MIT Sparc/Commonwealth Fusion Systems seem to have a chance at breakeven in a shorter time that the government and international labs. The problem is that now that fusion is commercial research we won't get updates until somebody wants to brag or a public lab make a breakthrough.
Might also be that the problem of neutron contamination of the hull turns out so bad that normal nuclear power plants and breeder reactors sound better.
funding has been basically nonexistent and dwindling. Achieving nuclear fission required $23 billion (today dollars) and 0.1% of the US population to work on it (Manhattan project)
Fusion funding is measured in tens of millions and does not have 350.000 people working on it.
It costs about the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project though, I would suspect, much of the cost of the Manhattan project was probably never accounted for, because much of the work was done by the military or other personnel paid for either way. You know, war time and such. But I haven't looked for any data on that, it could be it was all accounted for to the penny.
ITER is an international, purely scientific, peaceful project that is already going on for many more years than the original Manhattan project. Also fusion doesn't just happen by itself, when you "put the right elements close together". The problem that ITER tries to solve, even considering the advances over last 80 years, is quite a bit harder than nuclear fission in my opinion. Both are very hard, don't get me wrong, but fusion is considered the harder problem of those two.
It is good to ask, whether something is effective, efficient or at least has meaning. But with such endeavours, you can only really judge afterwards because it has never been done before. So the whole ITER project, with machinery that redefines the meaning of custom, costs about 4x as much, as the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport or 4x times as much as the current Lufthansa bailout. I wouldn't consider both to be very efficient spending of public money, but I am no expert. ITER is financed by most of the developed countries in some capacity, the compared projects are only financed by Germany.
Two side remarks: ITER is expected to cost >€20B, achieving fission cost $23B as estimated in hindsight. You say the cost of fission is roughly equals that of fusion, but fission is ITER + past projects + perhaps future project.
1. That implies that the total cost of past fission projects was a very small fraction of ITER's cost.
2. I find it difficult to believe that an eleven-digit hindsight estimate excludes military costs, let alone that the beancounters couldn't/wouldn't estimate "much of the cost".
We have a pretty solid roadmap to fusion power plants. ITER and DEMO don't have tremendous risks attached to them. But funding has been insufficient for fast progress. Funding is also insufficient for fast parallel exploration of non-tokamak designs.
The real question is whether fusion will ever be economically competitive with renewables+storage.
> We have a pretty solid roadmap to fusion power plants. ITER and DEMO don't have tremendous risks attached to them.
The costs of ITER have grown to be more than 4x as much as what was planned (and it is still in early stages so that's probably not the end of the story). I would not call that "solid".
> The real question is whether fusion will ever be economically competitive with renewables+storage.
Could you elaborate on what storage you have in mind? The only effective way we have to store large amounts of electricity right now is [pumped-storage hydroelectricity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...), which is interesting but also very sensitive to the geography.
I'm by no means an expert, but as far as I know a combination of batteries for fluctuations in the dozens-of-hours range and Power-to-{Methane,Hydrogen,Ammonia} for seasonal variations is what experts think feasible.
2050 is probably too late (it probably is already too late!), but you're right of course. In any case fusion won't play a role before we decided our climatological fate.
I did not know about this device so I did a quick research: it's essentially an optimised version of early plasma devices that use instabilities to create a very compact, dense structure that can reach really high ion temperatures. The main problem I see is that this structure is very short-lived: on the order of 10 nanoseconds.
These devices existed for a long time and have been used as X rays or neutron sources but not for fusion power. LPP have explained the exact machanism at the basis of the DPF fusion and have optimised the radiation losses and electron heating to reach higher temperatures but from this to claiming viable fusion power is quite a stretch.
Then there's this bit: "switching to pB11 fuel will give us a 100-fold increase in yield" -- compared to deuterium. That's straight-up backwards. pB11 power density is actually more like 100 times less. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
Yes, he's published papers about his experiments, but there's nothing in them about how he's going to get to net energy output -- so that part is not peer reviewed.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 22.3 ms ] threadWill fusion be achieved iteratively? Or will it need key new insights we have not yet discovered?
Fusion funding is measured in tens of millions and does not have 350.000 people working on it.
ITER is an international, purely scientific, peaceful project that is already going on for many more years than the original Manhattan project. Also fusion doesn't just happen by itself, when you "put the right elements close together". The problem that ITER tries to solve, even considering the advances over last 80 years, is quite a bit harder than nuclear fission in my opinion. Both are very hard, don't get me wrong, but fusion is considered the harder problem of those two.
It is good to ask, whether something is effective, efficient or at least has meaning. But with such endeavours, you can only really judge afterwards because it has never been done before. So the whole ITER project, with machinery that redefines the meaning of custom, costs about 4x as much, as the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport or 4x times as much as the current Lufthansa bailout. I wouldn't consider both to be very efficient spending of public money, but I am no expert. ITER is financed by most of the developed countries in some capacity, the compared projects are only financed by Germany.
1. That implies that the total cost of past fission projects was a very small fraction of ITER's cost.
2. I find it difficult to believe that an eleven-digit hindsight estimate excludes military costs, let alone that the beancounters couldn't/wouldn't estimate "much of the cost".
The real question is whether fusion will ever be economically competitive with renewables+storage.
(1) There could always be unknown-unknowns related to stability or confinement with a self-heating plasma. ITER is still a science experiment.
(2) The disruption problem hasn't be solved. There's an attitude of "it'll get solved because we need it to get solved."
You hit the nail on the head with the economics issue, though.
The costs of ITER have grown to be more than 4x as much as what was planned (and it is still in early stages so that's probably not the end of the story). I would not call that "solid".
Could you elaborate on what storage you have in mind? The only effective way we have to store large amounts of electricity right now is [pumped-storage hydroelectricity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...), which is interesting but also very sensitive to the geography.
[1] https://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2018_009_power-to-gas-wit...
I think 2019 (or was it 2018?)was the first year with more renewable installed than coal plants, if you look at max charge. Good news at least.
I wonder if this could be used to lower the temperature needed for fusion?
These devices existed for a long time and have been used as X rays or neutron sources but not for fusion power. LPP have explained the exact machanism at the basis of the DPF fusion and have optimised the radiation losses and electron heating to reach higher temperatures but from this to claiming viable fusion power is quite a stretch.
The board of advisors doesn't have a single physicist on it -- makes me suspicious as well.
https://lppfusion.com/investing-in-lppfusion/our-plan-to-net...
Then there's this bit: "switching to pB11 fuel will give us a 100-fold increase in yield" -- compared to deuterium. That's straight-up backwards. pB11 power density is actually more like 100 times less. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
Yes, he's published papers about his experiments, but there's nothing in them about how he's going to get to net energy output -- so that part is not peer reviewed.