# Why limitless fusion power is still a challenge



## qubit (Feb 14, 2021)

This video explains why and alas it doesn't look like it will become a reality anytime soon.


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## R-T-B (Feb 14, 2021)

My "youtube science" alarm bells are ringing (especially with that title).  Is there an actual non video source to back this up?


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## the54thvoid (Feb 14, 2021)

It's well known that fusion power as a means to move on from fossils and conventional nuclear *is along way off*. However, science is moving closer. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy or quick. Also, the 'limitless' power is very much a populist phrase. Energy has to be pumped in to create the reaction that will one day be self-sustaining. The concept of limitless power isn't so much  about energy equations but more based on the notion that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.

Here's some non-YT science stuff:









						5 Big Ideas for Making Fusion Power a Reality
					

Startups, universities, and major companies are vying to commercialize a nuclear fusion reactor




					spectrum.ieee.org
				





Edit: thread title changed to make a more constructive conversation.


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## R-T-B (Feb 14, 2021)

the54thvoid said:


> thread title


The youtube title was what set my alarm bells off, but I have a feeling thats outside your jurisdiction.


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## the54thvoid (Feb 14, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> The youtube title was what set my alarm bells off, but I have a feeling thats outside your jurisdiction.



Yeah, a lot of people forget YT is public access TV. Anybody can post anything for clicks. A nice dry journal isn't glamourous but it's got way more science chops than anything YT can offer.


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## R-T-B (Feb 14, 2021)

I just want to know what conspiracy "big-fusion" is not telling me about?

Sorry, I'll stop.


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## the54thvoid (Feb 14, 2021)

Yeah, there's no doubts fusion has challenges, but so did nuclear. But it became a reality. Fusion will take time - I'll not see it in my lifetime as a common energy source but I'll see it getting nearer. 200 years ago, flying vehicles, let alone cars, were a dream - not even a challenge. We'll get there with fusion with perseverence. And a lot of cash.


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## qubit (Feb 15, 2021)

the54thvoid said:


> Yeah, there's no doubts fusion has challenges, but so did nuclear. But it became a reality. Fusion will take time - I'll not see it in my lifetime as a common energy source but I'll see it getting nearer. 200 years ago, flying vehicles, let alone cars, were a dream - not even a challenge. We'll get there with fusion with perseverence. And a lot of cash.


Yes, we will. Even in the video, she never said that it will never happen, just that the challenges are really tough and guesstimated that we might have it by around 2100, way past my lifetime, too.  

I watched it all and I don't think this video is populist clickbait getting its facts wrong as some people on here seem to think, or I wouldn't have posted it.


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## R-T-B (Feb 15, 2021)

qubit said:


> I watched it all and I don't think this video is populist clickbait getting its facts wrong as some people on here seem to think, or I wouldn't have posted it.


That's fair.  I'll be honest, I did not watch it at the time (slow cellular data link).  The title just as I said, had that populist ring.


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## qubit (Feb 25, 2021)

@R-T-B Have you since watched it?   Regardless, here's a more optimistic view on solving the problem for everyone to read.









						5 Big Ideas for Making Fusion Power a Reality
					

Startups, universities, and major companies are vying to commercialize a nuclear fusion reactor




					spectrum.ieee.org
				




I don't know why the preview shows full page reload, but it does load the article.


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## dragontamer5788 (Feb 25, 2021)

the54thvoid said:


> Yeah, there's no doubts fusion has challenges, but so did nuclear. But it became a reality. Fusion will take time - I'll not see it in my lifetime as a common energy source but I'll see it getting nearer. 200 years ago, flying vehicles, let alone cars, were a dream - not even a challenge. We'll get there with fusion with perseverence. And a lot of cash.



I think a big problem with fusion is that fission is also (basically) unlimited free energy. So if fission keeps making advances, there might be no reason to do fusion.

The issue with Fission is mostly security: Uranium and Plutonium are highly energy dense and great sources of energy. Its also political: we DON'T want random countries purifying Uranium. That's just very sketchy. But even then, there are other metals such as Thorium that don't have any bomb-making capability that can still be used in a fission reactor.


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## TumbleGeorge (Mar 3, 2021)

dragontamer5788 said:


> So if fission keeps making advances, there might be no reason to do fusion.


Uranium deposits which are economically accessible for extraction and exploitation is much much much lesser than deuterium. Deuterium is ~0.02% of all hydrogen in water. Helium 3 contains not only on lunar surface but has around 37000 tons in Earth atmosphere. Is more than enough for hundreds or thousands years for humankind needs(if we use energy more effective and wisely).


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## dragontamer5788 (Mar 3, 2021)

TumbleGeorge said:


> Uranium deposits which are economically accessible for extraction and exploitation is much much much lesser than deuterium. Deuterium is ~0.02% of all hydrogen in water. Helium 3 contains not only on lunar surface but has around 37000 tons in Earth atmosphere. Is more than enough for hundreds or thousands years for humankind needs(if we use energy more effective and wisely).



The amount of Uranium "burned" in a nuclear reactor is almost completely negligible. 1 *gram* of Uranium produces 24MW-hrs of energy, equivalent to 3-*tons* of coal. That's not even the most efficient reaction: Uranium-Plutonium cycles are even more efficient.

The USA has 47900 tons (47,900,000 *kilograms*) of economically extractable uranium. Australia has 1,692,700 tons (1-billion tons).

We're not running out of uranium. Its just not happening. And that's not even getting into Thorium reactors. The major issue with uranium is the high-cost of fission (safety concerns: not just vs natural disasters, but also terrorist threats), as well as the trust issue. Any country that purifies uranium is going to be immediately distrusted on the world stage... let alone a country that starts to stockpile Plutonium.

EDIT: This doesn't even take into account "Breeder Reactors", which generate more fuel than they consume. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor. We have so much Uranium that we don't even bother building breeder reactors...

Thorium can't make a bomb. But that's also why Thorium is unpopular as a fissile material.

-------

Even nuclear bombs are highly efficient. A Uranium-bomb is just 10kg of purified Uranium (~1400kg of raw uranium) A Plutonium bomb is just 2kg (and Plutonium is easily made from purified Uranium roughly 1-to-1). We can sustain a nuclear war until the entire world is destroyed because of how efficient that damn material is.


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## bug (Mar 3, 2021)

Everything is a dead end until someone comes up with a novel idea that makes everybody go "why didn't I think of this before".


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## qubit (Mar 3, 2021)

dragontamer5788 said:


> The amount of Uranium "burned" in a nuclear reactor is almost completely negligible. 1 *gram* of Uranium produces 24MW-hrs of energy, equivalent to 3-*tons* of coal. That's not even the most efficient reaction: Uranium-Plutonium cycles are even more efficient.
> 
> The USA has 47900 tons (47,900,000 *kilograms*) of economically extractable uranium. Australia has 1,692,700 tons (1-billion tons).


Crikey! We've got enough fuel until the end of time. It makes fusion power worth researching and developing for as long as it takes, with gains as enormous as these.

It will make power shortages a thing of the past and power very, very cheap. Only the cost of the infrastructure will matter, not the fuel. Society would quite literally be transformed.


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## dragontamer5788 (Mar 3, 2021)

qubit said:


> Crikey! We've got enough fuel until the end of time. It makes fusion power worth researching and developing for as long as it takes, with gains as enormous as these.
> 
> It will make power shortages a thing of the past and power very, very cheap. Only the cost of the infrastructure will matter, not the fuel. Society would quite literally be transformed.



Fission (Uranium / Plutonium) is a *competitor* to Fusion (Hydrogen).

My general point is: I don't care how we get our free energy. Both fusion and fission offer basically free energy for the rest of our lives. The main difference is that we have hundreds of Fission reactors operating today, while Fusion remains a fantasy.

Researchers are gonna research what they want. There's nothing wrong with trying to get Fusion to work per se. But people are really sleeping on the benefits of Fission.


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## qubit (Mar 3, 2021)

dragontamer5788 said:


> But people are really sleeping on the benefits of Fission.


This ^^^ I'm a big proponent of nuclear, including fission. It makes me sick to see the anti-nuclear propaganda from the green lobby be so effective at setting government policy. Those luddites have no clue that fission will get them everything they want and should stop with all the scare stories about radiation and waste fuel storage. We have the technology to transform our power right now ffs. Unless there's another agenda to their campaigning, I dunno.


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## jboydgolfer (Mar 3, 2021)

qubit said:


> Unless there's another agenda


with most things where large amounts of money are concerned, Agenda's are not only possible, theyre prevalent. 
why let limitless power get in the way of a good agenda.


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## 80-watt Hamster (Mar 3, 2021)

qubit said:


> This ^^^ I'm a big proponent of nuclear, including fission. It makes me sick to see the anti-nuclear propaganda from the green lobby be so effective at setting government policy. Those luddites have no clue that fission will get them everything they want and should stop with all the scare stories about radiation and waste fuel storage. We have the technology to transform our power right now ffs. Unless there's another agenda to their campaigning, I dunno.



My hypothesis: Folks aren't as concerned about the dangers of fission-powered generation as they are over fission-powered disasters.  Chernobyl and Fukushima (and to a lesser extent Three Mile Island) have cast a pretty dark shadow across public opinion.


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## bug (Mar 3, 2021)

80-watt Hamster said:


> My hypothesis: Folks aren't as concerned about the dangers of fission-powered generation as they are over fission-powered disasters.  Chernobyl and Fukushima (and to a lesser extent Three Mile Island) have cast a pretty dark shadow across public opinion.


Even that was mostly scare-mongering. I mean, look at Fukushima: a 30+ year old plant, scheduled to be decommissioned and it took a giant earthquake combined with a tsunami to take it down. Even then, they just barely managed the feat.
I can't think of many other things the man has built that are more durable than that.

(Fwiw, the design flaw that took down Fukushima has been corrected since the 90s, iirc.)


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## qubit (Mar 3, 2021)

80-watt Hamster said:


> My hypothesis: Folks aren't as concerned about the dangers of fission-powered generation as they are over fission-powered disasters.  Chernobyl and Fukushima (and to a lesser extent Three Mile Island) have cast a pretty dark shadow across public opinion.


As @bug says, the dangers are overblown and have been for decades, that's why I refer to green propaganda. When you look at the death figures for the different types of power generation, coal is the worst, with thousands and going down until you get to nuclear, which is next to nothing.


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## Caring1 (Mar 3, 2021)

If all the issues have been covered, that only leaves the nuclear waste disposal to be solved.
Fire it off in to the sun, let it burn.
Yes i'm a NIMBY.


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## Aquinus (Mar 4, 2021)

80-watt Hamster said:


> My hypothesis: Folks aren't as concerned about the dangers of fission-powered generation as they are over fission-powered disasters.  Chernobyl and Fukushima (and to a lesser extent Three Mile Island) have cast a pretty dark shadow across public opinion.


Yet people constantly ignore the fact that all 3 of these power stations were commissioned in the 70s. Are we really so narrow minded to think that technology hasn't improved in the last half a century?


Caring1 said:


> If all the issues have been covered, that only leaves the nuclear waste disposal to be solved.


In the US the issue with used nuclear fuel isn't what to do with it, it's the laws that allow you to do things with it. Spent nuclear fuel can be reprocessed, but we don't in the name of non-proliferation, which is think is dumb.


