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Speeding the development of fusion power to create unlimited energy on Earth
Can tokamak fusion facilities, the most widely used devices for harvesting on Earth the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars, be developed more quickly to produce safe, clean, and virtually limitless energy for generating electricity? Physicist Jon Menard of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has examined that question in a detailed look at the concept of a compact tokamak equipped with high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. Such magnets can produce higher magnetic fields – necessary to produce and sustain fusion reactions – than would otherwise be possible in a compact facility.
Menard first presented the paper [open, DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2017.0440] [DX], now published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, to a Royal Society workshop in London that explored accelerating the development of tokamak-produced fusion power with compact tokamaks. "This is the first paper that quantitatively documents how the new superconductors can interplay with the high pressure that compact tokamaks produce to influence how tokamaks are optimized in the future," Menard said. "What we tried to develop were some simple models that capture important aspects of an integrated design."
The findings are "very significant," said Steve Cowley, director of PPPL. Cowley noted that "Jon's arguments in this and the previous paper have been very influential in the recent National Academies of Sciences report," which calls for a U.S. program to develop a compact fusion pilot plant to generate electricity at the lowest possible cost. "Jon has really outlined the technical aspects for much smaller tokamaks using high-temperature magnets," Cowley said.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fustakrakich on Monday March 25 2019, @08:02PM (29 children)
They're so full of it. Where are you going to dissipate all the heat? Present growth rates have us boiling off the oceans in less than 500 years [ucsd.edu]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Informative) by RamiK on Monday March 25 2019, @08:18PM (4 children)
I was about to link Tom Murphy's later, more famous, post on the subject: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ [ucsd.edu]
compiling...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 25 2019, @08:32PM
I had been looking for these. Thanks to both of you.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 25 2019, @09:18PM (2 children)
A.K.A.: if we don't go into space much sooner than the next 400 years, we're doomed to a flat-lined economy which will be even less friendly to such "frivolous wastes of time and resources."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday March 25 2019, @09:37PM (1 child)
A steady state economy is not flat-lined by any means. Infinite growth will give you this [wordpress.com].
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @11:34PM
I can believe it. Infinite growth has already given us this [wordpress.com].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday March 25 2019, @08:21PM (13 children)
If you can violate the First Law of Thermodynamics to create unlimited energy out of thin air on Earth, surely you can just as easily create an unlimited heat sink to somehow take away any of the excess without increasing entropy. Because we're well into the realm of magical thinking here: Even Pons and Fleischmann weren't being this grandiose.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 25 2019, @08:34PM (8 children)
The unlimited energy isn't coming from thin air, anymore than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did - or the heat from the Sun.
Instead of a heat-sink, I propose running a heat pump to reject high energy IR to space - sourced from fusion to power the pump and heat from the oceans.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday March 25 2019, @09:27PM (5 children)
Your heat pump will have to be at least as massive and big as the entire planet. The Star Trek stuff is pretty much off the table for now, until someone can show us everything we know is wrong.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:50AM (4 children)
The easier, and only long term, answer to continued economic growth is expansion to space.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:06AM (3 children)
And that will become practical the moment we break the light barrier. Who's gonna be our next Chuck Yeager?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 26 2019, @04:30PM (2 children)
I think people underestimate the attractiveness of Mars, Venus, the Asteroids, and even Jovian/Saturnian moons as compared to an Earth with 100B homo-sapiens resident.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday March 26 2019, @05:28PM (1 child)
an Earth with 100B homo-sapiens resident
That's very unlikely... We're just like any other species, we will reach a limit that cannot be extended. It's really nothing to be concerned about.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:51PM
Overpopulations generally aren't pretty for the overpopulated species, and most don't establish equilibrium on their first boom in a new environment - which is what h. sapiens is doing now.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday March 25 2019, @09:29PM (1 child)
That heat pump is going to need a beanstalk for a radiator, and I don't thing carbon fibers are strong enough. Either that or you're going to need to make some really high plateau hot enough to change the climate over the entire globe. A low red hot should probably be hot enough. Now, how do you pump the heat into that? (This isn't a matter of generating the heat there, it's a matter of collecting the heat from all over and pumping it onto that plateau. Of course, you run into the same problem with the beanstalk, but there the radiator is cold enough at the top end, that you could use it to cool the poles, so I guess you need two of them.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:55AM
The oceans would seem to be a good heat conductor for global distribution, let them bring the heat to the pump.
A breakthrough in higher temperature superconductors would be a nice thing to conduct heat up a beanstalk, although I think that replacing the telescope farm at the top of Mauna Kea with a big-hotter than lava radiator wouldn't be a bad thing. You could also run a higher gradient heat pump into Mauna Loa - pushing heat from the ocean back into the mantle, if the vulcanologists can identify a strong subduction current in the lava that would take hotter lava down.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday March 25 2019, @09:45PM (2 children)
Write to your representative and ask him to support the repealing of that pesky law. Problem solved by the magic of politics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday March 25 2019, @10:26PM (1 child)
Your proposed methodology needs refining: The letter to a representative must include a large check in exchange for this effort.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 26 2019, @02:20AM
Ima gonna promise him a reasonable percent of profits (say, 60%?) from the generated energy.
