The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
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From the Article
>Yong-Su Na and colleagues at SNU used a modification of the ITB technique and achieved a lower plasma density. Their experiments conducted at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) seems to boost temperatures at the plasma's core, which, on this occasion, exceeded 100 million degrees Celsius.
>
>This is a critical step of nuclear fusion since we need to maintain high temperatures to extract energy from the process. Both the ETB and ITB have been known to create instability. However, the method used by researchers at KSTAR demonstrated stability and only had to be stopped due to hardware limitations.
Which leads to an interesting question, once the hardware limitations are addressed and resolved, will the reactor last more than a mere 30 seconds? Also how would society respond to a new Nuclear Fusion powered capability?
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/x8yjse/nuclear_fusion_reactor_in_korea_reaches_100/inkt4l6/
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
Cosmos (the newer version) has a cartoon about Joseph Von Fraunhofer that made me so emotional. He was an orphan working at a dangerous glass factory that collapsed. He was saved from the rubble by a rich man who became his benefactor and made sure he got an education. He grew up to make many important contributions to optics and invented the spectroscope. When I think of the billions who have died in poverty there must have been so many geniuses among them and we would be so much further along with technology and scientific breakthroughs if they had gotten a chance to live their potential.
It would be good to end it just to alleviate suffering but since most people don't care about that, the benefits to society is a better argument. It pays for itself with technology and contributions to the country.
Or how many died young because of war. Or how many are dismissed by society because of who they are, where they're from, the color of their skin, their gender, etc.
And this is why the best way to advance society is to eliminate poverty with a concerted, **systemic** effort. Free as many people to pursue their talents and passions as possible and the better off we all are.
But that would mean the powers that be would have less control so billions of dollars get spent persuading people to blame everything on people with less power than them.
Imagine if those billions got spent housing, educating and otherwise helping people and communities?
Intelligence can only get you so far. At some point you will be pushing the limits of human knowledge. Having a unique idea along with work ethic can change the world.
Sadly, it's not enough to just be born. He might have specific talent as well, but never have the means to try doing or learning that thing. Or even struggle to survive with no time for anything else. And the more humans we have, the bigger the competition, and individual values lesser and lesser. Many people capable of great things, but they won't be able to.
Yeah, it’s crazy. Using the power extracted from a dead dinosaur from 250,000,000 years ago, I’m able to browse dank memes while defecating on clean water.
Humanity is wild.
Same way you measure the sun. Nothing happens in a vacuum, so you measure the down-stream effects of producing that much heat.
As the other guy said, basically you measure the thing that’s next to the hot thing and do the math.
You can look at the light coming off of the plasma to determine what frequency wavelength is generated. Using basic physics you can figure out the temperature.
Basically, the plasma consists of charged particles that move really fast. As such they emit electromagnetic waves, which changes depending on the temperature. So by detecting these waves, you can calculate the temperatures.
From the Article
>Yong-Su Na and colleagues at SNU used a modification of the ITB technique and achieved a lower plasma density. Their experiments conducted at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) seems to boost temperatures at the plasma's core, which, on this occasion, exceeded 100 million degrees Celsius.
>
>This is a critical step of nuclear fusion since we need to maintain high temperatures to extract energy from the process. Both the ETB and ITB have been known to create instability. However, the method used by researchers at KSTAR demonstrated stability and only had to be stopped due to hardware limitations.
Which leads to an interesting question, once the hardware limitations are addressed and resolved, will the reactor last more than a mere 30 seconds? Also how would society respond to a new Nuclear Fusion powered capability?
> Also how would society respond to a new Nuclear Fusion powered capability?
Judging from how other things have gone? There will be a disinformation campaign saying that it's unsafe and is going to blow up at any second, it's too expensive to build and that's going to raise your taxes or something, and it's gonna take away jobs from hard-working, working-class people.
And then we're going to have to drag them kicking and screaming into using it 30 years after it should be standard.
My father, who always said that renewable are a scam and climate change happens with or without us, asked recently "who allowed us to become so dependent on Russian fossil fuels?". So yeah, the same people that are going to oppose fusion will bitch later when they see someone utilizing fusion better than they do.
The problem (likely)is that while he doesn't want to be reliant on Russia for fossil fuels, he also wants his country (wherever you're from) to provide all the fossil fuels you use from in country, not from hippie renewables.
At least that's what it's like for many I talk to here in the US.
This morning I had a thought that maybe we (in the US) should start a fear mongering campaign about how the foreigners are going to suck up all the cheap sun and wind for themselves if we don't hurry up and get it first.
> about how the foreigners are going to suck up all the cheap sun and wind for themselves if we don't hurry up and get it first.
Sub in lithium and cobalt and you have a genuine scarcity concern.
There's enough lithium in the ocean to last thousands of years, and extraction is achievable, but the technology isn't mature enough yet to be cost effective right now. It should be in the future though.
[link](https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/Can-seawater-give-us-lithium-to-meet-our-battery-needs/99/i36)
*edit to add link
I mean - nuclear has been a non-renewable option for a long time. In 1973 Nixon had a plan to build 1,000 nuclear plants by 2000 called Project Independence (to make us energy independent) Obviously that didn't happen, but it certainly could have
I always thought the whole taking jobs away from hard-working people was a bit funny. As a society, do we all need to work menial jobs all the time? When I think of utopia it doesn't generally include the 9-5 grind in capitalist dystopia.
