By Jo Nova
Fusion reactors will one day be the ultimate in “free energy”, but judging by the latest news of holy grail moments, it won’t be soon. The bonanza of energy that everyone wants was never going to come by catching photons from the sun with a million square kilometer PV net, but from recreating the source of those photons here on Earth. It’s the energy released if we can smack two atoms together and make them fuse which requires extreme temperatures and pressures (a bit like the sun) and do it efficiently, reliably, and millions of times a day.
In the latest nuclear news round, the mini sun experiment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory California gave back slightly more energy than was directly put in, which seems very exciting, but systemic total costs and energy used to “make this moment” happen are in a Supernova category all by themselves.
UPDATE: Just after publishing this blog post, news came out of a newer experiment just ten days ago:
The US’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) has announced it successfully used a 192-beam laser to turn a tiny amount of hydrogen into enough energy to power about 15 – 20 kettles. This means that – for the first time – scientists were able to generate more power than the lasers put in to the experiment. — BBC
On Dec. 5, 2022, the National Ignition Facility shot a pellet of fuel with 2 million joules of laser energy – about the amount of power it takes to run a hair dryer for 15 minutes – all contained within a few billionths of a second. This triggered a fusion reaction that released 3 million joules. That is a gain of about 1.5, smashing the previous record of a gain of 0.7 achieved by the facility in August 2021. — The Conversation
The newer numbers are slightly better than the ones released last week. This is the same lab. The energy gain appears to have improved from 20% to 50%.
Art Berman gives us a summary of Javier Blas’s description on the fusion “breakthrough”.
1. Experiment lasted a fraction of a second.
2. It released 2.5 MJ [now 3.15 MJ] vs 2.1 MJ of energy [in]. But the lasers consume ~330 MJ to charge.
3. Lasers can only fire once a day.
David Whitehouse, NetZeroWatch is similarly skeptical:
“ It’s become something of a bad joke amongst the science community that fusion is always decades away. “
The announcement itself is a puzzle and had the feeling of being some much needed good news to announce. In reality although the experiments referred to took place a few months ago the “breakthrough” results were reported a year ago with the major advance being published in the Journal Nature in 2014. By one analysis 2.05 MJ of energy pumped into the pellet produced 3.15 MJ of energy. This does not include the 322 MJ needed to run the 192 lasers. So the story wasn’t a real breakthrough, just an advance. In any commercial development of this laser technique millions of fuel pellets would be needed for each reactor a year. At present they are tailor-made and cost almost $1 million each.
A few magnitudes of inefficiencies to go:
Javier Blas, the Energy and commodities columnist at Bloomberg, puts some details on just how many more years work may be required here:
If confirmed, the breakthrough is quite important, putting the world into the realms of “fusion ignition”, and perhaps in the future into a sustained and controlled fusion reaction. Sustained is a key word there. The current experiment lasted a fraction of a second.
There a few extra caveats. [Like] what net energy means? The lasers used by the Lawrence Livermore laboratory are extremely inefficient, so although the experiment produced net energy compared to what the laser delivered, the lasers consumed a LOT more before to charge. The experiment released 2.5 megajoules vs 2.1 MJ of laser energy. But due to inefficiencies, the lasers consume ~330 MJ to charge, with the energy stored in 3,840 high-voltage capacitors for 60 seconds before being released in a 400-microsecond burst. See “Energizing the Lazers“.
Even by those caveats, the experiment is a massive scientific breakthrough — but don’t think you are about to enjoy free and clean energy tomorrow. Or next year. Or in 20 years or, perhaps, even 50 years. Commerciality is far, far away. If ever.
Many obstacles remain. One example, the current lasers used in the experiment can fire, at best, only **once a day**. For commerciality, they will need to fire several times **per second**.
So the good news for countries with thermal coal reserves is they still have a few decades to dig it all up and burn it while it’s worth something.
As commenter RickWill says: They spent $3.5 billion to produce the heating power of 10 grams of coal
(Again, last weeks numbers)
They have spent USD3.5bn on the reactor to get a gain of 0.4MJ. Enough to vaporise 100 grams of water. Or equivalent to 10 grams of coal. Baby steps comes to mind. Power was impressive though. It appears the laser is rated at 1PW. Civilisation’s entire electrical generation averages 0.003PW. So the laser would not need to fire often to get a decent power output. But then it only produced a gain [of] 20%. So it would need 5 times the internal generation to that sent out.
