Fusion breakthrough

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euclid
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Fusion breakthrough

Post by euclid » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 16:24

Check this live stream. First time net energy gain, sounds very promising.

Cheers Euclid
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 16:32

This reminds me this video (especially part about energy gain and break even):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY


So before we open the champagne, we need to check first if not another nothingburger.

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by Falcrack » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 16:35

You can get a lot more net energy gain from wind power or solar power or tide power or hydroelectric power, and all of these are renewable resources. Working on fusion is good and definitely deserves research money, but these other forms of renewable energy production should be the focus for now, since even if you can manage to get fusion to have a small net energy gain, these other forms of renewable energy will still likely be far more economical for a long time to come.

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by felter » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 16:58

The problem with Fusion, that I know of, is that for Fusion to work it requires a certain element that currently the only way to get that element is through Nuclear fission, IE a nuclear power plant. Currently, for nuclear Fusion to work would require 300 grams of this element per day, while in reality we currently produce only 100 grams of it per year from a singular power plant in Canada.

Disclaimer; I can't remember the name of the element and can't be bothered to look it up. Also, pulled the numbers from my rear end so while they might be wrong it shows that what we require per day, is way more than we produce per year.

Right now, what we really need is a better way for energy storage to store the current energy that we do produce that we don't use when we produce it, for example during the night wind turbines continue to produce energy when our energy consumption is minimal, and it's not required while there currently is next to no way to store that energy to use when we need it.
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by CBJ » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 17:07

It's not an element, it's a Hydrogen isotope, or rather two isotopes: Deuterium and Tritium. And supply of those is not really a problem. They occur naturally in water in small quantities, but more than enough for use in fusion reactors.

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 17:38

CBJ wrote:
Tue, 13. Dec 22, 17:07
It's not an element, it's a Hydrogen isotope, or rather two isotopes: Deuterium and Tritium. And supply of those is not really a problem. They occur naturally in water in small quantities, but more than enough for use in fusion reactors.
The problem with isotope is that it's not necessary, but it provides most efficient fusion reaction (which is important for that net gain goal).
You can use much more widely avaliable regular hydrogen, if you are willing to accept less efficiency.

However both isotope and normal hydrogen (e.g from water) require energy input to isolate, which sadly raise the bar on net gain goal.


That's why, it would be economically viable to go to the moon to mine that isotope there (even, if you would have to plow hundred square kilometers of surface to get a few kilograms of isotope), rather than waste time and energy to try to isolate it on Earth.


One thing that bothers me, is that people say Fusion is clean and green, except that if whole planet jump into fusion and start to pull multi Tera/GigaWatts of output....at some point just the waste heat will be the pollution (Earth doesn't have limitless capacity to radiate heat into the space).

Granted this will be issue 50 or 100 years after general Fusion introduction, but basically we will never be free of non-polluting energy on Earth.
Unless we move industry and settlement into space or other planets (e.g. Mars is very cold place, so nobody would mind massive greenhouse and industrial waste heat there :D, Moon is also perfect location for future industrial hub).

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by euclid » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 18:04

Falcrack wrote:
Tue, 13. Dec 22, 16:35
You can get a lot more net energy gain from wind power or solar power or tide power or hydroelectric power, and all of these are renewable resources. Working on fusion is good and definitely deserves research money, but these other forms of renewable energy production should be the focus for now, since even if you can manage to get fusion to have a small net energy gain, these other forms of renewable energy will still likely be far more economical for a long time to come.
Absolutely agree with alternative energy sources. But there still is an acceptance problem: We had an initiative some years ago to errect an offshore windfarm to the West of the Gower peninsular which stirred a controversy and finally was vehemently rejected because of the "Outstanding Beauty" of the landscape :(

However, the clean aspect of fusion energy is only one part of the potential gain here. The major benefit would be the amount that potentially can be generated. It would unlock many aspects of spacefaring, powering engines and habitats for example. No other alternative has that capability.

