
A Commercial Path to Fusion - theothermkn
https://physicsworld.com/a/a-commercial-path-to-fusion/
======
hairytrog
This is R&D - not a commercial path.

These types of fusion projects are trying to prove the most basic piece of the
puzzle: net energy generation. And it is a big problem, even for Commonwealth.
I've heard that the magnets are underperforming by about a factor of 2 - and
that's 4 years into the project.

But commercialization is a lot more than just proving that the concept is
physically possible. It was proven possible that man could walk on the moon,
but it's not a commercial activity 50 years in. Commercialization for nuclear
energy systems means global deployment, mass manufacturing, lack of
proliferation risk, extreme safety, etc. Fusion systems like Commonwealth's do
not meet any of these criteria. They are constantly generating radioactive
waste because they have to breed their fuel and reprocess it on site.

To commercialize, you have to be able to deploy the technology in a
significantly better way than traditional fission. These large fusion
prototypes ($65B for ITER and $5B for Commonwealth based on their 2015 white
paper, so probably 2-4x larger now) exacerbate traditional nuclear's cost
problems because they are construction projects that will last decades. Viable
nuclear solutions will be factory manufactured rather than constructed.

For comments from MIT dissenter in 80s that stand true today:
[http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-
Trou...](http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trouble-With-
Fusion_MIT_Tech_Review_1983.pdf)

For a review of fusion problems: [https://thebulletin.org/2018/02/iter-is-a-
showcase-for-the-d...](https://thebulletin.org/2018/02/iter-is-a-showcase-for-
the-drawbacks-of-fusion-energy/)

~~~
Iv
If Apollo 11 had found oil on the moon, we would have a few thousand people
living there already. There is just nothing profitable in going to the moon.

With fusion the opposite is true: we know energy is precious, and we know its
market price. Just prove it can be done and commercialization will happen very
quickly.

~~~
clarkmoody
> If Apollo 11 had found oil on the moon, we would have a few thousand people
> living there already.

You're forgetting the most important piece of information in the economy:
price.

Since oil produced on Earth is cheap, compared with hauling it back from the
Moon, we don't get any from the Moon.

Now, if we had found some exotic energy source that didn't exist on Earth at
all, that would be a different story.

~~~
garmaine
> Now, if we had found some exotic energy source that didn't exist on Earth at
> all, that would be a different story.

Which does exist, btw: helium-3 which is deposited by the solar wind and
captured in cold traps on the lunar poles. It doesn't exist on Earth in any
quantity, except artificially produced in nuclear laboratories. He3 fusion is
easier to achieve and less dangerous to operate.

~~~
clarkmoody
Sounds like an excellent reason to go to the Moon :-)

~~~
dTal
Unlikely:

"The helium-3 incantation" \-
[http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1](http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1)

tl;dr the popularity of mine-the-moon-for-he3 meme is due to wishful thinking
about sustainable moon colonies, and there's no analysis that suggests it's
even remotely practical to do.

~~~
garmaine
That article is bogus. Let's take the outline points:

"There are no fusion reactors."

Well, duh. Fusion power isn't _that_ far off though. Even Lockheed has a self-
funded fusion power program being run out of Skunkworks, which isn't known for
ivory-tower boondoggles. Even so, part of the point is that He3 fusion is
different from D-T fusion, which brings us to...

"Helium-3 fusion is even more difficult than regular fusion."

No, He3 fusion ignition temperatures are higher than D-T fusion. But in every
other way aneutronic fusion reactors are easier to build and maintain than
neutron-generating D-T. They can be smaller, lighter, generate less
radioactive waste, permit more efficient direct electrical current generation,
and require simpler electrostatic containment than Tokamak-like designs. You
can literally build one in your garage.