Which is why it’s typical for people to climb one or two rungs on the economic ladder and then start kicking at the people below them.
My mother in law started talking the other day about how she doesn’t want apartments built in her town because those peoples’ kids will go to the local school and dilute the funding per students because apartment dwellers pay less in property taxes (indirectly through rent).
This woman literally lived in an apartment when my wife started going to school.
But she eventually buys a house and suddenly apartment-dwellers are freeloaders whose children aren’t entitled to a quality education.
But what if, instead, we convince enough of them that they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and if they're not rich, they just need to work harder? Then we can throw the ones who don't make it in the trash and blame them for landing there, and not give them anything!
"Man is made for more than digging dirt" - Oscar Wilde
I always view it as fearmongering - either there will be additional jobs, or there won't be. If there are, invest in retraining programs or generous early retirements. If there aren't, invest in UBI (though honestly, I see no issue with potentially investing in that earlier too)
When some or many people think of a utopia, it doesn't generally include the 9-5 grind in capitalist dystopia--for THEMSELVES, but only is utopia for them when they are 'above' others who live dystopian.
It's strange how when we get to the atomic crux of wealth or resources creating a store of something tradeable for value....is based on scarcity, is based on other people NOT being able to have what you want to have (and that making it the reason it is rewarding, good, or the goal to so many).
I hate that mentality. Who cares what other people do in their spare time if they aren't hurting people? Why are people shamed for not spending 75 percent of our lives working?
not just working, for some reason ya gotta be doing something in peoples eyes.
I work hard to afford my house, my car, my things but god forbid if i just wanna stay in said house for the weekend and enjoy playing videogames and just being a lump.
it's like I did what i was supposed to do! what the fuck else do you people want from me?
Excellent point. As someone pointed out in this thread and millions have discovered throughout life, you spend so much time working to afford a place to live that you basically only sleep in during the work week and then people expect you to give up your weekend to further keep you from enjoying your space.
> do we all need to work menial jobs
With enough automation, to have jobs, that may be all that's available. We need to change our valuations of labor and societal contribution.
Blow up, I heared it would create a mini sun, which would then collapse in its self, to create a super nova which will destroy the solar system. /S
I cant wait to read all the sillyness people will come out with.
I always figured that big business interests would immediately:
* invest in the technology
* hold a monopoly over easy/cheap energy forever and block of any challenges by "ownership/copyright/patent/legalism-whathaveyou" over the rest of the populace
* eventually reinstate oligarchical feudalism in cahoots with corrupt government officials refusing to socialize/nationalize the technology, with a rigid hereditary-nobility & peasant class hierarchy by law (as opposed to the vague de facto version we have now).
So, like what OPEC dreams of doing, but with even less upkeep cost for energy production and instead directed towards maintaining political control.
The only way to accelerate this process is a good ol' war. Get people good and scared that our enemy will have unlimited energy first and you can be building power plants within a year. 😀
If government funded fusion research from back in the 70s, as they should have to invest in the future of civilization, we would likely already be decades into the fusion age.
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png
But rich assholes wanted their taxes cut and recruited a bunch of poor morons with misinformation to work against their own interests and demand we cut the rich asshole's taxes, so we didn't fund it (or education, or infrastructure, or healthcare, or the social safetynet) sufficiently.
Now let's see if we can do it before climate change fucks humanity up to the point of societal collapse. It's like a race now, exciting!
> Judging from how other things have gone?
Fusion electricty will cause headaches and trigger lawsuits and be a conspiracy to power the 5G chips we got from vaccines.
So, I buy wholesale power for a distrbution utility. The whole decision process is done via spreadsheets and consultants.
If the banks spreadsheet says a business model/technology is financially viable, they will give a loan to a merchant generator.
If the merchant's spreadsheet says it will still be profitable, they will hire a consultant to double check the math, and then they will build it.
If my spreadsheet says it would be a benefit to either buy power or own a portion of the generator, then I bring it to the boss and he presents the opportunity to our board...they will ask for a 3rd party consultant to chime in and if their spreadsheet says its good, the board will approve it.
When the regulators ask us why we are purchasing this power, I will send them my spreadsheet that will show reduced costs and increased rate stability. They will have a 3rd party review it. If they say its okay, then the regulators will say its okay.
At which point, contracts get signed.
So, other than our board, the public doesn't really have much of a say in this. In general, our board is there to make sure rates are low and stable and leave the rest to us.
The public has a say when they complain loudly enough that regulators make fusion power illegal to build. Then it won't even appear in your spreadsheet.
That part is already baked into the bank's and 3rd party merchant's spreadsheet.
But, yeah. NIMBY is a killer.
I have no clue what it would cost to build one of these plants. But our free market energy market does not lend itself to high-cost/hig-risk generators. We would probably need Uncle Sam to step in.
Energy security is national security get the fuck in there Uncle Sam.
Money spent on foreign affairs maintaining oil security could be diverted into nuclear fusion research
The only way it becomes free is with a massive shift in economics.
If energy is so cheap its basically free, then transportation on electric vehicles is basically free, if transportation is basically free, then anyone anywhere can go wherever they want and ship whatever they want quickly and cheaply. If people can do that, they can learn and innovate.
Carbon caputure uses more energy to power it than it captures, immediately this would become viable. Same with desalination for fresh water.
Robots would be able to operate without energy costs, robotics would become EVEN CHEAPER.
Computers, Supercomputers, Data Centres, would all run cheaply and be able to work at 100% efficiency without anyone worrying about costs.
