For decades, government scientists have toiled away trying to make nuclear fusion work. Will commercial companies sprint to the finish?
If only there was some sort of big fusion ball in the sky which gave us vast amounts of energy that we could collect if we wanted to…
Today’s shower thought: is a fusion power plant just a miniaturized Dyson Sphere?
I get where youre going but not exactly. The dyson sphere would use solar energy but the fusion reactor, a tokomak specifically, uses steam generated by water pumped through the system to help keep the walls of the tokomak cool, to spin steam powered turbines
I’m constantly amazed that we’re working on super advanced power generation techniques… that still use steam to spin turbines.
It feels like we should be doing something cooler, like plasma conduits from Star Trek.
Just about the best way to do it for an external ‘combustion’ heat engine. Stirling engines can be used in some cases but in most cases steam ends up being the better option.
We spent centuries getting really good at using steam for getting work out of ‘hot thing’.
Look into what Helion Energy is doing. Not saying it will or won’t work, but they plan to extract the energy directly from the plasma electromagnetically.
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How does the power grid work?:
I hope it works.
But I’m skeptical enough to say that I think this is a scam. We’re closing in, research wise, on getting fusion to generate more power than it takes to run. Which is awesome!
But its still a far trek from that figure, to producing enough power to be practical (I’ve heard it said you really need to aim for 10x more production than input, minimum, for it to make any sense).
And that is still a trek from making a fusion plant competitive with existing grid power.
I’m skeptical if this plant they’re building will even generate power, which is like three steps away from making commercial sense at all.
You’re right, but you can’t use the word ‘scam’ for it. It’s an avenue that should be explored fully and may or may not lead somewhere. A scam would imply it’s a conspiracy where the players already know the unsuccessful end result, but are hiding it and using funding or similar for other end purposes.
That is what I think the owner is doing here. Scamming venture capital firms for a tech that cannot work.
And I mean, its not like I have any proof. I can’t read minds; maybe he is a true believer.
But this company feels like those companies back in the 80s that sold tickets to mars, for the rockets they were ‘just about to build’; a scam.
This isn’t a research firm. This isn’t trying to find the exact settings and layouts to make fusion possible. If the article can be taken at face value, this is a company to make a commercial fusion plant. And I find that, in 2023, patently absurd.
Even if they miraculously figured out how to build a commercially viable reactor TODAY, it would be too late to be more than a tiny building block of a zero carbon strategy.
Building enough of them, including all necessary global infrastructure would take 30 years. If we continue business as usual till then, it’s already over.
And fusion would only reduce carbon emissions in the energy sector, not in transportation, shipping, resource gathering/refining, etc.Reducing carbon emissions isn’t the primary goal here though. The primary goal is infinite clean energy. INFINITE power. The plant in France could become operational within 5 years. The harnessing of this power is a milestone for our species.
fusion won’t give us infinite power. It requires tritium last I knew.
Genuinely curious in what world do you think humanity’s energy needs are not going to increase over time?
It will work eventually. Just give them another 25 years.
Just another 20 years…
ALWAYS just another 20 years…