I bet he's gonna take the deal, he may be stupid enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:55AM
We already have several means of converting heat to other forms of energy. They don't even have to be all that efficient if you're just talking waste heat. So what if they lose 90% (not actually lost, just not going into the specific form you want it in) of the potential energy in waste heat?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 25 2019, @08:32PM (7 children)
With unlimited energy, you can heat pump it to the stars: sink one side of your heat pump into the ocean - extract heat from there, then connect the other side to a massive IR emitter pointed straight up through cloudless skies (make it strong enough and it should send the clouds away...)
Is SETI looking for massive IR signatures on exoplanets? Could be a sign.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @08:49PM
When we run out of energy and all we have is a cold and dense planet, it's not going to be me running to the supermarket to buy some more energy and light elements for Earth. Intergalactic-salemen are an unpleasant bunch to do business with.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday March 25 2019, @08:58PM (5 children)
You'll kill all your birds that way. All your birds, killed. The eagles and the everything else. You know, the environmentalists never talk about that. We need all forms of energy. But we must protect our magnificent birds.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @09:13PM
Clean coal never killed any birds, unlike wind turbines.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 25 2019, @09:20PM (3 children)
Could also pump it into the mantle to help keep the magma flowing... wouldn't want the volcanoes to stop altogether.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday March 25 2019, @09:31PM (1 child)
That's actually a much better idea. It would be less efficient, as you're pumping against a stronger gradient, but you could do it from several locations. Of course, it means you need to use something hotter than molten rock as your working fluid.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:57AM
I don't think the working fluid is going to be as challenging as the conduits to carry it, particularly under pressure.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @10:03PM
Could also pump it into the mantle to help keep the magma flowing
That would be a cool trick!
If we dig a hole deep enough, do you think the earth will pop like a balloon? That would definitely suck..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @10:58PM
We'll have unlimited energy. We can just use some of that to free energy to cool down the oceans. Problem solved.
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Tuesday March 26 2019, @02:13AM
Some curious points...
- The (by a replier's post) "phenomenally faithful" graph of energy usage in all forms shows that energy usage has tapered off in recent years, and in fact _damn_near_ flatlined. Huh. Almost as though we're becoming much more efficient in what we're doing.
- All of this depends on the "Technology of Todaaayyyy!" I was thinking, when I was younger, that we really, really shouldn't burn up all our oil. Imagine a world without plastic!! That would kind of be terrible. A couple (eight?) years ago I came across articles about creating synthetic plastics without starting with fossil oils. What we need, we create.
- The other day, I came across an article about "Second Sound" on Arstechnica. It says that the source of heat can be cooled to _less_ than the surroundings. That the heat is shunted away _immediately_ and takes some extra with it. Huh. Wow. So, if that's a research subject now, consider the shaft of a space elevator with an IR-tuned dish at the top to beam the heat back toward the sun. shrug. Just, hey, things that we don't know about right now. Are we going to invent them in the next 200 years? (How much technological progress have we made in the last 50 years?..) It's like that "Microwave Energy!" in SimCity, except in reverse. Use fusion-based energy to cool the globe, and blow the excess heat (and the fusion-excess heat powering the blower) off into.. wherever. Can you say it's not going to happen? I've got a lot of evidence showing us doing very much similar.
- Suppose that chart really is tapering off, and that 2.3% growth is actually 0.25% growth (buys us a thousand years), then in 100 years it's 0.1% growth (buys us another 5 000 years). What will be created in that time? Will all of this be in use on _Earth_ or will all of this be in use somewhere... off earth? It's awfully cold on those outter planets. Perhaps we can direct that IR-beam toward those planets (huh, sounds like something I heard in the movie _Chronicles of Riddick_, actually) for warmth and energy.
Truthfully, I'm mostly concerned about the perception that renewables are "free energy". To me, you're absorbing energy that would otherwise have bounced back off into space. Instead, we're keeping all that energy around. We're causing the planet to get hotter, by whatever degree. It will continue so, with no end in sight -- renewable or not. May technology save my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandkids. (Actually, remove two or three of those "greats" -- Millenials are having kids a lot later these days, I think.)
Again, not to say that climate change isn't happening (I actually _like_ not having bone-chilling weather, though, and stronger rain storms are welcome by me in New England!) but seriously... Things advocating a future based on todays technology are folly. Work toward efficiency, but don't scream that the sky is falling because today we don't know what to do. Stop using things that we know are bad (coal) when we have better, slightly more expensive alternatives. Stop holding onto the past (50 year old nuclear reactors) when we have new technology. At least the United States has become so seated in fear (see also: today's article about lacing a school with police monitoring) that it can't move _at_all_, such as by advancing nuclear tech to breeder reactors, etc. It would be a decent stop-gap to the next technological evolution.