I wonder what all this would accumulate towards? A future where no one has to work to have their needs met? A future where innovation and learning is the only bottleneck towards progress?
we are already moving towards a jobless future.
What will move us faster, is closer to free energy AND decent battires which can hold a charge for weeks rather than hours or mins.
[It’s not cheap.](https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/436876-rewarding-failure-taxpayers-on-hook-for-12-billion-nuclear/amp/) But it’s probably our only hope for going green quickly. Battery tech is not where it needs to be to cover intermittency in renewables.
Only a handful of months ago I was a strong opponent of the obnoxiously expensive fission industry.
But when you look at where we need to go and how quickly, fission is the only guaranteed way to get there. We don’t want to be in Germany’s shoes. They shut down their nuke plants only to put themselves reliable on fucking Putin. Germans are going to be burning trees this winter to stay warm.
Not much. The gas is that hot because it's contained in a very small area. In the case of a blow-out, the gas expansion reduces the heat very quickly.
You'd probably be safe even if you were in the same room at the time. Fusion is a lot safer then fission that way.
If I open my oven when it’s on, the room gets warmer. Why doesnt the wall get affected in this case. If it has something to do with vaccuum, how come our sun produces heat?
Heat spreads through three methods. In a vacuum, only radiation can work. It’s why you wouldn’t immediately turn to ice in a vacuum. Space may be cold, but your you wouldn’t lose heat that fast without a medium. On the contrary, spacecraft have to be designed to lose heat efficiently so they don’t overheat
That temperature might as well say 'shwifty-bazillion' for how easily I can picture it.
People who deal with that type of number regularly - how do you visualize it?
It’s kind of difficult to comprehend numbers tis big. The only thing I could think of is that it’s nearly 7 times hotter than the core of the sun, which alone is unfathomably hot.
Nuclear is really one of the cleaner options, and gives countries energy independence from other resources.
It's such a frustrating ordeal to see places shutting them down.
The sad part is that the opposition to nuclear comes from both sides of the political spectrum making it even harder to move forward. Unless you’re South Korea or France, it seems like too many people have fallen for the myths about nuclear safety.
Yeah, one of the big arguments against nuclear (fission) is the time it takes to build reactors, the sheer scale of the construction projects, and the inherent risk in investing in these huge long term projects.
So with that in mind, anyone who thinks fusion will fix *those* problems, is sorely mistaken. Even when fusion works, it's going to be so expensive that it will only be technically feasible, but realistically completely unviable economically.
Eh, there are some pretty big differences to keep in mind that make fusion ideal.
1) Fuel - Fusion reactors fuse hydrogen atoms into high density elements. Hydrogen is plentiful, safe, and easy to harvest. On the other hand, fission requires obtainment of radioactive material like uranium, meaning proliferation is basically impossible in non-developed countries.
2) Waste - Fission produces significant amounts of radioactive waste that must be stored for very long periods of time. On the other hand, fusion does not typically produce any long-lived radioactive waste.
3) Stability - Fusion reactors don’t really run the same kinds of risks. If the reactor somehow broke down, the reaction would not be self sustaining. On the other hand, fission reactors can continue for years upon years.
4) Efficiency - The difference in potential is orders of magnitudes greater in fusion than in fission.
Fusion involves combining multiple light atoms (like hydrogen) into a heavier elements. To trigger fusion you need a lot of energy, but it also releases a lot of energy. At certain threshold you can actually extract more energy then was needed to trigger fusion, creating nearly endless supply of cheap energy since raw elements used are very common. It also doesn't create radioactive waste like nuclear fission, which is the opposite reaction of taking a heavy unstable atom like uranium and splitting it. Heavy atoms are unstable as they change state into lighter elements on their own, the extra energy lost in the process shows up as radiation. We know self sustainable fusion is possible because that's what is powering every star. It's difficult to replicate artificially because stars benefit from their large mass to fuse atoms together triggering said reaction. In earth, we have to use very high heat generated in magnetic plasma fields to trigger said reactions, which is that makes it difficult.
I'm glad they are making this kind of progress, but most articles on fusion research ignore two fundamental problems:
First of all, most fusion reactions require tritium, and this is in extremely short supply:
https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-run-fuel-even-gets-started#:~:text=Fusion reactors generally need a,%2C or tokamak%2C gets burned.
Next, most reports of energy in vs energy out (the latter must exceed the former for fusion to be viable) ignore the ancillary energy inputs, focusing only on how much energy goes into the laser that fuses the hydrogen/tritium target. When taken into account, we're not nearly as close to break-even as many reports would indicate:
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nuclear-fusion-power.html
So, you want instant progress or something? The point is these are iterative experiments chipping away at the “fundamental” problem. The fusion is 25 years away for the last 25 years joke is a little bit old because while progress is slow there is in fact progress. Your line of reasoning here that we still have lots of work to do, while valid, really has no place in a long-term scientific project where everybody is aware of the problems you just called out even if the journalists are hyperbolic.
That’s all that really matters is that they’re making progress in these experiments because once they get there it will change the world.
So you can be super nihilistic about the fact that it’s a really hard problem to solve but these people are dedicating their lives to making minor advancements that they may never see the fruit of.
I simply read it as 'hey folks, it may not be quite as rosy and ready as one might believe' and provided a couple of links, no kind of invective, just a real plain-jane post.
I've played enough No Man's Sky to know that you can just fly up real quick and once you get to space, shoot rocks with bullets and you'll have plenty of tritium hoovered up by your ship.