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## Athlonite (Mar 4, 2021)

I seem to think Fusion wont be happening in my lifetime but we do need to move onward with fission like using molten salt reactors or Thorium reactors where you can feed in used crap from uranium/plutonium reactors and burn it off till it's relatively safe but that probaly wont happen either as there's too much money rolled up in conventional nuclear power and the production of it fuels


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## Aquinus (Mar 4, 2021)

Athlonite said:


> I seem to think Fusion wont be happening in my lifetime but we do need to move onward with fission like using molten salt reactors or Thorium reactors where you can feed in used crap from uranium/plutonium reactors and burn it off till it's relatively safe but that probaly wont happen either as there's too much money rolled up in conventional nuclear power and the production of it fuels


The up front investment cost for nuclear is very high which makes nuclear less lucrative than say natural gas power stations which can turn a profit around much more quickly. In my opinion, that's the main issue. A _good_ nuclear project can have returns much better than just about anything else, the problem is that it takes a long time and there are a lot of things that can go wrong before you even see a penny. I think that's the primary barrier to entry for nuclear power regardless of the type of fuel it uses.


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## TumbleGeorge (Mar 4, 2021)

dragontamer5788 said:


> Australia has 1,692,700 tons (1-billion tons)


Million


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## 80-watt Hamster (Mar 4, 2021)

Aquinus said:


> Yet people constantly ignore the fact that all 3 of these power stations were commissioned in the 70s. Are we really so narrow minded to think that technology hasn't improved in the last half a century?
> 
> In the US the issue with used nuclear fuel isn't what to do with it, it's the laws that allow you to do things with it. Spent nuclear fuel can be reprocessed, but we don't in the name of non-proliferation, which is think is dumb.



I'm not saying that people are justified in being scared, simply that they are.

Isn't disposal and storage of expended control rods the problem, not fuel?



dragontamer5788 said:


> Australia has 1,692,700 tons (1-billion tons).





TumbleGeorge said:


> Million



Kilograms?


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## The Data Master (Mar 4, 2021)

This is one of those scientific breakthroughs that if you can perfect it, you are tomorrow's next Rockstar, but if you make the slightest mistake, you potentially doom the planet and become the most hated scientist.
Just ask Doc Ock.


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## bug (Mar 4, 2021)

The Data Master said:


> This is one of those scientific breakthroughs that if you can perfect it, you are tomorrow's next Rockstar, but if you make the slightest mistake, you potentially doom the planet and become the most hated scientist.
> Just ask Doc Ock.


How would a slight mistake in implementing fusion doom the planet?
Everything that was implemented until now is flawed and we're still fine.


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## TumbleGeorge (Mar 4, 2021)

Tons uranium in Australia deposits are theoretical. When this amount is obtained, I will admit that the estimate is not too exaggerated.


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## Aquinus (Mar 4, 2021)

80-watt Hamster said:


> Isn't disposal and storage of expended control rods the problem, not fuel?


I didn't think that control rods where an item that gets consumed. The materials used for control rods are specifically picked because they won't undergo a nuclear reaction when exposed to a lot of neutrons. I'm not sure what process would require them to be replaced regularly.


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## Athlonite (Mar 5, 2021)

Aquinus said:


> I didn't think that control rods where an item that gets consumed. The materials used for control rods are specifically picked because they won't undergo a nuclear reaction when exposed to a lot of neutrons. I'm not sure what process would require them to be replaced regularly.



Correct control rods are not consumed as part of the power making process per say but they are degraded over time during the operation and still have to be stored secularly after use and this is where a Thorium reactor is a good idea all the wasted spent fuel rod and control rods can be burnt up in a thorium reactor instead of being buried for hundreds if not thousands of years


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## bug (Mar 5, 2021)

Aquinus said:


> I didn't think that control rods where an item that gets consumed. The materials used for control rods are specifically picked because they won't undergo a nuclear reaction when exposed to a lot of neutrons. I'm not sure what process would require them to be replaced regularly.


Control rods act as a sponge for neutrons. There's only so much they will absorb.


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## Aquinus (Mar 6, 2021)

bug said:


> Control rods act as a sponge for neutrons. There's only so much they will absorb.


