
Is nuclear fusion poised to deliver? - tilt
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/02/after-60-years-is-nuclear-fusion-finally-poised-to-deliver
======
sgt101
I saw a guy called Dennis Whyte from MIT give a shockingly bullish fusion
presentation a few weeks ago.

His view is that new superconductors make a compact (as in jet size) reactor
that does better than break even and is operable feasible in five years.

He seemed to know his stuff

~~~
midnightcontra
Did he mention using a stellarator as oppose to a tokamak? Apparently computer
modeling makes a stellarator more feasible and I was wondering if using
superconducting materials would make it even more so

~~~
jdietrich
Stellarators have become easier to design, but they're still a complete pain
in the arse to build. Wendelstein 7-X was nine years behind schedule and
significantly over-budget, mainly due to unforeseen problems in assembling the
coils. The National Compact Stellerator Experiment was abandoned in 2008,
again due to construction delays.

For stellerators to become viable, we need some major advances in
manufacturing technology.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Compact_Stellarator_E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Compact_Stellarator_Experiment)

~~~
Roritharr
But isn't simpler coil assembly what Mr. Whyte proposes? New Superconductors
allow for simpler and more powerful coils, allowing smaller, cheaper designs.
That should translate to the Stellarator configuration equally well, or am I
wrong?

------
arethuza
An alternative approach to generating power from fusion:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER)

 _" A typical design called for a 4 m thick steel alloy blast-chamber, 30 m
(100 ft) in diameter and 100 m (300 ft) tall,[10] to be embedded in a cavity
dug into bedrock in Nevada."_

It involves dropping H-bombs into holes in the ground - but at least we know
those work... :-)

~~~
stcredzero
We also have good idea about Thorium reactors. There's plenty of it around,
and good reasons to think they'd be safer than our current reactors.

~~~
dogma1138
Thorium reactors have no advantage over any other molten salt reactor.

The novelty in thorium isn't the fissile material but then reactor design
which isn't novel either it just not a breeder reactor so no one is going to
spend billions if when push comes to shove it can't be used to make nukes on
the way.

~~~
stcredzero
_Thorium reactors have no advantage over any other molten salt reactor._

More plentiful fuel?

~~~
dogma1138
And a considerably more expensive fuel cycle with breeding being questionable
at best.

And you then either have to chose if you are going to irradiate the thorium
when you make your fuel without purification which will introduce u232 into
the mix which undergoes gamma decay making the thorium fuel very dangerous to
handle, or purify it and end up with u233 in the mix which effectively makes
thorium a dual use fuel now so all weapon related restrictions apply.

------
codecamper
18 billion USD for a fusion reactor.

installed utility solar is right now about $1.50 / watt. The subsidy is 1/3
that. So $0.50 / watt.

$18 billion would incentivize 36 billion watts.

36 GW of fully installed utility solar is about half of all the PV solar
installed in the world in 2016.

36GW vs 3GW (iter's 500MW * 6 because the panels provide maybe just 4 hours
per day)

I realize fusion may be long term important, so well spent. Just hope people
are remembering we've got that big fusion ball in the sky.

~~~
superuser2
I expect my lights to turn on when it's dark or cloudy outside. Fusion
facilitates that, solar doesn't (unless we also get breakthroughs in battery
tech).

~~~
marssaxman
Lighting takes very little power once you switch to LEDs. I replaced all the
bulbs in my house a couple of years back, and the total draw - were we to turn
all interior and exterior lights on at once - would come in at around 250
watts. This is effectively negligible - the refrigerator alone uses at least
twice that much.

In any case, the real answer is not solar by itself, but solar plus other
sustainable sources like wind and hydro.

------
jcadam
I'll believe it when I see it. Fusion power is in that bin of
technologies/capabilities that are _always_ 20 years away, which includes
things like cures for aging and manned missions to Mars.

...or maybe I've just become too cynical.

~~~
paulmd
Fusion being 20 years away was contingent on receiving an appropriate level of
funding. Given the funding it's received (below the "fusion never" level),
it's exactly on track. In fact, if anything it's ahead of "never" given the
advances in superconducting materials we've made, since the director of MIT's
fusion program seems to think that we're now only 5 years away from energy-
positive fusion.

[http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg) (source:
[https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-
fus...](https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fusion-
researchers-answer-your-questions))

MIT director:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4)

Manned missions to Mars are also perfectly feasible. Like fusion, we just
don't devote enough resources to it.

