810
Nuclear fusion reactor in South Korea runs at 100 million degrees C for a record-breaking 48 seconds
(www.livescience.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
810 points (98.4% liked)
science
15020 readers
304 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.
2024-11-11
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You know, not everything has to be "eat the rich".
This could just be a really neat science article/discussion about a fusion test, and have no need to bring up Capitalism.
The constant complaining just gets old after a while. Be focused, if you want to be listen to, and taken seriously.
Seriously, can't we just be happy about something for a few minutes?
Well, for me, it's more of 'quit your bitching about everything all the time, it's annoying as F'.
Though if it wasn't that, it would definitely be what you stated.
Edit: I don't mean to be insulting, just expressing the irritation of it. I'm not trying to diminish anyone's opinions on any subject, just trying to focus it into the proper conversations so that other conversations don't get polluted (see below).
no
Agreed. There's communities where these comments are fine but the science community should be pretty strict about what type of comments are allowed. Every comment section in any community just ends with the same comments.
This is the thing which makes Lemmy more annoying than reddit. Every. Fucking. Thread. Has to be this same low information teenage edgelord shit about why capitalism has ruined the color green, or whatever. It's as exhausting as it is stupid.
Half this shit has literally nothing to do with capitalism. The other 2/3 is literally shit which is the exact same or worse under the USSR/Mao. For the love of fucking God, please at least critique capitalism in a way which makes literally any sense at all and stop with this "say the line Bart" fan service.
What about throw the rich into the fusion reactor?
Don't think the containment field could handle that.
It's fair that the constant complaining does get old, and the eat the rich shit is VERY old. But I don't see power bills getting cheaper as a result of this technology eventually becoming viable. At least not at first. Especially when in the US you have people like Warren Buffet who buys power companies and immediately raises prices by around 50% as a matter of routine.
Ah! Now this is a conversation we can have. (Gets on soapbox.)
With all the talk about cheap fusion energy, no discussion is ever made about how it's going to fit in with our existing capitalistic system, and what happens to all the companies that exist worldwide that currently generate energy using other/classic means.
Do they all go bankrupt? If so, what does that mean to the different economies in the different countries?
Assuming they're willing to go bankrupt in the first place. What about if they fight back, if they flex their political power to prevent the cheap fusion energy from being realized?
Maybe they have governments subsidize them? If so, then so much for cheap energy, as we all pay more taxes to subsidize. At that point then why bother, economically that is. It still benefits the planet, so there's that.
Maybe the world powers decide to do nothing, and just shelve fusion power altogether, to protect their existing interests. Then what happens to the planet, as we get more and more into trouble using fossil fuel energies that harm the planet? Existing renewables (solar, etc.) aren't enough, so something else is needed as well.
We all joke and/or worry about fusion energy being here in 20 to 30 years, and how that 20 to 30 years always keeps sliding into the future, never coming to fruition. But the real problem is going to be once Humanity finally makes fusion power work practically, what does that mean to the status quo in power, and will they be accepting of it, and if not, what does the rest of us do about it?
TLDR: Does old power 'go quietly into that last good night' and allow new power to take over, or do they fight back? And what does that mean for all of us? And the planet?
(Gets off soapbox.)
We still don't know anything other than wild hand waving speculation about the eventual costs of fusion power. The ultimate solution may require a ton of unobtanium-spice alloy that has been tempered in a midoclorian bath. We have no F-ing clue what it'll cost. But I can guarantee that there will be state sponsored conspiracy theories about all aspects of it. So let's wait before we start fighting over the conspiracies. They are not ripe yet.
Nothing wrong with starting the discussion. I guarantee you those who have something to lose are already thinking about it.
From another article...
As far as this goes...
... I see what you did there. 😉
I mean, If the oil and other polluting energy companies decide to fight back, I suppose that the fusion energy company can just send them a reactor as a gift to their headquarters and detonate them. Problem solved. /S
It's wwaaaaaaaayyy to soon to be speculating about power bills. A practical power plant is probably still about 30 years away.
Cheaper than renewables? 100 million degrees doesn't sound cheap, and frankly fusion power has been "coming in the next 10 years" at least since I was at school and I'm in my mid-forties.
The usual joke is that fusion is always “30 years away”, not 10. The reason is that fusion projects have historically faced an issue where funding is chronically below predictions
However, this past decade is seeing a number of promising changes that make fusion seem much closer than it ever has. Lawrence Livermore managed to produce net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time. Fusion startups are receiving historical levels of VC funding. ITER is expected to produce as much as ten times as much energy as used to start the reaction. The rise of private space infrastructure is making helium-3 mining on the moon more possible than ever before.
But technical issues aside, does that sound financially viable as a source of energy?
Even regular fission has fallen out of favour due to cost, and that's basically just hot rocks. Harnessing a miniature sun using gas mined on the moon sounds ludicrous in comparison.
It certainly has the potential to be. Remember most of the costs related to fission are safety measures, plant decommissioning, and waste disposal. If we merely had to operate the reactor without concern for those issues, fission would be incredibly cheap. The fuel costs and basic technical requirements to operate a reactor are trivial in comparison.
Fusion produced 4x more energy per mass of fuel compared to fission, isn’t at risk of meltdown, and has the potential to produce negligible radioactive byproducts. In addition, it outputs helium which is an important and finite strategic resource.
Even if the cost of fuel goes up dramatically compared to uranium reactors, it might still outperform nuclear in a big way. However, sourcing He-3 from the moon might be a lot cheaper than you think. My day job is related to space resource utilization. Transporting resources off the surface of the moon could be quite economical once we reach a sufficient level of development.
Much like the IRA attempting to kill Thatcher, we can fail to achieve unclear fusion as many times as we want, but we only need to succeed once.
Every year the people who send you bills get together to decide how big a slice of you each of them gets.
Yes, it always adds up to 100%
Or all these new companies that you now decide to charge you for power despite not actually being involved in power production, substations, or any other transmission. They exist only to drive up cost for the consumer and give a false sense of choice.
Half my electricity bill is "delivery fees" which I assume is line maintenance.
Super cheap electricity could still drop my bill by 40%
This could also translate to relying more on electricity for things like cooking and heating which would decrease carbon emissions.
You gotta make up for the research costs.
Is this experiment not govt funded?
Has that ever stopped them before?
Yup. To be fair, they never specified who was actually responsible for the cost of research. US pharma companies do that all the time - the majority of pharmaceutical research is heavily subsidized so, their just double-dipping.
In that case, got to pay those lobbyists.
government what
Cheaper in the long run perhaps - but how expensive is it to build?
Atomic energy is only "cheap" since the cost for the power plants is heavily paid for by tax money. For the cost of one power station you could cover a huge amount of land with solar panels.
This is apples to oranges. Fusion is not the same as fission. We simply don't know the economics of a viable fusion reactor.
However, we do know fissions cost is heavily driven by safety and regulation. It is very reasonable to assume that fusion's requirements in this area are distinctly smaller.
This is kind of my worry as well. We’ve seen fission become impractical by cost and renewables are much cheaper, so even a successful fusion generator has a high bar. I dream of controlled fusion to not just be successful, but practical
We don't know that it will be cheaper. We still don't really know that it will be possible.
Lmao, I literally clicked on this thread being like "I wonder how Lemmy will find a way to whine about this."