Nuclear Fusion Power Could Be Here by 2030, One Company Says

We have the technology to build a fission reaction with the same (auto-shutdown) properties. that design has yet to be commercially implemented.
 
The Cobra said:
Instead of putting Trillions of wasted dollars in the DOD/Pentagon budget, why not siphon off around $20 Billion per year for 10 years and have a breakout in Fusion research?
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Or, you know, feed and house the starving and homeless citizens in the US...
 
Mega6 said:
And just like nuclear - we will be stuck with tons of radioactive waste. Ah progress.
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.... ignorant much?

There is no radioactive waste. The byproducts are Helium and energy

1D2 + 1T3 --> 2He4 + 0n1 + 17.6 MeV

He4 is stable every day helium


The radioactive isotope involved in the process is the fuel tritium. So little would be stored at an one time that even if it all released into the air it wouldnt be a problem


Now if you are talking about the core (which is a one time 'waste') it's small being highly radioactive for about 50 years then low level for another 50 compared to 1000s of years for fission
 
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that is assuming a perfect reaction with no by products. that is not the case in man made fusion reactors. i have already agreed that the radioactive material byproducts will be less and yes above I already stated a 50 year half life.
 
Mega6 said:
that is assuming a perfect reaction with no by products. that is not the case in man made fusion reactors. i have already agreed that the radioactive material byproducts will be less and yes above I already stated a 50 year half life.
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Perfect reaction? It’s either fusion with a neutron plus helium and energy, or it’s not a fusion reaction. We are not talking about a 2 stroke dirt bike here
 
Look - a Neutron is expelled by the reaction.
D + T -> n (14.1 MeV) + He4 (3.5 MeV).

He4 is nothing to worry about. Notice the Neutrons @ 14.1 MeV. Whatever this Neutron hits will become irradiated. The DT Plasma is created. In that DT plasma, D + D reactions create two things -
1 ) p + T
2) n + He3

T is radioactive.
 
travisty said:
.... ignorant much?

There is no radioactive waste. The byproducts are Helium and energy

1D2 + 1T3 --> 2He4 + 0n1 + 17.6 MeV

He4 is stable every day helium


The radioactive isotope involved in the process is the fuel tritium. So little would be stored at one time that even if it all released into the air it wouldn't be a problem


Now if you are talking about the core (which is a one-time 'waste') it's small being highly radioactive for about 50 years then low level for another 50 compared to 1000s of years for fission
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Fusion waste will be insignificant regardless of which method is used.. but as I mentioned earlier it will exist. It doesn't matter one whit if you have a perfectly clean reaction because just as with a nuclear bomb the source material is not the main radioactive element after detonation.

The vast majority of nuclear waste is the actual parts which contain the reaction. Anything exposed to sufficient energy will result in a radioactive byproduct. Most commonly carbon in the surrounding mass. Again this is the same for a nuclear explosion. The detonation is just a photon bomb. The energy of that blast shotguns the local atoms into swiss cheese leaving behind a random assortment of radioactive materials. This is also why the radiation of a bomb strike drop sharply in as little as 6 hours after detonation with almost complete falloff in 7 days.

The fusion "core" of proposed designs will be radioactive over time and will suffer neutron degradation just like with any known nuclear reactor. Unlike a fission reactor, however, it will never yield high-level waste even if the reactor fails. Almost no waste has a "dangerous" 1000 year half-life. Nearly all waste is safely contained in a few inches of water.. indefinitely.. Regardless of container integrity. Radioactivity in materials is only dangerous when it has a path into your body.

Hell, it's like yellow cake. People still believe its dangerous. I've personally held it in my hand. Unless I eat the crap I will be fine. Fusion when successful is a no-brainer. When it fails it just self-immolates as the reaction dies, its byproducts are laughable, and its potential output is insane even at 5%. Until the last 5 years, I had nearly no real faith of seeing it in my lifetime. With the recent advancements however paired with the modern computational power, it is far less a pipe dream than it was.
 
Mega6 said:
Look - a Neutron is expelled by the reaction.
D + T -> n (14.1 MeV) + He4 (3.5 MeV).

He4 is nothing to worry about. Notice the Neutrons @ 14.1 MeV. Whatever this Neutron hits will become irradiated. The DT Plasma is created. In that DT plasma, D + D reactions create two things -
1 ) p + T
2) n + He3

T is radioactive.
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Yeah, we all know some Tritium is a byproduct of a Tokamak fusion reaction, but you implied earlier...

