
Inside the Dynomak: A Fusion Technology Cheaper Than Coal - ohaal
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/inside-the-dynomak-a-fusion-technology-cheaper-than-coal
======
ThePhysicist
The important word in the article is "experiment": As of now, most of the cost
estimates and even the viability of this new type of fusion reactor are based
on calculations only. It's of course great that new types of reactors get
researched, it's just a pity that the press always seems to overreact and sell
these experiments as production-ready systems to the world. This is probably
the main cause for the public skepticism towards fusion energy: Too often
early prototypes have been sold as working reactors.

BTW, there have been numerous proposed improvements over the Tokamak reactor
type over the years, such as the "Stellarator"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator)),
most of them have proven too complex to be of practical use though.

~~~
ommunist
Yeah, mankind will feed from simple Soviet designs that just works for
decades. Tokamak is a just a fascinating example. Think lasers for example --
the USSR tech of the 60-es ;-)

~~~
DonHopkins
All that fascinating technology, yet they're still afraid of gay people.

~~~
1971genocide
what ? Gay marriage is still not legalized in most of the united states. and
gay in russia means paedophiles included, its something putin has conjured up.

Saying Russians are scared of gays is like saying americans are all fat and
lazy.

~~~
DonHopkins
You facts are wrong, and even if you were right, your argument doesn't hold
any water.

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stormbrew
From an outsider's perspective, it kind of seems like fusion research is
picking up recently, especially in terms of the diversity of approaches by
relatively credible teams. Before it seemed like the credible effort was the
tokamak and everything else was the domain of crackpots. If so, this seems
like a good thing to me, even if most of these approaches might be doomed to
failure. Should have been happening years ago.

I'm curious if that's just some kind of perception filter thing, though, or if
not what's causing it.

~~~
phreeza
Putting on my tinfoil hat for a moment here, something I picked up on a
similar fusion story here on HN a while ago: there have recently been a lot of
news stories that _may_ be interpreted as being aimed at bringing down the oil
price. Not sure if I buy it, but if it is the case, it seems to be working.

~~~
XorNot
Fusion energy doesn't replace oil. It doesn't substantially reduce dependence
on it - oil fired power plants are uncommon compared to the quantity of coal
ones, and we have _a lot_ of coal to go through (well, not so much I guess -
Australia has 400 years worth, but that's what, 5-6 generations + blasting our
country into an uninhabitable wasteland?)

Fusion energy replaces coal powerplants, and probably fuel bunkers on
container ships/air craft carriers. No concept is small enough or dense enough
to replace oil, although _cheap_ fusion energy would make all sorts of crazy
synthetic hydrocarbon schemes viable.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Actually it can replace oil. _Making_ long chain hydrocarbons through a
process like the Fischer-Tropsch one is fairly straight forward if you have
the energy. You would still have a refinery but sitting on the ocean with your
fusion power plant your refinery would never need to have an oil tanker
offload, instead your fusion plant would be supplying the energy to pull CO2
out of the air, hydrogen and oxygen out of the water and converting them into
what the base for what ever the refinery needed.

~~~
dredmorbius
A technology I've only recently learned of, though the concept dates back 50
years.

It was first pursued by Meyer Steinberg, a nuclear physicist working at
Brookhaven National Labs. The US Navy's picked it up on the basis that they 1)
have a great deal of nuclear experience and 2) consume large volumes of fossil
fuel.

Check my recent post history for more on the topic, here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8665101](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8665101)

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is an excellent summary. One of the more interesting developments here
has been the development of zeolites for CO processing that you run through a
concentrated solar facility for heat. (Zeolites suck up CO2 while cold, you
ferry them to the focal point of the CSP, they outgas the CO2 which is
collected, and get returned to the pile below.)

~~~
dredmorbius
Thanks. The advantage of seawater extraction is that the carbon concentrations
are ~140x those of the atmosphere by volume. Oh, and for those who are
curious, freshwater _doesn 't_ have the same concentrations -- this really is
a seawater method, not a "water-based" method.

I'll look for information on the zeolite processes.

Of all places, the West Virginia Coal Association has a wealth of information
on carbon sequestration research. I suspect it's because the industry's
counting on this for its future lease on life.

