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Bold new claims from an "open Fusion" development team. They claim a compact design utilizing newly available high temperature superconductors will combine to allow them to demonstrate 10:1 energy returns from fusion reactions within the next four to five years, add 10 more years to build a practical electrical generation station around it. Stories have been all over the popular press for days now:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-reactor.html
https://news.mit.edu/2020/physics-fusion-studies-0929
Two and a half years ago, MIT entered into a research agreement with startup company Commonwealth Fusion Systems to develop a next-generation fusion research experiment, called SPARC, as a precursor to a practical, emissions-free power plant.
Now, after many months of intensive research and engineering work, the researchers charged with defining and refining the physics behind the ambitious tokamak design have published a series of papers summarizing the progress they have made and outlining the key research questions SPARC will enable.
[...] "The MIT group is pursuing a very compelling approach to fusion energy." says Chris Hegna, a professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was not connected to this work. "They realized the emergence of high-temperature superconducting technology enables a high magnetic field approach to producing net energy gain from a magnetic confinement system. This work is a potential game-changer for the international fusion program."
(Score: 3, Funny) by looorg on Friday October 02 2020, @04:16PM (2 children)
Looking forward to the development of Mr. Fusion, I can hardly wait but won't be holding my breath.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2020, @05:36PM (1 child)
Got one in my gut. The bad thing is, it hates waffles.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday October 02 2020, @07:10PM
But Doc said it would run on any kind of garbage!
(Score: 2) by srobert on Friday October 02 2020, @04:33PM (6 children)
... in 1979. I was in high school then. Fusion was just around the corner. Too bad it wasn't true. A lot of the what's gone wrong in the world since then might not have happened, wars over oil, climate change, etc. I'd like to believe this. If I did believe it, I'd invest in it. I won't be investing until I believe it, and that won't happen until the evidence warrants belief.
(Score: 3, Touché) by RandomFactor on Friday October 02 2020, @04:45PM
It's never been right around the corner :-\
Assuming they totally solve it overnight.
You still are several decades getting a new full size fusion power plant through design/test/certify/license/permit/build/hire/train/operate/lawsuits
Realistically I suspect boomers are more likely to see man walk on Mars in their lifetimes than full scale fusion power plants.
Of course I'd be perfectly happy to be totally wrong and we get all of this before the election, but we'll have to wait and see :-)
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 02 2020, @05:15PM (2 children)
These smaller designs are promising, cheaper to develop, and more useful (especially if they can fit on an 18-wheeler).
If any of the designs are sufficiently proven, it will be flooded with money from the likes of Google and the U.S. Navy.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by PaperNoodle on Friday October 02 2020, @05:21PM (1 child)
It's kind of interesting the paradigm of bigger is better seems to be losing out. Small modular reactors for fission. SPARC for fusion (assuming this pans out in N years). The race is on for giant ITER and SPARC. Place your bets.
Then again nothing pans out when lawyers enter the room.
B3
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 02 2020, @07:24PM
I think it may be a sign of the investment community appetite. I mean: if you're a fusion physicist/entreprenuer and there's $5B out there looking for a place to invest it in Fusion development, well, of course we can find a way to spend that... but, if the seed money is only $50M with maybe another $500M if your early work shows promise... then they start thinking smaller.
Big Fission has been dead in the water since Three Mile Island (yes, one new construction start in the last 52 years - and it's been a non-stop shitshow), so the pocket nukes are making another run...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jasassin on Friday October 02 2020, @05:53PM (1 child)
...and by then the stock will be worth more than Apple's.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Friday October 02 2020, @06:52PM
I still regret not investing in Fleischmann and Pons back in '89.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fadrian on Friday October 02 2020, @04:34PM (4 children)
... the power source of the future! I'll believe it when I see it.
That is all.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2020, @04:43PM (3 children)
Look out your window. That bright thing? It's fusion.
(Score: 5, Funny) by PaperNoodle on Friday October 02 2020, @05:16PM
I looked and now I can't see anything.
Fusion is a lie confirmed.
B3
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Friday October 02 2020, @05:50PM
Ha ha. Old joke, man. You know what I meant.
Call me back when they've gotten to a product safe enough to be marketable to individuals or power companies. I'm still betting that four years from now, it will still be four years in the future (at least).