"that is assuming a perfect reaction with no by products. that is not the case in man made fusion reactors."

Other than irradiation byproducts from the Neutron flux in the reactor shielding, and some Tritium, what other byproducts of a fusion reactor are we talking about here?
 
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Mega6 said:
And just like nuclear - we will be stuck with tons of radioactive waste. Ah progress.
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That isn't really the case.
First it really depends what a commercial fission reactor would use as fuel.

The standard right now is a Deuterium / Tritium mix. The byproducts created are helium-4 which is no big deal... the issue is Neutron cast off. These can make the reactor structure itself slightly radioactive, we are not talking the type of waste that has a half life of thousands of years. The waste product (the reactor lining) would have a half life of more like 30 years... most of the current reactor designs assume the lining should last a few years. The stellarator design uses divertors to remove waste products in a very controlled way protecting the majority of the reactors structure making it likely the way forward over Tokamaks. Being able to control what those energized cast off neutrons are hitting makes it very possible that they will develop reactor material (filter like material) that will capture those neutrons creating non radioactive waste.

Pretty much without a doubt if we can build a viable reactor it will be cleaner then anything else we currently have. The radioactive by product they are talking about is not the sort of crap the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has been dumping for years.
 
Mr. Fusion! Back to the Future II. I am afraid of heights but, I think we do not have skyways because people reject technology out of hand and we never made it to that point.
 
Back in the early 90's I was reading that Fission powered reactors were 10-20 years away at most...
 
Sniper that's mostly due to news reporters not really understanding what scientists and engineers say. When we say "if everything goes perfectly and we don't run into any problems 10 to 20 years" its engineer speak for "please god don't have a problem". Murphy always says "hi" shortly after any such statements.

With fusion power, things get really annoying because twenty years ago the technology to actually make it work just didn't exist. Twenty years before that the materials themselves didn't really exist. Right now we can a] reach fusion temperatures b]contain said temperatures c] sustain a reaction long enough to get meaningful data. Those three things are pretty significant. With data and the fact that we can actually build the damn things without waiting for a material to be invented puts it in the realm of possibility.
 
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Nafensoriel said:
As a last note. Modern nuclear plants are cheap. Dirt cheap. The myth that nuclear power is expensive really needs to end.
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I am from probably one of the most pro-nuclear communities in the United States. I think it makes unparalelled baseload power. However, that said, this is an objectively false assertion.

I wish that weren't the case, but that does not make it so.
 
Croak said:
Far, FAR less waste than fission. Less dangerous radiation than the tailings from a coal plant, or phosphate mine, or even being in a concrete building, if it's deuterium and tritium powered.

Neither is energetic enough to penetrate even skin, inhalation is the only way to get close to dangerous exposure, and even that is relatively hard to do, since they're far lighter than air (they're just pimped-out hydrogen) and will dissipate quickly if released.

And they're very short-lived radioactive elements. Deuterium and tritium have half-lives of a bit over 12 years, while the uranium waste produced by most fission reactors has a half life of 160 THOUSAND years...

Tritium is so benign we use it to make watch dials glow.
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The problem though is the radioactive material to worry about isnt the tritium its the actual reactor itself due to bombardment of neutrons from the D-T reactions.

While the half life of said radioactive waste can be considerably less than that of a fission plant it still is radioactive waste that needs to be dealt with at the end of life of the plant. Lastly the waste amounts are largely theoretical as we dont have a multi gigawatt fusion plant worth of output to actually see what the results are
 
sfsuphysics said:
The problem though is the radioactive material to worry about isnt the tritium its the actual reactor itself due to bombardment of neutrons from the D-T reactions.

While the half life of said radioactive waste can be considerably less than that of a fission plant it still is radioactive waste that needs to be dealt with at the end of life of the plant. Lastly the waste amounts are largely theoretical as we dont have a multi gigawatt fusion plant worth of output to actually see what the results are
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The nuclear waste produced by commercial reactors is, volumetrically, very small. Ever seen a coal ash pond? At some point, in my opinion, society needs to reckon with making very small, long-life storage decisions.
 