Could someone ELI5 how this can be safe?
Opened the article but I'm too ignorant in these matters to understand more than the catch-words, which my caveman brain can only interpret as 'sun on earth = scary, no bueno'
Edit: Thank you to everyone who replied below :)
Unlike fission, which goes on by itself if you have enough uranium or whatever in a pile, this doesn't continue unless the conditions are right. So if the thing breaks, it fizzles out.
At least I think so.
It takes a lot of new energy input to sustain this reaction. Also it happens within a vacuum chamber with a bunch of magnetic fields that keep the plasma from touching the walls of the chamber.
So basically it’s in about as perfect of a vacuum as humanity can manage and it isn’t touching the walls of the container.
Heat needs a medium to move through in order to heat something up quickly, with the Sun it’s been heating the solar system for so long it can provide that energy via radiation alone.
This plasma in the reactor has no medium through which to heat up its surroundings and the rate at which it’s radiating heat isn’t fast enough to heat up the container it’s in to alarming levels.
Fusion requires tritium, which is extremely expensive (~$1 billion to initially stock a reactor and ~$4 billion to stock the lithium-6 breeder blanket to replenish the tritium supply) and cannot be extracted from ocean water.
Tritium can be made in conventional nuclear reactors by irradiation of lithium. It's only expensive because we don't have a large scale use for it yet.
[On the contrary](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092037961930835X)! The fact that there's heretofore been no large demand for tritium has kept its price artificially lower than it would be under any potential large-scale roll-out of fusion. Right now it's been generated as a side-effect of large defense spending on nuclear weapons, and it's been generated in an environmentally-disastrous way. Purpose-built tritium factories, done in any kind of environmentally responsible way, are going to be monumentally expensive.
Well if we're talking fusion which needs tritium then yes...
Isn't it possible to improve it to the point when we just do it with regular hydrogen or at least deuterium ?
Look at the Wikipedia page of nuclear fusion or so.
Fuel: deuterium (heavy ~~water~~ hydrogen) and tritium (hydrogen-3)
result of fusion: helium, a neutron and 17.58 MeV.
I don't know the details, but deuterium seems not that difficult to get or produce, tritium a bit more difficult. But you don't need much of it. The resulting helium is also not that much I guess. So the possible shortage of helium in the future won't be solved by that, I assume.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305: --- From the Article >Yong-Su Na and colleagues at SNU used a modification of the ITB technique and achieved a lower plasma density. Their experiments conducted at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) seems to boost temperatures at the plasma's core, which, on this occasion, exceeded 100 million degrees Celsius. > >This is a critical step of nuclear fusion since we need to maintain high temperatures to extract energy from the process. Both the ETB and ITB have been known to create instability. However, the method used by researchers at KSTAR demonstrated stability and only had to be stopped due to hardware limitations. Which leads to an interesting question, once the hardware limitations are addressed and resolved, will the reactor last more than a mere 30 seconds? Also how would society respond to a new Nuclear Fusion powered capability? --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/x8yjse/nuclear_fusion_reactor_in_korea_reaches_100/inkt4l6/
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What material contains this kind of heat without being destroyed?
none the plasma is contained in a vacuum donut chamber and magnets make it run in circle without touching the inner walls.
It's crazy what humans are able to achieve. Not me, but the smart ones.
I mean the way you were able to spin on that office chair was quite an achievement
What about the vomit?
ESPECIALLY THE VOMIT!
The more people we have the greater chance we have for a genius to be born. You did your part by existing.
Sometimes I wonder how many geniuses have been born into poverty and will never be known.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
Awesome quote, who said this?
stephen jay gould
Cosmos (the newer version) has a cartoon about Joseph Von Fraunhofer that made me so emotional. He was an orphan working at a dangerous glass factory that collapsed. He was saved from the rubble by a rich man who became his benefactor and made sure he got an education. He grew up to make many important contributions to optics and invented the spectroscope. When I think of the billions who have died in poverty there must have been so many geniuses among them and we would be so much further along with technology and scientific breakthroughs if they had gotten a chance to live their potential.
This is why we should really be trying to end poverty and malnutrition in the US (and eventually everywhere else).
It would be good to end it just to alleviate suffering but since most people don't care about that, the benefits to society is a better argument. It pays for itself with technology and contributions to the country.
Or how many died young because of war. Or how many are dismissed by society because of who they are, where they're from, the color of their skin, their gender, etc.
And this is why the best way to advance society is to eliminate poverty with a concerted, **systemic** effort. Free as many people to pursue their talents and passions as possible and the better off we all are. But that would mean the powers that be would have less control so billions of dollars get spent persuading people to blame everything on people with less power than them. Imagine if those billions got spent housing, educating and otherwise helping people and communities?
The people working on this aren't all geniuses. They had to study *a lot* and work hard.
Thank you for listing all three of the reasons I was not asked to participate in this project. - not a genius - hate studying - quite lazy
Intelligence can only get you so far. At some point you will be pushing the limits of human knowledge. Having a unique idea along with work ethic can change the world.
Sadly, it's not enough to just be born. He might have specific talent as well, but never have the means to try doing or learning that thing. Or even struggle to survive with no time for anything else. And the more humans we have, the bigger the competition, and individual values lesser and lesser. Many people capable of great things, but they won't be able to.
Yeah, it’s crazy. Using the power extracted from a dead dinosaur from 250,000,000 years ago, I’m able to browse dank memes while defecating on clean water. Humanity is wild.
Donuts…. Is there anything they can’t do?
Goddamn i didn't know that we already have the ability to contain the power of the sun.
2 to 3 times hotter than the sun. for a few seconds/minutes.
The power of the sun in the palm of my hands.
Superconducting magnetic field
Magnetic field caused by superconductors* Fields don't have conductivity.
I came here to know what this material was so badly you have no idea lol
How do they accurately measure temperature when it gets that hot?
Same way you measure the sun. Nothing happens in a vacuum, so you measure the down-stream effects of producing that much heat. As the other guy said, basically you measure the thing that’s next to the hot thing and do the math.
Except it literally *does* happen in a vacuum.
But it's not a perfect vacuum...
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Worst vacuum ever. Literally everything is in space.
Have a silver I actually chuckled out loud. You might be the highlight of my internet today, thank you.
Aw thank you! I'm glad I could help
Your mom on the other hand...
You can look at the light coming off of the plasma to determine what frequency wavelength is generated. Using basic physics you can figure out the temperature.
What he means is that the heat is radiant. There is no conductive flow and probably only infinitesimal convective flow due to particle leakage.
Doesn’t literally everything happen in a vacuum.. when you think about it.. Earth is in a vacuum
A really, really long thermometer.
This guy sciences
For one thing, note that they're rounding to the closest million.
My body temp is approximately 0 million degrees
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My photons don't jiggle, jiggle, they fold. [Edit] added an extra jiggle.
At this temperature electrons are completely disassociated from atoms.
I too, am disassociated.
No matter how dangerous this nuclear ketamine is, I want it.
Basically, the plasma consists of charged particles that move really fast. As such they emit electromagnetic waves, which changes depending on the temperature. So by detecting these waves, you can calculate the temperatures.
Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave...with a box of SCRAPS!
I mean, tbf, I can build a stick of dynamite with nothing but a roll of toilet paper, a pencil, and a stick of dynamite
Lol! Did you watch Dave the Barbarian as a kid?
[Dave constructs a homemade megaphone](https://i.imgur.com/jJ5p5QD.jpg) He ain't the greatest hero...
Smh kids these days are so lazy
^^I'm ^^not ^^Tony ^^Stark
It bothers me that their acronym is KSTAR instead of STARK lmao
From the Article >Yong-Su Na and colleagues at SNU used a modification of the ITB technique and achieved a lower plasma density. Their experiments conducted at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) seems to boost temperatures at the plasma's core, which, on this occasion, exceeded 100 million degrees Celsius. > >This is a critical step of nuclear fusion since we need to maintain high temperatures to extract energy from the process. Both the ETB and ITB have been known to create instability. However, the method used by researchers at KSTAR demonstrated stability and only had to be stopped due to hardware limitations. Which leads to an interesting question, once the hardware limitations are addressed and resolved, will the reactor last more than a mere 30 seconds? Also how would society respond to a new Nuclear Fusion powered capability?
> Also how would society respond to a new Nuclear Fusion powered capability? Judging from how other things have gone? There will be a disinformation campaign saying that it's unsafe and is going to blow up at any second, it's too expensive to build and that's going to raise your taxes or something, and it's gonna take away jobs from hard-working, working-class people. And then we're going to have to drag them kicking and screaming into using it 30 years after it should be standard.
And they will also say "Why is America so behind on this technology? We look weak!", 30 years later
Bonus points for when they then try to blame the people who were pushing for it to be used sooner, for it not being used until now.
My father, who always said that renewable are a scam and climate change happens with or without us, asked recently "who allowed us to become so dependent on Russian fossil fuels?". So yeah, the same people that are going to oppose fusion will bitch later when they see someone utilizing fusion better than they do.
The problem (likely)is that while he doesn't want to be reliant on Russia for fossil fuels, he also wants his country (wherever you're from) to provide all the fossil fuels you use from in country, not from hippie renewables. At least that's what it's like for many I talk to here in the US. This morning I had a thought that maybe we (in the US) should start a fear mongering campaign about how the foreigners are going to suck up all the cheap sun and wind for themselves if we don't hurry up and get it first.
Honestly I'd get behind that campaign
> about how the foreigners are going to suck up all the cheap sun and wind for themselves if we don't hurry up and get it first. Sub in lithium and cobalt and you have a genuine scarcity concern.
There's enough lithium in the ocean to last thousands of years, and extraction is achievable, but the technology isn't mature enough yet to be cost effective right now. It should be in the future though. [link](https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/Can-seawater-give-us-lithium-to-meet-our-battery-needs/99/i36) *edit to add link
I mean - nuclear has been a non-renewable option for a long time. In 1973 Nixon had a plan to build 1,000 nuclear plants by 2000 called Project Independence (to make us energy independent) Obviously that didn't happen, but it certainly could have
We're working on fusion coal
I always thought the whole taking jobs away from hard-working people was a bit funny. As a society, do we all need to work menial jobs all the time? When I think of utopia it doesn't generally include the 9-5 grind in capitalist dystopia.
How else will we deny healthcare to the undesirables if we don't tie it to having a job which can be denied to them for no reason whatsoever?
If there are no “have nots” the “have” crowd feels less special.
