
Fusion Power Is About to Become a Reality? - zepto
https://medium.com/s/2069/finally-fusion-power-is-about-to-become-a-reality-c6b8b5915cf5
======
ChuckMcM
FWIW, I consider fusion power to be one of two possible black swan events that
will change the the future from what we consider 'gloom and doom' into
something much more fun to live in. The other, if you're wondering, is fully
decoded cell biology[1].

So if we have enough energy to operate at a high standard of living without
any imported raw material, it enables countries to switch from energy negative
economies to energy positive economies. For example African countries that
smelt the iron and aluminum that is being mined and exporting finished goods
rather than raw materials can capture more of the economic value of those
resources and keep it local. Building transport systems based on indigenous
electricity generation, removing dependency on pipelines and other fossil fuel
taxes. At a low enough cost, excess energy allows for the production of fresh
water from seawater, nitrogen from the atmosphere (for fertilizer and
farming), and long chain hydrocarbons (gas, oil, plastics, etc) using the
Fischer-Tropsch cycle.

[1] Basically we know a lot about how cells work and I expect at some point we
will know exactly how they work, allowing us a genetically remove errors that
result in disease, regenerate and replace any component of the body, and fix
any side effects from material exposure (like cancer).

~~~
epistasis
I don't understand your enthusiasm here, what are the potential wins of fusion
energy over any other energy source that we currently have?

Do you expect it to be super cheap, i.e. more than an order of magnitude
cheaper than solar? If so, how do you justify that belief? I ask this of
everyone that's enthusiastic about fusion, but I've never heard a reason why
fusion is such a desirable energy source.

~~~
fromthestart
Fusion is safe, clean, produces no waste, runs 24/7 on demand, and after
startup costs should be cheap, assuming repairs and maintenance aren't
enormously costly. Not to mention, more space efficient than wind or solar.
You don't need a particular environemt for it like hydro.

No more minig/drilling for energy. No more emissions. No toxic waste. No
hourly power variability. No need for batteries. Fusion is the perfect energy
source on paper, if it ever becomes a reality.

~~~
ben_w
D+D => 2% He4, 49% T (radioactive) + proton, 49% He3 + neutron (to a first
approximation, the only radiation which makes almost everything else
radioactive).

All tritium-based reactions require a steady manufacture of tritium because
the half life is too short.

All He3-based reactions either require it to be manufactured (conveniently
it’s the decay product of tritium, unfortunately see the earlier paragraph for
side effects), or mined — from a gas giant, because despite the meme,
concentrations on the moon are so low that it makes more sense to turn moon
rock into plasma, separate by isotope in a cyclotron, condense the metal into
cylinders, catapult the cylinders to earth, and the burn the cylinders in a
repurposed coal plant.

Even if you want to call fusion “clean” because you can design it so the
radioisotopes the neutron activation gives you are mostly benign, or because
you’re hoping for an aneutronic reaction like P-B11, it’s still a
proliferation hazard.

On the other hand, I’d love to see a rocket made from an open-ended fusion
reactor.

~~~
candiodari
Fusion is an energy source. Like any other energy source it's automatically
also a weapon. All energy sources have historically saved many more lives than
they ever cost, including nuclear power.

And even solar power is a weapon:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#Heat_ray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#Heat_ray)

~~~
ben_w
Yes.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that even current nuclear causes less deaths
per GWh than anything else including solar, it’s also the only power source
currently offering humanity a self-made extinction apocalypse.

(Also the heat mirror was debunked twice by Mythbusters, as referenced in your
own link).

~~~
candiodari
True, but that's only because it's a _really good_ power source. For instance,
it's also what allows us to have working devices outside our solar system, and
for similar reasons.

Any really good power source will have this problem, as will a great many
other technologies, should we have them.

~~~
ben_w
Indeed. I would rather we had mass interplanetary/lunar colonisation before
making interstellar propulsion, for that very reason.

------
cjslep
Seems like partially a Dennis Whyte puff piece.

The problem all tokomaks have is that ELMs exist and will remove the inner
lining of the containment unit over time, and current cutting edge research is
on how a plasma will react with specific impurities and their distribution
within said plasma. A major problem is lack of true experimental evidence, as
most fusion experiments are crude approximations of reality and then
subsequent closed source, poorly documented, or guess-the-fellow-researchers
code is at play.

Source: talked a lot this past holiday from a friend at ITER.

