The problem with fusion power is the funding levels are at “fusion, never”.
If we call one large unit of money “1 Iraq War” – the proven amount of money the US DoD directly spent on that ineffective war ($757bn), then the sum total of fusion research to date would be around 0.07 Iraq Wars (about $50bn total on research reactors). We’re willing to spend vast amounts of money on prosecuting a war that was questionable at the time, but are afraid to really spend what it takes on a nuclear energy technology that could provide us with reliable energy security for the forseeable future.
Steve6443 wrote:
That is not saying “someone else should pay”. I’m not a communist. Never was, never will be.
You have an interesting understanding of communism. Not that I’m a communist either, but this is a rather gross misrepresentation of what communism is about.
Sea level rise relative to what? I don’t notice 20cm difference on structures built long ago. But my coast is probably still rising after the ice melted.
Pacific islands are often volcanic, with changes in land causing barrier reefs recognised long ago.
Coal seems a cheaper power source. So China can win the contracts to supply offshore wind turbine bases, another 4 of which were delivered to Scotland this week, by an oil burning Chinese vessel, direct from North China.
Airborne_Again wrote:
You have an interesting understanding of communism. Not that I’m a communist either, but this is a rather gross misrepresentation of what communism is about.
Communism is basically the idea that everyone is equal and receives the same, irrespective of what they do. But there is no incentive for individual effort, meaning the lazy will get the same as the industrious. And if someone works but receives nothing whilst someone else gets something without working, doesn’t that fulfil the notion of someone else paying?
Steve6443 wrote:
Communism is basically the idea that everyone is equal and receives the same, irrespective of what they do.
To be correct, not only receive but also work. Communist labour policies are quite well known. Nobody got money for not working, at least no worker :)
Of course not many did get any useful amount at all, so most were equal again. “As they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work” used to be a well known mantra.
Steve6443 wrote:
Communism is basically the idea that everyone is equal and receives the same, irrespective of what they do.
That is basically not at all what it is about. But any such discussion is meaningless as the word “communism” has become something you slap on people whose politics you don’t like, much as the word “fascist” is used. Both words in reality have quite specific meanings.
alioth wrote:
We’re willing to spend vast amounts of money on prosecuting a war that was questionable at the time, but are afraid to really spend what it takes on a nuclear energy technology that could provide us with reliable energy security for the forseeable future.
Some truth to this.
My personal opinion is that fusion is such a gamechanger technology that it is well worth pursuing it with every penny or cent we can expend on it. Workable fusion reactors, especially if they can be miniaturised later on, are the stuff that moves us to science-fiction levels of technology.
It’s basically unlimited cheap and reliable energy. Miniaturised reactors could even power vehicles.
MedEwok wrote:
It’s basically unlimited cheap and reliable energy
- and as never produces a mW of power whatsoever in any lab on the globe, despite billions and billions being used in research 
Solar panels is the best way to harvest fusion power today, and is likely to be so for the next “20 years”.
On Christmas morning, with most Brits cooking lunch and watching telly, our grid is burning less than four Gigawatts of gas and exporting nearly 6 GW to our friends in Europe
Merry Xmas all, happy flying in 2023 – and do come and visit us down here on the Scottish riviera!
To add a bit of technical content (re: Recent fusion advances in Livermore Labs https://www.llnl.gov/news/national-ignition-facility-achieves-fusion-ignition )
Reposting from other place where I am lurking:
Troy:
What are the current thoughts from the AR brains trust on the latest fusion news re: positive gain in output? To me, this seems like a significant step, but there’s been a fair bit of debate re: laser input energy, scarcity of isotopes etc suggesting otherwise.
[ totally off topic stuff deleted ]
Henry
As far as practical power generation, relatively insignificant. Despite the hype (they’ve been working toward this for a long time, and are understandably happy that they finally succeeded), it’s the latest in a long series of incremental improvements, and a long way yet from being very useful for power production.
It’s positive gain, in terms of getting modestly more neutron energy out than the UV-photon energy that went into the fuel capsule. It’s still two orders of magnitude (!) short of positive gain, in terms of getting more neutron energy out than the electrical energy that went into the lasers. Even worse when the difficulties of translating neutron energy into electrical power are considered. Not to mention the fact that it takes them a week to set up for a shot, and a power plant would have to do it perhaps once a second.
Had this milestone come quickly and easily, laser inertial confinement might have been of genuine interest for fusion power. Since it’s been a long struggle, and still a long way from over, the fusion-power people have pretty much given up on it. It may be helpful for exploring the physics, but it doesn’t look like a good route to power production (or, for that matter, to space propulsion).
There’s also increasing concern that D-T fusion by any means may not be very practical for power production, which makes the road ahead still longer and steeper. (For those not up on this: quite apart from the awkwardness of converting high-energy neutrons to power — fission is helpful enough to put most of its energy directly into heat, but D-T fusion is not — the assumption has long been that fusion reactors could easily breed enough tritium to keep themselves going and provide startup fuel for more. Recently the practical aspects of this got a serious look, and the result was a nasty shock: just making a fusion reactor provide its own tritium actually looks quite difficult, and there’s unlikely to be much surplus to support growth. And the world’s non-military tritium supply, which isn’t large, is about to start declining — its half-life is only 12 years, and the Canadian heavy-water reactors that breed most of it are aging and starting to face retirement.)
