/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.9973419]

What's the current state of fusion power?

[Anonymous No.9973422]

>>9973419
Another 20 years.

[Anonymous No.9973426]

>>9973419
It's a meme. Even if it was capable today you are looking at astronomical build out/upkeep costs. It's not like there's a shortage of power as it is and if you think it will ever be 'free' you're lying to yourself.

[Anonymous No.9973429]

>>9973426
Hydro-thermal is most promising, but limited in area. Solar is next.

[Anonymous No.9973430]

>>9973419
Hopeless.

[Anonymous No.9973442]

>>9973429
Fission is the only acceptable form of power today.
>Large upfront cost that produces high levels of "as clean as it gets" energy, and moreso per square meter than anything else
>Liquid thorium based reactors can be made smaller/more efficient/more economical with a few more years into development (spent fuel becomes safe after 300 years)

>Solar requires terrible manufacturing practices, provides little power generation per square meter , fails even harder in 75-80% of the world where there isn't sun 12 hours a day.
>Wind, takes up too much space, constant maintenance, large startup cost just like fission
>Hydro-thermal, requires specific locations, high upfront costs, can cause earthquakes/fissures/sinkholes
>Hyrdoelectrical, huge costs, very location specific, environmental impacts on fisheries and the like

[Anonymous No.9973445]

>>9973442
I don't disagree. I just normally shy away from openly stating that I am a proponent of nuclear power.

[Anonymous No.9973455]

>>9973422
another 20 years then too

[Anonymous No.9973463]

>>9973419
fusion is sorely behind on where it _should_ be by now, but it's inevitably coming. don't believe the haters. iter is getting built. and others are trying to beat them to it. planned to fire up by 2025.

[Anonymous No.9973464]

>>9973455
>TFW: Your estimates are so open-ended they literally become a well known meme.
It isn't even really funny though, is it?

[Anonymous No.9973470]

>>9973463
I've missed you underscore anon, you're notation is so rare and wonderful. Where have you been? I'm the anon that had that long, several hour, discussion about interplanetary and interstellar travel with a couple of months ago.

[Anonymous No.9973473]

>>9973470
>*your

[Anonymous No.9973474]

>>9973470
i don't think i am same anon

the _underscore_ notation i use is most likely one of those rare 30 yo boomer computer geek things that none of the zoomers caught onto

[Anonymous No.9973481]

>>9973474
Please be you, we had a great discussion.

[OP No.9973547]

>>9973481
You_are_so_lonely

[Anonymous No.9973602]

Consumerist capitalism requires stagnation, scarcity, and dependency.

[Anonymous No.9973605]

>>9973602
We need a new system then, care to suggest one?

[Anonymous No.9973606]

>>9973445
>I just normally shy away from openly stating that I am a proponent of nuclear power.

What a beta male.

[Anonymous No.9973608]

>>9973605
Maybe we should stop idolizing 100 year old ideas and make a new one that doesn't depend on the failure of its own people.

[Anonymous No.9973619]

>>9973606
No, I just can't be bothered with the hassle of trying to explain it to someone who is ardently opposed to it, before they're either a hippie, or the son/daughter/relative of a hippie who indoctrinated them from childhood.

[Anonymous No.9973620]

>>9973605
not that guy but

how about we all go full Finland and give health care and free college to everybody, debt-free?

oh wait sorry, that's for /pol/ -- let me go post there where there will be a chorus of "YOURE A BOLSHEVIK", k thx

[Anonymous No.9973621]

>>9973608
Like what exactly?

[Anonymous No.9973623]

>>9973620
How would we fund all of that?

[Anonymous No.9973629]

>>9973623
We don't. The rich deserve trillions and the poor deserve to die.

[Anonymous No.9973634]

>>9973623
i think if the latest tax cut that was given to corporations and the very wealthy (plus the small and, unlike the other cuts, temporary) didn't happen, we could have mostly funded free college with that money

well, the current way the US funds its tax cuts is through just upping the debt ceiling, so we could just do it on debt like everything else the government's been spending on lately.

ideally we would raise revenues by taxing those entities who disproportionately harm society, while using undue influence to lobby lawmakers away from regulating or taxing them

[Anonymous No.9973638]

>>9973634
>plus the small and, unlike the other cuts, temporary
i meant:
plus the small and, unlike the other cuts, temporary buyout for working class citizens

typo

[Anonymous No.9973640]

>>9973629
>>9973634
No, but imagine trying to fund that across the world. Everyone would have to get exactly the same salary, even those who don't work, otherwise it wouldn't be fair. It isn't a solution, it is a problem.
Go back to the drawing board.
Not everyone is equal, not everyone does equal work, and not everyone deserves and equal share of the "pie."