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blaze33
One reason that allowed us to quickly develop fission power is that the
physics is mostly linear meaning building a 1GW plant wasn't so much more
difficult once you mastered the small experimental reactors.

Now I worked on nuclear plants and not on fusion research but I heard that the
main issue with fusion power is the non-linearity that comes along when
scaling up small experiments. Things like not being really able to predict
plasma behavior at industrial scale even if it works fine in the lab. Could
anyone with a better understanding of the physics expand on this ?

~~~
pavlov
I'm definitely not an expert, but building new fission plants to modern
standards seems to be substantially more difficult than previously thought.

The only new fission plant being built in Western Europe, Olkiluoto 3 in
Finland, was supposed to go online in 2010 but is still unfinished:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#U...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3)

Estimates suggest it may not be done until 2020, and the budget has overrun to
about $10.6 billion USD versus the original cost estimate of about $3.75B USD.
(This reactor is now more expensive than the Large Hadron Collider!)

When a fission plant costs $10B+ today, I wonder how much the first working
fusion plant will cost -- if we ever get that far.

~~~
b4stien
You forgot Flamanville 3 in France:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_\(nuclear_reactor\)#Flamanville_3_.28EDF.27s_first_plant.29).
Same problems though (huge delay, budget increase, ...)

~~~
bazzargh
And Hinkley C in Somerset, UK
[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/20/hinkley-
poin...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/20/hinkley-point-c-
nuclear-plant-boss-nigel-cann) (again, delays etc - currently only earthworks
are going on)

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carapace
Dr. Bussard gave a very interesting talk on his design for "inertial
electrostatic confinement" fusion reactor:
[http://youtu.be/rk6z1vP4Eo8](http://youtu.be/rk6z1vP4Eo8)

~~~
kristianp
See [http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php](http://www.talk-
polywell.org/bb/index.php) for info on his design, and other fusion news.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell)

------
Elrac
I'm a bit skeptical about the claim "it doesn't produce dangerous, long-term
toxic waste." I'm no expert but I've read that fusion reactors will be
producing massive amounts of neutron radiation (like the neutron bomb, AKA the
"real estate bomb," heh!) which ends up absorbed by the cladding of the
reactor chamber and converts it to partly radioactive isotopes.

A consequence is that the reaction chamber walls lose their physical
integrity, i.e. become brittle, so leaving them in place is not an option.
Thus, when operating a fusion reactor, you're constantly forced to replace
crunchy, fusion-baked, radioactive reactor wall debris with newly built wall
plates.

I admit to having no idea about which isotopes would be produced and what
their half-life would be. If anyone can shed some light or correct me, I'd be
indebted.

~~~
DennisP
Here's an article that quotes a fusion researcher saying there'd be much less
waste from fusion, and it would stop being significantly radioactive after 50
to 100 years: [http://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2012/safer,-more-
efficient,-f...](http://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2012/safer,-more-
efficient,-fusion-generated-electricity-is-on-the-horizon123.php)

That's a researcher working in mainstream fusion, so that would be for
deuterium-tritium fuel, which is the easiest but produces very high-energy
neutrons. More advanced fuels are mostly aneutronic. Helion is attempting
D-D/D-He3, which would release only 6% of its energy as neutron radiation.
Tri-Alpha and LPP are attempting boron fusion, for which neutron radiation is
only 1% of the released energy.

~~~
Elrac
The "state of the art" looks a bit chaotic to people looking in from the
outside, what with the variety of approaches being tested. But this is exactly
how progress is made in science!

I'm glad to see that neutron blasting is being taken into consideration. I
suppose not wasting most of your energy output as destructive radiation makes
excellent sense economically, too.

Thanks!

~~~
DennisP
With D-T the neutrons do heat a fluid, so it's not like the energy is wasted.
For example, General Fusion would use them to heat a mixture of molten lead
and lithium (the latter for breeding more tritium), which would heat water for
a steam turbine. But aneutronic fuels put most of their energy into fast-
moving charged particles, which lets you extract electric power without using
a turbine.

------
omellet
The article lists several other fusion approaches that are also in
development. Does anyone have a real sense of the likelihood of any of these
actually working? I'm optimistic, but also naïve about the engineering
challenges.