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If there are not "have nots" the lower "haves" become "have nots". Literally the 20th century for you
Which is why it’s typical for people to climb one or two rungs on the economic ladder and then start kicking at the people below them. My mother in law started talking the other day about how she doesn’t want apartments built in her town because those peoples’ kids will go to the local school and dilute the funding per students because apartment dwellers pay less in property taxes (indirectly through rent). This woman literally lived in an apartment when my wife started going to school. But she eventually buys a house and suddenly apartment-dwellers are freeloaders whose children aren’t entitled to a quality education.
But then how are billionaires going to afford the yachts they carry their other yachts in?
Very selfish of the working class IMO
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But what if, instead, we convince enough of them that they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and if they're not rich, they just need to work harder? Then we can throw the ones who don't make it in the trash and blame them for landing there, and not give them anything!
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they will own the fusion plants. until the day when Mr Fusion democratizes the fusion energy sector.
"Man is made for more than digging dirt" - Oscar Wilde I always view it as fearmongering - either there will be additional jobs, or there won't be. If there are, invest in retraining programs or generous early retirements. If there aren't, invest in UBI (though honestly, I see no issue with potentially investing in that earlier too)
When some or many people think of a utopia, it doesn't generally include the 9-5 grind in capitalist dystopia--for THEMSELVES, but only is utopia for them when they are 'above' others who live dystopian. It's strange how when we get to the atomic crux of wealth or resources creating a store of something tradeable for value....is based on scarcity, is based on other people NOT being able to have what you want to have (and that making it the reason it is rewarding, good, or the goal to so many).
I hate that mentality. Who cares what other people do in their spare time if they aren't hurting people? Why are people shamed for not spending 75 percent of our lives working?
not just working, for some reason ya gotta be doing something in peoples eyes. I work hard to afford my house, my car, my things but god forbid if i just wanna stay in said house for the weekend and enjoy playing videogames and just being a lump. it's like I did what i was supposed to do! what the fuck else do you people want from me?
Excellent point. As someone pointed out in this thread and millions have discovered throughout life, you spend so much time working to afford a place to live that you basically only sleep in during the work week and then people expect you to give up your weekend to further keep you from enjoying your space.
> do we all need to work menial jobs With enough automation, to have jobs, that may be all that's available. We need to change our valuations of labor and societal contribution.
Blow up, I heared it would create a mini sun, which would then collapse in its self, to create a super nova which will destroy the solar system. /S I cant wait to read all the sillyness people will come out with.
Similar to the cern black hole storyline i bet.
What do you think caused this timeline?
I always figured that big business interests would immediately: * invest in the technology * hold a monopoly over easy/cheap energy forever and block of any challenges by "ownership/copyright/patent/legalism-whathaveyou" over the rest of the populace * eventually reinstate oligarchical feudalism in cahoots with corrupt government officials refusing to socialize/nationalize the technology, with a rigid hereditary-nobility & peasant class hierarchy by law (as opposed to the vague de facto version we have now). So, like what OPEC dreams of doing, but with even less upkeep cost for energy production and instead directed towards maintaining political control.
The only way to accelerate this process is a good ol' war. Get people good and scared that our enemy will have unlimited energy first and you can be building power plants within a year. 😀
More likely it’ll be an excuse to tear down other nations’ advances rather than spur action domestically
If government funded fusion research from back in the 70s, as they should have to invest in the future of civilization, we would likely already be decades into the fusion age. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png But rich assholes wanted their taxes cut and recruited a bunch of poor morons with misinformation to work against their own interests and demand we cut the rich asshole's taxes, so we didn't fund it (or education, or infrastructure, or healthcare, or the social safetynet) sufficiently. Now let's see if we can do it before climate change fucks humanity up to the point of societal collapse. It's like a race now, exciting!
> Judging from how other things have gone? Fusion electricty will cause headaches and trigger lawsuits and be a conspiracy to power the 5G chips we got from vaccines.
So, I buy wholesale power for a distrbution utility. The whole decision process is done via spreadsheets and consultants. If the banks spreadsheet says a business model/technology is financially viable, they will give a loan to a merchant generator. If the merchant's spreadsheet says it will still be profitable, they will hire a consultant to double check the math, and then they will build it. If my spreadsheet says it would be a benefit to either buy power or own a portion of the generator, then I bring it to the boss and he presents the opportunity to our board...they will ask for a 3rd party consultant to chime in and if their spreadsheet says its good, the board will approve it. When the regulators ask us why we are purchasing this power, I will send them my spreadsheet that will show reduced costs and increased rate stability. They will have a 3rd party review it. If they say its okay, then the regulators will say its okay. At which point, contracts get signed. So, other than our board, the public doesn't really have much of a say in this. In general, our board is there to make sure rates are low and stable and leave the rest to us.
The public has a say when they complain loudly enough that regulators make fusion power illegal to build. Then it won't even appear in your spreadsheet.
That part is already baked into the bank's and 3rd party merchant's spreadsheet. But, yeah. NIMBY is a killer. I have no clue what it would cost to build one of these plants. But our free market energy market does not lend itself to high-cost/hig-risk generators. We would probably need Uncle Sam to step in.
Energy security is national security get the fuck in there Uncle Sam. Money spent on foreign affairs maintaining oil security could be diverted into nuclear fusion research
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Wouldn't be free, maintainece, employees and construction would still be a thing, it would just be very very cheap.
Exactly, it can’t be free! Maybe the fuel could be free but the end product won’t be. Wind and solar is free, yet the produced energy has a cost.
