Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/09/nuclear-fusion-on-brink-of-being-realised-say-mit-scientists

by lnguyen • 8 years ago

44 78 8 years ago

mariuolo• 8 years ago

I'm no expert, but 15 years seem like an awfully small timeframe to produce a commercial reactor with a still unproven technology.

sgt1014• 8 years ago

The argument is that they can make it small - room sized, with the new magnates. This reduces the every one of the subsidiary technical challenges to doable, basically you don't need big machines to dig big holes, you don't need 30000m^3 of concrete here, there and everywhere, you don't need a supply chain that involves 20000 people in 40 countries... so the co-ordination costs go away as well.

It's pretty like the idea with data analytics or software ; if you can do an iteration / update by yourself in 10 minutes you will be able to solve the problem (for reasonable problems) in a few weeks for sure. If you need to spend a month assembling the data and compiling the code before you can commit a change you are simply not going to ever be able to make progress.

vidanay• 8 years ago

I think the "for reasonable problems" is the question for fusion.

boomboomsubban• 8 years ago

It took sixteen years from our realization that fission based power was possible to the first plant running. Seems possible.

lucozade• 8 years ago

The trick is not to be too precise about when you start counting from

tim3333• 8 years ago

I figure they could probably build a reactor that produces power - the MIT design looks like it would work if built. Making it profitable without government subsidy is a whole different thing though which I doubt will happen in 15 years.

There are a lot of problems to deal with eg see "Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be" https://thebulletin.org/fusion-reactors-not-what-they%E2%80%... There's also a Reddit discussion of that saying the problems aren't quite so bad https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/67rqqg/fusion_react...

If I were a politician I'd vote for subsidising the thing by say buying the electricity at 30c/kWh to advance human understanding, so I think it could be built. I think MIT estimated $5bn + to build a 200MW generator which is not a huge amount in government terms.

anotheryou• 8 years ago

isn't it meaned to always be 50 years away?

The 10s runtime is surprisingly close to a continuum runtime btw.

scottlocklin2• 8 years ago

Fusion always 15 years from being realized. Always will be.

ShorsHammer• 8 years ago

It's the golden timeframe for world-shattering technology.

At least money is being raised and people are trying, it's easy to be a cynic about something that's been promised as around the corner for the last 50 years.

Fusion with net positive output would change everything for the world. Really hope they get over the line.

sien3• 8 years ago

Sadly, that joke is at least 30 years old too.

There are lots of companies in the game now.

Tri Alpha Energy, General Fusion, Lockheed Martin and there are quite a few more.

There is the Wendelstein 7X stellarator and ITER.

The increase in fusion magnetic energy has actually been faster than Moore's law.

See this video at 18:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4&t=3990s

The massive improvements in superconductive magnets are really making a huge impact. Check out ARC and SPARC from MIT.

Humanity is going to get usable energy generated from fusion.

PhantomGremlin• 8 years ago

Sadly, that joke is at least 30 years old too.

When I was in high school, 45 years ago, I visited prospective colleges. Some grad students were discussing the fusion work they were doing, in a big building, with lots of shiny hardware. They probably told me that practical fusion was 15 years away.

Humanity is going to get usable energy generated from fusion.

Yeah I heard that in high school. I'm now retired and am still hearing it. Still, stranger things have happened. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series a few years ago!

Ygg2• 8 years ago

If we invested in space technology, the same money we invest into fusion, we'd be only 15 years from going to the moon too.

However there was the space race and lots of funds were allocated to going to the Moon.

tim3333• 8 years ago

But there's been progress. The sun's been doing fusion for a while, we made fusion bombs in the 50s, the JET torus near Oxford produced fusion output at 16 MW from an input of 24 MW of heating in 1997, and one of the MIT's proposed designs is projected to produce 200MW net power output if built. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4&feature=youtu.be...)

