Fusion Fallacies

[RE]

We'll begin a new thread for the Holy Grail of "infinite" energy hopium, Nuclear Fusion.  Hot or Cold, both are loaded up all the time with total bullshit claims.  In this one, the bullshit claim is "Most powerful energy produced in history".  The "validation" of this claim is that the plasma reached a temperature of 10⁸C.

This claim relies on the stupefying ignorance of basic science of the reporter, the editors and the readers.  Temperature is NOT a measure of energy, Heat is.  Temperature is measured in Degrees Kelvin, Heat is measured in Joules.

All they did here was achieve the highest temperature of a plasma confined by a magnetic field in a tokamak, which they did by CONSUMING a prodigious amount of electrical energy to force a fusion to occur, which produced some energy, but probably not as much as the tokamak consumed to reach this temperature.  Even if it was net positive, they don't have a means to harness this energy and convert it from heat back to electrical energy measured in Watts (Joules/sec) where it could be useful.

They also only kept this running for 30 seconds, which is a pretty long ways from firing up a fusion reactor to run for decades, which it would have to to ever have a shot of paying off the even more prodigious amount of money it would cost to build it.

The Fusion Cavalry will not be riding to the rescue anytime too soon.

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/nuclear-energy-most-powerful/2079/

Most powerful energy produced in history: 100ºC million and a catastrophe the U.S. fears

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[RE]

Fusion Power-"Unlimited Energy"- is right around the corner, right?  That's what you get from the usual cheerleading articles about "breakthroughs" and "record high temperatures", etc.  It's been right around the corner since I first read about Tokamaks in Popular Mechanics when I was in 3rd grade.

In all likelihood, it will be right around the corner for another 50 years.  Here's one of the things you usuallyy DON'T hear about.  The Hydrogen is supposedly "unlimited" since it is part of Water molecules.  Except run of the mill H isn't what you need for a fusion reactor, you need isotopes of H which have an extra neutron or two.  Deuterium and Tritium they are called.  These isotopes are found in much smaller quantity in water, and if Fusion power was ever to be scaled up, would have to be produced in a "breeder" reactor using an isotope of Lithium, also  in somewhat limited supply.

None of the details of how all this D & T will be produced have been worked out, since they're still bizzy just trying to confine super hot plasma long enough for fusion reactions to take place, and  at some point maybe yield more energy than it takes to fire up the reactor.  IOW, after a half century, they're still not even past Step 1 in a multi stage engineering problem to finish someday with a commercially viable plant scaled up to produce gigawatts if not terawatts of power and acquire the fuel necessary to run it.  To make any kind of economic sense, a Fusion power plant would have to produce enormous amounts of energy.

So, except for calling out the bullshit, I don't see much point in reporting on Fusion power.  Write this one off the list of Hopium solutions.

https://physicsworld.com/a/the-fusion-industry-must-rise-to-its-tritium-challenge/

The fusion industry must rise to its tritium challenge

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[RE]

WHEN will they stop throwing good money after bad?  Can you IMAGINE the amount of affordable housing units that could have been built for $20B ?      Let's do the math on this one.  Generous cost estimate for building my suggested 8'X 20' container size Tiny Home units is $20K each.  Given I have seen models retailing at $20K, with economies of scale I'm sure you could manufacture them for $5K or less, but let's be generous.  Alot 1/2 of the money ($10B) for producing them means you get 50 MILLION of these  boxes.  Every last one of them could have a solar PV roof also.

This leaves $10B to acquire the land and build the scaffolding to slide them into in Urban neighborhoods where you have to stack them up.  Now, in NYC recently an Office building/skyscraper which sold for $250M a few years ago recently was auctioned for $3.5M.  Call it $5M for EZ calculation.  To gut this building down to the steel framework I'll estimate at $1M, or you could just implode it and start from scratch.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-33494787.

I'll estimate you could slip in 20 units/floor over 10 floors for 200 affordable housing unis.  Cost of construction for the scaffold I'll estimate at $3M, which again I think is high.  So, $20K/unit X 200 units = $5M + $4M + $3M = $12M for the 200 people comes to $60K/homeless person/project.  If you estimate generously there are 10M people in need of affordable housing, this cost total is just $6B of the $20B spent on the stupid Fusion Reactor which will never work.  Note also this is not free housing, just AFFORDABLE, and the people mostly have to pay $60K for a unit.  It's revenue generating, unlike the Fusion White Elephant, which is just a Money Pit.  Will this ever be done?  Of course not.    Fusion Power is a Billionaire's Wet Dream.  Highly centralized and expensive, it's ideal for monopolization if it ever was succassfuuly developed, which it won't.  Wasting the money though helps the billionaire class also, by keeping J6P_enslaved in grunt jobs building Pyramids to their greatness.