I guess they say that these reactions can make big gains once the conditions are right but USD3.5bn to produce what you get out of half a cents worth of coal suggests it is still a big mountain to climb. Maybe within 30 years. Just as the last of the die-hard CO2 demonisers shuffle off.
h/t to John Connor II, DD and Bill in AZ, and RickWill.
Photo: Eruption of a solar flare by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Enhanced by rawpixel.
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There’s always a new battery , energy source , insert device name here that’s going to power the planet in ten years . Maybe 20 , possibly in 30 but until then we have plenty of coal .
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Fusion energy might eventually be economically feasible but for now we have practically unlimited energy (for the foreseeable future) from coal, gas (with fracking), real hydro and fission reactors.
As for fission reactors, in the civilian nuclear fuel cycle, at least 90% (and I’ve see figures of 98%) of potential energy is still left in the nuclear waste when it’s buried.
That huge amount of wasted energy in civilian nuclear waste can be recovered by breeder reactors and the resulting waste product will then be substantially less radioactive as well.
Nuclear waste from reactors can even be dug up and recycled in this manner.
And thorium is yet to be commercialised.
Mankind has no shortage of energy. We have plenty.
Civilisation is being held back by powerful advocates against the use of energy and modern agriculture. Hence people soon to be starving and freezing in Europe, which will spread to the rest of the West with compliant puppet regimes such as Australia, NZ, Canada, USA.
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Even if fusion did become possible, the left would rigourously oppose it because it would dramatically increase global energy production and their end goal is to reduce energy production to near zero.
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It would reduce the hold over us that the left have by their control of energy. In Australia the governing Labor Party and the bureaucrats have figured out a way to “force” coal and gas companies to adhere to a capped price for their products. Now if I have a train full of coal, maybe 6600 tones, and the local power station can only offer me $125 a tonne but the energy company in Japan or Singapore will offer me $300 I would be duty bound by my shareholders to accept the higher offer. The members of the Labor party and most bureaucrats would not know what a decent day’s work looked like and not one would have ever invested their own hard earned into a productive enterprise so will be really surprised when the coal and gas companies either find a way to circumvent their stupid law or simply withdraw from the market until we start begging for their help and are willing to pay what they ask. Albo is nearly as smart as Joe Biden.
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Similarly with gas supplies.
I wonder if those in Canberra are really that thick or this was a propaganda exercise i.e. “Look we are doing something about electricity (by the middle of next year)”. And any benefit you get will be unmeasurable.
And then Dictator Dan’s plan to run the Victorian grid without coal fired suggests terminal delusion in Labor ranks.
30
Inertial confinement (heaps big lasers or particle accelerators) is unworkable due to ‘heater’ cost in billions. Magnetic confinement (heaps big magnet bottle like ITER or Wendelstein 7X) is unworkable due to bottle cost in billions and unworkable First-Wall neutron damage issues. Magnetised target fusion (like Helion, TAE, ZAP, General Fusion) strike a balance between heater and bottle costs with likely 10% of overall cost, and have far higher chance of working economically. Helion in particular are only a couple of years from (they believe) demonstrating economic break even with their only slightly scaled up next machine.
The same amount of R&D spend on fast breeder molten salt reactors would still be a far lower risk and guaranteed high payoff investment in humanities long term energy future. There’s enough Uranium and Thorium in the earth’s accessible upper crust to power human civilization for billions of years. And uranium from sea-water is economic in a fast breeder.
240
Large heavy-ion based inertial confinement fusion would be pretty certain to work – with it’s scale enabling simple/cheap deuterium fuel using mostly 1980’s tech-level efficient particle accelerator tech – a continuous accelerator input power can be used to produced bunched packets of particles with effectively within-packet super-high instantaneous power needed to ignite a target. Beam is magnetically switched between multiple reaction chambers to enable up to 100’s of shots per second, with typically 1GJ output per shot, Downside is size – 10’s of GW minimum, requiring a coastal location with large amounts of cooling water, and particle accelerators and ion packet sculpting/bunching hardware 10’s of km in length. Cost per GW would be economic but construction costs in $10’s of billions and basically too big to hook up to conventional grid (it would be a point source baseload for a whole continent).