Pretty much anything space-related would be much easier with two simple steps:
first, you build a launch loop to drop launch costs. It's all the capabilities
of a space elevator but doesn't require any exotic materials. Launch costs are
estimated at ~$3 per kg for a 20GW system, figuring $30B construction cost
with 5-year payback if you can hit 100% utilization. And no that's not a typo,
that's 5 years to profit at $3/kg - where's Elon Musk when you need him,
right? :P

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop)

[http://launchloop.com/LaunchLoop?action=AttachFile&do=get&ta...](http://launchloop.com/LaunchLoop?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=isdc2002loop.pdf)

Then, you drag an asteroid into orbit and mine it, so you have a bunch of
material that's not at the bottom of a gravity well. Both of those steps are
in a similar category to a manned mission to Mars - feasible, but would take
some serious engineering and serious resources. But once you do them, you also
open some serious doors. There is a massive quantity of literally any metal
you want in an asteroid. One small rocky asteroid has about 10x the total
amount of minerals ever mined on Earth, and why stop at one?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining)

Even if we couldn't feasibly return them to earth, they're infinitely more
valuable in orbit where they are. We are talking about just a mind-boggling
amount of resources exactly where we need them.

If you have large amounts of lead and other radiation-resistant material in
orbit you've solved one of the main impediments to a Mars mission, and large-
scale space construction in general. Then it just comes down to lifting enough
fuel to get you on your way, or finding a way to refine it in orbit.

Heck, you can even use the husk of the asteroid itself as an Aldrin cycler.
You kit it out as a radiation shelter, then you can put it on a periodic orbit
that will make a 146-day trip to Mars every 2 years and then you never have to
touch it again, you just dock your payload to it and ride it along. That way
you don't need to accelerate and decelerate all the mass of your radiation
shelter every single trip. There are even some orbits that will make faster
trips (but less frequently)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler)

Another possibility you open up there is using some of a rocky asteroid's
uranium for nuclear-thermal rocket engines. The problem with them has always
been that nobody wants to use them for takeoff, or even really risk lifting
them off with a regular rocket. But if you source uranium in orbit, that
problem is solved. Firing them in orbit is still kinda questionable, but it's
much more plausible to be able to give them a good kick to build distance if
you're not starting from a terrestrial launch. Having orbital infrastructure
just makes everything so incredibly much easier since you are saving at least
2 stages, maybe three.

Nuclear-thermal rockets use hydrogen as a reaction mass, which you may know as
"the most abundant element in the universe". Ramscoops could even allow such
craft to have a plausible mechanism to acquire more fuel (reaction mass,
technically) on long-duration or interstellar missions. You could even combine
nuclear thermal propulsion to get you up to ramscoop speeds, switch to ramjet
for cruising, and then brake on the nuclear-thermal engine again - all on a
single fuel source.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket)

Viable interstellar probes are the marquee selling point of the uranium, but
of course you would also be able to power reactors in orbit to run all this
infrastructure, breed more Pu-239 for RTGs for probes safely in orbit without
the risk of a launch accident, etc.

At this point the solutions exist on paper to go anywhere we want within our
solar system, and even start exploring beyond. You can even make it pretty
easy by laying down this infrastructure. But we could do it the hard way right
now as well, if we wanted to. There's nothing stopping you from using big
rockets to lift big parts into orbit and then assembling a huge ship suitable
for a long-duration interplanetary mission. We just don't want to. Bummer,
especially since we could get unlucky tomorrow and have another K-T extinction
event.

Aging is a tough nut to crack and we're not going to plausibly break Death
anytime soon (maybe in a few hundred more years - but sorry kiddos, that still
means that in the grand scale of the human timeline you still are some of the
last people that are ever going to die). But there's animals that are capable
of living much longer lives than you would expect, and we can certainly adopt
some of their mechanisms for maintaining genetic homeostasis. There's no
reason to think that our current lifespan is the limit, after all people
living to 100+ was absurd not too long ago. Nature and science undoubtedly
still have some tricks up their sleeves.

You don't suddenly discover one weird trick to live forever (doctors hate
him!). It's a debugging process, we are going to crack one problem and then
move onto the next one, getting a little farther each time as we go. Someone
will figure out how to switch cancer cells off, someone else will figure out
how to cure dementia, then the average lifespan will start creeping up to 150
years old. At that point the predominant cause of death will shift to skin
failure or boneitis or some other failure point, we will spend another 50
years curing that, and the cycle repeats. (a word of warning: do NOT use
squirrel bones)

~~~
andrewflnr
I was actually reading about mining uranium from asteroids recently. It seems
like it would be impractical because the chemical processes (involving water)
that concentrate uranium on Earth don't operate in asteroids. How does uranium
mining and refinement actually work in space?

~~~
marktangotango
My theory is that could be the martian "killer app"; shallow gravity well and
benign climate (unlike venus) for the industrial processing of asteroid
sourced resources.