Cheers Euclid
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- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Metaphysical Foundations of the Science of Nature, 4:470, 1786

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by CBJ » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 18:17

mr.WHO wrote:
Tue, 13. Dec 22, 17:38
That's why, it would be economically viable to go to the moon to mine that isotope there (even, if you would have to plow hundred square kilometers of surface to get a few kilograms of isotope), rather than waste time and energy to try to isolate it on Earth.
I take your point about the net energy gain bar being raised, but I'm really not sure where you are getting this part from. According to the IAEA, "Fusion fuel is plentiful and easily accessible: deuterium can be extracted inexpensively from seawater, and tritium can potentially be produced from the reaction of fusion generated neutrons with naturally abundant lithium. These fuel supplies would last for millions of years."

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by Chips » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 18:58

mr.WHO wrote:
Tue, 13. Dec 22, 17:38
One thing that bothers me, is that people say Fusion is clean and green, except that if whole planet jump into fusion and start to pull multi Tera/GigaWatts of output....at some point just the waste heat will be the pollution
Erm, what? I refer you to energy of sun hitting earth as example.
https://news.mit.edu/2011/energy-scale- ... ntinuously.
A total of 173,000 terawatts (trillions of watts) of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously. That's more than 10,000 times the world's total energy use. And that energy is completely renewable — at least, for the lifetime of the sun. "It's finite, but we're talking billions of years," Taylor says.
I imagine, compared to all that burning of coal (heat), or use of solar (sometimes heat), Geothermal (heat), oil (heat), petrol (heat) and so on, that the real issue behind fusion is that somehow it's going to cook the planet... because heat.

Sorry, highly sceptical. Perhaps you've a link to some scientific data backing up that claim?

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 19:22

CBJ wrote:
Tue, 13. Dec 22, 18:17
I take your point about the net energy gain bar being raised, but I'm really not sure where you are getting this part from. According to the IAEA, "Fusion fuel is plentiful and easily accessible: deuterium can be extracted inexpensively from seawater, and tritium can potentially be produced from the reaction of fusion generated neutrons with naturally abundant lithium. These fuel supplies would last for millions of years."
That one confuse me a lot - for every arcticle claiming hydrogen is plentiful and accessible there is one claiming the opposite.

Granted you only need a tonne or two for entire yearly US energy consumption, but we don't even know what are the purity requirements (e.g. I'm not sure, if you want an odd heavy element poping out of multi-milion degree plasma, going through the magnetic field and hitting one of those super-magnets).

For coal power we can accept huge energy waste due to crude technology, but hyper advanced and hyper expensive fusion reactors are much more sensitive to energy waste.

That's why hydrogen extraction, purification and storage might still drag that net energy gain above economical viability - that's even before considering 50% energy wasted with using heated water turbine to transfer and convert reactor heat, into usable electricity.

However, launching/landing rockets between Earth/Moon adds up to net energy bar as well, moon mining as well.



On a side note, there are still breakthroughs to be made:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prvXCuEA1lw

There is posibility that there might be artificially created super heavy elemets, that are (relatively) stable and (relatively) non-radioactive and possibly could (or not, it's just a guess) witstand multi-milion degree plasma.
That would made those magnetic fields redundant and instantly drop the maintenance costs, complexity and vastly drop down the net energy bar (still you would need to put energy to artificially generate those heavy elements, but possibly a lot less that all those super-magnest running through fusion reactor lifetime).


If we could have net positive fusion, durable heavy elements and mass production of carbon nanotubes, then we can start doing cool space stuff like Space Elevators and O'Neil cylinders and The Expanse style Solar System colonization.

Oh and there are some tiny progress on wormholes, so it's a tiny step towards X-Universe gates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJCS1W1uzg
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by clakclak » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 19:31

All these comments made me realise how little I know about this topic. So I will follow this with great interest and an even greater lack of understanding.
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by EGO_Aut » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 19:53

This was one of those typical viral messages to raise money for the project and keep the funders happy. :roll:

No offense, I really hope that there will soon be a breakthrough and a real power plant - the sooner the better.

I would bet on Iter, Wendelstein and the laser thing are still in their infancy compared to the tokamak. :gruebel:

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 20:06

EGO_Aut wrote:
Tue, 13. Dec 22, 19:53
I would bet on Iter, Wendelstein and the laser thing are still in their infancy compared to the tokamak. :gruebel:
I recall tokamak was never intended as anything beyond lab and experimental scienctific proof of concept.

Iter, Wendelstein and the laser thing are more like prototypes of a prototypes.

The planned next generation (that will incorporate enything we ill learn from Iter, Wendelstein and the laser thing) will be first industrial/practical technology demonstrator.

