We need to create a collective for the "CF University Fighting Fanatics".
US DOE - Fusion Ignition
- Thread starter BanjoCy
- Start date
This was essentially the explanation I got on it too.
The breakthru is basically the confirmation that you CAN get net positive energy out of a fusion reaction; but the methods we have to use to get the heat and pressure are still miles and miles and miles away from practical. The engineering required to make this sustainable and practical is mind boggling. But then so are the benefits of unlimited, low-cost, green power.
The laser research is much more important in terms of near term future practicality - for military use. I have a friend who sells laser jeeps for Raytheon, (ostensibly) to shoot down drones. Those lasers will just get bigger, more reliable, longer range, etc. They are certainly a much cheaper way to shoot down missiles than using other missiles.
I would agree its a long ways off. But when I was a kid in the late 70s/early 80s, they talked about solar power being the future. And everyone complained it was decades away - and it was! But here we are 4 decades later, and solar is practical and cost effective. Maybe by 2060 fusion will be all that and a bag of chips.
Laser jeeps? Like 80s GI Joe cartoon? We have laser jeeps?
It's a positive thing if people want to learn more about the world. People used to praise that, look up to their grandpa who always seemed to know a little about how everything works. Now that level of curiosity and desire to know more about the ways of the world is mocked. "You don't need to learn about that, leave it to the experts".
Isn’t the tipping point the minute it self sustains a wild change in efficiency though? wildly inefficient until it breaks a certain point and becomes most efficient energy ever instantly?
Could it be 100 years away?
Genuinely wanting to learn like this thread so far = good.
I know more than scientists because I read my uncle’s Facebook (most politicized topics) = bad.
He's certainty optimistic about it. More than I would have expected. He's usually pretty pessimistic.
It's the attitude that if scientific discovery has no immediate practical application it's worthless and not worth our time. It's a complete lack of appreciation of the scientific process, and the fact that most of the significant practical applications of science were brought about by years of incremental scientific success, many of which seemed to have little practical application at the time.
This is probably true that in several decades this could be realistic. But the press releases this week and the way this is being communicated doesn't seem to align with that. Headlines that read "Breakthrough in Limitless Clean Energy" is disingenuous at best. A more accurate headline for what this actually is would be "One Step Closer to Ultimate Hydrogen Bomb to End Civilization".
I won't disagree that the headlines and breathlessness are overdone vs the practical reality of the event. But that is just a communications issue.
Also, I would point out that we have had access to civilization ending hydrogen bombs for about 60 years. That's not a new thing. The research now is actually more on smaller nukes rather than bigger.
Nailed it. Reality is there are technologies that could eliminate fossil CO2 emissions and they aren’t even horribly expensive. You can expect the typical pro-fossil fuel obstructionists, but there’s certainly a lot of throwing out the baby with the bathwater by environmental groups.
As I've shared in many of these types of posts, Energy Information Administration has published a ton of information for years on this, and right now a combination of non-dispatchable wind and solar with dispatchable biomass derived fuel to supplement when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining beats everything, including nuclear for cost. And the biomass derived fuel approaches are pretty simple technologies that can produce crudes that can also feed refiners to make fuel for hard to electrify vehicles in aviation and heavy industry. All while sequestering a hell of a lot more C than the direct air capture or C pipeline schemes.
ISU just published an article on the economics of the biomass side of this in Green Chemistry.