So it goes.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/03/is-the-dream-of-nuclear-fusion-dead-why-the-international-experimental-reactor-is-in-big-trouble

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[K-Dog]

said Aneeqa Khan, a research fellow in nuclear fusion at the University of Manchester. "Only if fusion power plants produce significant amounts of electricity later in the century will they help keep our carbon emissions down – and that will become crucial in the fight against climate change."

No, the added electricity will only make remaining fossil fuels be used faster.  Collapse is intensified with each delay.  You don't fight energy use by more energy use.  Without restrictions adding more of one kind will increase use of all kinds.

I don't care what a research fellow in nuclear fusion needs to think to get through his day.  If it helps him do his job, fine.  The effect of using fusion is beyond his bailiwick.  I give him his simple substitution.

[RE]

said Aneeqa Khan, a research fellow in nuclear fusion at the University of Manchester. "Only if fusion power plants produce significant amounts of electricity later in the century will they help keep our carbon emissions down – and that will become crucial in the fight against climate change."

No, the added electricity will only make remaining fossil fuels be used faster.  Collapse is intensified with each delay.  You don't fight energy use by more energy use.  Without restrictions adding more of one kind will increase use of all kinds.

I don't care what a research fellow in nuclear fusion needs to think to get through his day.  If it helps him do his job, fine.  The effect of using fusion is beyond his bailiwick.  I give him his simple substitution.

Emphasis mine.

The flaw here is we would have to GET to the end of the century for this to even have a CHANCE.  We're talking 76 years.  Who thinks we stand ANY chance of getting to 2100 before we run short of the energy necessary to keep 8B+ homo sap Meat Packages fed?  We simply don't have that kind of time to mess around to make fusion work.  This is an engineering  bridge too far, it's been talked about and worked on for 50 years, and the best they can do is get a few seconds of net positive energy out of the contraption.  No way to harness that energy to produce electricity, no way yet to source the large quantity of Tritium needed for a commercial scale application, no long term testing of the hardware subject to bombardment by high energy particle beams daily 24/7...blah blah blah.  It's just not gonna happen in time.  Even if they had 76 years it probably can't be done.  In the mean time though it consumes a huge amount of resources to keep going with it.  Scientists who could be working on projects with some chance of success, money that could go to solving immediate pressing problems, andd gobs of energy toget the plasma hot enough and create strong enough magnetic fields to contain it.  How is the energy generated to do that?  You guessed it, FOSSIL FUELS!!!  The Lasers and Electromagnets all use Gigawatts worth of electricity to fire up one of these Tokamaks for a few seconds.  The energy it produces doesn't power it, it just is heat.  No turbines and conversion of the heat to work to drive turbines.  Basically, it's a very expensive Bonfire for theoretical physicists.  Burning energy and burning money for a pipe dream.  Total waste.

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[monsta666]

Not that I think fusion energy will save the day but I do feel if things went really south then the timeline for these fusion experiments could be pushed forward some. When I read about ITER and its current plan of producing its first plasma in 2034 and then a energy positive reaction in 2039 I wonder why it takes so long to complete each stage. There seems to be no sense of urgency to get it done.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to focus minds and resources. If really pinched then perhaps those timelines can be brought forward. Just think, vaccines normally take years if not a decade to reach mass use yet during Covid a vaccine was out within 12 months. When push comes to shove then things can progress faster than we think. Now I don't think fusion, even if the technology could be realised, would help. The argument I am trying to make is things can happen quicker if people are given the right incentives. At the moment there is no incentive to perfect fusion so it gets dragged out.

In a hypothetical world where we imagine fusion energy is mastered and is economical we would still face the same problem of growth. If anything I would say we would get a worse outcome than today as all the greater energy would do is allow us to deplete our resources even more completely than what is the case now.

There would be greater consumption of goods and services and this will lead to more pollution of the environment and all the issues of lowering water tables, soil erosion and destruction of natural habitats would be that much worse. We think American consumption is bad but imagine if the whole world was consuming at the same rate. For better or worse that is what fusion will deliver. Issue is the optimists don't look at the downsides, only the positives so all the associated destruction caused by fusion energy are not spoken or considered.

[RE]

This is the first I have heard of the "huge advancements" overcoming the various problems with bringing Fusion power up to commercial grid scale operation.  The fact this is coming from MIT gives it more than the usual level of credibility, But I will be very surprised if they actually bring a Fusion reactor online in the 2030s.

I can about guarantee huge cost overruns and construction delays which plague any new nuclear project, even conventional ones.  It's not out of the question though, but what the cost/Kw/hr will be we don't know, or how much it costs to keep the plant running.  Where will they be sourcing the various isotopes they need in sufficient quantity for a commercial scale reactor?

Maybe I'll  live long enough to see Fusion power, but I'm not optimistic.  It's been "just around the corner" since I read about Tokamaks in Popular Mechanics when I was 8 years old.

https://news.mit.edu/2024/commonwealth-fusion-systems-unveils-worlds-first-fusion-power-plant-1217

MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems unveils plans for the world's first fusion power plant

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[K-Dog]