Working fusion generator just 15 years away...

I just read this and came here to start a thread but Darat beat me to it. Looks promising, but I'm not going to get too excited just yet.
 
It's been ten years away for decades. This means we're going backwards.
 
AFAIK, there are currently four designs that, in theory, could generate more power than they consume: the ITER, the Wendelstein, the JT-60 and the MIT-assisted one.
It is good to see the US getting back in the game.
 
Lets all hold thumbs*.

At the start of the article they say:
The dream of nuclear fusion is on the brink of being realised, according to a major new US initiative that says it will put fusion power on the grid within 15 years.
Click to expand...
And at the end:
Prof Wilson was also cautious about the timeframe, saying that while the project was exciting he couldn’t see how it would achieve its goal of putting energy on the grid within 15 years.
Click to expand...

The publicity department vs the scientist?

* Edit - or cross our fingers. I must be Swedish. :eye-poppi
 
Last edited:
They should have consulted the electric universe woomeisters. According to them, the neutrinos from the Sun are from fusion in the photosphere. Ergo, we should be able to pull this off at 5800K, and 1 x 10-9 atmospheres. Can't see what the hold up is.
 
Darat said:
Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists
Click to expand...

We have had those since 1952. Just not in a form usable for generating electrical power.

15 years might be reasonable for a test bed that finally makes more energy than it consumes in a usable form. I wouldn't expect to see real power plants coming on line for at least 5 years after a working test bed reactor.
 
I guess I am getting old.

I have noticed that about every ten years or so since the 1950's there is an announcement of some new, vast energy source that will be shortly available which will change the world.

Just to name one example of many, does anyone else recall in the early 1980's there was that one fellow (who was being sponsored by the publisher of Penthouse Magazine of all things) who was going to develop some vast new energy source which would be very, very inexpensive? And it turned out to be some sort of scam.
 
Belz... said:
Right. Assuming we managed to get Tokamaks or another sort of fusion reactor to work commercially, 80 billion is nothing.
Click to expand...


That's my thought. Once you've built it (and another one, and another one, Beelzebuddy :D ), then you can sell energy on at a massive mark-up, can't you?

Not only that but you can build them on the coast and put a desalination next to them and solve the water problem too.
 
CORed said:
Possibly. It will be impossible until it isn't (if that ever happens). If not impossible, it's certainly damned difficult, or it would have been done by now.
Click to expand...

Well, it took us 6000 years of history to get to the moon. I think we'll get this one done, too. It's just very technically difficult to do, since we have to simulate a star's mass with a magnetic field. Not quite an easy task. Once we've got the basics right, we can try to go on to the next fusion tech; Helium-3 + Helium-3 sounds fantastically advantageous, if we can get the temperature right.
 
That Skunkworks reactor is still kicking around as well. Then again, five years ago they said it would take five years to build the prototype, and I have not seen nor heard of such thing recently.

I try to look on the bright side: Lots of good science and engineering advances happening with most of these efforts. Even if we don't get practical fusion-sourced electricity, we still get ancillary benefit from the science and engineering advances.
 
That Skunkworks reactor is still kicking around as well. Then again, five years ago they said it would take five years to build the prototype, and I have not seen nor heard of such thing recently.
Click to expand...

They said they were looking to team up ....I wonder if this is it?
The project, a collaboration between scientists at MIT and a private company
Click to expand...
 
macdoc said:
They said they were looking to team up ....I wonder if this is it?
Click to expand...

No, this is the private company from the article:
Bob Mumgaard, CEO of the private company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has attracted $50 million in support of this effort from the Italian energy company Eni, said: “The aspiration is to have a working power plant in time to combat climate change. We think we have the science, speed and scale to put carbon-free fusion power on the grid in 15 years.”
Click to expand...

It also remains possible that they get it to work, but only in an impractical way. Imagine a thing that releases more energy than it consumes, and uses that energy to make electricity - but requires hideously expensive alloys, crazy precise engineering, and a team of thousands (if you include manufacture of parts and materials) to keep it working, only to generate a relatively small amount of electricity.
 
MikeG said:
It's been ten years away for decades. This means we're going backwards.
Click to expand...

This. JET claimed to have got "within spitting distance" of working fusion at a time when I did some coil testing for them. This was 25 years ago. The time from now to a commercial fusion generator is tending to a constant.
 
Excited (as a fanboy) that there's some materials science at the heart of the announced breakthrough on magnets. Emergent properties at molecular levels is sure to be a source of wondrous advancements throughout this century. Whoever gets to quantum computing first will have a major leg up on doing the vast computation that modeling stereochemical effects requires.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
Excited (as a fanboy) that there's some materials science at the heart of the announced breakthrough on magnets. Emergent properties at molecular levels is sure to be a source of wondrous advancements throughout this century. Whoever gets to quantum computing first will have a major leg up on doing the vast computation that modeling stereochemical effects requires.
Click to expand...

I'm against quantum computing.

I'm not willing to sacrifice that many cats for faster computers.

:D
 
So I'll be in my 40s when this thing may be "realized"

Then I'll be an old man when it's commercially available.

I probably will get to experience it when I'm on my last legs. If I want to be remembered I might as well throw my hat in the ring and join these scientists :boxedin:. Life's so short.
 
Crossbow said:
every ten years or so since the 1950's there is an announcement of some new, vast energy source that will be shortly available which will change the world.
Click to expand...
We already have a vast energy source that is changing the World - and not in a good way.

15 years until the next one is way too late.

The Window Is Closing to Avoid Dangerous Global Warming
To avoid this fate, Xu and Ramanathan recommend that nations pull three mitigation "levers" in the very near future. The world must achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, they write, with greenhouse gas emissions peaking by 2020 — a rate that is not in line with the voluntary commitments made by countries in Paris.
Click to expand...


2020? Not going to happen, we're screwed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom