Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion?

Should we get our hopes up?
>new superconductors reducing both cost and size
>doesn't require temperatures close to 0 kelvin
>materials simple enough to manufacture those super conductors
>actual obtainable budget levels
>good road map to get the models and funding done

Is it going to kill the meme?
youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide
youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk
youtube.com/watch?v=ExAY2kYvkpQ
youtu.be/L0KuAx1COEk?t=3344
thebulletin.org/iter-showcase-drawbacks-fusion-energy11512
youtube.com/watch?v=efOlmF3wjJE
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Government will just kill nuclear again because there is so much money in oil.
Never forget thorium nuclear energy and what they did to that.
#NutForNuclear2018

Everything about this post is cringe. Kill yourself.

>Government will just kill nuclear again because there is so much money in oil.
kind of like the entire environmentalist movement right now?
how they totally killed and silenced that?
and blocked the paris agreement totally?

Holy shit that REBCO stuff is incredible

>MFW 1000A through a 1 micron cable

Alrighty, I'm in. But it still doesn't solve the problem of how you extract the energy from the plasma and transform it into electrical energy to be put into the grid ? (I haven't see the whole vid yet, thus the question mark)

In the Q&A he answers your question.

Making reactors smaller and more efficient is the only hope for fusion having the slightest chance of being viable for energy production... all this shit with projects like ITER - bigger, badder, more expensive reactors is fucking retarded. The damn thing's probably going to hit $50 billion before first plasma, let alone before it hits its absurdly optimistic 500 MW goal.

I don't care how efficient and clean fusion is - there's no way you can make it a viable replacement for other forms of power generation at that scale - not when you can build a modern uranium fission reactor at a twentieth or less of the dollar-per-watt price tag.

Fusion needs to go back to the drawing board - researchers need to work on more novel ways to make smaller scale reactors more efficient, look at applying new materials in construction, alternative geometries, etc.

The one proposed in the video is 10 times smaller than arc, and the SPARC prototype they plan on building has a radius of 1.5 meters while also costing a quarter of a billion dollars.

Even ITER does fail I feel like that is a bad reason to put hate on the fusion reactors idea. I would think the first nuclear reactor was very sketchy sounding when it was being thought up. Just a guess though. Losing all those resources does suck but the bigger picture is worth it.

>alternative geometries
This is the big one. Stop trying to make donut shaped stars ffs.

>doesn't require temperatures close to 0 kelvin
This hasnt been the case for most superconductors for many years now. YBCO has been around for like 20 years and can achieve superconductivity when cooled by cheap plentiful liquid nitrogen. Superconductors are not the issue for fusion. Get your pop sci reading faggoty face out of Veeky Forums.

I'll believe it when I see them power a lightbulb with one.

I feel like fusion is like flying cars.

We'll keep hearing about them being available in 10 years for 100 years until people stop giving a shit entirely and then in some half assed form they become available.

It's a self-fullfilling prophecy, people stop believing in it therefore stop funding flying car research. I have a hard time getting funding for my flying car designs because it's seen as /x/

I think the actual reason is that the technology isn't quite there yet.

Nobody thinks of them as magic, but until they are as practical as actual passenger cars of today there will simply be shit for interest.

No I have breakthrough flying car technology it can be done today if it was funded
>inb4 how can a neckbeard make breakthrough tech
As I said simply nobody is bothering to research it, not that it is particularly difficult.

Nuclear fusion probably already exists. Look at Lockmart's concept reactor, which was supposed to fit on a truck originally but was quietly respec'ed to have the exact same dimensions as a submarine reactor.

It is highly likely the USN already has the technology, or is planning to have it day one in their new Columbia Class submarines which begin operations in 2021. Likewise these new submarines will use reactors made by a new entrant into the maritime reactor business, Bechtel. The same company who helps operate the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Pantex Plant where nuclear weapons are made.

For some context the US Navy built the world's first nuclear-powered submarine (the USS Nautilus) in 1951, three years before the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant in Russia opened and six years before the Shippingport Atomic Power Station opened in America. This happened despite the added complexity, compactness and durability maritime reactors have to be compared to stationary ones.

Also contrary to popular belief the main problem isn't power it's control. Moller's failed flying car had enough power to get off the ground it was just uncontrollable. Computers are advanced now....

Fusion is a bit different than flying cars, at least in a "government money pit" sense. Because fusors can simulate atomic weapons blasts very realistically, they are necessary for testing of nuclear weapon components. Notably Obama began an upgrade of America's nuclear weapons in 2011, so there's a lot of research happening here and everyone is figuring out the limits of existing fusors, which is driving demand for newer and more efficient ones domestically.

Keep an eye out on politics as well. If the "russian meddling" narrative is still here in 2021, New Start will expire and cause the cap on nuclear warheads to be lifted, thereby creating demand for more nuclear bombs and better bombs. Which of course drives demand for bigger and better fusors, eventually resulting in commercially viable fusion.

Who knows, so far every version has been a shitty dressed up quad copter.

Unless someone invents some antigravity tier propulsion they will never be truly practical.

There's fusion for military research and there is fusion for the people.

These are 2 very different things.

>These are 2 very different things.

Functionally, not really. The military has a desire to create the longest and hottest fusions plausible, in doing this special parts have to be engineered to contain and sustain the reaction. Civilian fusor use is the same angle.

>hurr durr it isn't really a flying car unless it looks like Back To The Future
I hate people like this, Is BFR not a spaceship because "hurr durr no warp drive"?
>they will never be truly practical
I hate people like this also, same pessimists who said going to Mars with chemical rockets wasn't possible until Musk revealed the BFR design.

The recent successes of SpaceX shows that pessimism holds back innovation more than technology. If he had brought his reuseable rockets to NASA he would have been told it was a dumb idea so he had to spend his own money to prove it feasible. Same with all new inventions pretty much.

>make giant quadcopter that can carry humans
>no longer have a flying car but instead a shitty helicopter that makes cancerous noise and thus will never become a thing because so many reasons

I'm not a pessimist, I want these things as much as you do and I know we will one day achieve them. I'm just simply stating that we do not have all the pieces of the puzzle yet.

They will all fall into place once it's time. The technologies that are required for it are better developed in other areas where they can serve an actual purpose now.

Aneutronic fusion is the only thing worth pursuing, that's where the literal >clean energy is at.

Thrust = noise deal with it.
>drone = helicopter
I've been over this so many times, if you want to be pedantic yes it's a form of helicopter however they are distinct to and have a number of advantages over the "traditional" helicopter so for all intents and purposes they are different. It's like saying a motorcycle is an automobile

Point is a quad copter would come with all the same reasons that prevent normal people from just parking a helicopter in their backyard.

Obviously they both have their advantages and disadvantages, but the ones that truly matter are the same.

Nope. Quad blades have a fraction of the kinetic energy and can be shrouded - safe for use in urban areas, also quieter for this reason. Easier to automate as well, nobody is going to allow flying a flying car yourself. I've argued this before, contrarians argue that helicopters are good enough yet they are not widespread among the general public indicating otherwise. You get the same stubborness in the RC field, they scream that RC helis are good enough for everyone yet until drones showed up it was a tiny niche hobby for nerds. I think the problem is that people who are in the technical fields can't seem to grasp the concept of marketability is distinct from efficiency.

which fucking brainlet said mars was impossible

You mean planes?

The first nuclear reactor was a pile of fuel surrounded by graphite blocks. It was very simple and a good proof of concept. ITER is a joke without a punchline - The Aristocrats of fusion research.

But no one has used this kind of superconductor before, it has all been shitty copper ones. If this performs as claimed, and I don't see why not if it is off the shelf available, then it really is a game changer for fusion because of B4 scaling. Their proposal resolves both the field strength issue with these superconductors and the blanket issue by using the whole molten salt cooling gig, which is used to then heat water and power turbines. Am I missing something here? Why would this not work?

?
The number one issue for nuclear is that the NRC exists to stop it

>yet they are not widespread among the general public indicating otherwise.
Because its illegal for you fly over populated areas, meaning you cannot make any practical use of your personal flying vehicle

Stuff like paramotors for personal flight have been super practical for years, but until you can buy one to commute to work with it, its not going to be common.

Paramotors can't hover or be automated. The big parachute also risks being tangled up on wires in urban areas.
Even in bumfuck nowhere where it's legal to fly choppers still aren't common. And a fully autonomous drone has a chance of being legal in urban areas unlike a manually piloted helicopter

the paris accord is literally doing nothing
the entire environmentalist movement is shilling for technology that is inefficient and will not be viable which is why they don't kill and silence it after all what danger is there about random retards crying for solar power when it's unviable.
They are killing nuclear power because it is the as it stands safest cleanest and most viable way to generate power but it would fuck up everything else if allowed to develop properly

>Paramotors can't hover
Why would you hover?

>The big parachute
Don't run into power lines then, they could easily put red flashing lights on top of them, and tell everyone to fly over 200 feet

Choppers cost hundreds of thousands
A paramotor costs less than 10 grand.

You talk about RISKS, imagine if you took these sorts of cowardly RISK views towards cars, "NO DRIVING A CAR NEAR PEDESTRIANS, OR NEAR OTHER CARS, OR IN AN URBAN AREA..." etc Essentially banning the productive use of cars

Of course noone would buy cars, since they would be for limited recreational use only

If I could take off from the street outside my house, and land on the street in front of my work/store/etc, then TONS of people would buy paramotors or gyrocopters

its not just environmentalists who killed nuclear
I highly doubt the government bureaucracies and judges who prevent nuclear power are filled with these green crazies either, though there are probably quite a few of em

ITER will teach us a lot about how to handle such high temperatures, and with this new knowledge we can start to try and make them more compact. The "clever" designs are a pure shot in the dark without getting these kind of knowledge first.

In addition, the one thing that sucks about ITER is the international organisation, that is the reason why it is getting so ridiculously expensive and is getting delayed again and again. Its incredibely inefficient. I bet if the US government decided to build its own ITER it would have Plasma while ITER is still fighting about which country gets to produce which part of the reactor.

you misunderstood me i specifically said that the government keeps nuclear down because they don't want to let go of what they have right now. With the environmentalists i was referring to his question why they are left to demonstrate for their shit and not just silenced

Solar is going through the roof right now

>This thread

Why is no one talking about the video content? This is serious shit, I know the meme about "20 years away", but these kind of things are the final breakthroughs needed to actually accomplish it. This design eliminates the issue of neutron wear and serviceability by using existing technology (FLiBe) and actually thinking about how to put the thing together properly. It also ramps up the power of the field hugely using this new material which was always the other main problem. Those theories they presented hold up fine and there is no reason why it couldn't work, it is just an engineering question now.

>Making reactors smaller and more efficient is the only hope for fusion having the slightest chance of being viable for energy production... all this shit with projects like ITER - bigger, badder, more expensive reactors is fucking retarded. The damn thing's probably going to hit $50 billion before first plasma, let alone before it hits its absurdly optimistic 500 MW goal.

A lot of this applies to particle colliders too.
When people run out of new ideas they just try to smack the old ones harder against the wall until they stick.

>science
>on Veeky Forums
you must be new here

>Why would you hover?

So you can
>take off from the street outside my house, and land on the street in front of my work/store/etc

?
What is a road other than a "runway" ?
Why do you think you need to be able to hover to take off from a runway?

Gas the cars, transport war now!

NRC exists to keep it from becoming fukushima
and they do a very good job of it
probably too good a job

>we're almost there guys
I mean eventually we will actually be there but fusion is such a fucking meme.

>not even a wikipedia page on this superconductor
fucking russians

The easiest way to develop those advancements is to design larger reactors and figure out how to do that shit on the way.

?
Not if all funding has been consumed by one shit project that never produces anything, all run b y some incompetent "international" team

Bullshit
The NRC refuses to approve new refuses, for decades now, and they drag out construction for years and years.

Fukushima happened because its backup power plants were in a flood zone, that would likely only take a week for a bureaucrat to figure out.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_barium_copper_oxide

>shills climate change
jesus christ really, that's why fusion is important, fucking climate change

Gotta get dat grant money bro.

this
shit costs money, so they gotta do something to get investors interested
conveniently the big political thing nowadays is climate change. being able to hold up an energy source that both generates ludicrous amounts of energy, and is perfectly clean is a really good way of getting interest.

Fusion was and is interesting on its own for being relatively clean and theoretically quite compact. A good way to get funds is to demonstrate its feasibility. This video didn't even bother to do anything to estimate how close they would be to breaking even on net energy.

>250MW estimated production
How much of that is spent cooling nitrogen and pumping liquids around? I mean even if the conversion of heat to electricity were 100% efficient, moving around that much heat isn't cheap on energy already. What's the projected lifetime of the coils? How much will they cost to produce and therefore how much would you have to sell the electricity for at this point?

Obviously the first units will present a net loss in terms of investment but this can be quite easily justified. $5 billion is unfortunately way too large of a price tag for something like this. A proof of concept simply has to be cheaper.

Looks like we're ten years off still.

The 5 Billion tag was for their big model, they said they only needed 250-350 million to fund a small scale prototype which I don't think is unreasonable.

Compared to the MWs that go into powering the thing, the liquid pumping and nitrogen cooling are a pretty small percent, If that reactor is designed the way I think it is then it looks like the FLiBe liquid salt should flow naturally with a convection current, presumably through some sort of radiator fins or manifold to boil steam, remember that shit is 1600 degrees molten, it's fucking hot. I think they said they had a projected 10 year average lifespan on the coils, but yeah no real idea of costings on those, but at least the thing is fucking simple to maintain. Can't believe it has taken this long for someone to think

>Well durr how about we just take the top off?

I forgot the small version they mentioned, thanks for reminding me. $250mill is reasonable for say DOD to fund it. Something that small could run an aircraft carrier when the tech matures. That's who they should be shopping for instead of fucking climate change faggots. If climate change fags cared we'd already have switched to fission plants.

why not both?
they're probably chatting with the DOD right now about getting a contract

>If climate change fags cared we'd already have switched to fission plants

This, holy fuck all my rage. Fusion is cool and I want Fusion, but until then fuck, I'll happily settle for some properly designed LFTR reactors rather than the clusterfuck of dinofuel and renewable shit we have now.

youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk
This video has an interesting Q & A section on the progress of the project.

>why would you hover
There are no runways in a city
>lol just dont run into power lines xD
Or you could avoid the risk entirely by not having a bigass parachute
>If I could take off from the street outside my house, and land on the street in front of my work/store/etc, then TONS of people would buy paramotors or gyrocopters
Nope because they look dangerous
>inb4 they arent
Marketing my friend, marketing. They kind of are anyway because they can't be made autonomous like a drone.
You can't use a busy main street as a runway.

>mfw people don't think we have flying cars
We have jet hoverboards you keks.
youtube.com/watch?v=ExAY2kYvkpQ

>There are no runways in a city
ROADS? Ever heard of them? They run everywhere
This idea that you need dedicated runways, special air traffic control, empty skies, nothing that "looks dangerous" to busy body bureaucrats is what prevents useful personal flight.

>Or you could avoid the risk entirely by not having a bigass parachute
Physics remains physics, you want to to have giant rotating props and thousands of horsepower instead, that is both dangerous & cost money

vs already existing practical vehicles that could be flown by tens of thousands of people around any urban area

> because they can't be made autonomous like a drone.
I dnno why you think autonomous means "quad rotor drone"

Are you fucking retarded, you can't use a public road as a runway without closing it
>Physics remains physics, you want to to have giant rotating props and thousands of horsepower instead
t. done no maths, you need about 30 hp to lift a person.
>I dnno why you think autonomous means "quad rotor drone"
It doesn't but it is by far the easiest to automate.
I think every kid into tech dreamed of having a hoverboard, the problem with Veeky Forums is that they were too unimaginative to come up with a viable design so declared it impossible and now shit on anyone else who tries

...

Fusion has taken so long that it gave time for solar to develop making the whole prospect of fusion power plants even less likely. Why build a fusion power plant when I can throw solar panels on my roof?

Maybe fusion will be good for a Mars colony or other niche use case, but for now and the near future solar battery systems have won.

>Why build a fusion power plant when I can throw solar panels on my roof?
because solar is still pretty much garbage in terms of energy return versus energy investment

Fusion is even worse ;)

no one is saying you have to put fusion reactors on your roof to save the planet

you forgot to mention the Q&A starts at
youtu.be/L0KuAx1COEk?t=3344

They have been saying Fusion will save us for far longer than solar.

because it will save us, due to how much energy the process produces
it's just monumental pain in the ass to get working
we know it's possible to create net positive, if it wasn't, stars would not be able to function

Question at 1:31:35 hits the nail on the head.
Speaker claims "engineering problem" to explain away issues.
Audience guy points out, you haven't even ever observed the necessary physics and don't even know if you ever will.

ITER will deliever that, too bad they made it international though, we will have to wait for at least another decade until they produce something.

most of ITER is outdated garbage, and is being pushed back perpetually
and as a bonus, once it finally comes online, we'd still need to wait decades after to get anything of actual fucking value out of it

Government projects are worthless, you can't have scientific development with infinite budgets, infinite time, and no punishment for blatant embezzlement through procrastination

It will teach us a lot about plasma physics, so it will be really valueable. They should have made it only euro-wide, worked fine for CERN. Global is just too much, even India is involved in ITER, and all these countries are constantly fighting for who gets to produce what. But it is making progress, and once it delievers, it will bring new scientific basics to nuclear fusion.

I doubt it will play out this way. My guess is someone will have made progress independent of this, similar to OP's video. ITER will end up a toy for bureaucrats and """experts""" to masturbate over.

you're probably right that world-wide collaboration slows things down considerably.
i'm not even so sure ITER will produce a burning plasma. much smarter people than me say that it will, but some of them also say radiation losses in magnetic confinement make D-T the only fuel that can possibly achieve ignition. it's not a stretch to say ITER will come close but still fail in its primary goal because of unforeseen scaling problems.

Veeky Forums getting BTFO
>thebulletin.org/iter-showcase-drawbacks-fusion-energy11512

Sub reactors are actually easy as fuck because you have a whole ocean of coolant around you to work with.

Stars cheat by using their extreme mass to create a gravity field that does all the work for them.

There is already a flying car. Cheap? No. Practical? Not quite. But it works pretty well.

We just had this thread last month and I blackpilled everyone that it was all a waste for nothing

Cost of demonstrator SPARC is marginal, like launch of Delta IV Heavy. They only need to get funding from Trump.

People can't even drive on roads. Imagine them trying to fly

>They only need to get funding from Trump.
The President does not dictate funding, that is Congress.

also worth noting, stars burn fuel very very very slowly. the heat output per volume ends up being tiny. our star only looks impressive because if consists of 99% of all mass in the solar system. quite the opposite is required for fusion power--very rapid reactions, very large output per volume, and huge amounts of energy in order to contain it.
granted there is a difference in fuels.. naturally occurring H-H vs highly processed D-T, but it also means energy is spent making and concentrating fuel too.

yes but they also have to survive being inverted, g-forces from acceleration, and impact tests in the event of a hull failure. This all makes the design more complicated than it otherwise would be.

Would be interested to see you dispute their proposal and what is wrong with it, holds up pretty well as far as I can see.

That's a roadable aircraft.
Jesus christ I just spent the entire thread talking about autonomous flight and you pull out the ultra retarded "hurr people will crash the car"

Fukushima literally happened because Naoto Kan refused to vent the reactors.

Same cunt later claimed he was anti-nucler and saved tokyo

This thing is engineering kino holy shit look at it

youtube.com/watch?v=efOlmF3wjJE

When scienctist stop learning about science and figure out who they are as a person understand themselves and understand that the universe works when the way our body works you'll find yourself within yourself... Ever wonder why Hubble's pictures look like the way what we look like down to the atom

>fusion reactors are reality
>nobody bothers with energy efficiency anymore
>someone figures out energy can be used to make gasoline so no need to throw away cars and planes it all works!
>pollution skyrockets because of the above and "we can fix it later with more energy lulz!"
>heat and co2 accelerate the greenhouse effect drastically
>"we'll just irrigate using more energy haha!"

We are not ready. The ones who are developing this should be lynched. If the first plant opens and is not disabled by national and global protests then humanity is deserves all it will get.

there is no such thing as a "greenhouse effect' on a planet

>not general fusions hammers
Absolutely disgusting

To make gasoline you need a carbon source; with really cheap energy CO2 from the atmosphere could be used, thus making gasoline a carbon neutral fuel. And for that matter, cheap enough energy could be used to pull excess carbon out of the atmosphere, and either mixed into soil (look up terra preta to see why that is a good thing ) or dumped into old mines.