"Helium-3 may be very difficult to locate and mine on the Moon"

This was invalidated by LRO's data on the cold traps in permanently shadowed
craters on the Moon (and MESSENGER's data on Mercury), which were then
validated by simulations of the Moon's exosphere and interaction with the
solar wind. The regolith in these craters is as much 40% volatiles by weight,
of which a economically extractable fraction is He3 from the solar wind.

~~~
pfdietz
The huge point against lunar 3He, even ignoring that it's two orders of
magnitude less reactive than DT, is the difficulty of extracting it on the
moon.

3He occurs in regolith in concentrations measured in the ppb. Even with
beneficiation of fine fractions and efficient recycling of heat from the
thermal extraction step, the energy requires are large, a significant fraction
of the energy the 3He would produce when fused.

So to power the terrestrial economy with 3He, you need to put a significant
fraction of the terrestrial energy output on the moon to get the 3He. Power
plants on the moon will be much more expensive than on Earth (because labor,
materials, and supply chains will be more expensive there, even with cheap
space transport), so this is unlikely to pencil out.

~~~
garmaine
Your information about the composition of the moon is 30 years out of date.
He3 would be mined from the cold traps in permanently shadowed craters at the
north and south poles of the moon. There it exists in extremely high
concentrations, alongside other useful volatiles that together make up 40% of
the surface material by weight.

“Refining” is a process as simple as shoveling it into a pressure container,
heating it, and then letting dissipatively cool back to ambient temperature,
collecting the other volatiles as they condense out. What’s left is a mix of
inert gasses, including He3.

~~~
pfdietz
There is no data on 3He at the poles. The area there is small anyway.

The concentration of 3He on the moon in general is such that simply heating
regolith without heat recycling and separation of fines would use more energy
than the 3He would yield if fused.

------
evdev
For a breakdown of the reasoning behind the project, if you haven't already
seen it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk)

~~~
rhcom2
For a layman this was incredibly interesting. The speaker explains the
concepts very well.

------
Balero
For anyone interested in learning more about the history of fusion power
research I would recommend the book: A Piece of the Sun: The Quest for Fusion
Energy

I found it informative, and a really easy read to get a good overview of the
history of the research.

~~~
dmix
Agreed this a great history about how the standard designs came about,
particularly the two big ones historically: Tokamak (Soviet approach,
mentioned in this article) and Stellarator (US/Princeton approach). Then later
in the 1970s ICE using lasers (inertial confinement fusion) which is the other
dominant form in modern attempts since Stellarator hasn't worked out.

Reads a bit like those Manhattan Project books.

[https://www.amazon.com/Piece-Sun-Quest-Fusion-
Energy/dp/B00D...](https://www.amazon.com/Piece-Sun-Quest-Fusion-
Energy/dp/B00DRG3WH2/)

~~~
chiefalchemist
Approx four or five years ago I had an accidental/random conversation with one
of the prominent researchers at the Princeton facility (PPPL). Long to short,
he said, "We're getting there. The more funding we have, the sooner we'll get
there. But yeah, we're really close."

Mind you, that's what any research scientist would say. But everything I've
seen and read since tells me he's was being honest and has been accurate. I
hope he's right.

[https://www.pppl.gov/](https://www.pppl.gov/)

~~~
Iv
That's really one of my dream: that fusion ends up being up in the corner and
suddenly the energy crisis is over.

~~~
chiefalchemist
I too will be happy to see the clean energy problem solved. On the other hand,
if big oil - and the countries that depend on it - implodes then we have a new
problem. That's not pretty.

------
kybernetikos
The plasma needs to be >=200 million kelvin, the superconductor that contains
it doesn't work if its not <=20 kelvin. No wonder this is an engineering
nightmare!

I wonder if gradients that extreme exist in nature.

~~~
DennisP
I won't say it's not challenging, but bear in mind that while the plasma is at
high temperature, it has very low density. The atoms are moving really fast
but there aren't many of them. Consequently the amount of _heat_ is comparable
to fossil plants.

------
numakerg
How would a commercial venture plan to recoup their investment cost when (if)
they finally reach a viable reactor design?

If an American/European company came out with a working reactor, would India
and China pay for the technology, or would they put hundreds of billions into
developing their own? What about the opposite scenario? Even a tiny peek at
the design would shave off a large portion of the cutting edge investment. On
the other hand, fusion could completely alter the course of climate change,
perhaps it's cheaper in the long run to just give out the technology.