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The length of time that fusion can be maintained has historically been the holy grail for researchers. Since an undeveloped third world country achieved burn times of over 100 seconds and then over 1000 in 2021 the focus has changed to energy in versus energy created. Too cynical?
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Will fusion be possible by 2050 or 2100 or later, who knows?
But we know that Nuclear fission energy has been available for a very long time and it is very safe and cheap if we abide by sensible regulations.
We know that the USS Ronald Reagan was powered for 25 years without refuelling and the reactor size is very small.
And similar safe, small modular reactors could be used in the future to power our cities, towns etc and provide reliable power 24/7. No ifs no buts.
The TOXIC, POLLUTING S & W disasters should be stopped ASAP and we have plenty of coal and gas as well.
Why would anyone want to wreck our environment above and below the ground by using the S & W lunacy that isn’t cheap, clean or green?
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There are some extra challenges down this road. Since the idea is a micro-sun, the hard part is getting most of the energy out of it without having the thing burn down every scrap of your factory very quickly. It’s too hot for any kind of material to stand up to. But magnetic confinement has another set of problems.
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Jo’s image of a solar flare at the top of the post made me think about the potential dangers of Fusion power.
Everyone seems to think that a fusion reactor would be safe and non polluting. But why should it be safe? Consider that the surface of the sun is constantly in turmoil, shooting out solar flares and mass ejections and hurling super hot gasses into space, some of which cause problems here on Earth. We are likely living at the minimum safe distance from that fusion reactor!
Would a micro Sun here on Earth be any safer?
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It would not be a micro sun.
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What would it be?
Why would it be safer?
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The sun has massive gravity, tidal forces, other fusion reactions and huge movements of matter. It is like holding a wet rock and calling it a tiny earth.
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Really. Not a micro-sun? Most of these experiments are millions of degrees. So how do you get the heat out of it usefully? The instant it cools down enough to form back into atoms, the magnets completely stop confining it, and it’s still hot enough to vaporize anything it touches.
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Don’t worry, its just GA not having vaguest clue what he/she is talking about… yet again.
Science and physics are not part of its knowledge stream.
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No. It is not a tiny sun.
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I have NO idea why they’re even bothering with fusion.
At the moment there are plenty of submarines and ships being safely powered by nuclear and eventually breeder reactors will be all the rage.
See here for some interesting information.
Cheers
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FYI..
The NIF used 200 lasers to power this experiment.
EACH ONE of those lasers is the size of several football fields !
So yes, much refinement and development still to be done .
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no. only a single small laser is required. its beam can be “split”into multiple beam paths and each beam amplified.
the timing, coherence and amplified power of each beam must be exact so that the fuel pellet is efficiently and sufficiently irradiated.
IMO laser fusion is not practical. The equipment and construction cost would be prohibitive Continuous maintenance cost for the hundreds of amplified arms required is intensive and one spec of dust anywhere in a beam path could result in failure.
60
Well, we have our own, “pocket” Super Nova right here.
And there is a big, rolling example of fusion just 93 million miles away, keeping this planet alive.
Any decent nuke facility can probably put together a fusion rig. Working, “one-shot” examples can be stored and made “operational” in something smaller than a 44 gallon drum.
There is just the wee matter of “controlling” it.
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Quite so. As we say in motor sport-
Power without control is worthless.
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Last night I made a hot chilli Mexican beef & beans brew; ingredients cost $20 and time-wise 45 minutes simmering: I believe I achieved a similar result to these ‘scientists’. Where do I pick-up my billion dollar grant from?
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You will only get paid with the new chilli crypto currency so good luck with that one.
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I think I made a similar joke recently. 😎
Blair’s UltraDeath in all stirfry’s.
Chilli crypto – now there’s a novelty idea.
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A rock-doctoring friend who spent some time in “mining camps” in parts of Northern Australia, told stories of “rite of passage” chili consumption and the survival thereof.
In one establishment, the “test brews” was referred to as “Chili God-Damn”, apparently with good reason.
I don’t mind a tasty hot chili, but ‘burns at both end=s and no “flavour””, I can live without.