I didn't think that they absorbed neutrons, only slowed them down and brought them to a lower energy state. After doing some research I guess it depends on the type of material used. Some are consumed, others are stable. So I guess we're both right?


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## the54thvoid (Mar 7, 2021)

The issue with nuclear is practically everything used becomes irradiated. On health and safety precautions, that amounts to a lot of 'waste'. The actual reactor components are the most dangerous but the low level waste requires specific handling and storage as well.  

That being said, modern nuclear design is remarkably safe. It is an excellent green energy source.


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## mtcn77 (Mar 7, 2021)

TL;DR: does she talk about the stellerator, or just digress about obsolete tokamaks?


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## HenrySomeone (Mar 7, 2021)

the54thvoid said:


> Yeah, there's no doubts fusion has challenges, but so did nuclear. But it became a reality. Fusion will take time - I'll not see it in my lifetime as a common energy source but I'll see it getting nearer. 200 years ago, flying vehicles, let alone cars, were a dream - not even a challenge. We'll get there with fusion with perseverence. And a lot of cash.


Well, it depends on which definition of vehicle you take, but hot-air balloons existed almost 250 years ago and so did the first steam powered "cars", so I would definitely say that marked the transition from dream to a challenge, it just took about 150 years for both to become a more widespread reality. And I believe fusion is in a similar category - I am almost entirely certain, it won't happen in this century (at least not commercially), maybe not even in the next (the same goes for a manned mission to Mars). Yes, (current) nuclear energy came into use remarkably quickly, but fusion has been "just around the corner" (about 20 years away) for almost 50 years now and we're barely any closer which is a clear indicator that it will take much longer. Sure, with limitless cash and determination, it could happen earlier, but just like always in this cases, ROI is at the forefront of causes holding things back...


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## Aquinus (Mar 7, 2021)

the54thvoid said:


> The actual reactor components are the most dangerous


These are also the components that are heavily shielded. Fun little fact, you receive less ambient radiation inside of Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant (in my state of NH,) than you do anywhere in the state. Why is that? It's because the power station is heavily shielded whereas in nature, NH has a lot of granite which contains uranium among other radioactive materials in the ground. So just living in NH gives you more radiation than being inside the nuclear plant. This plant was also commissioned 30 years ago.

Honestly, Nuclear can be very safe if done right, but the risk and cost to doing it right is extremely high, so no one wants to commit to a hundred million dollar investment to built one when you might not even see a return. To me, that's the biggest issue. It's also an issue that I think that the federal government (in the US,) could help with. The reality is that once a nuclear plant has been approved by local municipalities, they shouldn't be able to change their mind mid-construction which would cause the investment firm to lose millions and millions of dollars. That problem needs to be fixed. The bottom line is that we need to ensure good designs and not allow stupid political moves once the plan is committed to.


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## mtcn77 (Mar 7, 2021)

Aquinus said:


> Why is that?


I thought it was due to the bombardment of the countryside with nuclear armaments?


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## dragontamer5788 (Mar 7, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> I thought it was due to the bombardment of the countryside with nuclear armaments?



Radiation is all around us. Bananas for example are high in radioactive potassium.

It's simply a matter of degree. Once radiation goes above a certain level, it gets dangerous.


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## mtcn77 (Mar 8, 2021)

dragontamer5788 said:


> Bananas for example are high in radioactive potassium.


Not unless you harvest them from radiation tainted soil.
Nature - as far as I'm concerned - does not engage in nuclear reactions, only chemical ones. I can drop by a citation if you don't believe me.


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## bug (Mar 8, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> Not unless you harvest them from radiation tainted soil.
> *Nature *- as far as I'm concerned - *does not engage in nuclear reactions*, only chemical ones. I can drop by a citation if you don't believe me.



Really? You think they're man made?