~~~
Zigurd
Disney manages to get them to pay for movies enough of the time. Reactors are
more difficult to bootleg.

------
digikata
The Omega Tau podcast had some very interesting discussions about various
improvements needed for fusions reactors to hit parity in their Wendelstein 7x
episode. Some discussions I think come out all the more because the 7x was
targeted to plasma research so many practical aspects are discussed outside
the normal fusion discussion that hits regular science media.

[https://omegataupodcast.net/312-the-
wendelstein-7-x-fusion-e...](https://omegataupodcast.net/312-the-
wendelstein-7-x-fusion-experiment/)

------
Animats
_The SPARC project’s first task, over the next few years, will be to build and
test a full-scale prototype HTS fusion magnet. ... one of the primary missions
of the prototype HTS coil will be to investigate our ability to detect and
mitigate a “quench” event, which is a sudden loss of superconductivity._

Good for a decade of funding and theses before having to actually work on
fusion.

This is not a "commercial path to fusion". This is superconducting magnet R&D.

------
peteretep
With renewables getting better every day, at what point will they make fusion
reactors irrelevant?

~~~
theothermkn
Saul Griffith has an old talk entitled "Climate Change Recalculated." The gist
is that he converts everyday energy consumption into averaged watts over a
day, and then looks at the energy area density of renewables. The resulting
picture is rather daunting. If we go 100% renewable--If we even could!--all of
our lifestyles would be radically curtailed, and this is after a construction
binge of enormous scale.

We absolutely need fission and/or fusion. Of this there is no doubt.

~~~
pfdietz
Yeah, that's bullshit. Energy density of renewables doesn't preclude current
lifestyles. The Earth is constantly hit by 100,000 TW of sunlight, and the
energy collected doesn't have to be used near where the collectors are.

~~~
serioussecurity
Density in this case referring to "kW per acre of solar panels", and the #s
come out to something like covering all of Australia with solar panels, if I
remember correctly.

~~~
peteretep
> and the #s come out to something like covering all of Australia with solar
> panels, if I remember correctly

You do not remember correctly. Estimates seem to vary, but Musk reckons 100
miles by 100 miles for America[0] which I make as 0.003% of Australia. It's a
large (if imaginary) place.

[0] [https://futurism.com/elon-musk-tells-national-governors-
asso...](https://futurism.com/elon-musk-tells-national-governors-association-
how-we-could-power-the-u-s-with-solar)

~~~
theothermkn
GP remembers correctly. From
[http://longnow.org/seminars/02009/jan/16/climate-change-
reca...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02009/jan/16/climate-change-
recalculated/) :

> In other words, the land area dedicated to renewable energy (”Renewistan”)
> would occupy a space about the size of Australia to keep the carbon dioxide
> level at 450 ppm. To get to Hanson’s goal of 350 ppm of carbon dioxide,
> fossil fuel burning would have to be cut to ZERO, which means another 3
> terawatts would have to come from renewables, expanding the size of
> Renewistan further by 26 percent.

~~~
pfdietz
That confuses primary energy with zero-entropy energy (work). One does not
replace a gigajoule of coal with a gigajoule of electrical energy. It also is
talking about biomass, which is very land inefficient.

So, basically, the source you are pointing to is obviously flawed and should
be ignored.

------
carapace
FWIW, Dr. Robert Bussard claimed in 2006 that the inertial electrostatic
confinement fusor could be developed for ~$200M IIRC

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

"Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really)"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6z1vP4Eo8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6z1vP4Eo8)

~~~
pfdietz
I wouldn't believe that for a moment, and Google probably didn't either.

It's interesting how the internet enables wishful thinking like this. You'd
have thought the dearth of peer reviewed papers about Polywell would have been
a clue, but true believers admit no impediment to their belief.

There are good theoretical reasons to believe IEC fusion cannot work on
advanced fuels, reasons that HAVE appeared in the peer reviewed literature.

