
MIT's Pathway to Fusion Energy [video] - mozumder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk
======
abefetterman
Overall this is presenting a smaller university-class tokamak with advanced
superconductors to try to reach Q>2 (scientific breakeven). One of the big
advantages of higher fields is that the fusion power goes like B^4. I think
this is an interesting idea, but it's hard to imagine the US funding something
like this at the same time as ITER. Last year's talk [1] suggests "alternative
funding," pointing to other private fusion research, which I am dubious of.
There is a mindset that "if these bad ideas get funded, our good idea should
get funded more," which we know is not how funding works.

As a former researcher of alternative magnetic confinement schemes, I'm
disappointed the latest research in FRCs and mirrors didn't make it into this
talk. Viewers should take into account that this, like most talks, is pushing
an agenda, in this case a new device called SPARC. It appears to also be a way
of using the incredibly talented tokamak researchers at MIT now that Alcator
C-Mod is not operating.

[1]
[http://library.psfc.mit.edu/catalog/online_pubs/iap/iap2016/...](http://library.psfc.mit.edu/catalog/online_pubs/iap/iap2016/mumgaard.pdf)

~~~
tambourine_man
>Viewers should take into account that this, like most talks, is pushing an
agenda

Exactly, and it annoyed me a bit the somewhat dismissive tone he applies to
the competing ideas. He starts by trying to show an impartial overview while
being anything but.

~~~
dwaltrip
To be fair, his dismissal was consistent in focusing on the most important
metric, Q (energy out / energy in).

However, I'm not qualified to assess anything else in the video, and I do
recognize the potential for bias here.

------
wwarner
Found this opposing pov: [http://thebulletin.org/fusion-reactors-not-what-
they%E2%80%9...](http://thebulletin.org/fusion-reactors-not-what-
they%E2%80%99re-cracked-be10699)

------
mcqueenjordan
Summary in text for those of us that cannot watch a video at present?

~~~
majjam
tl;dw: the best model is the tokamak, new magnets mean that they can be much
smaller (and cheaper) than expected. This is awkward for existing projects
(iter).

~~~
markvdb
Plus:

* Stellarators like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X) are very interesting academically, and the only alternative approaching net energy positive fusion within an order of magnitude.

* The shrinking of the process thanks to HTS magnet technology brings net energy positive fusion within reach of national governments or soon even major institutions.

He was promoting a compact MIT tokamak design called SPARC, a derivative of
ARC described below: [http://news.mit.edu/2015/small-modular-efficient-fusion-
plan...](http://news.mit.edu/2015/small-modular-efficient-fusion-plant-0810)

------
ibarrac
In the video the researcher claims that they can build a significantly
smaller/cheaper tokamak with HTS (high temperature superconductor) materials
technology that has only became available in the last 5 years. Even if ITER is
built not using HTS, can HTS be later retrofitted into it and therefore
improve its performance down the line?

~~~
topspin
These are certainly the _painfully_ obvious questions aren't they? Hartwig
claimed that HTS can make existing designs either smaller or more powerful, so
what about ITER?

And yet it isn't addressed, and it -- somehow -- doesn't occur to anyone in
this MIT audience to ask. Even if one wished to argue that ITER is committed
to a design and shouldn't be altered at this point it would still useful and
compelling to at least compute how much better the ITER reactor might be...
but nothing like that happens here.

I imagine that any person endeavouring to earn a place in fusion power
research (at least at the university or government level) needs to be careful
about questioning ITER design. At the moment ITER is the home of many of the
worlds leading fusion power minds and all of the best funded ones, so you'd
better have your ducks in a row. The fact that the question isn't directly
addressed is probably an indication of just how certain the HTS proponents are
about their proposal.

One of the best parts of the talk were the photographs of the unknown alloys
("tokamakium") being deposited on the surfaces of a tokamak plasma chamber.
Interesting things.

~~~
candiodari
ITER has done heroic design efforts over the past few years. But you'd be
disappointed how small the resulting changes were, but they were heroic
efforts. Things like feedback systems for plasma containment. So to your
question, the answer is no. ITER cannot be retrofitted to use HTS materials.
Effectively they cannot change the materials they use, nor can they change the
shape of the superconductors. If you can't do that, there's no real point to
switching to HTS supply.

