Nuclear Fusion

Anyone else here following fusion news? Iter, Tokamak Energy, General Fusion, and all the rest.

Do you think we will be able to see fusion on the grid by 2050? Will solar and renewables prove too cheap to beat?

I have high hopes on Tokamak Energy and other High Temperature Superconducting projects.

Other urls found in this thread:

physicsanduniverse.com/binding-energy-stability-nucleus/
youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk
newsweek.com/fusion-energy-iter-reactor-50-percent-complete-735266
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockcroft–Walton_generator
iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/42/105/42105212.pdf
wired.com/2007/03/high-school-stu/
news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150726-nuclear-reactor-fusion-science-kid-ngbooktalk/
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

We will almost certainly have access to fusion energy by 2050, we will just have to see if we have people willing to invest their money in it. Fields of solar panels makes you look cool to the public, fusion energy that almost nobody understands doesn't.

>We will almost certainly have access to fusion energy by 2050
>We will almost certainly have access to fusion energy by 1970
t. faggot from 1950

Have you given consideration to the possibility that the scales required for fusion to be energy profitable may not be viable?

Why is nobody researching self-magnetizing plasmas?

Fusion may be great but I see inifite energy as a +/- form...like a battery. Wonder what's inside this...E-arth.

:3

Brainlet here
How can both fusion and fission release energy?

Iter most directly translates to journey, except for when used when facere, in which case the construction "iter facere" means "to march".

Either one leads to a more stable nucleus/nuclei. Energy is released to get to a lower energy, more stable state

>We will almost certainly have access to powered heavier than air aircraft by 1910
>We will almost certainly have access to powered heavier than air aircraft by 1840
>t. faggot from 1820

I'm completely open to the idea that controlled, energy-producing fusion could be physically impossible or unattainably difficult, but until someone establishes a convincing proof of that I'm going to continue assuming that it's possible.
The fact that people in the past were overly optimistic due to not being aware of the hurdles they would eventually encounter does not imply that there will always be more hurdles.

Medium weight atoms are the most stable.
Stars fuse hydrogen to produce helium and energy. Massive stars can fuse helium into heavier elements when the hydrogen runs out. This process can continue until you reach Iron. It takes energy to turn iron into something else.
In the instants of a supernova explosion there's so much energy floating around that energy-consuming reactions build elements heavier than iron.
See physicsanduniverse.com/binding-energy-stability-nucleus/
Notice that the curve peaks at iron.
So either fusion of very light elements or fission of very heavy ones can be used as a power source.

Thanks anons

youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk

>Tokomak
>Stellarator
>Inertial Confinement
Which one should I root for? Fusion is something that I'm looking forward to solve our energy needs in the future, especially as cities become more denser.

Even a retard like myself can build an inertial confinement reactor.

In WW2, when they were trying to refine fissionables, there were several methods which might have worked. They tried all of them simultaneously.
When you're desperate, you don't put all your eggs in one basket.

I know it's a joke, but what IS that thing?

everything wants to be iron so it gives you energy for helping it along

It's not just coolness; solar and wind power combined with storage technology (mostly batteries or molten-salt thermal storage) are rapidly falling in price. In some locations, the costs of establishing and running new renewable energy options are already cheaper than that of maintaining current coal power stations, even without subsidies. In Colorado, for instance, renewable options with storage were within the same price neighbourhood for a contract as many fossil fuel proposals, while South Australia's government recently awarded 100% of a government electricity contract to a company with a concentrated solar thermal power station proposal (when only 25% of the contract was renewable-exclusive, while 75% was open to fossil-fuel tenders as well). In addition, projections indicate renewables will pass that point of cost efficiency in many other locations within 5 years.

By the time fusion power becomes viable, renewables will hold a significant commercial edge in the electricity market. It will be difficult to attract investors or win contracts if they can't undercut renewables on price.

>but what IS that thing?
A pressure vessel with a view port.

>having to be concerned about beating solar in the economics department

what timeline are we even in

Stellarator

The tokomak design is retarded and needs to die. I hope that ITER suffers a critical instability, crashes the plasma, and burn the instrument to the ground. Then we can stop building the fucking things.

Inertial confinement is interesting, but nowhere near a viable power source. The design just doesn't facilitate power generation. Very cool for other purposes though.

Honestly, we need to put a lot more time and effort into understanding plasma physics first, in a general sense, before we expect to make real progress on the engineering problem of fusion energy.

>Honestly, we need to put a lot more time and effort into understanding plasma physics first, in a general sense, before we expect to make real progress on the engineering problem of fusion energy.
>haha let's just do the theoretical half of what we're already doing but sit on our asses and do nothing practical

When do you theoretards think we know enough to actually start doing things? Fags like you would have put a moratorium on fire use until the physics of it were understood.

I would like to think that fusion would be a viable power source but sadly I don’t think it will. You see the problem we run into is the fact that it is near impossible and expensive to create an area that can be used for fusion. Until we can overcome this I think we should look to thorium as an alternate to uranium in fission reactors. Or go with more eco friendly options

Agree with ya on most.

For large engineering projects in the future, we will need single reliable and "condensed" power sources. A launch loop or orbital ring will need several reactors to keep it powered at all times. A spaceship or colony can't rely on the solar when far out in space.

