Companies say they're closing in on nuclear fusion as an energy source. Will it work?

NightGaunts@kbin.social to News@lemmy.world – 38 points –
npr.org

For decades, government scientists have toiled away trying to make nuclear fusion work. Will commercial companies sprint to the finish?

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If only there was some sort of big fusion ball in the sky which gave us vast amounts of energy that we could collect if we wanted to...

Today's shower thought: is a fusion power plant just a miniaturized Dyson Sphere?

I get where youre going but not exactly. The dyson sphere would use solar energy but the fusion reactor, a tokomak specifically, uses steam generated by water pumped through the system to help keep the walls of the tokomak cool, to spin steam powered turbines

I'm constantly amazed that we're working on super advanced power generation techniques... that still use steam to spin turbines.

It feels like we should be doing something cooler, like plasma conduits from Star Trek.

Just about the best way to do it for an external 'combustion' heat engine. Stirling engines can be used in some cases but in most cases steam ends up being the better option.

We spent centuries getting really good at using steam for getting work out of 'hot thing'.

Look into what Helion Energy is doing. Not saying it will or won't work, but they plan to extract the energy directly from the plasma electromagnetically.

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I hope it works.

But I'm skeptical enough to say that I think this is a scam. We're closing in, research wise, on getting fusion to generate more power than it takes to run. Which is awesome!

But its still a far trek from that figure, to producing enough power to be practical (I've heard it said you really need to aim for 10x more production than input, minimum, for it to make any sense).

And that is still a trek from making a fusion plant competitive with existing grid power.

I'm skeptical if this plant they're building will even generate power, which is like three steps away from making commercial sense at all.

You're right, but you can't use the word 'scam' for it. It's an avenue that should be explored fully and may or may not lead somewhere. A scam would imply it's a conspiracy where the players already know the unsuccessful end result, but are hiding it and using funding or similar for other end purposes.

That is what I think the owner is doing here. Scamming venture capital firms for a tech that cannot work.

And I mean, its not like I have any proof. I can't read minds; maybe he is a true believer.

But this company feels like those companies back in the 80s that sold tickets to mars, for the rockets they were 'just about to build'; a scam.

This isn't a research firm. This isn't trying to find the exact settings and layouts to make fusion possible. If the article can be taken at face value, this is a company to make a commercial fusion plant. And I find that, in 2023, patently absurd.

I don't think I trust the commercial companies, but the research coming out of national labs is promising at least

I agree. I'm very much for more research into fusion. I'm still somewhat skeptical of it ever being 'infinite cheap energy'. But even if it never becomes a 'good energy source', the advancement of knowledge is valuable. So its not like I think fusion is a scam overall.

But I think this particular company is.

If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Back to the drawing board.

If it works, then let's reproduce it a couple times to be sure that it works, and then start pouring concrete. Fusion isn't worth pursuing just because of global warming, but because it's akin to making energy out of nothing. We would have a nigh limitless capacity for conducting fusion and generating energy. A future with unlimited energy isn't a climate goal necessarily, it's a massive leap for humanity overall.

Unfortunately everything I have read indicates very few experts in nuclear energy believe it could be possible in the future.

It will work eventually. Just give them another 25 years.

Based on current events, nuclear fusion plus corporate greed is probably the solution to the fermi paradox.

It's not about any advances in fusion. It's about the list of idiots they've raised money from.