~~~
DennisP
As long as "over time" isn't too short of a time, the MIT has it covered.
Their design makes it easy to crack open the reactor and replace the inner
wall, which will be 3D-printed. They plan to do it annually.

~~~
cjslep
I read the article. I wasn't clear in my original post. The issue isn't the
ablation of the containment wall and replacing the wall, the issue is how to
properly manage the plasma as the containment impurities disperse throughout
the plasma and how it impacts the fusion, magnetic, pressure, and temperature
characteristics on both a local and macro level. Which is a common problem
between the MIT and other tokomak reactors.

------
StavrosK
What do you mean "finally"? It's been about to become a reality for decades!

~~~
csours
It's been 20 years away for the past 60 years. Now it's only 10 years away.

~~~
izzydata
So we are only 30 years from it being 5 years away?

~~~
FlyMoreRockets
Commercial fusion will coincide with the Singularity.

~~~
TeMPOraL
As expected. It's often forgotten that acceleration of technology caused by
runaway recursively-improving AI would require rapidly increasing availability
of energy - after all, something has to power all this tech. Who knows, maybe
lack of fusion power is the one thing that'll delay the singularity? :).

------
xefer
I believe this (long!) video of a Dennis Whyte talk from 2016 was posted to HN
way back when:

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

It sounded pretty encouraging, but I have no idea what progress has been made
or if these ideas had run into any roadblocks in two years since this was
first discussed.

------
mcguire
Paul Erdös said mathematicians were god's way of converting coffee into
theorems. I claim programmers are god's way of converting coffee into
profanity.

Fusion research is god's way of converting money into promises. This same
article could have been written in the 1980s.

" _Fusion definitely works. You see it every day. Our sun and other stars
blast hydrogen atoms together with such intense force that their nuclei
overcome their normal inclination to repel each other._ "

And all we need to do it is a mass of hydrogen the size of the sun.

~~~
perilunar
> And all we need to do it is a mass of hydrogen the size of the sun.

Done. Now we just need to set up lots of panels to collect the energy.

------
nickik
I have never understood why people are so hot for fusion.

Fusion gives you 10^15 energy density, fission gives you 10^12 already. So the
difference between fusion and fission is really not relevant compared to what
we have now.

Fusion has many of the same potential practical problem as fission and many
even worse.

Yet fission is here, its the highest low-carbon energy source, it has proven
to be able to replace fossil on a MASSIVE scale, see France, US, South Korea,
Japan, Switzerland, Sweden and so on.

Fusion is the dream in the future that makes it easy for people to dismiss
fission. And that is keeping us back. I'm not saying studying fusion is not
useful, but a we should put 10x more resources in fission research.

The world just does not make sense to me.

------
sp332
The new trouble with fusion and even near-future fission projects is that
solar and wind costs have plummeted. It's a lot harder to get investment in
anything else when solar is now $.03/kWh.

~~~
Libbum
You are mistaken. Grid level battery storage cannot provide baseline power for
days, and until that's a reality we will need a baseline power source that can
supply when there is no sun, wind (or hydro, wave etc where available). Fusion
& fission plants are the sustainable alternatives for this sector.

~~~
Tossrock
Calling it now: granite piston based gravity storage is going to be the grid-
scale storage solution: [http://gravitypower.net](http://gravitypower.net)

~~~
noobiemcfoob
fun read

~~~
Tossrock
If you find it interesting, the founder / inventor recently was a guest on the
Omega Tau science & engineering podcast:
[http://omegataupodcast.net/299-gravity-
storage/](http://omegataupodcast.net/299-gravity-storage/)

They go into much greater detail than the website.

