I want my Mr Fusion!
September 12, 2005 2:23 PM Subscribe
Where's my Mr Fusion? - Cold or Hot, is there any realistic prospect of commercial nuclear fusion coming good before the oil starts to run out? Would throwing money at the problem help?
In my schoolboy future, commercial fusion reactors arrive just in time to bail us out of the oil crunch. Cheap, clean and inexhaustable they represent a permanent solution to our energy needs. Am I dreaming? If not, why don't we just pull our finger out and get the thing done. I know about ITER but it all seems rather half-hearted (and it took two years to figure out where to build it, not a good start). Shouldn't we be spending colossal sums on this? What could possibly be more important?
In my schoolboy future, commercial fusion reactors arrive just in time to bail us out of the oil crunch. Cheap, clean and inexhaustable they represent a permanent solution to our energy needs. Am I dreaming? If not, why don't we just pull our finger out and get the thing done. I know about ITER but it all seems rather half-hearted (and it took two years to figure out where to build it, not a good start). Shouldn't we be spending colossal sums on this? What could possibly be more important?
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but one of the major reasons alternative energy sources (fusion and more efficient/safe fission included) aren't taking off the way they could/should be, is quite simply because the oil/gas industry doesn't want them to.
There are documented cases of Exxon, et al purchasing promising alt-energy theses and other documents from needy grad students and researchers, and then just sitting on them so nobody can develop them into anything that might undercut the companies' currently lucrative business. An incredibly high level of lobbying the government to not put as much money into alt-energy research. Stuff like that.
It's like the old automobiles vs carriage-makers issue, except nowdays the country is essentially run by the carriage-makers (and no, I don't just mean the Bush Administration; while they're even more beholden to Big Oil than most past administrations, this problem transcends any specific group of individuals).
I only hope that someone, somewhere DOES come up with fusion or some equally viable alternative before the gas runs out, or we're all terribly fscked.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 3:27 PM on September 12, 2005
There are documented cases of Exxon, et al purchasing promising alt-energy theses and other documents from needy grad students and researchers, and then just sitting on them so nobody can develop them into anything that might undercut the companies' currently lucrative business. An incredibly high level of lobbying the government to not put as much money into alt-energy research. Stuff like that.
It's like the old automobiles vs carriage-makers issue, except nowdays the country is essentially run by the carriage-makers (and no, I don't just mean the Bush Administration; while they're even more beholden to Big Oil than most past administrations, this problem transcends any specific group of individuals).
I only hope that someone, somewhere DOES come up with fusion or some equally viable alternative before the gas runs out, or we're all terribly fscked.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 3:27 PM on September 12, 2005
Oh, and my reply was mostly aimed at answering "If not, why don't we just pull our finger out and get the thing done.". I'm not a nuclear physicist, so I don't know how close we are technologically, nor how long it might take us to get to fusion if aforementioned social roadblocks weren't hampering research. I hope someone more knowledgeable can tell us, though, because it is an exciting concept :)
posted by cyrusdogstar at 3:29 PM on September 12, 2005
posted by cyrusdogstar at 3:29 PM on September 12, 2005
nobody on the planet has built a fusion reactor with a Q = 1, which is the break-even point at which energy in (to the plasma) equals energy out.
a practical reactor operating for the generation of energy via nuclear fusion should meet the lawson criterion which specifices a gain of ~20.
there is also a problem of support services - control rooms, cooling pumps, computers, power supplies. these things have a substantial energy overhead, which will add a large (~100 MW) additional power requirement for a fusion reactor to be profitable.
this is far, far beyond what even the most advanced tokamaks can accomplish. the highest Q factor ever reached was by JET, which was about 0.6 for around a second or so; achieving this number was not easy.