[Anonymous No.9973641]

>>9973640
>*an equal share

[Anonymous No.9973643]

>>9973640
no, that's not what i'm saying. i started by mentioning finland, where it is NOT true that everyone makes the same salary

democratic socialists actually DO believe in capitalism for most of the market. however socialized medicine and state-subsidized tuition are good ideas they do support

[Anonymous No.9973645]

>>9973640
False dilemma. The only two options aren't extreme inequality or false equality.

Stop making excuses and get some willpower to control your greed and hate for other people.

[Anonymous No.9973646]

>>9973463
Linear time for an ITER-sized project is as useless as calculating orbits around a black hole without relativity; you need to follow bureaucracy laws.

ITER will start in 2045-2050.

[Anonymous No.9973650]

>>9973643
Fair enough. But you do realize how small the population of Finland is relative to other much larger countries? And that other countries also outperform it in GDP? It might work in Finland, sure. But what is to say it would work elsewhere?

>>9973645
Lmao, you aren't even worth replying to if you genuinely think the world is some black and white dichotomy. It isn't.

[Anonymous No.9973672]

>>9973650
>But what is to say it would work elsewhere?
good point—is it scalable? i don’t know if it will work well, but maybe Japan is a good country to study for a more apt comparison in terms of population

however i think the political tradition of the US supports these ideas; the Federalist Papers and Jefferson’s writings made a strong case for why universal basic education should be considered a “right” of all citizens, and in modern society, undergrad or at least vocational school seems to be “basic education”

all i’m saying is that it’s worth a shot

[Anonymous No.9973675]

>>9973672
>all i’m saying is that it’s worth a shot
Can you imagine the fallout that would occur in not only the establishment, but also in the general populous, if any president, let alone Trump, signed off on this?
You would have the Vietnam veterans up in arms about communism this, communism that. The far-left would do a fucking back-flip, whilst the far-right would charge the White House in their Chevrolet pickups.
Besides, look at their population, and look at their GDP. It's no wonder they can afford it, compared to the GDP and population of other cities, they're like kings.

[Anonymous No.9973682]

>>9973672
>>9973675
People and governments already waste 12 years of badly organized public education. How does extending that to 16 change any of the failed dynamics?

[The Lord No.9973686]

What's the current status of electromechanical devices whose coefficients of efficiency are over unity?

[Anonymous No.9973695]

>>9973682
It requires more funding? And more funding doesn't just come out of no where.

[Anonymous No.9973990]

>>9973419
>What's the current state of fusion power?

advanced plasma experiment, best so far is
stellarator Wendelstein 7-X
https://www.ipp.mpg.de/4413312/04_18

an general overview over fusion experiments can be found here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fusion_experiments

[Anonymous No.9974006]

>>9973990
>stellarator
>Literally naming our shit after stars, but we can't even break even.
Why're humans so arrogant?

[Anonymous No.9974030]

>>9973620
>how about we all go full Finland and give health care and free college to everybody, debt-free?
As a Finnfag, I would advise against that, since it leads to an enormous tax rate and a socialist, gibsmedat mindset. Liberty and the welfare state cannot coexist.

PS. You´re not a Bolshevik - just stupid.

[Anonymous No.9974034]

>>9974030
Knew it, which is exactly why I was challenging them. Funding isn't just a magical thing you can pull out of your ass, it has to come from somewhere.

[Anonymous No.9974037]

>>9973643
>i started by mentioning finland, where it is NOT true that everyone makes the same salary
Garbage truck drivers make roughly 60-70% of what an engineer with similar work experience (calculated in years). A similar, unreasonably small wage gap exists between trade workers/bureaucrats and highly educated people working in the private sector.

>however socialized medicine and state-subsidized tuition are good ideas they do support
Socialized medicine leads people to lose their sense of personal responsibilty, and subsidized tuition has no effect on the number of students enrolled in (non-meme) higher education, due to the normal distribution of intelligence in the population.

What you propose simply causes more problems than it solves.

[Anonymous No.9974092]

>>9973620
Funny how every single person who actually has to live with public healthcare including myself will tell you exactly how truly shit tier it is but rabid USA liberals think it's free, on demand top quality surgeries and care.

[Anonymous No.9974131]

>>9973422
What this means is that its officially too late to use fusion to stop global warming.
Just give up and build a shit ton of wind, solar, battery systems.

[Anonymous No.9974140]

>>9973419
Pipe dream like always.

[Anonymous No.9974499]

>>9973442
>Solar requires terrible manufacturing practices
Cite?