------
lambdadmitry
The title picture is misleading. It's not a "fusion reactor", it's a training
facility at Culham, never having an actual reaction going (it's actually a few
spare sectors of the reactor vessel assembled together to form 3/4th of its
circumference). Those reflections all over the right part of the picture?
That's plexiglass window between the vessel and an access platform.

------
theothermkn
My problem with this article is the focus on the "startup" mythology of moving
fast and breaking things. Break a Coulomb barrier, first, and then come talk
to us.

I really liked
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk)
for a discussion of how to evaluate and understand fusion claims, as well as a
discussion of the high-field REBCO tapes that seem poised to enable the
ARC/SPARC reactors out of MIT. Another video I like is
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMxOvuSMAug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMxOvuSMAug)
, featuring Steven Cowley.

In short, newly commercially available high temperature superconductors in
mass quantities seem poised to give us at least a doubling of available
magnetic field strength, and all the figure of merit that improve only
linearly with size improve to the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th power with magnetic field
strength. This is what could lead to break-even before ITER, not the mythology
of American entrepreneurial moxie.

In my opinion, the article author knows whom he's flattering.

------
gonational
Some other articles about vapor power:

2016 -
[https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obj...](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11585194)

2014 - [http://techgenmag.com/2014/10/why-nuclear-fusion-will-
soon-b...](http://techgenmag.com/2014/10/why-nuclear-fusion-will-soon-become-
reality/)

2012 - [https://www.rt.com/usa/plasma-fusion-energy-
nuclear-080/](https://www.rt.com/usa/plasma-fusion-energy-nuclear-080/)

2010 - [https://www.universetoday.com/52696/nuclear-fusion-power-
clo...](https://www.universetoday.com/52696/nuclear-fusion-power-closer-to-
reality-say-two-separate-teams/)

2008 - [https://cleantechnica.com/2008/11/13/will-nuclear-fusion-
sol...](https://cleantechnica.com/2008/11/13/will-nuclear-fusion-solve-the-
energy-crisis/)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Our whole civilization might just depend on if we can get viable fusion
working in the near future. With global warming, I do not have any hope of a
political solution in the timeframe required. We can only hope for a technical
solution, and that solution will be very, very energy intensive (carbon
sequestration from the atmosphere, massive desalination to provide fresh water
for humans and agriculture, etc). Fusion is the only candidate that can
provide that level of energy at the density and scale in a location
independent manner.

------
zunzun
Valuable, valuable helium-3 can be mined on the moon and used for fuel after
we put a lightweight, working fusion reactor there with enough personnel and
spare parts to run it (puff,puff,inhale).

~~~
Symmetry
Helium-3 is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. Deuterium/Tritium is a lot easier
to fuse and is what pretty much everybody working on the problem is looking
at. If, later, we were able to get get helium-3/deuterium fusion working that
would be great because then there wouldn't be any neutrons created reducing
the already modest fusion nuclear waste problem to zero. But that's still a
ways off.

~~~
the8472
Well, the gamma rays produced by fusion can still photo-desintegrate various
elements which in turn leads to secondary neutron radiation and unstable
isotopes. I don't know what the cross sections of those interactions are but
it's not quite zero.

------
X6S1x6Okd1st
It sounds like we really don't know what the maintenance/running costs will
be. Is there a good reason to think that this will certainly beat the cost of
fission?

~~~
pfdietz
There's excellent reason to think it won't.

------
ryanmercer
Eh, it is my opinion that we are a long way from even having a net-positive
prototype reactor (if ever).

Even if we get one operational, I suspect the construction cost alone would be
an order of magnitude more than a traditional nuclear reactor. Then, how much
of a net output will you actually be capable of generating, probably a
fraction of the energy it consumes which is something but by the time you
factor in construction costs as well as maintenance/upkeep costs you're
probably going to have a fantastically expensive power source.

Then consider that if we had a viable fusion reactor TODAY, and only needed
10,000 of them to replace the 62,000 something power plants in the world it
would likely take many decades to build them all. Then of course, energy
consumption increases over time.

Between 1990 and 2008 world energy consumption increased 39%. Since 2008 we've
added considerably more electronics to our lives just in 'the first world'
nations so I suspect that increase has been even greater in the past decade.
Factor in electric vehicles being added and...

So even if we do get fusion working in the near future, it's not going to be
anywhere near a miracle.