At these rates, fusion will beat solar/battery infrastructure by a century.
 
velusip said:
At these rates, fusion will beat solar/battery infrastructure by a century.
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Incorrect. Solar and Wind are both exponential technologies (as are batteries). "Century" for linear products. "Decade" for exponential. More than likely solar/wind + batteries is cheaper than any fussion ever will be even today. Fussion will be the best option for massively dense population centers like NYC, anywhere outside of major cities it will be wind/solar + batteries

 
travisty said:
Incorrect. Solar and Wind are both exponential technologies (as are batteries). "Century" for linear products. "Decade" for exponential. More than likely solar/wind + batteries is cheaper than any fussion ever will be even today. Fussion will be the best option for massively dense population centers like NYC, anywhere outside of major cities it will be wind/solar + batteries

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I've seen this before. However, max-tangential change on production costs is an important milestone in early capital investment. "Exponential technology" is being misused as a buzzword here as it's in reference to ROI vs early adoption rate flipping. I don't really want to go into how this should be interpreted, because it's up to people with capital, not me. :)

In short: Mono PV hit its max point two years ago (the graph is even in his presentation), so now it's a "linear technology" using your/his words, lol. However, now the real fun starts as the little guys jump on the bandwagon. Wind has a long way to go in this regard and I don't expect to see the curve level out for another decade.

Batteries, however... we're yet to see ANY movement from early investors. Large investemnts are still getting tied up in raw materials (Far, Zoro, Azencourt, Apple) and research (NSERC).
 
sfsuphysics said:
The problem though is the radioactive material to worry about isnt the tritium its the actual reactor itself due to bombardment of neutrons from the D-T reactions.

While the half life of said radioactive waste can be considerably less than that of a fission plant it still is radioactive waste that needs to be dealt with at the end of life of the plant. Lastly the waste amounts are largely theoretical as we dont have a multi gigawatt fusion plant worth of output to actually see what the results are
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Any design that would go into long term operation would build in plans to remove a specific amount of waste. (unless someone comes up with some crazy material that absorbs stray neutrons. Who knows some sort of carbon tubing honeycomb or some such thing... their are people researching potential materials I'm sure.) That may not happen, meaning some material would need to be handled but it would be material that would be low grade radioactive waste on day one and with a 40 year half life its not like our great great great great grand children won't need to worry about it as is the case with fission reactors.

The stellarator design will likely prove to be superior as it seems to be the better design in terms of radiating only the parts they want irradiated. The Wendelstein stellarators been designed to direct the location of stray neutron waste. This should allow them to finely control where plasma wall interaction will happen. In 2019 they plan to test a water cooled divertor system that shows some real promise.

https://nucleus.iaea.org/sites/fusionportal/Shared Documents/SSO 9th/Programme/23.03/1. Endler.pdf
 
travisty said:
.... ignorant much?

There is no radioactive waste. The byproducts are Helium and energy

1D2 + 1T3 --> 2He4 + 0n1 + 17.6 MeV

He4 is stable every day helium


The radioactive isotope involved in the process is the fuel tritium. So little would be stored at an one time that even if it all released into the air it wouldnt be a problem


Now if you are talking about the core (which is a one time 'waste') it's small being highly radioactive for about 50 years then low level for another 50 compared to 1000s of years for fission
Click to expand...

No direct radioative waste, for sure. There can be indirect radioative waste as the current systems do release Helium-4 and a free neutron. That neutron could cause a radioactive indirect by-product, but one with a very short half-life (less than 20 years) and a strength low enough as to not be harmful to humans. It depends on how that free neutron interacts with the surrounding materials.
 
Sniper_Merc said:
Back in the early 90's I was reading that Fission powered reactors were 10-20 years away at most...
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no you didn't ... The 1st fission reactor was created in WW2 to create the needed Uranium for the nuclear bombs. Power stations using nuclear fission have been on the grids in multiple countries since the 1950's
 
Where do get fuel for Tritium for Fussion Reactors? From Nuclear Fission Reactors - that's where.
 
Mega6 said:
Where do get fuel for Tritium for Fussion Reactors? From Nuclear Fission Reactors - that's where.
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That is not the only source... one of the byproducts of the fusion process is neutrons (this is what then irradiates the installation causing decommission concerns). Lithium-6 when bombarded with neutrons will create titrium. That is why lithium is one of the additional fuels for fusion reactors (something we don't have much of :) )

The half-life of tritium means it cannot really be transported economically and thus needs to be produced on-site
 
So, my questions are...