------
dekhn
Probably not poised. At best ITER might show some interesting results, but
it's not a cost effective way to build a power plant.

~~~
neaden
While I would of course be very happy if a workable fusion system ever becomes
practical I think there is almost no chance of it happening in my lifetime.
Every time there is some positive news like this going back 50 years it turns
out that we are still "20 years away".

------
wolfv
The article fails to mention the elephant in the room: damage from high-speed
neutrons. From [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-small-
fusion-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-small-fusion-
energy-start-ups-conquer-the-problems-that-killed-the-giants/) Deuterium-
tritium fusion releases most of its energy as high-speed neutrons, which
damage steel parts and gradually turn them radioactive.

In contrast, much simpler Molten-salt-fueled reactors can burn current stock
piles of spent fuel rods. Safely generating electricity while reducing nuclear
waste. References:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_Salt_Reactor#Molten-
salt...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_Salt_Reactor#Molten-
salt_fueled_reactors)

[http://transatomicpower.com/white_papers/TAP_White_Paper.pdf](http://transatomicpower.com/white_papers/TAP_White_Paper.pdf)

The molten salt reactor (MSR) in generation IV: Overview and perspectives
[http://www.daretothink.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/03/serp14...](http://www.daretothink.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/03/serp1401.pdf)

------
gbrown_
> “We are convinced we can deliver hundreds of megawatts through Iter,” up to
> 10 times more energy than is put in, says David Campbell, the director of
> science and operations at Iter (which means “the way” in Latin).

That doesn't sound great to me.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested)

I'm all for fusion but I think we're some way off it being a staple energy
source.

~~~
maxerickson
It actually doesn't matter. It just has to be energy positive and cost
competitive.

Take the case of fully tracked wholesale cost of fusion power at $0.01 a kw-h.
Would you buy more expensive power just because it had a better EROI?

~~~
DubiousPusher
Maybe I'm missing something but since there's tons of government money going
into this, you're not paying the full cost. There's an externality which makes
doing the same thing somewhere else unlikely to happen.

Edit: I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. I'm asking a genuine
question. It's not just about energy invested vs. energy harvested. If it
costs $100 to build a power plant and you put $1 of energy in and get $2 worth
of energy out over its lifetime, you didn't get $2 worth of energy for $1, you
got $2 worth of energy for $101.

You'd have to look at the opportunity cost of some other energy technology to
know if it was a good investment or not.

Am I looking at this wrong somehow?

~~~
maxerickson
I don't know why you were downvoted, but my point was that if it costs less
after accounting for the costs you mention, the EROI doesn't matter. That's
what I meant by "fully tracked".

~~~
wffurr
If it costs less after accounting for construction and decommissioning costs,
then the EROEI is in all likelihood quite good. Cost can often be used as a
proxy for energy invested, since energy isn't free after all.

------
baldfat
I have more hope in the German fusion reactor that was constructed in 2015. It
would provide continus energy output and not the 50 minutes or so outburst of
energy of the ITER reactor.

[http://newswise.com/articles/pppl-and-max-planck-
physicists-...](http://newswise.com/articles/pppl-and-max-planck-physicists-
confirm-the-precision-of-magnetic-fields-in-the-most-advanced-stellarator-in-
the-world)

"Stellarators confine the hot, charged gas, otherwise known as plasma, that
fuels fusion reactions in twisty -- or 3D -- magnetic fields, compared with
the symmetrical -- or 2D --fields that the more widely used tokamaks create.
The twisty configuration enables stellarators to control the plasma with no
need for the current that tokamaks must induce in the gas to complete the
magnetic field. Stellarator plasmas thus run little risk of disrupting, as can
happen in tokamaks, causing the internal current to abruptly halt and fusion
reactions to shut down."

~~~
dogma1138
None of them are self sustaining or energy positive as of yet.

Fusion works but stellar fusion is effectively powered by gravity, no one
knows yet if it will be viable on smaller scales hence why while a lot of
process has been made no one has a made sufficient progress to claim they have
a working reactor.

You can initiate fusion in your garage making it energy positive even by a
small margin is what we haven't really managed to break.

~~~
baldfat
> You can initiate fusion in your garage making it energy positive even by a
> small margin is what we haven't really managed to break

That is WORLD changing right there. No we don't have fusion, but the
sustaining part has come down to possibly just needing Lithium. Now if you
look at where we have come from we are getting closer to where we actually
will get more energy out and that will be a game changer.

~~~
dogma1138
Lithium is for Aneutronic fusion, while this is being researched it's a
completely different fusion mechanism than the hydrogen plasma these reactors
fuse.

I made a few comments about this in a previous thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12877466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12877466)

~~~
DennisP
You're thinking of boron.

~~~
dogma1138
No, I'm thinking of Lithium.

------
sonium
If you have ever wondered about why one goes through the difficulties of the
tritium fuel cycle: It's really politically motivated, so none of the
participating countries has to rely on an external fuel supply.