One clue is to make a goodly-sized batch of “proper”, garlic and herb loaded pasta sauce. Use as directed on one night and store the excess in the fridge for a couple of days to “mellow”. Then you add the “heat”, carefully. Smooth, complex and with a “zing”. Excellent with rice and a freshly-prepared side salad and accompanied by good, chilled beer or wine. I am not a booze snob; if it tastes good by the second glass and goes with the food, then, regardless of origin or vintage, it’s OK.
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60+ years and over 100 billion dollars of research – and we made enough new energy to heat a few kettles. . . once.
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This is actual science (obviously a long way from production).
I’m a fan of anyone who does potentially useful science properly – there aren’t many of them today – and I’m disappointed to see Jo getting on their case.
It’s a real and important step forward. Incrementally is how we build knowledge and capability.
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So is a lot that gets no funding and doesn’t happen. Maybe this will lead to a break through, or maybe not. Jo is pointing out how far there is to go while it gets written up as a break through on the way to being viable.
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Angus, forgive me. I am all for “blue sky” research, and with no commercial goal. My cynicism was directed at the hype and low quality of the media reporting, and the fact that we already have workable nuclear plants that would solve both the energy crisis and the “CO2-fake-scare” but we are trapped in a system which won’t use them, and won’t even ask why we won’t use them.
But perhaps I should have made that clearer.
Also, this was a very cynical press situation where press releases have been coming out last week, and were mostly “recycled” older experiments. It was only after I hit publish that I saw the wall of news stories out in the last hours and realized they had very recent new results.
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I love the idea that you can spot commercially applicable science. Mind you, that is the definition of engineering, not science.
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There is lot of commercially applicable science. I worked in a field dominated by engineers but their understanding of what was occurring at a molecular level was still so poor that even small changes to the formulation were unpredictable, to a large degree. The scientific work was analysing a product nothing like the useful product, designed to get a better understanding of what happens at a molecular level to better tweek the commercial product.
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“definition of engineering, not science.”
The fact that you say that, shows that you know essentially nothing about either.
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I am reminded of Thomas Edison and his 113 experimental light bulbs. Each partial success led to a better light bulb and then along came Turnbull to regress those advances. Why? Because he believed the fairy tale that CO2 was a pollutant. You are correct that some scientists are still doing important work but as Barnaby Joyce pointed out yesterday our once world renowned CSIRO now only does climate propaganda for money. That is prostitution of the first order and I apologise to working prostitutes who at least perform a useful function.
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I think cold fusion is much better. It doesn’t work either but is far cheaper.
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It’s a magic development. Ultimately fusion is the answer. It is what powers all motion, all life on earth, everything. To quote Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Or more prosaically in my favorite Monty Python skit on flying sheep at 2:19 “because of the enormous commercial possibilities should he succeed”
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Science justifies itself. Ignorance can never.
If there is a problem with science, the problem is in how the science is applied, not in the science.
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Sorry, that was meant for #13.
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So why are OECD countries so stupid today and why are China, India and non OECD countries building 100s of BASE-LOAD power stns like coal, gas and Nuclear etc?
In Australia we have enough RELIABLE, BASE-LOAD energy for thousands of years and yet we’re forced to use unreliable TOXIC S & W?
Never forget that TODAY FOSSIL FUELS generate over 80% of global energy and Humans now live in the safest period ever and our health and wealth have never been better.
Yet our stupid leaders want to throw that away for a ZERO change for temp or climate.
Even Dr Finkel told the Senate that Aussies could reduce our co2 emissions to zero and there would be no change at all to our climate.
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That’s right, our stupid leaders. Why don’t we ask ourselves why are our leaders the most stupid people available? And if they are indeed so stupid they allow themselves to be seduced by global utopian totalitarian ideals, as seems evident, instead of doing their sworn duty and working for the good of the nation, then why do we continue to allow ourselves to be led by them? The inherent weakness in a democracy is that not all people are endowed equally, and more than half the population are content to unquestioningly believe what they are told and happy to be misled.