That is all.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday October 05 2020, @12:40AM
A lot of tiny dim things in the sky out there. Presumably those are fusion too?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Friday October 02 2020, @04:42PM (3 children)
For decades and decades fusion power has always been 20 years away. Always.
That "20 years away" is settled science and solidly known engineering.
But now, the ****ing impatient gotta-have-everything-now millennials are getting into power and suddenly fusion is 4-5yrs +10 away.
"4-5" + 10 is _not_ 20, ye cannae change the laws of math, or physics. Fusion is 20 years away. End of discussion, get your neutrons off my lawn, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2020, @04:44PM
But what about the Singularity? Time is getting compressed.
(Score: 2) by bussdriver on Friday October 02 2020, @07:41PM (1 child)
I think 5 is so cliché they are now saying 4
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Friday October 02 2020, @11:07PM
The Diversity and Compliance Officers improve performance by 25%. Well, on paper anyway.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2020, @05:03PM
My condlences to their families within the next four years as I too will be deeply saddened by their sudden disappearance.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2020, @05:05PM
https://xkcd.com/678/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bart9h on Friday October 02 2020, @05:42PM (3 children)
So.... 5 + 10 = 4?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday October 02 2020, @05:50PM (2 children)
I think you may be underestimating. This is, after all, a design stage prediction. Those often turn out to be incredibly optimistic. And that's if it even works. The first demo has yet to be built.
But it *could* be something incredibly important, even if it takes awhile to develop.
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(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Saturday October 03 2020, @05:50AM (1 child)
It'll be interesting if the combination of better superconductors + plasma physics learned with ITER lets this work before ITER does.
No idea about the record/likely reliability of this group. (aka are these permanent '20 years away' folks like fusion has been for 60 years? Sucking up the air supply from Thorium or other safer fission...)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday October 03 2020, @01:52PM
If it can be made to work, fusion is potentially much better than Thorium reactors. But it's a lot iffier.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by oumuamua on Friday October 02 2020, @05:57PM (4 children)
Fusion can supply not only green power but additional power toward removing carbon from the atmosphere. This last part is actually built into models that stop global warming but nobody pays it much attention because the first step has proven so difficult.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Friday October 02 2020, @06:55PM
Unicorn farts are more effective at every issue you mention.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 02 2020, @07:37PM (2 children)
How green is fusion power, for realz? Fission has had it's run, and we're left with more tons of waste than anyone will admit. And, we have no place to PUT the stuff! So, back to fusion. Will there be waste? How much? Can we safely dispose of it, without shooting it into the sun?
It would be ideal if we could feed our radioactive fission products into a fusion plant, and make it all safe again. But, that's just wishful thinking. We're stuck with what we have, plus whatever we generate in the future.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anotherblackhat on Saturday October 03 2020, @12:47AM (1 child)
Since fusion doesn't actually exist yet, you can claim it's as green as you want.
In theory, if you're talking D-T fusion, it's more than clean enough, with the waste products breaking down quickly.
If you're talking Proton-Boron fusion, then it's incredibly clean, with the waste products being Helium.
It's worth noting that fission has a better safety record than coal, with fewer deaths and less pollution, even if you include Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
(Yes, fission has killed fewer people than coal, even when you count the two times we were actually trying to kill them.)
Mostly this is because coal is so incredibly bad -- see fog of death [wikipedia.org] for example -- but also because fission is 6 orders of magnitude denser as a fuel.
Even the incredibly bad stuff fission generates as pollution isn't so bad when you consider than there's only 1 millionth as much of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 03 2020, @11:56PM
it's probably the same reason we can say fission is safer then ... well pretty much anything else ... that we haven't gotten fusion to work ... missing data.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Friday October 02 2020, @06:08PM (1 child)
t. investment fooligans
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2020, @06:35PM
Obviously, you wont believe it until the president utters it.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday October 02 2020, @09:32PM
From the article
I could not help laughing when I read that line.
I expect LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) [newatlas.com] based fusion to be on the grid a long, long, loooonnnnggggg time before any of the hot strong force stuff like this and the other projects currently being pursued ever become practical, if they ever do.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 03 2020, @01:27PM
another:
10 years
10 billion dollars
and 10000 grad students
we'll have this thing licked!
said every decade for the last 60 years
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