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## Space Lynx (Mar 8, 2021)

the54thvoid said:


> The issue with nuclear is practically everything used becomes irradiated. On health and safety precautions, that amounts to a lot of 'waste'. The actual reactor components are the most dangerous but the low level waste requires specific handling and storage as well.
> 
> That being said, modern nuclear design is remarkably safe. It is an excellent green energy source.



agreed, let's just not build them next to possible tsunami areas or fault lines...


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## dorsetknob (Mar 8, 2021)

mtcn77 said:


> Nature - as far as I'm concerned - does not engage in nuclear reactions, only chemical ones.


Just look up at the sky 
in daylight your see a perfect example
at night your see even more examples.

As for Fusion power we are allready using it. 
Photoelectric cells convert sunlight to Usable power the light they convert into power comes from our local fusion power source ie THE SUN
so our current use of fusion power is basically very inefficient .
the goal here is to create new and more efficient ways of generating power.

Oh and by the way Nucler science is just VERY ADVANCED CHEMISTRY.


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## mtcn77 (Mar 8, 2021)

bug said:


> Really? You think they're man made?


Not that I know, other than the staunch belief that is a 'known' quantity.


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## jsteinhauer (Mar 8, 2021)

When I was an undergraduate student majoring in nuclear engineering from 1987-1991, nuclear fusion as a theoretical source of energy was estimated to be 5 years from breakeven, meaning you got as much energy out of the reaction as it cost to create the reaction.  This was clearly a falsely optimistic claim to boost support for continued funding for research projects.  I am encouraged, as memories of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl fade, that fission of both fissile and fissionable material is once again becoming a topic of conversation.  I never ended up with an engineering career, for what it's worth.  1991 was a bad time to look for work in that industry, and I found out I am not graduate school material, so I ended up with an MD practicing pathology.


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## mtcn77 (Mar 8, 2021)

jsteinhauer said:


> so I ended up with an MD practicing pathology.


You wouldn't believe how popular neuropathology is among neurologists. Some sort of new frontier I suppose.


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## Steevo (Mar 8, 2021)

We need fission reactors for a stable clean base load while we wait on Fusion, plus the breeder design can make us plutonium for deep space probes, and reuse the waste from other fission reactors.


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## The Data Master (Mar 9, 2021)

bug said:


> How would a slight mistake in implementing fusion doom the planet?
> Everything that was implemented until now is flawed and we're still fine.


Maybe I don't know enough about it. When I think Fusion, I think of instability turning the planet into another sun. Then again we had a lot of Nuclear talk in here and I also am the guy worried that a hydrogen car accident would cause the same reaction as a hydrogen bomb.


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## bug (Mar 9, 2021)

The Data Master said:


> Maybe I don't know enough about it. When I think Fusion, I think of instability turning the planet into another sun.


You needn't worry. To keep fusion going, plasma needs to be confined in magnetic fields. Instability, in this context, means instability of those fields that no longer contain plasma. And when plasma is not contained... it just stops fusing. It will probably damage the containment vessel, but nothing more than that. That's what makes fusion so desirable: a quasi-infinite supply of fuel and when it goes awry, it pretty much shuts down on its own.


The Data Master said:


> Then again we had a lot of Nuclear talk in here and I also am the guy worried that a hydrogen car accident would cause the same reaction as a hydrogen bomb.


It could happen. If the cars were moving at a speed of maybe 100,000mph. But even then, I don't think the hydrogen in both cars will be enough to damage anything outside a small radius (maybe 300ft or so).


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## Athlonite (Mar 10, 2021)

bug said:


> It could happen. If the cars were moving at a speed of maybe 100,000mph. But even then, I don't think the hydrogen in both cars will be enough to damage anything outside a small radius (maybe 300ft or so).


If that car hit earth at 100,000MPH it would release this much energy 1.22 x 10-2 MegaTons so a pretty big hole in the ground


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## R-T-B (Mar 24, 2021)

Athlonite said:


> If that car hit earth at 100,000MPH it would release this much energy 1.22 x 10-2 MegaTons so a pretty big hole in the ground


This is why we have speed limits.