Renewable and good/cheap storage? Noice!
Want to go to Andromeda? Start fusing shit.

It's a vacuum chamber for a Farnsworth fusor reactor. I am leading a team in building one at my uni.

>Want to go to Andromeda? Start fusing shit.
That's probably what I hate most about solarwindtards. If we want to get any space colonization done, we need to develop fusion. But they always go for the local minimum.

>when do you think we (will) know enough

Well, we are still finding new wave modes, and I'm sure you know that each mode is associated with an instability.
People don't understand reconnection yet, which is a major problem in fusion 'science' and other areas.
People still don't have a good way to perform non-inductive current drive in high-density plasma.
I'm sure you know how each of those is a major problem, and each precludes fusion as a viable energy source.

That would be a good start. It doesn't help that it is almost impossible to get funding in the US right now, without relating your research to the next big tokomak/IC.

>theoretards
nice one, kiddo. Little did you know I'm an experimentalist in a different field. I jumped the plasma ship after talking with people about the state of the field at a DPP conference a while back.

>it's called a coil

Interesting. I'm used to seeing Farnsworths "out in the open", just intersecting wire loops.
It's always been my understanding that losses (collisions with the grids) drain energy faster than fusions generate it, so there's no hope of a net energy gain.
Do you think you've found a way around this or are you just planning to use it as a neutron source?
Any links to project?
It's a very elegant concept, much more so than magnetic confinement or laser/electron beam reactors. If only it worked!!!

Fusion is REQUIRED if you want to have a space civilization. 2050 is very conservative, 2040 is more likely.

>, before we expect to make real progress on the engineering problem of fusion energy.

Why can't we do both? Study plasma physics in fusion reactors...

also it seems more feasible, imagine going to the nearest bureaucrat/average joe/project manager telling him "I want to an study on plasma flow" instead of "I want to make a nuclear fusion reactor" just adding the n-word makes it more appealing.

In order to study plasma physics in reactors, to get funding, the research needs to directly relate to ITER. If it can't be directly related to the next big project in a novel way, it doesn't get funding. That is even the case in research as potentially-removed from fusion on the role of wave polarization on trajectory through plasma with shearing magnetic fields. It stunts the field by limiting what research people can feasibly do. Hundreds of scientists are going to spend their entire careers writing papers about heat sinks to deal with engineering problems instead of doing research that could actually lead to longer plasma shots, just because of what agencies are giving out money for these days.

What do you mean out in the open? They are always contained inside of a vacuum chamber.

The goal of ours is to be used in plasma production and studying materials. We are the first to ever attempt it at our university. Very few people on Earth have even achieved fusion, we hope to make a bit of a splash when (if) we do it.

It is a nice concept because it is simple for teaching, that is the main point of the device.

There was a lot of pushback against us for attempting it, it is not easy and not super safe.

quality thread op. I follow fusion research very closely and I believe ITER has achieved a 500 mW output of thermal output while only consuming a 50 mW input.

This is the sort of illustration normally shown.
Of an even simpler set of loops at mutual right angles.
Photographed that way for clarity, of course.
Never saw picture of assembled device (until I did Google search just now.)

Good luck! And beware of neutrons.

How can that be when it's only half completed?
newsweek.com/fusion-energy-iter-reactor-50-percent-complete-735266

ITER is 30 year old tech we have better materials now but it is hard to build projects of that size even when they are well organized and the clusterfuck of jobs program that ITER is now is going nowhere.
If US or Chinks or Bezos focus on fusion they will crack it in 20 years sadly solar and stupid wind power are more popular for normies so they get more funding in a year in Germany alone than entire ITER will for30 years.That is how little money is spent on fusion energy research.

sorry, I misspoke. It is designed to generate that much energy. Of course, as you said, it's not built yet so we won't know if it can actually do that yet.

That's a picture of a liquid oxygen tank, idk why that's relevant

>Very few people on Earth have even achieved fusion
false, fusion itself is not hard to achieve, it's hard to build a machine that uses less energy fusing atoms than it can produce from the reaction. University and even high school students have built working fusion devices in their garage, however these devices used kilowatts of power to run while only generating a few watts via fusion reactions.

...

...

No one has built a net positive machine.

Very few have even achieved net negative. So you are just an ignorant retard trying to seem smarter than the poster.

Net negative is easy.
Cockcroft and Walton did it in 1932. And it may have been done as early as 1919.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockcroft–Walton_generator
Millions of them are in use daily as high voltage sources and as neutron generators (which is how C&W discovered the fusion reaction in the first place)
iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/42/105/42105212.pdf
There are two of them on Mars right now. Where do you think the rovers get the neutrons they use to analyze rocks?

They're useless as power sources but they do produce fusion. Some fast-talker got Juan Peron to heavily bankroll him in the 50s on the promise that he'd turn Argentina into a world leader in nuclear energy.

Electrostatic fusors aren't difficult.
wired.com/2007/03/high-school-stu/
Here's one that was built by a 14-year old.
news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150726-nuclear-reactor-fusion-science-kid-ngbooktalk/

Do a little research before throwing "retard" around casually.

>Very few have even achieved net negative.
A shit ton of people have achieved net negative
Hell, even teenagers have done it