy...

... many affluent people now enjoy. And there's no way it could support the current human population of 8 billion people.

The math is rather intimidating. How much does an off-the-grid solar energy system with electric car cost in terms of dollars and resources? Now multiply that number by 8 billion. Where would all that copper and lithium come from?

The problem with food is even more formidable. 40% of the nitrogen in the typical human body comes from artificial sources, in particular the Haber–Bosch process which converts atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia using fossil fuels. Modern agriculture is hugely dependent on high density energy sources, and not just for fertilizers.

Nuclear fission is the only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely, which is something we must do. It's a mature seventy year old technology. The nuclear power plant designs of the 1970's are closer in time to the very first nuclear reactors than they are to the safe and robust nuclear power plants being built today.

I'm a radical environmentalist and some kind of socialist. I believe that every human deserves healthy food, clean water and air, and comfortable shelter that includes such nice things as indoor plumbing and clean cooking appliances. How do we accomplish that?

[mahina]

42. Did you happen to catch this interview on Watt It Takes with Nigerian-American

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watt-it-takes/id1554962073?i=1000522183610

SHYFT founder Ugwem Eneyo?

Unrelated - We have 8 years to cut 30% of carbon emissions if we aim to keep 1.5 degrees by 2050, right? And equity of oil producing countries’ people must be considered. Check her out. Aloha.

Ps
“Watt It Takes is our monthly podcast that tells the stories of founders who are building a carbon-free future — their upbringings, their risks, their failures, and their breakthroughs that are transforming our world.“
Supported by google
Partnered w Powerhouse

It’s a worthwhile podcast imho

[GB_RN]

7. Heard About This On BBC News Hour Via NPR...

This morning. Exciting progress! They're building a larger version of this reactor in southern France. If it works, they could go for a production scale reactor after that, if I correctly understood what they were saying. The scientist they interviewed said that if they can do 5 seconds, then they should be able to do 5 minutes, 5 hours, etc. It's all just steps.

Since I was in high school back in the 80s, it's been "fusion is about 30 years away at current funding levels". But funding never seemed be a priority. It should be a fucking priority now! It needs A LOT more funding than what we're giving it. And if we can throw away money on that boondoggle of a plane, the F-35 "aka, the Flying Swiss Army Knife", we can absolutely do this. Fusion has a lot of more potential for saving our collective assess than that POS of a plane, that's for certain.

Fusion is also safer than nuclear fission reactors: There's no long-term radioactive waste (like plutonium and other byproducts with fission reactors). With fusion, the "waste" is helium, which can be used for other things (and we're running out of it) such as PET scans, rather than nuclear stockpiles. We don't lack for fuel for the reactors, as that's just hydrogen. Also we don't have to dig for the fuel, like we do for uranium: No big, open pit mines!

[Rotegard]

8. In 1989 one of my British Associates, whos was working for JET took me aside at a NASA Conference...

This research has been going since the early 1950s and is the favorite futurist "charity: of the American Physical Society (The people who build nuclear weapons).. The good Doctor was published on the computer models of "Eco-spasm" or the projected collapse of civilization
His mordent comments:
"Hot Fusion is the energy of the future, and always will be".. also "Hot fusion is twenty years in the future and has been for the last 40 years"

I have seen or read chemists and /or physicists subversively boiling water on table top with a variety of other nuclear techniques since the 1990s only to answered by breathless "Fusion is just around the corner!" press releases from the NATO nuclear heart of darkness that dominates the press, funding and patent approvals. I am sick of this con.

[WA-03 Democrat]

11. Yep

[Happy Hoosier]

12. It's a hard problem. But hard problems can be solved.

The payoff here is massive, so the investment is worth it, IMHO.

Really, it's a problem we've been working on for less than a century, and it could provide an energy revolution of massive proportions.

Seems like it's worth the risk.

[Rotegard]

28. There are opportunity costs

Nuclear physicists have long since circled their wagons around this ultra large approach .. other technologies draw their utter wrath and most of the press is intimidated by Physicists the APA has shut down funding,
patents and IPO's of any other approach

[exboyfil]

13. Yes that is a popular joke

The amazing thing is the billions being spent in preparation for industrialization without even a clear path forward. Heating water and running a turbine from a fission pile is relatively simple and the mechanics of it was known in the 1930s. As you start down the rabbit hole of all the other technologies needed even with a positive fusion power output, your mind quickly fries (or at least mine does).

