Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

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AdmiralKird
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Re: Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

Post by AdmiralKird »

Fusion will be a thing... someday... This is more of a 22nd century tech than a 21st century tech.

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AWvsCBsteeeerike3
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Re: Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

AdmiralKird wrote:
February 11 22, 12:40 pm
Fusion will be a thing... someday... This is more of a 22nd century tech than a 21st century tech.
Gut feeling or is that timeframe based on something?

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AdmiralKird
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Re: Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

Post by AdmiralKird »

The time frame necessary to produce tokamaks of increasing size and complexity and how much knowledge is gained from each will require at least a handful over the next century. These have decade+ build time frames with the very best engineers and scientists from each country pouring away on each consecutive iteration to improve the understanding and designs. Or in other words, each time you try and advance fusion you need another project like the Large Hadron Collider to be constructed. That's not something that happens within time frames under a century.

We'll have fusion someday but to get to the point where that knowledge can then be disseminated and any region can build one to produce local power with their own local expertise is gonna be a long time.

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Re: Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

Post by Arthur Dent »

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:
February 11 22, 9:40 am
Where's @Swirls at?

Is fusion so drastically different from fission (I mean, obviously, yes) but is it, from an engineering perspective a completely different field.

Let's say in a hypothetical scenario 2035 sees fusion plants coming online. Will nuke plant operators/engineers of today be able to be trained for the fusion plants or is that akin to taking a coal plant operator and teaching him/her how to run a nuke plant?
I think there’s basically zero similarity in the engineering. Instead of solid fuel rods in water, most fusion plans involve an ultra high temperature (~100 million degrees) magnetically confined plasmas. Apparently, stabilizing the plasma containment is extremely difficult and routinely fails dumping tons of energy into the reactor walls.

People have been working on this since the 50s. It appears to be a super difficult problem we’re always “just around the corner” from solving, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.

One thing that strikes me is that they like to describe fusion reactors as creating a mini-sun, but actually it’s way hotter in these reactors than the sun because we can’t contain the fuel at anywhere close to sun type densities, so it needs to go even hotter to get the needed reactions. In the sun, the thermal output density is actually quite low — on the same order as you get produced in an active pile of compost with large output driven by the huge volume rather than intensity per se. Earth based fusion reactors have to figure out how to achieve that result safely at some feasible physical scale.

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Re: Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

Post by Joe Shlabotnik »

Popeye_Card wrote:
February 11 22, 12:19 pm
go birds wrote:
February 11 22, 10:23 am
george soros and bill gates...what could possibly go wrong
Is there a reason why we should mistrust either of them?
Clear the furniture.

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Re: Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

@Arthur Dent
The article I posted mentions that it is 10x hotter than the sun due to lower density/pressure; 100M Celsius (yikes) in the lab vs 10M Celsius at the sun.

And, the latest test, which was successful, was to look at using beryllium and tungsten as the wall linings instead of carbon since these linings absorb much less of the tritium. Hence the optimism. Though your skepticism is still well deserved, I'm at least glad to see some progress, hopefully.

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Re: Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

AdmiralKird wrote:
February 11 22, 1:17 pm
The time frame necessary to produce tokamaks of increasing size and complexity and how much knowledge is gained from each will require at least a handful over the next century. These have decade+ build time frames with the very best engineers and scientists from each country pouring away on each consecutive iteration to improve the understanding and designs. Or in other words, each time you try and advance fusion you need another project like the Large Hadron Collider to be constructed. That's not something that happens within time frames under a century.

We'll have fusion someday but to get to the point where that knowledge can then be disseminated and any region can build one to produce local power with their own local expertise is gonna be a long time.
Good points. I'd think you'd end up with a condensed timeframe for design/construction once lessons are learned in the first couple iterations, but that's no guarantee.

Regarding local expertise, I find it highly unlikely much of the nuanced stuff will be a local thing. You'll end up with specialized companies that become global to provide their expertise and travel from project to project. We're working on a project right now that is a perfect example of this. Most design teams on a typical project (say a retail development) involve 1) an architect to design the building, 2) structural engineers to make sure it stands up, and 3) Mechanical Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) Engineers to heat/cool, power, and run water/gas/sewer throughout the building. Plus there are 4) interior designers, 5) surveyors, 6)civil engineers, etc. Then there's a contractor to build it.

We're part of a team doing an oncology center that includes proton therapy which means they have to have some specialized proton accelerators in the building. Take the design team I mention above, and those are the local guys. There's a local contractor.

There's also another design team, consisting of an architect and MEP who solely are doing the proton stuff. And, there's a separate contractor doing only the proton stuff construction. A completely separate design team, though there is coordination, and a completely separate contractor, though there is coordination. It's two concurrent projects, really, and it's fascinating to watch.

All that to say, I imagine that's how fusion plants would be built in the future. And, once they figure out how to make the tokamaks, I imagine those would be built in warehouses by a specialized company and shipped, in parts, where needed. Though, that's pure speculation.
Last edited by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 on February 11 22, 2:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

Post by TGantz »

GeddyWrox wrote:
February 11 22, 12:38 pm
Plus, they only donated to the fund. It's not like they're leading the research. The company was born out of MIT. These people sound legit.

That said, I am still of the mind that their timeline is overly optimistic. That 2025 date will be really telling. Net+ energy production is the holy grail.
I don't want to get into a big thing with Gates and Soros specifically, but regardless of who is involved, funders completely lead the research.

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Re: Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

Post by Superorganism »

This sounds a little dangerous.

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Re: Nuclear Fusion closer to becoming a reality?

Post by Joe Shlabotnik »

:wink:
Superorganism wrote:
February 11 22, 2:25 pm
This sounds a little dangerous.
That's what I'm thinking. One the one hand, much cheaper ubiquitous energy with no toxic pollution as a byproduct. WOW.

On the other hand, what happens if one of these baby's blows? It sounds like it might make Chernobyl look like a flesh wound.

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