So it's coming along even if commercial viability may still be a while off.

zaarn4• 8 years ago

I hope we crack the concept of fusion soon, it would solve a lot of our problems (atleast most of the energy related ones, ie safety, pollution, availability of fuel)

ben_w3• 8 years ago

Article talks about YBCO as if it was new, but it’s almost as old as I am. If it was the only thing holding back fusion, the reactors would’ve had software updates for the Millennium Bug.

Perhaps this time I won’t fall for the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect…

rbjorklin• 8 years ago

The way I’m reading the article they’re talking about a new superconductor where YBCO is one of the materials used. English isn’t my first language though so I could be off base here.

sgt1014• 8 years ago

They've found a way to wind it into tapes which make fabricating magnates relatively easy - they have demonstrated world record magnetic capability with these. Fusion is one of the applications but the thing I liked about the research is that there are intermediate technology goals that they are aiming to hit which should fund everything - notably compact medical scanners.

fabian2k• 8 years ago

YBCO is not new, but the production of it in the amounts and quality necessary for large superconducting magnets is still difficult. You need to produce long stretches of the material to create large magnets efficiently, and that isn't trivial.

The old superconductors typically used in this kind of magnets have been pushed to the limit already in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, ~23 Tesla is the strongest existing commercial one and this seems to be a limit for that technology. The first NMR magnets that use YBCO are expected in the next years as far as I remember, I don't think any exist yet.

ben_w3• 8 years ago

Now that is interesting. I had thought YBCO was easy to fabricate given I saw some amateur do it on YouTube, but I do accept they had quality control issues — important on large scale production.

hguhghuff• 8 years ago

I first heard about fusion maybe 30 years ago. At the time I was told that the cliche of fusion energy is that it's always just around the corner.

And this article seems to say, well it's.......

danmaz74• 8 years ago

This prediction will always be wrong... until it won't.

By the way, "on the brink of" in the title is pretty stupid.

ZenoArrow2• 8 years ago

Ever wonder why that is?

I'd suggest the optimistic estimates are both for scientists and investors. Optimism is used as a fuel to keep scientists going when the future is uncertain, and any breakthrough, however small, is a chance to recharge that fuel. On the other side, (in our society) scientific research requires funding. It's easier to acquire funding if you suggest the research may take 20 years rather than suggesting it'll take 100 years. This also encourages scientists to be optimistic in their predictions, as if they aren't optimistic they risk losing their funding, which greatly reduces the chance of rapid progress.

For those reasons, I'd suggest these long estimates (as a definition of 'long', let's say in this case anything over 5 years) are just tools that help to get the work done, rather than being something with a high probability of being true.

annabellish3• 8 years ago

Well, we're mostly software developers - I'm sure we all understand being an hour away from completing a project for the past several days of development.

Scale that up, and...

oldcynic• 8 years ago

First time I heard that fusion was 15 years away was around 35 years ago, in an already old book belonging to my eldest brother. They were talking about ZETA (late 50s).

Wake me when the first power station is being built.

tomw2005• 8 years ago

To quote my Physics of Electrical Power Generation lecturer from a few years ago: "Fusion is 15 years away, I think it will always be 15 years away."

ScipioAfricanus• 8 years ago

It's a good quote, but you should know you're really quoting the zeigeist there, as was your professor.

rikkus• 8 years ago

If we were to work with an assumption that fusion happens soon (<20 years) and power is now cheap, what would we now be able to achieve that was previously prohibitively difficult / expensive?

throwawayqdhd2• 8 years ago

If energy is basically free, how will it impact crypto prices?

cycrutchfield3• 8 years ago

Variable costs are eliminated so the amortized fixed cost of hardware is the only ingredient for price.

Basically the price (demand) for hardware goes up and should equilibriate when it reaches the previous cost of energy.

alex_hitchins5• 8 years ago

Will the concept of money still mater as much if at all if all energy is free?

incompatible3• 8 years ago

I believe the proof-of-work calculations automatically become more difficult as more computing power is dedicated to solving them. The net result is that the amount of energy consumed will probably increase inversely proportionally to any reduction in power prices.

asteli• 8 years ago

To name a couple, you enable mass desalination and cracking of water. Solve humanity's access to clean water, enable replacement of fossil fuels for vehicles, solve anthropogenic climate change. Just those two are huge.

alex_duf6• 8 years ago

Isn't it the promise of renewables already? Prices dropping by double digits every year, exponential growth in every market.