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Note here that the dreams and hopes and wishes of the green anti fossil fuel supporters are just that ….. dreams. The dream of unlimited power from fusion, still so far off into the future. The dreams that we can replace existing power with wind turbines. The dream that we can replace reliable power with rooftop panels. The dream that we can replace huge power sources with solar power plants of tiny power generation. The dream of concentrating solar power, (solar thermal, and hey, what DID happen to that?)
Dreams ….. all of them dreams and hopes and wishes.
Meanwhile, coal fired power HAS actually made four levels of advancement in the same time, over the last thirty years.
While wind turbines average around 4MW, while rooftop panels deliver 6KW to the home. While solar panel plants cover hundreds of hectares for pitifully small power, while concentrating solar ….. what did happen to that so called saviour?
We now have coal fired single Units of AUSC driving 1300MW turbo alternators.
Dreamy far off Dreams versus actual ….. “Getting on with it!”
Tony.
AUSC is Advanced UltraSuperCritical
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The breathless “reporting” of this by the ABC was sufficient warning – this is a unicorn side-show, it’s to deflect we the sheeple as the Left systematically destroy our sources of power.
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But isn’t China claiming to be lightyears ahead with an “artificial sun” burning at some facility?
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I would have thought you must first understand something before you can replicate it, anyone who thinks we understand how the sun works is a fool, and of course science is now full of fools so here we are.
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They are not trying to replicate the sun.
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Pray tell what are they trying to do GA?
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They are trying to engineer a safe and useful fusion reactor without the assistance of incredible gravitational forces and massive amounts of matter present in the sun.
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Yes, that was my problem with this story as well. There is a lot of uncertainty as to the power of the sun and in fact some doubt as to whether “fusion” is actually the basis of the sun’s power. In fact, that factoid may be an urban myth.
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Another source of potentially usable energy is static energy in the atmosphere. At any moment in time, there are maybe 10,000 thunderstorms doing their thing around the world. I do not have numbers on the typical joule content of an average thunderstorm, but I understand that it is considerable. Tesla spent the last years of his life trying to harness this cheap and abundant ‘power for the people’.
Meanwhile, until such time these future energy sources become feasible, there is no harm in returning the carbon captured in coal back into the atmosphere, providing warmth, cooling, light, transportation, mechanical power as required, and fertilizing our atmosphere with CO2 in the process.
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Yes but its harder to collect than wind and sunshine 🙂
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There is plenty of energy in lightning but just like wind and solar, it’s not economical to collect, even worse so.
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Benjamin Franklin was trying to fly a kite with that one.
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Sorry – not feasible.
https://numberwatch.co.uk/cables.htm
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Mr. Asp: If your theory gains traction, we will know it when we see China monopolize production of kites and keys.
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“Honey, while you’re up , toss another rock in the fuzar, it’s chilly in here.” I can’t wait.
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BBC were banging on about this yesterday morning and interviewed an Australian expert from one of the Universities. The fuss they made one would have thought we were only a few years from full scale production. More like a few decades if they’re lucky. All really dull and boring and just another ABC distraction . .
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Fusion’s likely energy density (using Deuterium) could be up to ~570,000,000 Mega-joules / kg – which will be fantastic – eventually.
But why wait. We could be transmuting ‘fertile’ Th-232 to ‘fissile’ U-233 with an energy density through standard ‘thermal spectrum’ fission of ~81,000,000 mega-joules / kg. This is less than Fusion for sure, but it still ain’t bad.
Molten Salt Fission Reactors is where the majority of development funding should go for now. We won’t run out of Th-232 for at least 10,000 years.
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There is a fusion reactor fuel problem that has not been solved. The fusion reactors require tritium and there is roughly 25 kg of tritium in the world. 25 kg is orders of magnitude too small to enable a single fusion reactor to start up.
Ignoring the start-up problem… The ‘plan’ is that Lithium 6 (Lithium 6 is an isotope that must be separated at 7% and enriched to around 90%. There is no separation/enrichment plant currently operating in the world) will be converted in a blanket surrounding the fusion reactor to Tritium. The nuclear reaction that has a theoretical/calculated conversion efficiency of 1.1 to 1.2 times more Tritium produced that consumed. If the reaction efficiency is less than predicted, tritium fusion is not viable.