Have we successfully had a fusion reactor produce more energy than it took to cause the reaction? If we can't reliably do this, all of this is nothing more than an interesting lab exercise.

If we can generate more energy than it takes to kick things off, is it something we can actually utilize? I honestly don't know what methods would be used to create electricity from a fusion reaction. I would guess it would be used to create steam to turn a turbine since that's what fission reactions are used for, and coal and oil plants do the same. Does having a greater heat source for generating steam really translate into more usable energy or is there a point where a portion of the heat energy created is so much overkill for the process that it's just wasted?

How close are we to maintaining plasma containment for practical periods of time? I thought the longest sustained containment, with or without actual fusion, has been 101.2 seconds.

Color me skeptical, but after hearing about fusion being just around the corner for the past 40 years, this seems to be a similar claim. Given that the current record for fusion power generation was made over 20 years ago and we still are no closer to any sort of practical application.....
 
Mega6 said:
While the Fusion radioactivity on a per-kilogram basis is smaller than Fission - the volume and mass of "Fusion Activated Materials" can exceed the former.
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and Fission reactors don't get irradiated? we still don't have a working reactor yet, what shielding material is used will affect how hazardous it is in the long term.


Mega6 said:
Where do get fuel for Tritium for Fussion Reactors? From Nuclear Fission Reactors - that's where.
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from the article you are linking above:

"The tritium consumed in fusion can theoretically be fully regenerated in order to sustain the nuclear reactions. To accomplish this goal, a lithium-containing “blanket” must be placed around the reacting medium—an extremely hot, fully ionized gas called a plasma. The neutrons produced by the fusion reaction will irradiate the lithium, “breeding” tritium."


Still not certain what your problem is with fusion reactors, they are demonstrably, inherently safer, and produce less radioactive waste by orders of magnitude. the Tritium you are worried about is actually a useful byproduct that can be recycled as fuel for the reactor.

Assuming they ever get one working, that is.

Fusion reactors have potential problems, but many of them are engineering challenges that are solvable or can at least be alleviated.

edited to reduce snarkiness.
 
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I am not "Cherry Picking" anything, merely providing a basis the views being expressed. Theoretical is not at the Engineering phase. There are concepts being tested now, by no means are going to be successful. The point being that Fusion Reactors are not as pure clean as the Theoretical Physics proposes as we make the step to practical Engineering. There are many issues that remain to be resolved before pure clean power will, if ever be available. No matter what Engineering methodology is chosen.
 
griffinhart said:
So, my questions are...

Have we successfully had a fusion reactor produce more energy than it took to cause the reaction? If we can't reliably do this, all of this is nothing more than an interesting lab exercise.

---In short term scales Yes. In practical application. No. The problem is more maintaining the reaction.

If we can generate more energy than it takes to kick things off, is it something we can actually utilize? I honestly don't know what methods would be used to create electricity from a fusion reaction. I would guess it would be used to create steam to turn a turbine since that's what fission reactions are used for, and coal and oil plants do the same. Does having a greater heat source for generating steam really translate into more usable energy or is there a point where a portion of the heat energy created is so much overkill for the process that it's just wasted?

--- Steam. It is immaterial how this is created. We can utilize most of it quite simply. Cases, where "more" steam is created in a shorter time period, are simply processed differently. Remember the steam loop is entirely independent of a fusion reaction. We can build that loop to spec which in general means a high level of efficiency and capture.

How close are we to maintaining plasma containment for practical periods of time? I thought the longest sustained containment, with or without actual fusion, has been 101.2 seconds.

--- This is a fun one just because its a simple yet complex answer. In short, we don't know. Nuclear reactions are quirky and require timing that can sometimes drop into the picosecond range for precision. Right now getting the reaction to start consistently and in a predictable way is what is generally being looked at. After that, you can move on to keeping that reaction stable longer and longer. In practical reality, you do both of these things at the same time. When one of the teams makes a breakthrough it will be sudden from the public perspective.

Color me skeptical, but after hearing about fusion being just around the corner for the past 40 years, this seems to be a similar claim. Given that the current record for fusion power generation was made over 20 years ago and we still are no closer to any sort of practical application.....
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--- Energy.. both mental and physical. Its required to produce anything. 40 years ago we did not have the practical or material sciences in place to actually make the theory work beyond brief moments. Today we have computers of vastly more complexity that let us progress much more rapidly. Why? Well, simulations let us entirely skip whole sections of prototyping. As computers advance and our knowledge of material sciences(so we can program a proper simulation), all things fusion will advance as well.

