/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.11097452]

>/sci/ is for nuclear power
>it’s nuclear fission

why aren’t you for fusion? you aren’t one of those retards who fell for the muh its always gonna be 20 years away meme?

[Anonymous No.11097462]

>>11097452

People were just stunt by how quickly we unlocked the H-Bomb, so they figured out that maybe we could get a working reactor too soon too. That's the origin of the meme.

In any case, fusion technology is not any better or worse than other technologies when it comes to how long it takes for them to make them viable. Look at solar panels. It took a full century before they became commercially viable. It's actually moving forward faster than other techs.

[Anonymous No.11097463]

>>11097452
I have high hopes for fusion, but for the time being, it has not proven itself useful so I perfectly understand the skepticism.

[Anonymous No.11097513]

>>11097452

Fusion as a serious concept is a lot newer than many of our other power sources, and has progressed neither particularly faster nor slower than most of them.

Just an example solar power - itself an example of harnessing fusion from the Sun - has only recently become economically viable as a primary power source. Back in the 1980s, we really only saw photovoltaics on very low energy, portable devices like calculators, as it was very expensive and inefficient. it was not new technology then either, way back in 1876 it was found that you could generate electricity by exposing selenium to sunlight, and Charles Fritts made the first solar cells in 1883. So it took over a century before we even had good enough solar to consider commercial usage of it. It was also half a century after those first solar cells before we even knew what fusion was, and before that we thought the sunlight running those primitive solar cells was caused by gravitational collapse. We had our first working artificial fusion source a mere generation later, with the Hydrogen bomb in 1952.

Similarly, while Ben Fraklin did his famous kite flying experiment with electricity in 1752, it was half a century later before Alessandro Volta, for whom the volt is named, built the first electric battery. Then it was a couple more generations before we saw the first electric generations and engines and a couple more before Edison and Tesla hit the scene.

It is not that shocking that we still don't have a working fusion reactor less than a century after we even realised such a thing as fusion existed.

[Anonymous No.11098003]

>>11097513
>>It is not that shocking that we still don't have a working fusion reactor less than a century after we even realised such a thing as fusion existed.

Pic related was the only thing ever holding us back.

[Anonymous No.11098013]

>>11098003
Not sure what you mean with that can of yttrium oxide there, Anon. Do you mean in reference to the precursor chemicals to Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide, and the existence of other high temperature superconductors?

[Anonymous No.11098017]

>>11098013
That pic is more than it seems:

https://ethw.org/First-Hand:Discovery_of_Superconductivity_at_93_K_in_YBCO:_The_View_from_Ground_Zero

[Anonymous No.11098025]

>>11098017
That's a wee bit tl;dr. What do you mean by holding us back?

[Anonymous No.11098031]

>>11097452
I hope fusion works, it's going to solve a lot of problems if it does.

[Anonymous No.11098035]

>>11098025

>tldr: Well that can is the exact can they used to make the very first YBCO

Also fusion is dependent on superconducting magnets. You can optimize everything else and they have, but having very high tesla magnets is all you need for nuclear fusion. And all the times they said they were close and didn't have the magnets it was all a big lie.

[Anonymous No.11098039]

>>11098031
>it's going to solve a lot of problems if it does.

I used to believe this but not anymore. Solar battery is all we need.

[Anonymous No.11098042]

>>11098035
>but having very high tesla magnets is all you need for nuclear fusion.
As far as I know, there's still a good deal more to it than that. Plasma still plays tricky with high tesla magnetic fields, and probably nullifies most of the potential of high-beta configuration reactors.

[Anonymous No.11098044]

>>11097452
i’m for both. fission can happen quickly though. realistically fusion is at least 40 years away even if ITER and DEMO go great

[Anonymous No.11098045]

>>11098042
>As far as I know, there's still a good deal more to it than that.
You are wrong and there isn't. Matter of fact you can't even study the proper plasma behavior until you use the high tesla magnets because the behavior is different.

[Anonymous No.11098063]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

Have you guys seen this.
A friend of mine had info that they built a giant one underground, and that's what caused the global copper shortage, but who knows.