~~~
kolinko
The consumption probably grew due to Asia and Africa using more electricity,
but in the western world?

In 2008 I had a stationary computer taking 350W-400W, a bunch of 100W
lightbulbs in my house, a TV, and an old fridge. Now I have 60W laptop that
took over my TV as well, and most of the lightbulbs are the power efficient
ones taking 10-20W, 100W ones are not even being sold in Europe (a few
exceptions aside).

(Just checked - in Europe, electricity consumption was on the rise to around
2008, and then remained static and even fell a bit)

~~~
ryanmercer
>The consumption probably grew due to Asia and Africa using more electricity,
but in the western world?

Fair, looking at more recent data it looks like between 2008 and 2017 the US
has bounced back and forth about 100 TWh in total use.

BUT if you look at things like Bitcoin... one estimate (
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/new-study-
quanti...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/new-study-quantifies-
bitcoins-ludicrous-energy-consumption/) ) put the Bitcoin network alone using
30-70 TWh a year.

If we look at [https://yearbook.enerdata.net/](https://yearbook.enerdata.net/)
we see more recent data and yeah the biggest culprit is Asia with 1-3%
increases each year. I imagine a good chunk of this is manufacturing for
'first world' countries though which one could argue should be assigned to the
countries being exported to not the country doing the manufacturing but that's
going to be way too complicated to estimate. I work in international freight
and I've definitely seen freight grow in the past decade, especially Asia (if
we exclude the past few months with Section 301 and China) and if EVs start to
catch on in the next 5-10 years you'll likely see a large jump in actual
electrical demand as well.

The middle east is consistently growing, I'm guessing a lot of that isn't
'third world' areas though and more likely cities like Dubai.

Something to keep in mind though is global warming, if budgets allow I imagine
we're going to see cost of cooling increase in the coming years.

~~~
mquander
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Consumption)

 _In 2016 the total US consumption of electricity was 4,137.1 terawatt-hours
(TWh)._

~~~
ryanmercer
"bounced back and forth about 100 TWh" as in on year 4000, one year 3900, one
year 4100.

~~~
mquander
Oh, OK, I misunderstood.

~~~
ryanmercer
I figured :)

------
modzu
the headline is clickbaity but the gist of the article is different: even if
its a long way off or even if it might not work, its very important to try

------
shaki-dora
It seems like there's a segment of the tech crowd forever living in some 1950s
sci-fi fantasy. There must be something about big hairy difficult-to-control
technology that has an emotional appeal to a certain segment.

Meanwhile, in the real world, wind and especially solar power, as well as
battery technology, are close to being cost-competitive with even the cheapest
power sources (i. e. coal and gas).

I know it still stings how the general public just insisted on their black
swans or whatever, and didn't quite like the idea of radiation as much as you
do.

But the safety argument has long become irrelevant. Nuclear power has lost on
economic terms now, and it has absolutely no chance of catching up with
renewables in the one or two decades until those become so cheap as to render
that fight irrelevant, too.

~~~
pfdietz
There's something Dieselpunk about fusion reactors. One could make the case
it's a replay of vacuum tubes (read fusion) vs. transistors (read photovoltaic
cells). The former are hot and bulky and relatively dangerous; the latter are
made churned out by the billions at ever decreasing costs.

------
logfromblammo
I'm at about the point where I will finally believe fusion power is a reality
when the utilities board has just approved a $0.005/kWh rate increase to
handle some unexpected cost overruns, experienced during the decommissioning
of a 50-year-old fusion plant.

------
pier25
If fusion works (and that's a really big if) it could be the miracle humanity
needs.

~~~
swarnie_
Until someone works out how to weaponize it which always seems to be the
way....