ITER's goal is to reach a Q of 10; but with the site overhead mentioned above it will just break even, if everything goes according to plan.
the reason this is so hard is that getting nuclei to fuse is very, very difficult.
if we want to make fusion energy a reality, it will take more than just throwing money at it. this will require a heroic effort, ingenious minds and an enormous commitment. this is like putting a man on the moon, but at least that involved life-size objects and relatively well-understood (and weak) forces like gravitation. fusion is a whole 'nother beast.
why can't we "just get the thing done"? because nobody really knows how. (though if you want a rough idea of progress so far, look here.)
posted by sergeant sandwich at 4:09 PM on September 12, 2005
a practical reactor operating for the generation of energy via nuclear fusion should meet the lawson criterion which specifices a gain of ~20.
there is also a problem of support services - control rooms, cooling pumps, computers, power supplies. these things have a substantial energy overhead, which will add a large (~100 MW) additional power requirement for a fusion reactor to be profitable.
this is far, far beyond what even the most advanced tokamaks can accomplish. the highest Q factor ever reached was by JET, which was about 0.6 for around a second or so; achieving this number was not easy.
ITER's goal is to reach a Q of 10; but with the site overhead mentioned above it will just break even, if everything goes according to plan.
the reason this is so hard is that getting nuclei to fuse is very, very difficult.
if we want to make fusion energy a reality, it will take more than just throwing money at it. this will require a heroic effort, ingenious minds and an enormous commitment. this is like putting a man on the moon, but at least that involved life-size objects and relatively well-understood (and weak) forces like gravitation. fusion is a whole 'nother beast.
why can't we "just get the thing done"? because nobody really knows how. (though if you want a rough idea of progress so far, look here.)
posted by sergeant sandwich at 4:09 PM on September 12, 2005
You may find the article "Star in a Jar" interesting. It appeared a few months ago in the Sacramento News & Review (and likely several other small weeklies, as News & Review seems use syndicated articles or something).
posted by fishfucker at 4:18 PM on September 12, 2005
posted by fishfucker at 4:18 PM on September 12, 2005
There are documented cases of Exxon, et al purchasing promising alt-energy theses
Citation please?
posted by LarryC at 5:02 PM on September 12, 2005
Citation please?
posted by LarryC at 5:02 PM on September 12, 2005
I fear nothing will happen until there is an economic incentive for the US to pull their heads out of the sand.
We can' t invent a new energy source just because we want to.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist
Oy.
but one of the major reasons alternative energy sources (fusion and more efficient/safe fission included) aren't taking off the way they could/should be, is quite simply because the oil/gas industry doesn't want them to.
I really don't know where to start. Sheesh.
I only hope that someone, somewhere DOES come up with fusion or some equally viable alternative before the gas runs out, or we're all terribly fscked.
See, fusion isn't really a replacement for the kinds of uses that gas has. When it becomes a reality, it will most directly replace coal and fission.
So, the original question.
Fusion is, as noted, hard. We've been working around the idea for about five decades so far, with only halting progress. Very little of this research is by any means susceptible to "oil industry" machinations. Most of it builds successfully on science that was well-funded by the power-generation industry (GE etc.), and almost anything nuclear has lots of defense dollars thrown at it. The Navy, for example, would be one of the first major beneficiaries of successful fusion power generation.
I don't think ITER is "half-hearted" by any means. It's the single largest and most expensive international science project ever attempted, short of the International Space Station. Some people have doubts over the direction of research, but that's not the same thing.
Cheap, clean and inexhaustable they represent a permanent solution to our energy needs.
The infamous boast by the head of the AEC in 1957 was that (fission) nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter". It didn't work out that way for a raft of reasons, not limited to the whole question of logistics but certainly influenced by the rising expectations of safety, especially Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. It isn't a money-loser, but it isn't an amazing profit center for utilities, either.
I'd say, keep the laws of thermodynamics firmly in mind.
The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering the three laws:
1. You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).
2. You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).
3. You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).
My own physics professor was fond of saying that the greatest source of new energy in the future will be conservation -- that is, more efficient use of what we already have. Better automobile engines. Smarter appliances. Streetlights that don't send 3/4 of their light out to space. Superinsulated houses that don't glow red to the energy auditor. Better use of natural sources of energy that we currently ignore.