[Anonymous No.11098071]

>>11098063
polywells aren't a good technology. even standard tokamaks are way ahead of polywells.

i think there are a few fusion technologies that might work even within, say, 5 years, if there were a manhattan project level effort. and polywells may be among them. but with the very tiny trickle of funding fusion gets, best to stay with tokamaks. even z-pinch would probably be more promising than polywells at this point. but all three might work quickly if we even invested in fusion as much as we invest in space crap.

heck, ITER has only cost the world like 1/5 the ISS did. imagine if we took all the ISS money and made 5 more competitors to ITER. and even then, the annual military budget dwarfs the entire lifetime budget of ISS.

it's just an epic lack of investment, thanks entrenched intrests

[Anonymous No.11098077]

>>11098045
>>11098071
>>11098063

>Polywell unfortunately just doesn't have the physics behind it. There's no reason the diamagnetic 'whiffleball' would remain field-free. The magnetic field is just going to soak through the plasma, and then game over, the cusp losses eat your lunch.

[Anonymous No.11098114]

have we every actually successfully achieved nuclear fusion on earth?

[Anonymous No.11098116]

>>11098114
ever*

[Anonymous No.11098123]

>>11098114
Many, many times. Breakeven? Never.

[Anonymous No.11098125]

>>11098071
> if there were a manhattan project level effort.
Reminder that Reagan killed such push in US in 1980
Thank you based neoliberalism.
>>11098114
Of course. How do you think hydrogen bombs work?

[Anonymous No.11098291]

>>11098114

We have done it regularly. The issue is that we need temperatures more than 10 times higher than the core of the Sun. The Sun have gravity to help and it isnt in a hurry to release tons of energy (otherwise it wouldnt have lasted billions of years).

[Anonymous No.11098295]

ITER and DEMO will happen. Only people who don't know about this are against nuclear fusion

[Anonymous No.11098299]

>>11098295
I don't think anyone's against nuclear fusion as much as dismissive of the chances the various designs promising to do fusion better-faster-cheaper than ITER and the future DEMO.

[Anonymous No.11098304]

>>11098299

A few ecoologist anti-nuclear nutjobs are against iter and argue that money would be better spent on solar research.

[Anonymous No.11098307]

>>11098304
I'm fairly sure that those types have ulterior motives for their anti-fusion activism. Dependence on Solar means dependence on whoever can supply panels the cheapest, and China has made it a matter of foreign policy to underwrite the cost of solar panels far below the cost of production.

[Anonymous No.11098496]

>>11097452
It‘s no longer ALWAYS 20 years away. There has been quite a lot of progress. But it‘s still 20 years away regardless.
Mostly because ITER was set-up on the moat inefficient way possible and it‘s kind of the bottleneck of fusion research now.

[Anonymous No.11098516]

>>11097452
>iter
>not high temperature superconductors

oh yeah it's a government jobs program lol

[Anonymous No.11098539]

>>11097463
Nuclear bombs use fusion and are extremely useful and powerful.

ITER will be finished in 2025 which is just 6 years from now

[Anonymous No.11098545]

>>11098114
H-bombs are fusion bombs.

In fact we could already harvest fusion power by detonating H-bombs over and over again and generating power from the blast. It would be incredibly inefficient but WOULD result in a net gain of power generation.

We've also achieved stable nuclear fusion in fusion reactors. Just not at the rate where more power is generated than used to keep the reaction in check.

We have learned from these experiments and the first power station that will generate more than is put into it (5x more to be precise) will be ITER which is currently under construction in Europe and be completed in 2025.

What is learned from ITER will be used to construct "DEMO" which is the first commercial fusion power plant and is expected to start operation somewhere betweeon 2040-2050.

Uneducated people still wrongly believe Nuclear fusion is just some hypothesis instead of an extremely well understood field. It has primarily been a political/budget issue, not a science or engineering issue.

[Anonymous No.11098629]

>>11098291
>The Sun have gravity to help
lol why doesn't someone just rotate a tokamak?

[Anonymous No.11098632]

>>11098545
>In fact we could already harvest fusion power by detonating H-bombs over and over again and generating power from the blast. It would be incredibly inefficient but WOULD result in a net gain of power generation.

proof government regulations are cancer

[Anonymous No.11099018]

>>11098125
>>11098545
i thought atomic bombs were fission, my b

[Anonymous No.11099023]

>>11099018
standard atomic bombs are fission. hydrogen bombs are a different technology and use a fission reaction to ignite a fusion reaction. the hiroshima and nagasaki bombs were standard atomic bombs, not hydrogen bombs

[Anonymous No.11099026]

>>11099023
huh, something new everyday

[Anonymous No.11100653]

>>11099023
>>11099026
Most of the energy of a hydrogen bomb comes from the increased efficiency of the fission reactions by the production of energetic free neutrons by fusion.