The problem with ITER is that it's being half-ass funded. It's only enough
funding to build it over 50 years or so. We could spend 3-4x the amount one
year and have it built in 2 years instead and we wouldn't be asking these
sorts of questions. We would know (that it doesn't work - I'm not a believer.
However, I do agree that a massive amount of plasma physics will be learned
with it after it fails to Q>1).

------
ChuckMcM
Of course if you can build a 200MW plant (ARC) for $50B that has an operating
cost that allows for it to pay for itself in 10 years you'll have companies
like Apple or Facebook building them.

~~~
jjaredsimpson
That's $2.85 per kWh. Seems impractical

~~~
ChuckMcM
Well presumably _if_ you could build one, you could build fifty for better
economics. I agree with Dr. Hartwig that once you _know_ you can build even
one, everything changes. I hope I live to see that day.

~~~
shoo
i attended a talk on energy use at industrial chemical plants a few months ago
- one of the main points emphasised by the academic giving the talk was that
industry refuses to invest in deploying any new technique/approach coming out
of research until it is demonstrated that the new approach definitely works at
scale. maybe part of "knowing" that it works is having something operational
at large-scale and running for long enough to help identify and iron out
problems that weren't anticipated during design and smaller scale trials. if
it costs hundreds of millions to billions to build the thing you want to
guarantee that the approach is solid.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think that is exactly correct, it is also why Facebook and Google have built
more data centers in the last 10 years than any of the "established" internet
service providers. They operate on a different evaluation strategy, and
establishing a source of energy that they controlled and was 'green and
unencumbered' has been high on Google's list for a while. They helped build a
very large solar farm in the Mohave desert for just that reason.

And they are sitting on billions of dollars of cash that is returning maybe
1.2% in returns.

------
mozumder
Going beyond the tech into the business side, at $500 million a pop for the
smaller SPARC sized fusion reactors. There's an opportunity for startup
funding for this. Probably a market of 1,000-10,000 of these smaller reactors
around the world, just for the initial first generation.

------
SCAQTony
Te lecture begins at the 2:20 mark

------
johnnybowman
Does it mention anything about timeline?

~~~
ChuckMcM
The obligatory 10 to 15 years :-)

More seriously though a summary is that you can buy off the shelf high
temperature superconductors (HTS) and they allow a Tokamak type architecture
to reach break even with a much smaller machine. He wants to build such a
machine to prove his statements.

He did not address the question what this means for stellerators (only that
they were interesting to watch)

And I found his dismissal of LENR somewhat presumptuous. His point that there
isn't any sort of theory yet that is testable experimentally that would
explain the results is true, but as far as I can tell the ability to generate
results from an experiment that are not explained by existing theory is
something to not write off just yet. I agree that it's unlikely in the extreme
to have an impact but science has to accept that sometimes the crazy stuff
leads to a deeper understanding.

~~~
ted_dunning
If you aren't willing to write of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions AKA cold fusion
(had to look that up) by now, when _will_ you think it appropriate?

It is now 30 years on from Pons and Fleischman's famous mistake and we have
had a tiny smattering of irreproducible results and a mass of reproducible
non-results.

The point about lack of a theory is a nice way to say that there isn't any
plausible explanation why researchers who produced watts of excess energy
didn't die of either neutron or gamma flux. All of the supposed explanations
that I have heard have been tens of orders of magnitude off of the mark.

So what kind of reasonable dismissal of LENR would you find not presumptuous?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Hmm, it's a fair question. I pretty much _have_ written off LENR as has most
everyone else, my comment was that I try not to disparage people who haven't
written it off, I just set my expectations that something that will come from
it at zero.

The difference is that I feel it is a perfectly _legitimate scientific
pursuit_ to understand what is going on in a LENR experiment producing
unexplained results, even if I personally don't expect it to produce any
meaningful results. I know its a fine line, I totally dismiss creationists
trying to 'prove' that the world is only 6,000 years old, even though they
tell me they have approached it 'scientifically.'

------
tekkk
Cool. I posted this same link two times already. No matter, it's a very
interesting video but I'm quite curious how people can get their links to the
front page. It seems impossible unless you rapidly gain like tens of upvotes
or else it just drops from the new list and goes unnoticed.

------
crimsonalucard
Did not know tony starks arc reactor was based off of real fusion research.
Interesting.