[Anonymous No.9974869]

This kills ITER

[Anonymous No.9974903]

>>9974869
What

[Anonymous No.9975157]

>>9973990
Isn't this using 1.5 tesla magnets...lol

>>9974869
>>9974903
14 tesla superconducting magnets

[Anonymous No.9975185]

>>9975157
it's an older thing, if I remember
they'd probably upgrade if they had the money to and it wouldn't kneecap them like nothing else

[Anonymous No.9975192]

>>9973419
SP/ARC is the future for nuclear fusion, the EU project is a waste

[Anonymous No.9975216]

>>9973470
I want to have that conversation with someone

[Anonymous No.9975552]

>>9973990
Wendelstein 7-X was never built for power generation

[Anonymous No.9976031]

>>9973426
build costs will be similar or slightly below nuclear fission plants. Upkeep costs are not something you can really know about right now. At least there's virtually no fuel cost at all. Realistic maintenance costs can't be estimated without more research.

[Anonymous No.9976033]

>>9975157
They just wanted to prove that their design could contain plasma effectively at all. they didn't want to do fusion experiments in it yet.

[Anonymous No.9976049]

>>9973419
Iter is a Q>1 experimental reactor being built in France right now. It will start experiments in 2025, but they'll keep upgrading and making changes for another 10 years before they'll actually do any fusion there.
It won't generate electricity though since it's not made for continuous operation yet.

Wendelstein 7-X is looking good, on its way to proving that Stellerators are a decent alternative to Tokamaks with several advantages, but with a much more complex design.

SPARC/ARC is a project started by MIT that uses a new superconductor material that should allow Q>1 in much smaller reactors, reducing the amount of funding needed. Outside of the superconductor material there's nothing particularly special about their approach. Just a Tokamak design with water cooling. They're projecting stuff like 2025 for first power to the grid or something equally fantastical.

Tokamak Energy is doing the exact same thing as MIT with the exact same fantastical calculations for first power generation. I think their Tokamaks are more spherical than MIT's but that's about it. They started with machines that fit on your desk and are slowly building bigger and more capable machines. They're currently up to a car-sized machine with the goal to achieve fusion temperatures in there (for a tiny timeframe).

General Fusion is building a big ole' meme machine. Something about pistons compressing liquid metal with plasma injected in the middle. It's unproven technology and there's no way of telling whether it works or not.

I don't remember the name, but someone else was also working on a ...Z-pinch design or something... Looks like a meme. But again, it's unproven technology so who knows how that'll go.

That's the state of fusion right now.

Oh and recently there's been some papers about how you could make Tokamaks perform in a continuous state so they don't have to shut down ever so often. I think the idea was using radiowaves to create current instead of doing it magnetically

[Anonymous No.9976068]

>>9973619
>I just can't be bothered
lethargic onion boy

[Anonymous No.9976096]

>>9975552
no fusion experiment was ever build for power generation, we are still in a stage where using fusion to power anything is just science fiction

[Anonymous No.9976099]

>>9974499
Anywhere on the web senpai. The biggest problem is you need insanly pure sand and then you have to melt that shit (sand has high meltibg point)

[Anonymous No.9976107]

x+25 years
where X equals the current date

[Anonymous No.9976108]

>>9976049

[Anonymous No.9976129]

what about the Large Helical Device? is it achieving or did it achieve anything besides looking really fucking cool?

[Anonymous No.9976178]

>>9973620
I wish americans would stop using us as some communist utopia. We aren't as socialist as you believe, we don't like it as much as you believe, we have more debt than you believe and finally we don't have nearly as many blacks.

[Anonymous No.9976181]

>>9974092
This. They will point to my country as a symbol of great universal healthcare but i have crohns and it took a year for me to get diagnosed as each appointment would have three months waiting lists, i took 9 months off work as a result.

In turn americans get much more cutting edge therapy and research funded by the market. I plan to eventually move there if i can convince my wife.

[Anonymous No.9976183]

>>9973629
Who are you to say 'deserve', if you make the money you deserve it. There's nothing else to it. Someone like Bezos had skills, originality and business sense that was clearly worth several magnitudes more than a random cashier. You are the one advocating some artificial redistribution against natural justice.

[Anonymous No.9976630]

>>9976096
Well we know the theory of what to do.
If we tried right now we could build a reactor that produces energy. It would just be shitty, unreliable and probably really expensive to build and operate.

Actually, stellerators are looking so good right now, we could probably build a large one with higher magnetic field strength and it would solve most of the issues of being shitty and unreliable. Just cost would still be a factor and maintenance/longevity.

[Anonymous No.9976663]

>>9976129
it helped lay the ground work for Wendelstein.

[Anonymous No.9976727]

>>9976181
>american healthcare
I hope you enjoy being in eternal debt
good healthcare is for business owners and other wealthy persons, not for peasants