In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for Mr. Fusion to magically solve all our problems. Practical fusion is still years, probably decades away, and even when it comes it will have its own drawbacks -- for starters, being expensive as hell.
posted by dhartung at 7:42 PM on September 12, 2005
We can' t invent a new energy source just because we want to.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist
Oy.
but one of the major reasons alternative energy sources (fusion and more efficient/safe fission included) aren't taking off the way they could/should be, is quite simply because the oil/gas industry doesn't want them to.
I really don't know where to start. Sheesh.
I only hope that someone, somewhere DOES come up with fusion or some equally viable alternative before the gas runs out, or we're all terribly fscked.
See, fusion isn't really a replacement for the kinds of uses that gas has. When it becomes a reality, it will most directly replace coal and fission.
So, the original question.
Fusion is, as noted, hard. We've been working around the idea for about five decades so far, with only halting progress. Very little of this research is by any means susceptible to "oil industry" machinations. Most of it builds successfully on science that was well-funded by the power-generation industry (GE etc.), and almost anything nuclear has lots of defense dollars thrown at it. The Navy, for example, would be one of the first major beneficiaries of successful fusion power generation.
I don't think ITER is "half-hearted" by any means. It's the single largest and most expensive international science project ever attempted, short of the International Space Station. Some people have doubts over the direction of research, but that's not the same thing.
Cheap, clean and inexhaustable they represent a permanent solution to our energy needs.
The infamous boast by the head of the AEC in 1957 was that (fission) nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter". It didn't work out that way for a raft of reasons, not limited to the whole question of logistics but certainly influenced by the rising expectations of safety, especially Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. It isn't a money-loser, but it isn't an amazing profit center for utilities, either.
I'd say, keep the laws of thermodynamics firmly in mind.
The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering the three laws:
1. You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).
2. You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).
3. You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).
My own physics professor was fond of saying that the greatest source of new energy in the future will be conservation -- that is, more efficient use of what we already have. Better automobile engines. Smarter appliances. Streetlights that don't send 3/4 of their light out to space. Superinsulated houses that don't glow red to the energy auditor. Better use of natural sources of energy that we currently ignore.
In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for Mr. Fusion to magically solve all our problems. Practical fusion is still years, probably decades away, and even when it comes it will have its own drawbacks -- for starters, being expensive as hell.
posted by dhartung at 7:42 PM on September 12, 2005
I don't think the laws of thermodynamics really make much diffrence to nuclear fusion. Yes, they still 'apply' in that you can never extract more energy then actualy exists via E=MC2, but we can definetly extract more energy then exists as energy in the system. That's the whole point. There's a lot more energy released by a hydrogen bomb then that's in the chemical bonds in the bomb itself (as with a conventional bomb).
posted by delmoi at 7:53 PM on September 12, 2005
posted by delmoi at 7:53 PM on September 12, 2005
I went off to Harvard in 1990 convinced that this was the single most important question/problem now confronting humanity.
I'm still more or less convinced, but I became even more convinced that Harvard physics professors have their heads so far up their assholes that they're likely to see the singularity at the beginning of the universe.
Which is good, because they're certainly not doing anything else useful.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:32 PM on September 12, 2005
I'm still more or less convinced, but I became even more convinced that Harvard physics professors have their heads so far up their assholes that they're likely to see the singularity at the beginning of the universe.
Which is good, because they're certainly not doing anything else useful.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:32 PM on September 12, 2005
Fission works pretty well as it is. In my opinion, we should explore that further while working on fusion.
posted by electroboy at 7:23 AM on September 13, 2005
posted by electroboy at 7:23 AM on September 13, 2005
I agree about ITER being far from half-hearted. It's not meant to be a production plant, and can handle almost all the fundamental research required before production can ensue. The rest is regular product design.
There is some unfortunate resistance to fusion research from environment lobby organizations. In some cases the arguments are very naive and uninformed. The points to address seem to be:
1) A fusion reactor cannot go to hell. A fission reactor must be restrained all the time, but that is not the case with fusion - that reaction has to be pushed, and it can not escape out of its vessel.