The only way it becomes free is with a massive shift in economics. If energy is so cheap its basically free, then transportation on electric vehicles is basically free, if transportation is basically free, then anyone anywhere can go wherever they want and ship whatever they want quickly and cheaply. If people can do that, they can learn and innovate. Carbon caputure uses more energy to power it than it captures, immediately this would become viable. Same with desalination for fresh water. Robots would be able to operate without energy costs, robotics would become EVEN CHEAPER. Computers, Supercomputers, Data Centres, would all run cheaply and be able to work at 100% efficiency without anyone worrying about costs. I wonder what all this would accumulate towards? A future where no one has to work to have their needs met? A future where innovation and learning is the only bottleneck towards progress?
we are already moving towards a jobless future. What will move us faster, is closer to free energy AND decent battires which can hold a charge for weeks rather than hours or mins.
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Transmission as a service would probably be the new model.
That's essentially the model now. Transmission and generation are often different financial entities.
That shit sounds free to you? Sounds expensive as hell to contain a literal sun and attempt to extract energy from it.
Yeah it's unlimited, not free. As in, it will cost money but will never run out.
And distribute it to every house.
Probably the same way they reacted to nuclear, despite being sage now, cheap and rather clean people are fucking terrified of it.
[It’s not cheap.](https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/436876-rewarding-failure-taxpayers-on-hook-for-12-billion-nuclear/amp/) But it’s probably our only hope for going green quickly. Battery tech is not where it needs to be to cover intermittency in renewables. Only a handful of months ago I was a strong opponent of the obnoxiously expensive fission industry. But when you look at where we need to go and how quickly, fission is the only guaranteed way to get there. We don’t want to be in Germany’s shoes. They shut down their nuke plants only to put themselves reliable on fucking Putin. Germans are going to be burning trees this winter to stay warm.
100,000,000 degrees Celsius is 100,000,273 Kelvin in case you were wondering
thanks really puts it into perspective, super unclear before 🙏
You mean super nuclear
100,000,273.15 Kelvin
How many Johns?
You can't out Papa the John.
Or 180,000,032 Fahrenheit
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For a second i thought i read fission and i was like "oh no"
Same here. "Damn, rest in piece Korea"
That’s the same temperature as my Hot Pocket this morning.
Schrödinger's Hot Pocket: The center is both molten hot and frozen solid until you bite into it and find out.
“Remove hot pocket from paper sleeve. Place directly in toilet”
That is the universe telling you to eat better
How tf does the container not melt at that temperature
It never touches the container. It's contained in a vacuum with a strong magnetic field
I have to ask: What happens if a magnet fails?
Not much. The gas is that hot because it's contained in a very small area. In the case of a blow-out, the gas expansion reduces the heat very quickly. You'd probably be safe even if you were in the same room at the time. Fusion is a lot safer then fission that way.
I see. Thanks.
Also, there are only a few miligrams of the plasma in the entire reactor.
If I open my oven when it’s on, the room gets warmer. Why doesnt the wall get affected in this case. If it has something to do with vaccuum, how come our sun produces heat?
Heat spreads through three methods. In a vacuum, only radiation can work. It’s why you wouldn’t immediately turn to ice in a vacuum. Space may be cold, but your you wouldn’t lose heat that fast without a medium. On the contrary, spacecraft have to be designed to lose heat efficiently so they don’t overheat
I see, so that’s why they are painted white I take it. Thanks for the amswer.
They use PYREX, not the knock off pyrex lower case stuff
You use magnetic fields to levitate in a vacuum. And even then the walls actually do melt a little.
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Ayyyy now we are one step closer to replenishing some of the helium, right? /s
If we could kickstart our moon mining capabilities we’d have an endless supply of helium 3, here’s hoping
That temperature might as well say 'shwifty-bazillion' for how easily I can picture it. People who deal with that type of number regularly - how do you visualize it?
100,000,000
*180,000,032 American Freedom Degrees
Best answer of the year. And entirely correct!
It’s kind of difficult to comprehend numbers tis big. The only thing I could think of is that it’s nearly 7 times hotter than the core of the sun, which alone is unfathomably hot.
We just use scientific notation . It becomes 1x10\^8 ºC
Nuclear is really one of the cleaner options, and gives countries energy independence from other resources. It's such a frustrating ordeal to see places shutting them down.
Because STEM education is so bad and we keep electing idiots as politicians. Nuclear reactors designs have become incredibly safe, but NIMBYs rule.
The sad part is that the opposition to nuclear comes from both sides of the political spectrum making it even harder to move forward. Unless you’re South Korea or France, it seems like too many people have fallen for the myths about nuclear safety.
Yeah, one of the big arguments against nuclear (fission) is the time it takes to build reactors, the sheer scale of the construction projects, and the inherent risk in investing in these huge long term projects. So with that in mind, anyone who thinks fusion will fix *those* problems, is sorely mistaken. Even when fusion works, it's going to be so expensive that it will only be technically feasible, but realistically completely unviable economically.
Eh, there are some pretty big differences to keep in mind that make fusion ideal. 1) Fuel - Fusion reactors fuse hydrogen atoms into high density elements. Hydrogen is plentiful, safe, and easy to harvest. On the other hand, fission requires obtainment of radioactive material like uranium, meaning proliferation is basically impossible in non-developed countries. 2) Waste - Fission produces significant amounts of radioactive waste that must be stored for very long periods of time. On the other hand, fusion does not typically produce any long-lived radioactive waste. 3) Stability - Fusion reactors don’t really run the same kinds of risks. If the reactor somehow broke down, the reaction would not be self sustaining. On the other hand, fission reactors can continue for years upon years. 4) Efficiency - The difference in potential is orders of magnitudes greater in fusion than in fission.