---To give you another real-world example of why we are seeing progress now when we saw none 40 years ago?(there was still progress just limited by the mental watts thrown at the problem)
Weather. Even twenty years ago our accuracy for predicting the weather was effectively as good as looking out the window for any high order accuracy. Today we actually have both the data sets, computers, and simulation accuracy to stretch that almost a full day. Effectively computers add more people thinking to the mix. More prototypes can be run per year than without them. Engineering is all about failing until you don't. We can just perform more fails per second today than we could then. Hence progress!
 
Nafensoriel said:
Engineering is all about failing until you don't. We can just perform more fails per second today than we could then. Hence progress!
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I love that quote. "We can just perform more fails per second today than we could then". Change that to EVER and I have my new sig quote! And it's true, if the internet has taught us anything, it is that we are FAILING faster then EVER before in human history! LOL
 
GotNoRice said:
Will people actually allow it without simply freaking out about it being another form of "nuclear" power?
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People bitch out coal power, solar power, wind power, water power, nuclear power. Yes they will bitch about this. They want power to be created from nothing.
 
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ChadD said:
Any design that would go into long term operation would build in plans to remove a specific amount of waste.
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The problem with "long term" plans is the assumption that they're financially sustainable. So big corporation (only ones who can afford this) builds a nuclear reactor, they are charged 0.2 cents per MWh of energy produced by NRC to pay for the dealing with the end of life of the reactor. Company says "fuck yeah" passes that cost onto all consumers, and at the end of the 40 year life span of the reactor the company simply walks away and the NRC deals with the cleanup/storage of all radioactive stuff. Sounds great in theory, except that rate that's charged might not pay for the actual cleanup because 40 years later the cost cleanup/storage is exponentially higher. There simply is no mechanism in place to go after more money from the company who raked in all the cash from the reactor.

That said, I'm not against nuclear fusion at all (or fission for that matter), I'm against the bureaucracy of how things are taken care of. Plus with fusion we simply don't know how much waste will be produce, and I'm really against the "don't do it because someone on the internet said it might be bad" mentality, cheap, relatively clean, abundant energy is probably a better outcome than dealing with a minor amount of waste... although the power companies will still find a way to screw over the consumer for greed as I can very easily stare down the barrel of 44c/kWh if I use more than about 28kWh per day (which FYI is just under the average household usage in the US)
 
Hopefully this comes to pass in my lifetime. Rather see nuclear power plants that take up a few acres, compared to solar farms that destroy habitat and diminish what land is left for native species and only works when the sun is out.
 
I don't understand. Why are we in a big hurry to research fusion reactors? We already have a monster fusion reactor powering the solar system, and so far it's been pretty dependable and hasn't killed us. Rather than designing a new fusion reactor, why don't we continue to improve our ability to make use of the one we have? You know, the one we don't need to mine fuel for, the one we don't need to clean, the one that doesn't have waste products or downtime.


P.S. We hope it doesn't have down time.
 
seanreisk said:
I don't understand. Why are we in a big hurry to research fusion reactors? We already have a monster fusion reactor powering the solar system, and so far it's been pretty dependable and hasn't killed us. Rather than designing a new fusion reactor, why don't we continue to improve our ability to make use of the one we have? You know, the one we don't need to mine fuel for, the one we don't need to clean, the one that doesn't have waste products or downtime.


P.S. We hope it doesn't have down time.
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Good reason for some locations to look for alternative Fusion sources right here: https://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/1961-1990/redbook/atlas/serve.cgi

Some parts of the US in winter can have basically 0 solar production for weeks at a time.
 
motomonkey said:
Good reason for some locations to look for alternative Fusion sources right here: https://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/1961-1990/redbook/atlas/serve.cgi

Some parts of the US in winter can have basically 0 solar production for weeks at a time.
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Many places, I would suspect, have zero coincident peak in the winter. Winter peaking utility (as many are) would be screwed. Short story: you still need 100% backup power. That's where the cost is at.

Intermittent power, by any other name, is not dispatchable. Curtailable, yes.
 
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