This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I was under the impression that the major two advantages of fusion were exponentially more power output, provided we can actually sustain it, and no radioactive byproducts....
It depends on the type of fusion.
The easiest fusion reaction is deuterium/tritium - two isotopes of hydrogen. The vast majority of the energy of that reaction is released as neutrons, which are very difficult to contain and will irradiate the reactor's containment vessel. The walls of the reactor will degrade, and will eventually need to be replaced and the originals treated as radioactive waste.
Lithium/deuterium fusion releases most of its energy in the form of alpha particles - making it much more practical to harness the energy for electrical generation - and releases something like 80% fewer high energy neutrons -- much less radioactive waste. As a trade-off, the conditions required to sustain the reaction are even more extreme and difficult to maintain.
There are many many possible fusion reactions and multiple containment methods - some produce significant radioactive waste and some do not. In terms of energy output, the energy released per reaction event is much higher than in fission, but it is much harder to concentrate reaction events, so overall energy output is much lower until some significant advancement is made on the engineering challenges that have plagued fusion for 70+ years.
Man this article is terribly off base compared to the title.
Quiet!!
If the tech brows wanna dump money into developing renewable energy systems, detaching themselves from our main power grid they currently destabilize. Let them!
Huh. Buzzword fueled stupidity might have a positive effect for once.
"AI hype trash accidentally solves global energy issues and ends fossil fuels" was not on my bingo card, but I'll take it lol
Really shitty scaremongering article. I'd like to know how exactly increased investment in fusion could potentially make it unsuitable for public use, as the article claims?
I don't see why we are hating on the waste like this. Yes it's very dangerous waste, but the amount is quite small, and if we store them safely, as shown in Tom Scott's video on Nuclear Storage in Finland, it's actually a very good solution for the time being.
Maybe Tom Scott should make a video about the Asse salt mine. It's where the "yellow barrel == nuclear waste" meme comes from look here a picture.
This stuff is the driving factor behind nuclear energy being a political no-go in Germany: We just don't trust anyone, including ourselves, to do it properly. Sufficiently failure-proof humans have yet to be invented. Then, aside from that: Fission is expensive AF, and that's before considering that they don't have to pay for their own insurance because no insurance company would take on the contract.
Fusion OTOH has progressed to a point where it's actually around the corner, when the Max Planck institute is spinning out a company to commercialise it you know it's the real deal. And they did.
"if we store them safely" - here's the problem with the entire argument. Nobody wants to pay for it, so they won't unless they are forced to. Carbon capture is a viable technology but it costs money to implement at a net financial loss, so nobody uses that if they don't have to either. The problem is the same as always - nobody who stands to lose money gives a damn. The planet dying is somebody else's concern tomorrow, and profits are their concern today.
We've already paid for it though. That's why we built Yucca Mountain.
Jon Oliver did an entire segment on that in the fourth season, featuring news segments from the late 70s early 80s
I hate on the waste that pushes AI in everything.
Ok but that's not my point.
I think a even better solution might be to not unnecessarily waste energies 😉
It's also not as if there are not other nuclear power stations in existence. There is plenty of storage capacity as you say.
This is just the standard hating everything tech companies do because, AI equals bad
Tech bosses think nuclear fusion is the solution
No they don't; this is literally the first thing I've ever read claiming that. Tech bosses are perfect happy to power AI with nuclear fission and don't give the slightest fuck about the waste.
(As well they shouldn't, TBH, since it really ought to get reprocessed anyway. But that doesn't excuse them for wanting to waste the power on bullshit.)
Also nuclear fusion has essentially zero waste.
That turns out to not be true, at least not with the tokamak reactors most groups are pursuing.
You see, at some point you need a shield around the reactor to actually absorb all the high energy particles released, and turn that energy into heat. That's the whole point of the reactor, to generate heat and run a turbine. You absorb those high energy particles with a "blanket", that's just what they call the shield around the reactor.
Here's the issue, absorbing all those high energy particles necessarily results in transmuting the material absorbing them. That blanket becomes brittle and eventually needs to be replaced. Not coincidentally, that blanket is also now radioactive, because you've bombarded it with protons and neutrons and it's now partially made up of unstable, radioactive elements.
So while fission reactors have radioactive fuel rods to dispose of, fusion reactors will have radioactive blankets to dispose of. Who knows if this is an improvement.
Who knows if this is an improvement.
The Max Planck Institute for Physics knows and spoiler, yes. Yes it is.
If it ends up working though it's not a waste of power is it? And if it doesn't work then, oh well.
Big tech companies do a lot of cramp, but this one I actually don't really mind. You never know we might actually get the Star Trek utopia we've always wanted from this, it's unlikely but it's not impossible.
They're missing a fusion reactor capable of positive energy output?
"Tech bosses think warp drive might get us to Mars faster..."