~~~
arethuza
There are a lot of fascinating engineering issues with projects like ITER -
which are starting to scale up towards a commercial scale fusion plant. For
example the ITER cryostat is apparently the largest high-vacuum chamber ever
built:

[http://www.iter.org/newsline/294/1792](http://www.iter.org/newsline/294/1792)

~~~
apaprocki
The sad part is that the Tokamaks were being defunded in order to fund ITER,
which wasn't even built yet. I'm not sure what wound up happening. I visited
the one at MIT and got to see it fire live from inside the control room, but
the postdocs were all sad that we were canning working primary research for
what seemed like a complicated construction boondoggle. I hope they found
another way to fund the research!

~~~
ZenoArrow
I don't understand what you mean by "The sad part is that the Tokamaks were
being defunded in order to fund ITER". ITER is a tokamak, the world's largest
(if/when it's completed), so funding for tokamaks is not a problem.

------
Mithaldu
Do i understand this right that with the HIT-SI3 they have already built a
working dynomak that can generate a surplus of energy, albeit at a small
scale, and the challenge is to make a bigger one that still works?

~~~
the8472
Looking at the linked abstract[1] of a paper about their experimental device
it seems like they're running their prototype with a helium plasma, which
can't produce energy (He-4 fusion processes require a lot more activation
energy than various hydrogen processes). So they're mostly testing the plasma
physics and rely on projections for the energy yield if actual fusion were to
happen.

[1]
[http://absimage.aps.org/image/DPP14/MWS_DPP14-2014-000198.pd...](http://absimage.aps.org/image/DPP14/MWS_DPP14-2014-000198.pdf)

------
seren
Like the Lockheed announcement, the goal seems to raise more funds to create
more advanced prototype, so obviously the perspective sounds optimistic.

------
illumen
"The primary argument against fusion power has been that despite decades of
work, it still doesn’t exist"

I'd bet on thermal solar, that is proven to work. Also smart energy management
with wind and solar are all proven to work. Electric cars have big batteries
which are proven to work as energy storage.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
I know, there are several viable alternatives that would cost much less than
the equivalent in fusion. Simply putting solar on most rooftops at about $20K
per install would probably create a huge surplus in existing electric
generation.

That said, I favor the continued R&D and I hope one of these approaches pans
out. Research is rarely wasted.

~~~
danmaz74
Photostatic already produces a surplus at some hours, but produce nothing at
other hours. That's a big big problem.

~~~
marvin
This problem is already solved from a technical perspective: It is now
possible to buy durable and reliable >10kWh battery packs to install in
residential solar setups. The only remaining issue is volume production and
cost.

We'll see what happens once Tesla's new battery plant is up and running in a
few years, my money is on this being a game-changer.

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lotsofmangos
So, from what I understand, they are blowing a charged smoke-ring of plasma
and then coupling it inductively as one half of a motor, so they can keep it
sustained, and the more electric you feed in, the hotter and tighter and
faster it goes. I want one.

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dghf
> The primary argument against fusion power has been that despite decades of
> work, it still doesn’t exist.

I thought it did exist but wasn't efficient (i.e., energy in > energy out)?

~~~
Elrac
You're correct. Fusion is routinely achieved already, but without approaching
a positive energy balance.

When people talk about "doing" fusion, it's usually implied to mean "in a
commercially viable way."

~~~
frtab
A positive energy balance was achieved in 2013.

[http://www.nature.com/news/laser-fusion-experiment-
extracts-...](http://www.nature.com/news/laser-fusion-experiment-extracts-net-
energy-from-fuel-1.14710)

For only a hundredth of a second, and not even remotely economically viable
yet. But it's a step in the right direction.

~~~
Elrac
I stand corrected, thanks! I guess I'd need to add "sustained" to my shopping
list of implied necessary criteria.

~~~
db48x
Add in 'with a practical mass budget' as well. Right now the best known way to
produce power from fusion is to build a star, and put solar panels around it.

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jacknews
There seems to be a flurry of "fusion/energy breakthrough" press items
recently. On the one hand it's extremely exciting, but on the other, I wonder
if there's a more sinister motive behind all the press. Cui Bono?