[Happy Hoosier]

15. I know someone on the Princeton team....

... and it's true that there are hard problems. But I think to say there is no clear path forward is perhaps selling the various teams a bit short. There ARE possible breakthroughs possible. And IF we get to the point of self-sustainment, the problem gets to be much easier. There are competing ideas of how to get there. Will any of them pan out? Only one way to find out....

[exboyfil]

16. Nobels and the thanks of a frightened world

Await those breakthroughs. I hope to live to see them.

[Happy Hoosier]

17. Me too! NT

[rolypolychloe]

21. Focus fusion is closer to break even

I've been following lppfusion for a few years now. Their device fits in a building the size of a service garage. When they switch to the Hydrogen-Boron fusion reaction later this year, they expect to exceed break even. Or maybe not. They will know in a year or two if it's going to work or not. None of this 20 years from today nonsense.

https://lppfusion.com/technology/aneutronic-fusion/aneutronic-fusion-approaches/

[Igel]

36. There are at least two break even points.

One is getting out the energy that's put in.

That usually doesn't include the energy for the containment field or other components of the device. They're also non-trivial.

[rolypolychloe]

47. Focus fusion doesn't need containment fields

It's a pulse device. It creates plasmoids that compress/pinch the gas until it fuses. They do this routinely btw. They have demonstrated a temperature over a billion degrees, enough for a Hydrogen-Boron fusion reaction, which doesn't produce neutrons, just alpha particles. It doesn't boil water but instead captures power as the alpha particles pass through coils. It also captures X-ray energy. What they are currently working on now is making it reliable. The vast current going through the device is eroding the electrodes which contaminates the gas reducing power output. They are currently testing with deuterium, but plan on switching to the hydrogen-boron mixture later this year. Boron is toxic, so they are doing that last. If everything scales the way they think, break even is not far away. If it doesn't scale the way they think, they will know that in a year or two. None of this constant 20 years in the future stuff. There are other fusion devices in development that are also pulsed. Most are vastly cheaper than the Jet project.

[Aussie105]

26. Small steps, but each is good news.

Fusion reactions need to put out more power than they require to run.
They need to be sustainable, and controllable. And safe.

It's exciting news . . . baby steps, but the future looks bright.

A fusion reactor in every home, the size of a microwave? Put me down for one!

As for the naysayers . . .do shuddup please!

[BadgerKid]

27. Great, but you and i know that

politicians will manage to eff it up. I believe we're at least 10-20 years off before any resemblance of implementation.

[toopers]

30. Since this involves hydrogen . . .

What happened to the use of hydrogen cells to power automobiles? It was discussed a lot 10-15 years ago.

[paulkienitz]

35. hydrogen fuel cells work best as a supplemental range extender for a battery car

and once you have a battery car, you're usually okay with no hydrogen.

[toopers]

37. So the use of Hydrogen cells is not a reasonable source for primary power?

n/t

[paulkienitz]

38. the big issue with fuel cells is delivery of the hydrogen to the point of use

and since the same energy can be very easily delivered through an electric wire, I don't foresee there being any economic benefit to putting a hundred billion dollars into hydrogen pipelines.

Hydrogen for cars looked like a good bet when battery cars had only a 50 mile range, but at this point the race against batteries has been lost.

[Cheezoholic]

31. While this is another baby step to what's possible, when ITER

comes online in the next 2 or 3 years, that will be the proof of the pudding.

https://www.iter.org/

[paulkienitz]

33. Fusion doesn't just have to become feasible, it has to become cheap to make any difference

Even if we were able to build a fully working mature sustainable fusion plant tomorrow, the power it produced would still be substantially more expensive than that from solar cells. Fusion will probably be the dominant source of power someday for future colonies among the moons of Jupiter or the asteroid belt, but I don't think it'll make economic sense here in our lifetimes.

[fizzix137]

46. 11 MW from two 500 MW flywheels

11 MW out from 1 GW (1000 MW) in! Imagine how much energy we could lose if it ran for an hour. Not to mention all the liquid copper produced by melting the magnet coils. It doesn't look like a decade or two until we have Doc Brown's Mr. Fusion. This is all meant in jest, but I sometimes question if the money and effort for fusion research couldn't be used for something more likely to work.