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## dorsetknob (May 26, 2021)

Fusion News Update









						Mast Upgrade: UK experiment could sweep aside fusion hurdle
					

Results from a UK experiment could help clear a hurdle to achieving commercial fusion power.



					www.bbc.co.uk
				




"Excerpt"

*Initial results from a UK experiment could help clear a hurdle to achieving commercial power based on nuclear fusion, experts say.*
The researchers believe they now have a better way to remove the excess heat produced by fusion reactions.
This intense heat can melt materials used inside a reactor, limiting the amount of time it can operate for.
The system, which has been likened to a car exhaust, resulted in a tenfold reduction in the heat.
The tests were carried out at the Mast (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak) Upgrade nuclear fusion experiment at Culham in Oxfordshire. The £55m device began operating in October last year, after a seven-year build.


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## bug (May 26, 2021)

I wish there was a checklist somewhere of all the hurdles left to overcome.


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## qubit (May 26, 2021)

bug said:


> I wish there was a checklist somewhere of all the hurdles left to overcome.


Alas, it looks like commercial fusion won’t be achieved in my lifetime, or will be right at the end of it. I’m confident that the scientists and engineers will crack it, however.

Fusion and quantum computing will be game changers for the modern world, improving it, possibly unrecognisably. This is why my username is qubit. 

@dorsetknob this could bring forward fusion power by decades. Excellent development.


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## bug (May 26, 2021)

qubit said:


> Alas, it looks like commercial fusion won’t be achieved in my lifetime, or will be right at the end of it. I’m confident that the scientists and engineers will crack it, however.
> 
> Fusion and quantum computing will be game changers for the modern world, improving it, possibly unrecognisably. This is why my username is qubit.
> 
> @dorsetknob this could bring forward fusion power by decades. Excellent development.


Agreed. Some say with fusion cracked, we'll have so much energy, only a couple of fusion power plants will be able to service the whole planet. Of course that won't happen because we'll find ways to suck even more power and governments will never agree to depend on someone else supplying their power, but fusion can be _that_ disruptive.


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## Shrek (May 26, 2021)

qubit said:


> Fusion and quantum computing will be game changers for the modern world, improving it, possibly unrecognisably. This is why my username is qubit.


I am not sure quantum error correction can allow the scaling of digital quantum computers; protecting one quantum bit is not enough, one must also protect those doing the protection.


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## bug (May 26, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> I am not sure quantum error correction can allow the scaling of digital quantum computers; protecting one quantum bit is not enough, one must also protect those doing the protection.


I don't think computers* will not go completely quantum, but heterogeneous. The quantum part will be there like the FPU was in the beginning. And it will go from there.

*I mean useful computers, not the things we have today that are little more than proof of concepts.


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## Shrek (May 26, 2021)

I belive analogue quantum computers will exist but not digital (hybrid or otherwise)


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## bug (May 26, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> I belive analogue quantum computers will exist but not digital (hybrid or otherwise)


You can have a traditional, digital, CPU sampling state/data from an analogue quantum engine


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## Shrek (May 26, 2021)

Absolutely, and together they are analogue


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## qubit (May 26, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> I am not sure quantum error correction can allow the scaling of digital quantum computers; protecting one quantum bit is not enough, one must also protect those doing the protection.


They've made good progress on this in recent years and have made computers with tens of qubits now. I don't have any details off the top of my head, but I think they'll fully crack this problem eventually. Perhaps they'll learn some new physics or something which will help.


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## Shrek (May 26, 2021)

I am not sure they will crack it any more than we can't make error free analogue computers.


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## 64K (May 26, 2021)

Lockheed Martin said a few years ago that they were planning to launch a fusion engine that would be the size of trailer within 10 years time. Imagine the rewards of having the patent for such a thing.


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## Shrek (May 26, 2021)

Hydrogen based, Deuterium based or Tritium based?


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