[Anonymous No.11102753]

>>11098545
Interesting, thank you for this post

[Anonymous No.11102949]

>>11097452
Personally I see fission as a stop-gap for fusion, we should be building fission plants today while funding fusion research.

[Anonymous No.11103813]

>>11098516
>>iter
>>not high temperature superconductors
>
>oh yeah it's a government jobs program lol

They explained the reasoning on why they aren't using YBCO, which are much stronger. Basically they need so much of the material they had to build a factory to make it and it is too late to switch over.

>but don't worry I'm sure the multi billionaire dollar update 3 years after running it will have the better magnets

[Anonymous No.11103841]

>>11097452
I was taking a look at a EE masters degree in sweden that was about fusion and plasma engineering and shit.
Do you guys think it could be worthwhile?
The classes seem ridiculously hard, and it seems very research and academia oriented.

[Anonymous No.11103844]

>>11102949
literally stupid. >spend trillions retrofitting the world energy infrastructure to nuclear only to replace it in 15 years when we are working on short time scales

[Anonymous No.11103869]

>>11103813
The design specification of ITER literally predates the development of YBCO superconductors as an industrial, commercial, or scientific product.

[Anonymous No.11103874]

We can build almost perfectly safe fission reactors today. Every reactor that's ever failed has been first or second generation. Reactors designed today don't have the same flaws.

[Anonymous No.11103947]

>>11103869
Yeah makes sense given they talked about building it in the mid 90's.

That said they just finished the building. Given the difference between what they are planning on building and what they can build I think it should be delayed to switch to YBCO.

[Anonymous No.11103987]

>>11103947
It was too late for that once they started fabricating parts. Those parts are mostly ready, now.

[Anonymous No.11103992]

There's a company that's close to cracking a Q of 1 and has a design that's far more practical for power generation than a huge tokamak-Helion Energy.

[Anonymous No.11104362]

>>11103992
The minimum Q for economic viability is something like five, and you're going to have a hard time getting serious investments in commercial reactors at less than twenty.

[Anonymous No.11104555]

Why haven't western countries looked into LFTR as a serious form of energy production?

[Anonymous No.11104563]

>>11104555
Can't readily weaponize it, the full behavior of the nuclear fuel cycle isn't entirely understood, and Greenpeace has been extraordinarily successful at suppressing the approval of new reactor technologies in the United States. France is the only nation in Europe that actually likes nuclear power, and everyone else is trying to phase it out.

[Anonymous No.11104573]

>>11097452
I am for fusion, it's safe and reliable for billions of years and we only need to harvest this energy. It's cheap, it's perfect.

[Anonymous No.11104575]

>>11104573
Except the load curve doesn't match the generating curve in the slightest, it's completely worthless in any climate where it snows for most of the year, it doesn't mesh with the existing energy grid, it would cost trillions of dollars just to replicate the existing capabilities of our power distribution system, and transmission losses from regions where the solar irradiance is high enough to make it viable will eat your lunch. The panels are cheap, but the system is expensive and it sucks ass, while creating industrial energy dependence on China, who's subsidizing the cost of panels well below their production costs.

[Anonymous No.11104637]

>>11103844
>waiting 15 years and hoping fusion is economically viable
You build fission plants and get the ~50 year lifespan out of them, as they age out and as energy demand increases you build fusion plants.

If we get fusion in 2030 we don't have to have a full fusion grid by 2040 if we are already running zero carbon fission. Who cares if we don't have full fusion until 2100 if there is plenty of uranium (there is) and it isn't driving climate change.

[Anonymous No.11104647]

>>11103841
It's at the front leading edge of EE. The industry will most likely not take off until the late 2020s-early 2030s. And it'd be like going into computer science as a mathematician in the 1940s but eventually it's going to be one of the biggest fields and you have an impressive headstart if you begin now.

[Anonymous No.11104652]

>>11103992
ITER is estimated to have Q>5 and will be completed in 2025

[Anonymous No.11106010]

>>11104637
>implying fission is economically viable now.

face it, no one wants fission and thats a good thing.