Coupled with emerging energy storage it seems like cheap energy is due to come long before fusion

Maakuth• 8 years ago

For comparison, Olkiluoto 3 fission plant has been under construction for 13 years already. It's currently estimated to enter energy production a bit over one year from now.

andygates• 8 years ago

The delays there have been the usual big project problems - big builds, corporate drama, quality control. none of those apply to the MIT plan (they did apply to ITER, which was one of the arguments against it, but at the time it was the best option because the small strong magnets didn't exist).

throwawayqdhd2• 8 years ago

What will be realized first: affordable graphene production, nuclear fusion, or general artificial intelligence?

alex_hitchins5• 8 years ago

I'll go one step further - humans might sort their species out and stop with all the pointless tribalism and unite for the common good.

solnyshok• 8 years ago

Or, human might sorth their species out and away from the list of Earth species, effectively rendering question of nuclear fusion, graphene production, AI, and social constructs irrelevant.

hutzlibu5• 8 years ago

"stop with all the pointless tribalism "

I'll challenge that, because I think tribalism (living in small groups) is the way more akin to our genes. And much from the rising mental problems of humans today comes from living on your own in a big anonymous pool of strangers.

But those small groups could then indeed work (more) together for the common good.

martiuk• 8 years ago

The funny thing is that you're announcing you're part of the tribe that doesn't like tribalism.

sgt1014• 8 years ago

We can make graphene very cheaply and easily now, the issue is making large continuous high quality sheets of it. Same for carbon nanotubes.

GAI and fusion are different issues in that we have clear elementary understand of fusion (and a large chunk of the technology worked out). We have little to no understanding of cognition and much of the technology that we use for AI now may (or may not) prove to be irrelevant to GAI.

alex_duf6• 8 years ago

I'm sure it would be useful to have that technology around and I'm quite excited by the prospect of it, especially as the volume seems to be drastically reduced compared to ITER.

But I'm wondering how relevant fusion is to reverse climate change. It seems like renewables and storage are already fitting the bill, at a much lower cost.

Edit: happy to hear any arguments

DennisP2• 8 years ago

Renewables are cheap when backed up by natural gas plants, but wouldn't be especially cheap if you built enough storage to run civilization on them.

I certainly think we should build renewables as fast as we can, because they're available now and a long way from the market share that requires a lot of expensive storage. But down the road, it's entirely possible that advanced nuclear power sources, whether fusion or advanced fission like MSRs, will be more economical than building enormous amounts of battery storage. (We do have cheap hydro storage but that's geographically limited.)

clon2• 8 years ago

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQV2HAS...

I enjoy the joke about the perpetually shifting fusion acquisition time frame, but it would be fair to add that in terms of actual funding, we have been under the "fusion never" level. I feel like the context for the saying has always been that the proper financing assumption holds.

clon2• 8 years ago

That said, the material sciences advances required, especially high temperature superconducting magnets, simply were not there in the 70s. So a moonshot project to achieve it may have been a failure at massive costs, discouraging humanity from fusion research for a long time.

pfdietz• 8 years ago

According to the 2014 arxiv.org paper on the ARC reactor

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.3540.pdf

the concept (which would produce 190MW(e)) uses 90 tonnes of beryllium.

According to the USGS, the current total world annual production of Be is 220 tonnes, and total global resource is estimated at 100,000 tonnes.

The world uses ~20 TW of primary energy, so roughly 100,000 ARC reactors would be needed to supply the world, using about 100x as much Be as the estimated amount available for mining.

Unless Be supplies can be drastically increased, this concept is at best a niche player.

Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists

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