The following is a clear explanation of the issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHZMW0AmAKw&t=310s
“The Shocking Problem That Could End
60
Our nearest star works fine as a low cost fusion reactor for me. I’m happy with its performance so far. I would recommend this fusion reactor to other people. I give it a score of 10/10.
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Or, if you are in Australia you could combine a dense form of hydrocarbon (eg coal) in a high grade thermo reactor (ie. a furnace, preferably of a UC or USC grade) which could produce incredible amounts of energy for hundreds of years. CO2 – who cares, it’s a plant food that will enrich green plant growth worldwide.
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Don’t forget that coal, wind and solar are all fusion power.
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Coal obviously – cold fusion in fact!
That is why Coal is so brilliant. The energy was fused into coal long ago and it here ready for use.
If GA can see this simple fact, why is it so difficult for the Greens and others.
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Fusion — where the high paying green jobs are!
I do support good science. A poor country could not attempt this sort of stuff.
30
In time it’ll scale down to “Mr Fusion” bar fridge size.
In the 1960’s a 5 MEGAbyte hard drive was the size of a decent fridge/freezer and today a 128GB micro SD card is the size of a fingernail. 25,600 times the capacity and dawg knows what times smaller, 10’s of millions probably.
Maybe in 50 years, but you have to start somewhere.
Now if only the FBI would release the 50 boxes of Tesla files they “appropriated”…
30
From an article in 2014
The original Tesla Roadster in 2008 had a 117 Wh/kg battery. The new 4680 battery introduced in 2020 has a little less than 300 Wh/kg. Just a bit better than twofold improvement in over 10 years. Similar with iPhones. The original had a 1800 mAh battery while the latest, over 15 years later, has about 4000 mAh depending on the model.
Lead-acid batteries from 100 years ago had better than 20 Wh/kg so not even 15 fold improvement from 100 years ago.
It’s not scientific to make such predictions of development of technology that barely exists let alone hasn’t been invented because other technology had an exponential growth. It’s why the idea of phasing out ICE to push electric car and renewable energy development could only come from a numpty or someone with a Luddite agenda.
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Fusion reactors are an essential step on the way to total matter to energy conversion. Once we eventually achieve this everything you see in Star Trek will be plausible, warp travel, replicators and transporters. Though probably not for living things.
Total matter conversion would yield 18,000,000,000,000,000 times more energy than fusion, one gram of fuel would supply all of the worlds energy consumption for millions of years. The equivalent of a teaspoon of sugar could power the world forever.
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This is why tokamaks (magnetic confinement) are a better bet for terrestrial nuclear fusion plants.
10
When I was an undergraduate in the 1960’s fusion was predicted to be a reality within 10 years!
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Don’t forget that current fusion reactors mostly fuse deuterium and / or tritium, not ordinary hydrogen. There are very few facilities for large scale extraction of heavy water in operation today. Canada’s CANDU fission reactors use heavy water as a neutron moderator and primary coolant. Canada used to have three heavy water plants but they are all decommissioned and demolished, and Canada relies on imports of heavy water from Argentina. The Bruce Heavy Water Facility was the largest in the world, and it produced less than 2,000 tonnes per year.
30
Sustainable fusion used to be a perpetual 30 years away. But with this giant breakthrough, it is now only 29 years away.
20
How much easier and cheaper it would be to just rehabilitate and re-educate the indoctrinated population. Make Green Murder, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and Apocolypse Never , compulsory texts for all school students. No one even argues about the climate anymore. If the BOM doesn’t confirm this year as the coldest year in the last 50 years then they are just plainly dishonest. Even overseas they are experiencing unseasonably cold weather.
When we have re-educated the population then we can refurbish existing coal fired plants and build some new ones. Not only would we solve the energy crisis but the reduced spending would take pressure off inflation and interest rates.
20
“confirm this year as the coldest year in the last 50 years”
Yes the last couple of months have been cooler, but there were a couple of “warmer than usual” months earlier in the year. (April +.6 and July +.65 in UAH Aust)
On a “to end of November” basis, UAH for Australia 2022, is in 17th position out of 44 years with an average monthly anomaly of 0.03ºC
10
Then there’s the Greek version. Confusion.
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SAFIRE on youtube….
Simple vacuum tubes … Aureon Energy is turning them into boilers, but hey, baby steps!
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