I think people got hyped by the power budget of the plasma field, and forgot about the power budget of the excitation of the tokomak, the cooling, the giant farm of GPUs mining bitcoin...
I'm sure I remember reading as far back as I first heard of ITER, literally about 15 years ago (I'm currently 30), that the power was only ever expected to net to zero and they planned a demonstration plant to be built subsequently called DEMO [1] which would generate net power and operate continuously. So I'm surprised to see these claims of net power production from ITER itself...
If you haven't watched this yet, it's definitely worth your time. Rather than being a super opinionated think-piece, it instead does a fantastic job walking the viewer through:
- high level nuclear fusion engineering performance curves / the engineering design contraint space
- the current state of nuclear fusion research (as of 5 years ago) and
- breaks down why some new smaller reactors will likely begin construction soon and counter-intuitively, the most recently started ones may be completed before ITER
That talk is a long pitch for getting a certain reactor design funded. Since the release of the video, a startup has been formed to build such a reactor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC_(tokamak)
This type of antiscientific/clickbait reporting shouldn't be on HN. ITER (whatever you think of its results, its competition with more modern approaches like commonwealth fusion systems, and fusion in general) has never been designed for, and has never claimed net-positive power production. It's a prototype vessel for research.
This drivel doesn't deserve to be on HN. There's no difference between this and any other misinformation spreading on Facebook or Twitter.
This is a crackpot website by right wing nutjob who is totally unqualified and just wants to sell you his insane books about some sort of massive conspiracy among scientists to waste time on fusion instead of his obsession, low-energy nuclear reactions. Because, yes, that's what scientists are working toward, a conspiracy to do nothing.
Krivit is a charlatan plain and simple. Even his bio is absurd, it says he's a "recognized subject-matter expert on Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) research". He has a BA in some sort of administration field, nothing to do with science.
This would be funny if Krivit didn't clearly have a mental illness and strong ties to the Heartland institute. I hope ITER has good security.
It sounds like the author of the article is really confused, or is just trying to kick up dust.
The included screenshots from the ITER website don't claim what he says they are claiming. And note that he carefully avoids pointing out that in the same screenshots there are phrases that explicitly say that ITER won't be used to produce power. A simple visit to Wikipedia[1] should have been enough to understand this.
Sure, a naive reader may fail to grasp what the "50MW in, 500 MW out" claim refers to... but I would also argue such a naive reader is probably not interested in the inner workings of nuclear experiments. That's why for such readers it's always spelled out that the experimental reactor won't actually produce electric power.
Frankly speaking, this article seems a blatant attempt to gaslight readers that may not be familiar with what an experimental reactor is supposed to be, or how it's supposed to work.
I was misinformed on ITER as well. Based on popular science, my understanding was that they actually intend to produce some small amount of energy. I would not be surprised if journalists and politicians were similarly misinformed.
E.g. CNBC:
> ITER, a $22 billion dollar international megaproject in the south of France, is the best-funded fusion endeavor, paid for by the governments of its seven member nations. It hopes to be the first to demonstrate the viability of fusion by generating more energy than it consumes.
> ITER will be the largest fusion reactor yet once it is complete, with 2025 the current end goal. Engineers working on the project aim to make it the first reactor that will provide more energy from fuel than is required to sustain the fusion reaction – the plan is to create 500 megawatts of usable energy from an input of 50 megawatts.
14 comments
[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 47.5 ms ] thread1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Plant
- high level nuclear fusion engineering performance curves / the engineering design contraint space
- the current state of nuclear fusion research (as of 5 years ago) and
- breaks down why some new smaller reactors will likely begin construction soon and counter-intuitively, the most recently started ones may be completed before ITER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
FIFA concedes that finger dexterity plays no big role in football.
NSA concedes they employ mathematicians.
This is a crackpot website by right wing nutjob who is totally unqualified and just wants to sell you his insane books about some sort of massive conspiracy among scientists to waste time on fusion instead of his obsession, low-energy nuclear reactions. Because, yes, that's what scientists are working toward, a conspiracy to do nothing.
Krivit is a charlatan plain and simple. Even his bio is absurd, it says he's a "recognized subject-matter expert on Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) research". He has a BA in some sort of administration field, nothing to do with science.
This would be funny if Krivit didn't clearly have a mental illness and strong ties to the Heartland institute. I hope ITER has good security.
The included screenshots from the ITER website don't claim what he says they are claiming. And note that he carefully avoids pointing out that in the same screenshots there are phrases that explicitly say that ITER won't be used to produce power. A simple visit to Wikipedia[1] should have been enough to understand this.
Sure, a naive reader may fail to grasp what the "50MW in, 500 MW out" claim refers to... but I would also argue such a naive reader is probably not interested in the inner workings of nuclear experiments. That's why for such readers it's always spelled out that the experimental reactor won't actually produce electric power.
Frankly speaking, this article seems a blatant attempt to gaslight readers that may not be familiar with what an experimental reactor is supposed to be, or how it's supposed to work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#:~:text=As%20a%20research....
E.g. CNBC:
> ITER, a $22 billion dollar international megaproject in the south of France, is the best-funded fusion endeavor, paid for by the governments of its seven member nations. It hopes to be the first to demonstrate the viability of fusion by generating more energy than it consumes.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/01/the-22-billion-iter-megaproj...
NewScientist:
> ITER will be the largest fusion reactor yet once it is complete, with 2025 the current end goal. Engineers working on the project aim to make it the first reactor that will provide more energy from fuel than is required to sustain the fusion reaction – the plan is to create 500 megawatts of usable energy from an input of 50 megawatts.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2280763-worlds-most-pow...