------
transfire
If you are depending on ITER to do it, then forget about it. ITER is a _money
sink_. It was designed to suck up as much fusion research money as possible to
_slow the progress of fusion development_.

Don't take my word for it. Go to their website, study the annual reports and
time lines, the ever consistent delays, and the mammoth budget and budget
overruns. Then go read about the (far too few) more promising experiments in
other labs achieved with shoe-string budgets.

------
NikolaeVarius
"Give it another 20 years" \- Said every year since 1980

~~~
deelowe
While funding fell through the floor and came no where near what the
recommendation was when those models were developed. Those "in another 20
years predictions" are simple adjusted time lines based on the current level
of funding.

Source: [https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-
fus...](https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fusion-
researchers-answer-your-questions)

~~~
dv_dt
It's not a failure of the model, and it's unknown if the science failed (as it
didn't get a chance to be fully explored), but it's a
social/economic/governmental failure. Probably for the same reasons that we
are failing to address climate change - in large part, the entrenched
interests of existing energy companies.

------
edem
Can this thing blow up? I mean is there an equivalent in fusion technology to
a meltdown in fission tech?

~~~
dtech
Theoretically yes, every star is a self-sustaining fusion reactor.

However, in practice not because fusion requires much more delicate conditions
to work then fission. A breach in the reactor chamber would cause the plasma
to quickly expand and cool down, which means the necessary conditions for
fusion disappear. Basically fission can cause a self-sustaining chain reaction
once started, while fusion requires very specific artificial conditions to be
maintained.

~~~
fdej
More precisely, stellar fusion is self-sustaining because of the immense
gravitational pressure. You need around 1/10 the mass of the sun for this to
be possible. In the current economic situation, it would be difficult to get
funding for a fusion reactor that large.

------
scrumper
Exciting times. I'll be watching this, but I'm very curious to see what
happens with stellarator designs which appear to be much easier to operate (if
massively harder to build).

------
bbarn
How do they deal with weather on complex installations this size? I have to
imagine some of the equipment they're installing isn't meant to be wet?

~~~
amelius
My guess is that they first build the concrete support for the instruments,
then make a roof, and then bring in the actual instruments.

Much like an ordinary building, I suppose.

------
poelzi
5 years ago, I would have thought that ITER is a step in the right direction.

After studying alternative physical model and looking into more logical sun
models that explain more while require less assumptions, I came to the
conclusion that ITER is the wrong way to go. Dense Plasma Focus is way more
promising for hot fusion direction while still not optimal.

~~~
libeclipse
What're your credentials?

~~~
DickingAround
Or reasoning?

~~~
poelzi
beta factor is bad. stellerator is better, but still wrong approach to fusion.
It really depends on the physical model you use - I don't think in the
Standard Model anymore - it's falsified and there are better models out there.

------
vslira
Paraphrasing Musashi: Respect nuclear fusion power, without relying on it.

------
ommunist
Fission provides.

------
visarga
> Is nuclear fusion poised to deliver?

No.

Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can
be answered by the word no."

------
ythn
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

~~~
johansch
"Is Betteridge's law of headlines correct?" (brilliant title, given what
follows)

[http://calmerthanyouare.org/2015/03/19/betteridges-
law.html](http://calmerthanyouare.org/2015/03/19/betteridges-law.html)

"In other words, it appears as if roughly a quarter of all headlines which end
in a question mark can be answered by the word no. You can go ahead and call
that Linander’s law of headlines, if you will."

Don't miss the data:

[https://gist.github.com/matslina/64601f39ef12bd653be6](https://gist.github.com/matslina/64601f39ef12bd653be6)

~~~
paulddraper
Very many of those YES headlines were followed by favorable articles (like
this one), but concretely, I would answer NO.

Even their own supportive authors felt it wasn't clear enough to qualify for a
statement.

~~~
johansch
I also did a manual inspection of the data and ended up mostly agreeing with
the author of the post.

------
FrancoDiaz
This is a very laymen, simplistic comment, but it sounds like the engineering
complexities for industrialization need a little help from AI.

I know nothing about AI/machine learning, but if these processes could be
unleashed to simplify the engineering processes then maybe cold fusion could
be cost effective.

Humans are just very slow and the complexity is almost overwhelming.

~~~
noahdesu
This is certainly the case, but not necessarily AI. Huge supercomputers are
used to run physics simulations to assist with material design processes at
national labs [0]. I cannot imagine that some of that work is related to
dealing with material at the extremes where fusion would be pushing the state
of the art. Genetic algorithms have been used for exploring large design
spaces, as well [1]. It's all really cool stuff.

[0]: [https://lanl.gov/org/padste/adeps/materials-science-
technolo...](https://lanl.gov/org/padste/adeps/materials-science-technology/)
[1]:
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=genetic+algorithm...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=genetic+algorithm+design+antenna&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=)

