Now this is just vibes based… But I imagine “functionally limitless high output clean energy” would probably solve the “supply side” of the “supply and demand” equation pretty quickly. More, cheaper, cleaner, energy would certainly be less expensive to the consumer than less, more expensive production.
We have a fusion reactor in the middle of our solar system solving the spicy half of the problem already. If we are having a solar heat capture problem, how is a new source of virtually unlimited power (and heat) here going to work? How is superconductivity coming along to help mitigate this?
Because the problem fusion reactors will solve isn’t free energy. We already have that, like you suggest. Solar, wind, geo thermal, hydro power, oceanic tide harvesting, and to a certain extent nuclear…all of that is free energy waiting to be harnessed.
The problems it solves include packaging (think footprint for a solar farm power plant), radio activity (like fission power plants), predictability ( solar, wind, etc), and location (hydro). Fusion puts clean power plants anywhere you want them, safely and reliably.
All of these allow you to advocate for a functioning power plant to governments and citizens without any drawbacks besides costs to build and maintain. It’s an easier sell than any other power in existence. It runs off of water.
…and lithium. At least the current generation. While there’s plenty of deuterium in the oceans (left over from the big bang, or at least that’s the best theory we’ve got) tritium is a completely different matter: It’s extremely rare because it’s not stable with quite low half-life (12.32 years). If you throw a neutron at lithium though you get helium and tritium, and deuterium+tritium fusion happens to produce neutrons. All that btw yes is a bit radioactive the radiation safety requirements of a fusion reactor are ballpark those of the radiology department in your local hospital.
Right, for the sake of brevity and not talking past my knowledge base, I was omitting that part. I knew that the deuterium reaction was coupled with tritium but I didn’t know we had to use a precursor reaction to get the tritium. That’s really neat knowledge.
Oh the comments annoy you? Sorry some of us will struggle quieter? Wtf
I’m advocating for you to be smart in how you do it. Apply it in the right places, in the right amounts, to the right audiences.
‘Bullet spraying’ the same thing over and over again everywhere just dilutes the message, and it turns people off to listening to the message, and harms the causes the opinions are being expressed for.
No, not to be stupid about it. There’s a difference.
Say it at the right time, at the right place.
‘Bullet spraying’ the same thing over and over again everywhere just dilutes the message, and it turns people off to listening to the message, and harms the causes the opinions are being expressed for.
y’all would complain about the boston tea party if you were alive during it. you’d be the wimps telling others to stop planning revolutions or discussing democracy
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).
Easy to call it bitching when you have an easy privileged life.
No, it’s not, not when you care.
When you care, you want to see opinions expressed at the right places, and in the right amounts, so they’re the most effective.
‘Bullet spraying’ the same thing over and over again everywhere just dilutes the message, and it turns people off to listening to the message, and harms the causes the opinions are being expressed for.
If everyone was stuck outside in the cold, and one guy wouldn’t stop talking about how cold it is, how long before others would start to be annoyed? Yes, it’s cold out. Yes, we’re cold too. Yes, mutually complaining about the cold can be a bonding experience, especially when we can all see another group safely enjoying their warm shelter they refuse to share. But when every conversation or discussion for months on end is interrupted by the guy saying it’s cold and offering zero solutions, at some point people are going to tell him to shut up.
Yes it sure is! Just as easy as it is to not be a permanent cynic about fucking everything, because (and I speak from past experience I wish people would learn from here) that takes effort too.
Consider: the caloric energy expenditure in your pointless stating the obvious above, now multiply that by how often you do this. Carry the 2. Imagine using that on something productive! Think of the Bitcoin you could own!! All the energy needed for that Bitcoin’s gonna need at least 50 seconds of fusion.
And so: we’ve come full circle, as was prophesied.
‘Bullet spraying’ the same thing over and over again everywhere just dilutes the message, and it turns people off to listening to the message, and harms the causes the opinions are being expressed for.
Once the top 1% are eaten, there will be a (slightly poorer) new top 1%. We’ll eat them. Eventuallt we will all rise to the top and be eaten. Thus, the circle of life will continue.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
—not least by thinking about issues of energy equity and justice. “When we have these plants, where do we place them so that we can provide a clean energy source for all types of communities?” the NIF’s Ma asks. “How do we build up a workforce that is diverse? How do we ensure that as we are building up this industry, we are training folks to have the skills of the future? We get to at least try to do it right this time.”
As far as this goes…
The ultimate solution may require a ton of unobtanium-spice alloy that has been tempered in a midoclorian bath.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Well according to the 1993 classic, “SimCity 2000,” fusion power becomes available to build in the year 2050. Since I have no other source that provides an exact date of viability, this remians the most reliable prediction we have.
It’s also just kind of how these things tend to go. I mean even the the funny international one ITER. Has had this exact issue, they keep pushing back deadlines over and over again. Which is only really surprising if you aren’t familiar with the tech, it’s highly complex. But it’s a great example as to why this stuff happens.
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