worrisome news

[james_davis_nicoll]

Misinformation about fusion may impede deployment of a technology unlikely to be delivered in a practical, commercial form during our lifetimes.

Comments

[jessie_c]

I'm quite certain it'll be developed soon. After all, it's been 20 years away for the past 40 years already.

[ba_munronoe]

To be more precise: 20 years away .

"In conclusion, according to the collective remarks by scientists, the popular phrase “fusion is always 30 years away” is proven wrong, technically speaking. To be precise, we should now say “fusion was said to be 19.3 years away 30 years ago; it was 28.3 years away 20 years ago; 27.8 years away 10 years ago.” And now, scientists believe fusion energy is only 17.8 years away."

This is, of course, from 2017, and may need to be updated.

[patrick_morris_miller]

Four points define a cubic. I'm too lazy to find its zero(es), though.

[malada]

What they said.

[oh6]

Public misapprehension of problems with fusion energy prevents recognition of the many actual problems with fusion energy.

[(Anonymous)]

I do wonder what "inherently safe" means. I doubt that any form of power generation is inherently safe. While less of a problem that with fission, fusion does produce radioactive waste. Even aneutronic fusion (which is further from our reach) produces radioactive waste via side reactions and gamma excitation (an excited state of an atom may decay to a radioactive isotope by beta emission rather than back to the ground state via gamma emission). Perhaps they mean that runaway power excursions (leading to meltdown, etc.) don't occur; in that case the term also to some fission power designs.

[(Anonymous)]

People say "There is no safe level" - I remember Doctor Who saying it. But don't bananas produce radioactive waste?

Robert Carnegie

[jessie_c]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

[neowolf2]

The focus on safety is based on the misapprehension that fission has failed because of public perception of its safety.

[(Anonymous)]

I think of this as standard bait and switch that refers to "acceptable risk" (carefully leaving that undefined) as "inherently safe" or not, depending on context. Compare https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/generally-recognized-safe-gras.

[viktor_haag]

I worry that "Fission's amazing safety culture" is, and has been, subject to the same kind of depreciation that we have seen in Boeing's "safety culture". But frankly, even with the risks, I think we're better off putting all our pennies on nuclear at this point to assist in getting off oil, gas, and coal. But what do I know.

[neowolf2]

I don't think it's worth putting anything more into nuclear fission, save perhaps continuing to operate some existing power plants for a time. New ones are so far out of the running economically that building them would be CO2-inferior to focusing entirely on renewables.

This might not have been so obvious even ten years ago, but renewable and storage costs have crashed and continue to decline.

[roseembolism]

Honestly, given the economics of nuclear power, the only reason to build more plants is if you want them to supply plutonium for nuclear weapons.

[scott_sanford]

Renewable energy prices, particularly solar, are falling through the floor right now. That's nice. Energy storage isn't there yet, certainly not for the amounts of power it takes to run an electrical grid - but we can hope.

[neowolf2]

The relevant figure is not how much storage costs now, but how much storage would cost N years in the future, where N = number of years to build a nuclear power plant starting the planning now - number of years to do the same to a battery installation.

BTW, LFP batteries in China are just crashing in price recently (cell price).

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/ev-lfp-battery-price-war-w-55-in-six-months.html

Global battery production approached 1.1 TWh of capacity in 2023, most of that in China.

[zeborah]

Technically we already have a perfectly usable fusion power plant that's producing more than enough power for the needs of everyone on the planet. Why we need another one is beyond me.