2) Fusion does not produce any 100000-years-half-life "ash", as fission reactors do. The garbage consists of reactor parts that have been irradiated with a strong neutron flux. It comes in small quantities and is short-lived. Fission reactors produce the same stuff, and it's a trivial problem, especially compared to the long lasting stuff.
3) "High temperature" does not equal "lots of heat", a mistake I've heard being made in serious debate. The amount of heat is not larger in a fusion plant than in any other plant of similar capacity. It's just highly concentrated, and that is not dangerous.
Fossil fuels generate loads more free energy at the surface of the earth than we get out of it, due to the Greenhouse effect. One thing I never read about though is what amount of "new" energy we can produce before it starts becoming a problem in itself. Can someone enlighten me?
posted by springload at 7:30 AM on September 13, 2005
There is some unfortunate resistance to fusion research from environment lobby organizations. In some cases the arguments are very naive and uninformed. The points to address seem to be:
1) A fusion reactor cannot go to hell. A fission reactor must be restrained all the time, but that is not the case with fusion - that reaction has to be pushed, and it can not escape out of its vessel.
2) Fusion does not produce any 100000-years-half-life "ash", as fission reactors do. The garbage consists of reactor parts that have been irradiated with a strong neutron flux. It comes in small quantities and is short-lived. Fission reactors produce the same stuff, and it's a trivial problem, especially compared to the long lasting stuff.
3) "High temperature" does not equal "lots of heat", a mistake I've heard being made in serious debate. The amount of heat is not larger in a fusion plant than in any other plant of similar capacity. It's just highly concentrated, and that is not dangerous.
Fossil fuels generate loads more free energy at the surface of the earth than we get out of it, due to the Greenhouse effect. One thing I never read about though is what amount of "new" energy we can produce before it starts becoming a problem in itself. Can someone enlighten me?
posted by springload at 7:30 AM on September 13, 2005
Best answer: 1.) No.
2.) Yes.
Speaking as a physicist I can tell you it's extremely unlikely that we're going to get a Mr Fusion type device any time in the next 50 years.
Yes, there have been reports of "desktop fusion" but nothing that approaches Q=1. A much better bet is ITER and similar tokamak projects, and that's where the money-throwing would help.
posted by alby at 9:53 AM on September 13, 2005
2.) Yes.
Speaking as a physicist I can tell you it's extremely unlikely that we're going to get a Mr Fusion type device any time in the next 50 years.
Yes, there have been reports of "desktop fusion" but nothing that approaches Q=1. A much better bet is ITER and similar tokamak projects, and that's where the money-throwing would help.
posted by alby at 9:53 AM on September 13, 2005
Fossil fuels generate loads more free energy at the surface of the earth than we get out of it, due to the Greenhouse effect. One thing I never read about though is what amount of "new" energy we can produce before it starts becoming a problem in itself. Can someone enlighten me?
Well, the earth's atmosphere is 5.1E18 kg. The specific heat is about 1k J/Kg*k (under constant pressure), meaning it takes 1000 joules of energy to heat one kilogram of air by one degree kelvin. So to heat up the whole atmosphere by one degree kelvin, we'd need to produce about 1022 joules of energy, minus whatever gets radiated into space in the time that we generate that.
posted by delmoi at 1:28 PM on September 13, 2005
Well, the earth's atmosphere is 5.1E18 kg. The specific heat is about 1k J/Kg*k (under constant pressure), meaning it takes 1000 joules of energy to heat one kilogram of air by one degree kelvin. So to heat up the whole atmosphere by one degree kelvin, we'd need to produce about 1022 joules of energy, minus whatever gets radiated into space in the time that we generate that.
posted by delmoi at 1:28 PM on September 13, 2005
(that assumes constant pressure over the entire atmosphere, which is obviously not the case)
posted by delmoi at 1:29 PM on September 13, 2005
posted by delmoi at 1:29 PM on September 13, 2005
Response by poster: [aside] Interesting example of a meme in action
posted by grahamwell at 2:18 AM on September 15, 2005
posted by grahamwell at 2:18 AM on September 15, 2005
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