~~~
cestith
Weaponized fusion has been around for decades. Getting a confined, long-term
reaction from which to draw usable power is the difficult part remaining.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

That said, the actual article doesn't have a question. But they've been saying
"Fusion is Just Around the Corner" since I was a kid so a solid "No" is
probably applicable.

~~~
DennisP
In the 1950s they said fusion was around the corner, because they were just
getting started and didn't understand the problems yet.

In the 1970s they said it was 30 years away, but conditioned that on a much
higher level of funding than they actually got. For the level of funding they
got, they said it would never happen.

Now we have a very good understanding of tokamak plasmas, and some new
enabling technologies including much better superconductors.

~~~
pfdietz
And in the 1980s, it was pointed out that fundamental limitations on power
density will likely keep any DT fusion reactor from being competitive.

------
nategri
No??

------
EamonnMR
Relying on fusion power solving our problems is a foolish. We need to solve
our energy problems with the technology we have now, and if we end up with
cheap clean electricity on top of it, well, we'll already have the
infrastructure to take advantage of it.

------
pontifier
Here I come again to lament the lack of interest in the reactor I've designed.
I've become very pessimistic about even trying to work on it.

Think about that for a minute... imagine that my design works, but our society
is so jaded by con artists and corrupted by insiders theiving and politics
that it never gets a chance.

I feel like I'm starting to identify with bond style supervillains. I could
fund the research alone, and keep the fruits of my labor to myself. I'm sure I
could also weaponize it.

~~~
AboutTheWhisles
It's not what you know, it's what you can prove.

~~~
pontifier
That's exactly the problem in our society right now. How am I supposed to
prove this without building a prototype?

I don't have the resources to personally build one right now, and nobody else
seems to care. Our entire society stands to benefit from this, yet I'm
expected to complete this work alone?

I used to be altruistic and optimistic, now, not so much. I'm inclined to let
the world rot while I take my sweet time. It's not like I have much choice in
the matter anyway.

------
xte
Few things: no government really want unlimited energy for all for a simple
reason: power&control. If any country in the planet can be autonomous if it
can produce enough food for their citizens there is only war as a means to
control it's development and that's unacceptable for nearly all ruling
classes.

Second things: we have already achieved nuclear fusion in France and UK and
perhaps other researches I do not know but from there to arrive to a positive
sustainable heat production and in turn to arrive at industrial scale the road
is _super_ long only technically leaving apart any political and business
consideration.

Third and last thing: actual fission based nuclear power is useful to produce
plutonium so usable and powerful nuke, and anyone like the idea of having many
of them in it's arsenal. With fusion we only produce heat. Usable for many
things, mostly to produce steam and so electricity and even to heat cities in
the winter. But with little use for military purpose.

Long story short: I think even if someone know and can produce a working
fusion-powered electrical plant no government will let seriously develop it,
at least for next few decades...

~~~
AboutTheWhisles
Wouldn't that imply that less powerful governments would want unlimited energy
to become less dependent on richer and more powerful governments?

~~~
xte
They simply can't... Less powerful in that sense means less developed. Such
kind of research demand enormous resources and knowledge.

These days industrial knowledge is mostly in private hands with universities
that are not anymore a "center of (public) knowledge" bu mere gym to form
Ford-models workers with a different skillset respect of classic one but not
much different in terms of ability to understand the big picture, being
autonomous etc.

In present society there is no room for new "Einstein", "Tesla" etc.

~~~
AboutTheWhisles
Your post that I replied to said that no governments wanted free energy, now
you are shifting the goal post to some sort of further made up hypothetical
world where big governments have free energy and small governments don't.

~~~
xte
I reformulate: no governments that theoretically can achieve free energy want
it, perhaps governments that can't dream it as a temporary solution to find a
way to lock it out for their own sake. Better?

Keep in mind a thing: hitler was not blocked via military operation forces
against forces nor interior civil war but due to the lack of gasoline. And
that's true for essentially anything. If you can "ground" a country you can
rule it to a certain extent a thing any government powerful enough want.

Did you remember prohibitionist in the USA to avoid an improbable development
of alcohol powered cars because produce alcohol is easy, produce gasoline it's
not?

I can cite many more examples.