Only after those steps we will see a true Fusion Power Plant.


There is a joke that Fusion is always just 20 years away...already for over 50 years.
However, the difference now is, that we are actually making visible steps, so that 20 year timeline stops being a vague guess, but more of actual timeline with tangible milestones.

I still doubt we will have working commercial FPP in 20 years, but having a technology demonstrator is achievable.

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by felter » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 20:16

CBJ wrote:
Tue, 13. Dec 22, 17:07
It's not an element, it's a Hydrogen isotope, or rather two isotopes: Deuterium and Tritium. And supply of those is not really a problem. They occur naturally in water in small quantities, but more than enough for use in fusion reactors.
Tritium, that's the one I couldn't remember, and it's pretty rare, our main source as I said is from Nuclear reactors from their cooling water to be exact, but as I said also there is just the one Nuclear plant that does it and that's in Canada.

The Problem with Nuclear Fusion is a good video to watch, if you just want to hear about the issue with Tritium forward to 7:30, but I recommend watching the whole video.
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by Observe » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 20:30

I too am interested in the Tritium aspect. From what I understand, once they have sustained fusion, it might be possible to extract more Tritium than used for the reaction, with a net gain of Tritium. The problem is, obtaining enough Tritium for initial ignition and for the various experiments that need to occur in the meantime. If they could obtain ignition without Tritium, then they would be off to the races with sustained fusion and a steady supply of Tritium. On the other hand, perhaps I don't have a clue what I'm talking about. :gruebel:

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by Alan Phipps » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 21:01

I thought the whole point of cutting-edge research was that when the current obstacles to progress are encountered, they look for ways around them or even completely alternative routes to achieve the progress needed. Isn't that how any new scientific theory, practical approach or tech is arrived at?
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 21:36

One of the coolest recent discoveries on Fusion field was last year, when some scientist calculated different 3D shapes of magnetic containment fields.
Some more unorthodox shapes greatly improve stability of contained plasma, while reducing power requirement and making it easier to feed hydrogen into the running system.

Aparently the baseline normal smooth donut shape is not optimal and twirled donut shape might be more useful (albeit more complicated to construct).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwOrbr8KWDs

Now every time I see this, I can't help but to think about Fusion Reactors:
https://images.onerichs.com/CIP/preview ... uscm/56248
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by EGO_Aut » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 21:56

mr.WHO wrote:
Tue, 13. Dec 22, 20:06
EGO_Aut wrote:
Tue, 13. Dec 22, 19:53
I would bet on Iter, Wendelstein and the laser thing are still in their infancy compared to the tokamak. :gruebel:
I recall tokamak was never intended as anything beyond lab and experimental scienctific proof of concept.

Iter, Wendelstein and the laser thing are more like prototypes of a prototypes.

The planned next generation (that will incorporate enything we ill learn from Iter, Wendelstein and the laser thing) will be first industrial/practical technology demonstrator.
........

I still doubt we will have working commercial FPP in 20 years, but having a technology demonstrator is achievable.
Iter is a Tokamak and will produce "real" more power, and more than a few kilo Watt. But it is a research reactor, and it will take a few decades to build a powerplant with improvements from Iter.
Chinese are doing their own Iter, and what i remember they build not just one. We will see who will be the first.
Atm it is much more important to burn billions of money in things that can kill us more efficient and faster, than save the mankind. :rant:

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 22:07

Be me in school - not a fan of geometry
Be me in university - repulsed by higher-dimesion geometry and calculations. "WTF? Who needs this abstract sh*t?"

Be me now - Fusion magnetic fields, wormholes and particle modeling (graphene, carbon nanotubes) are cool, give me those right now!

:doh:

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by Falcrack » Tue, 13. Dec 22, 22:16

EGO_Aut wrote:
Tue, 13. Dec 22, 21:56
Atm it is much more important to burn billions of money in things that can kill us more efficient and faster, than save the mankind. :rant:
It is important to burn billions of money on things to kill us more efficient and faster as long as we have adversaries who are determined to kill, take our land and our freedoms, or the land and freedoms of our allies. Ideally, nobody would have aspirations of doing that to their neighbors, and there would be no need for a defense industry at all. But until humanity reaches that blessed state where all people can be trusted not to wage wars of aggression, these tools of destruction are unfortunately necessary.

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