[Anonymous No.11106019]

>>11104573
>no energy after 6pm

nice one retard. solar is fucking monkey ass retarded

[Anonymous No.11106135]

>>11106010

>nobody wants cheap, safe, available, low emission energy with current technology

This guy.

[Anonymous No.11106166]

>>11106135
>cheap
>safe

dumb engineer doesnt know that there is more to the real world than your assurances. The public has zero confidence and no one will invest in it. No amount of shilling can change that

If what you are saying is true then why is this even a problem huh? the problem is so easy just build nuclear! Its a problem precisely because like I said, no one wants nuclear fission

[Anonymous No.11106193]

>>11106166
The public's confidence is greater than zero, and the rest of the distrust is propaganda. Even with nuclear disasters, the death toll from cancers caused by radiation is higher from coal plants than nuclear plants, and there's no other technology that comes close to meeting the base load needs of the energy grid. Only idiots don't want fission.

[Anonymous No.11106245]

>>11106166
Not him, but in terms of safety it's one of the safest both long and short term, even if you speciously assume catastrophic disasters will keep happening at regular intervals. As for the cost and why people don't accept fission in general,
>decades of propaganda
>uninformed pop culture stereotypes
>interference by existing industries and special interests
>non-nuclear armed developing nations aren't trusted with it
>overzealous safety regulations balloon costs of common materials such as screws with no benefit to actual safety
>belief in myths surrounding the nature of fuel, waste, and disasters over actual consequences
>lack of coverage for the far worse short and long term consequences of fossil fuels beyond climate change
>belief that solar, hydro, wind, and geothermal can completely replace fossil fuels faster and more cheaply than nuclear
>cost and time needed to construct and train staff increases over time as less people pursue a career in nuclear energy due to above points
>overall lack of urgency, belief that monetary costs outweigh existential threat (this is a problem for all alternative energy sources)

[Anonymous No.11106597]

>>11103987
>It was too late for that once they started fabricating parts. Those parts are mostly ready, now.

Then they get to plan their multi billion dollar update! Just all the hallmarks of a bloated government program.

[Anonymous No.11106706]

>>11106597
Don't sell them short.

It's all the hallmarks of a bloated, multinational government program.

[Anonymous No.11106715]

>>11097452
Fission has the benefit of existing
>you aren’t one of those retards who fell for the muh its always gonna be 20 years away meme?
And twenty years from now I'll still be going "I told you so."

[Anonymous No.11107438]

>>11104573
Looks extremely vulnerable to enemy attack. Or dust, or nighttime.

[Anonymous No.11107453]

>>11097452
Fusion is a longs way down.
Until then fission is best energy source overall

[Anonymous No.11108504]

>>11097452
I want fusion to work and I think it's inevitable but I fear that we are wasting our time in dead project.
By the time ITER is built someone might invent a new design incredibly stable, smaller and won't require as much maintenance.

I'm not thinking of the Polywell reactor or the certainly bullshit claim from Lockheed who said they invented a fusion reactor that fit in a truck.

[Anonymous No.11108509]

>>11098123
We did break even several time, as energy goes at least.
In therm of cost I'm not sure we did

[Anonymous No.11108525]

>>11107438
>Looks extremely vulnerable to enemy attack
>solar panel
You can't be serious.
A single bomb hit a reactor and it's Tchernobyl+Fukushima, the entire country is irradiated and cancer become common during the next thousand years
Even if by chance the reactor isn't hit you'll still spend 20 years clearing the rubble and rebuilding it.

Carpet bomb a solar farm? As long as there's still electric line working what's left will keep producing energy, you can clean the rubble in a few day and install a new batch of mass produced solar panel.
If we had a cheaper way to store energy you could use it exclusively.

[Anonymous No.11108576]

>>11097452
Because it’s not here yet? “Bro, why aren’t you in your flying car yet dude? Don’t tell me you fell for the “it’s always gonna be 20 years away” meme? Bro just get in your flying car”

[Anonymous No.11108580]

>>11107438
What? How is fusion in any conceivable way more vulnerable to enemy attack than fission? If an enemy detonated a bomb in a fusion reactor the fusion reactor stops working. If they do it in a fission reactor, the fission reactor fucking melts.