~~~
carapace
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Would it be so terrible to do
a little more research? If only to honor Dr Bussard's (RIP) memory? Google's
not hurting for cash right now?

"When a physicist tells you something is possible you should believe him, when
a physicist tells you something is impossible you should doubt him."

I forget who said that, but it holds. Lots of things had "good theoretical
reasons" for not working until someone figured out how. Planes? Visiting the
Moon?

~~~
pfdietz
Absence of evidence is evidence of shenanigans.

If someone is making a claim, especially a remarkable claim, it is their
responsibility to provide evidence for their claim. If they cannot, or if
their evidence is such that it cannot pass peer review, something stinks, and
one should be highly skeptical.

This is not a case of "no one has shown X, therefore X should be dismissed".
It's "P has claimed X, but has not shown evidence to justify their claim,
therefore their claim should not be believed." If someone holds a position,
presumably they had a good reason to do that, and one can ask for that
reasoning and evidence (and ask that that reasoning and evidence be verified
by peer review.)

~~~
carapace
Dude, Dr. Bussard died not long after the video I linked to, so maybe you
don't realize you're kind of disparaging a man who's no longer here to defend
himself.

In any event, I didn't mean to upset you. I'm not a physicist, nor some sort
of "true believer", I just think Dr. Bussard's ideas deserve more research
before we can rule them out so definitively. Maybe I'm a gullible dufus. On
the Internet.

------
Swivekth18
SPARC is an HTS experiment, showing the viability of compact Q>1 using the
technology, showing you don't have to be ITER -size to have successful fusion.
It doesn't claim to be and won't be much more than that. An important step,
nonetheless.

------
xchaotic
What I find particularly troubling about the design of tokamak reactors is
that on one hand you have magnets that need to be cooled to -250C or whatever
the “high” temperature is nowadays and in the middle of it you have plasma
that will leak thermal radiation in any way possible. The magnets themselves
will heat up from running large electric currents through them. This just
feels like a recipe for a disaster - if things suddenly stop working, due to
heat or otherwise you have a very hot, radioactive plasma trying to equalise
its energy with the outer world...

~~~
theothermkn
Well, there's kind of a chain of intuitions here that are off by up to orders
of magnitude. First, YBCO has a critical temperature of 93K, not 23K or so as
you've suggested (albeit not as a value for YBCO). In other words, there have
been advances in high temperature superconductors. Second, the magnets will
not heat up from having large currents running through them. This is the point
of superconductors. So, this estimate of resistivity is high by several orders
of magnitude. Third, any estimate of the total energy of the hot plasma that
gets us anywhere near verbiage hinting at explosions is too high by several
orders of magnitude. You could typically extinguish a burning plasma by
blowing gently on it. Finally, the thermal gradients aren't nearly so dire as,
you know, 200e6K _immediately_ next to 90K. There is typically over a meter
of, in order: near-vacuum; inner wall; flowing lithium blanket; outer wall;
and liquid nitrogen or other cryogenic coolant, all between the plasma and the
magnets.

This is the farthest thing from a recipe for disaster.

~~~
grogers
Just want to point out that specific critical temperature varies with magnetic
field. The article mentions 12T and 20K so presumably that is within some
reasonable safety margin of the limit for YBCO at that field strength.

------
AtlasBarfed
Don't fusion reactors have problems with vessel degradation from fast neutrons
turning the reactors themselves into radioactive waste?

LFTR is what fusion should have been, and should have gotten equivalent
funding. Plentiful fuel (thorium), can "burn" current nuclear waste as fuel,
meltdown safe, etc etc etc. And they can scale down to pretty small sizes, per
another commenter's "construction" vs "factory production" comment.

The only interesting fusion idea I've seen is antimatter catalyze fusion
rockets for space travel.

Wind/Solar/Storage have won. This would be wasted money.

~~~
travisoneill1
If they have won why do they not power most of the grid?

~~~
ben_w
Inertia. If I remember right, if you look at how the distribution of new power
sources rather than existing ones, more than half of new power is renewable.