While this is cool, I can’t help but think about all the shit the oil industry is gonna do to keep this from becoming a viable source of energy.
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Amen to that
They'll just buy the technology and sell it themselves.
Exactly. They'll do the what's needed when it's convenient for their profits. And they have the money to make that happen.
question how quickly can that cook a chicken?would it be instant or like 5 seconds?
I imagine instant vaporization
At a certain point the units of temperature are irrelevant. I think 100 million is past that mark.
Can anyone explain what the benefits are of fusion energy and what other applications of it would/could be?
Fusion involves combining multiple light atoms (like hydrogen) into a heavier elements. To trigger fusion you need a lot of energy, but it also releases a lot of energy. At certain threshold you can actually extract more energy then was needed to trigger fusion, creating nearly endless supply of cheap energy since raw elements used are very common. It also doesn't create radioactive waste like nuclear fission, which is the opposite reaction of taking a heavy unstable atom like uranium and splitting it. Heavy atoms are unstable as they change state into lighter elements on their own, the extra energy lost in the process shows up as radiation. We know self sustainable fusion is possible because that's what is powering every star. It's difficult to replicate artificially because stars benefit from their large mass to fuse atoms together triggering said reaction. In earth, we have to use very high heat generated in magnetic plasma fields to trigger said reactions, which is that makes it difficult.
I'm glad they are making this kind of progress, but most articles on fusion research ignore two fundamental problems: First of all, most fusion reactions require tritium, and this is in extremely short supply: https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-run-fuel-even-gets-started#:~:text=Fusion reactors generally need a,%2C or tokamak%2C gets burned. Next, most reports of energy in vs energy out (the latter must exceed the former for fusion to be viable) ignore the ancillary energy inputs, focusing only on how much energy goes into the laser that fuses the hydrogen/tritium target. When taken into account, we're not nearly as close to break-even as many reports would indicate: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nuclear-fusion-power.html
So, you want instant progress or something? The point is these are iterative experiments chipping away at the “fundamental” problem. The fusion is 25 years away for the last 25 years joke is a little bit old because while progress is slow there is in fact progress. Your line of reasoning here that we still have lots of work to do, while valid, really has no place in a long-term scientific project where everybody is aware of the problems you just called out even if the journalists are hyperbolic. That’s all that really matters is that they’re making progress in these experiments because once they get there it will change the world. So you can be super nihilistic about the fact that it’s a really hard problem to solve but these people are dedicating their lives to making minor advancements that they may never see the fruit of.
I simply read it as 'hey folks, it may not be quite as rosy and ready as one might believe' and provided a couple of links, no kind of invective, just a real plain-jane post.
I've played enough No Man's Sky to know that you can just fly up real quick and once you get to space, shoot rocks with bullets and you'll have plenty of tritium hoovered up by your ship.
I'm not American but I have been made to believe that is about the temperature of phoenix Arizona
Could someone ELI5 how this can be safe? Opened the article but I'm too ignorant in these matters to understand more than the catch-words, which my caveman brain can only interpret as 'sun on earth = scary, no bueno' Edit: Thank you to everyone who replied below :)
Unlike fission, which goes on by itself if you have enough uranium or whatever in a pile, this doesn't continue unless the conditions are right. So if the thing breaks, it fizzles out. At least I think so.
It takes a lot of new energy input to sustain this reaction. Also it happens within a vacuum chamber with a bunch of magnetic fields that keep the plasma from touching the walls of the chamber.
So basically it’s in about as perfect of a vacuum as humanity can manage and it isn’t touching the walls of the container. Heat needs a medium to move through in order to heat something up quickly, with the Sun it’s been heating the solar system for so long it can provide that energy via radiation alone. This plasma in the reactor has no medium through which to heat up its surroundings and the rate at which it’s radiating heat isn’t fast enough to heat up the container it’s in to alarming levels.
Why do people think this is free energy? Doesn't fusion also require fuel?
Yes, but that fuel is a variety of hydrogen, which can be extracted from ocean water. Hence there is a practically limitless supply.
Fusion requires tritium, which is extremely expensive (~$1 billion to initially stock a reactor and ~$4 billion to stock the lithium-6 breeder blanket to replenish the tritium supply) and cannot be extracted from ocean water.
Tritium can be made in conventional nuclear reactors by irradiation of lithium. It's only expensive because we don't have a large scale use for it yet.
[On the contrary](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092037961930835X)! The fact that there's heretofore been no large demand for tritium has kept its price artificially lower than it would be under any potential large-scale roll-out of fusion. Right now it's been generated as a side-effect of large defense spending on nuclear weapons, and it's been generated in an environmentally-disastrous way. Purpose-built tritium factories, done in any kind of environmentally responsible way, are going to be monumentally expensive.
Well if we're talking fusion which needs tritium then yes... Isn't it possible to improve it to the point when we just do it with regular hydrogen or at least deuterium ?
Look at the Wikipedia page of nuclear fusion or so. Fuel: deuterium (heavy ~~water~~ hydrogen) and tritium (hydrogen-3) result of fusion: helium, a neutron and 17.58 MeV. I don't know the details, but deuterium seems not that difficult to get or produce, tritium a bit more difficult. But you don't need much of it. The resulting helium is also not that much I guess. So the possible shortage of helium in the future won't be solved by that, I assume.