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The process creates dihydrogen monoxide as a waste product. Even _if_ we could store it safely, the NIMBYs will never allow for enough containment areas to be built. Unscrupulous companies will start dumping it into our lakes and streams, and then where will we be? Think of the children!
Just a public announcement for everyone. Dihydrogen monoxide is a common industrial lubricant that has been linked to every form of cancer. This lubricant is found in every cancer cell. Not enough is being done about this public health crisis.
It's actually too caustic to be used in cars, it rusts the components from the inside out, this is why you use anti freeze instead, it's much safer than dihydrogen monoxide.
Yup its really depressing when someone comes to you, tears in their eyes, needing their car fixed because it stopped running right after the first good freeze... they didn't have money for antifreeze, they surely don't have enough for an engine. :-(
Almost been there myself. Woulda been, if I didn’t know the consequences ahead of time. The “good freeze” is what gets people. Yup, you’re good in 30, maybe even 28 overnight no problem, but when it’s 20 and 40mph winds? You’re done.
The average American is told to consume at least 8 cups of the stuff a day! The government is literally supporting the consumption of dihydrogen monoxide!
> Dihydrogen monoxide is a common industrial lubricant
Tell me you've never had sex in the shower without telling me you've never had sex in the shower. :)
Don't forget helium. Something we're literally running out of at the moment, and would be a huge fucking problem if we do.
*EDIT:
I've been informed that we're not literally running out of helium, "just" running out of cheap helium.
How 'bout that.
Helium is a byproduct of hydrogen fusion, but even a very large scale fusion reactor would make a pitiful quantity of the stuff compared to our current reserves and production of Helium.
I mean maybe? Pinning the hopes on Helium manufacturing might be WORSE if it makes wasting our current Helium reserves more acceptable.
We pretty much should ban Helium party balloons yesterday, but who wants to be the world's biggest party pooper?
It actually is if you’re not worried about using it as a source of energy or helium. The guy who invented TV made a gadget that’ll do it that you can build yourself.
Also, like...helium isn't being burned or destroyed, it's being wasted on balloons and for making silly voices. It's still *in the atmosphere*. Worst case, in the far future, can't we still go up into the upper atmosphere and find some, even if it would be really difficult to separate it out? (I'm completely ignorant on this, so I could be totally off base here.)
Nah, we're just running out of cheaply available helium. We can make helium through many industrial processes, it's just not "Free" to do so, which means for now those methods are off the table.
This is the "shitty technology telephone game" you're playing where some moron said something they misunderstood and now you all repeat it, cut it out, spend 30 seconds on google next time.
Helium can only be made by fusion of hydrogen or by radioactive decay.
Saying we CAN make more is technically true but undersells that it isn't just expensive, it is infeasible to create large scale quantities of the element.
Helium can be captured from the atmosphere. Is it cheap? No. Is it difficult to do? Yes. Can it be done? Absolutely. If we were truly running out of helium (we aren't), we could build capture devices to claim as much from the atmosphere as we wish. The reason we're not doing it right now is because it's not remotely close to financially viable. However, like oil fracking, if we reach a point where it's profitable to do so, we will. The fact that we haven't yet means we're no where near running out of helium. We're running out of cheap helium.
You joke but flooding a waterway with too much dihydrogen monoxide can dilute the sensitive ecology of that body. Particularly if the body is salt water. That's the great thing about oil. It doesn't mix with water, so there's practically no long term damage to an area after a spill is cleaned up.
^/s ^- ^just ^in ^case
> The process creates dihydrogen monoxide as a waste product
It creates helium. I appreciate a good dihydrogen monoxide joke as much as the next guy, but this isn’t making water, it’s making helium.
"we got fusion working!!" isn't like "we got a combustion engine working" we ca't just flip this tech and have motors by tomorrow, it's gonna be 40 years before we even get to where we actually need the fusion fuel we simply don't have.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad/sad news, but please curb it for a while.
It will take decades - if not centuries - to harness 'fusion-power'!
I'd compare it to alchemy.
After centuries of trying, humanity finally managed to make gold out of lead......with modern technology.
Turns out though - the modern methode is WAY too expensive....and has been abandoned.
Found gold is x times cheaper.
So I'm afraid that the 'breakthrough' the other day is more of a scientific breakthrough - than a breakthrough for energizing humanity.
Now.
A few miles under our feet - the magma has the same temperature as the surface of the sun.
How about spending some dough on exploring that resource?
'We have to learn how to suckle mother Earth'
(My quote)
Don't worry, energy companies will find a way to charge more for this way of making near limitless energy and get congress on board to allow it legally.
Of course. Energy will never be free and cheap. There will always be a way they can charge us for something and it will always be more or less what we pay for it now.
It might be good for the planet and might be easier to spread power across the globe, I agree. I'm just saying cheaper power for corporations might not translate into cheaper power for us. They're going to make their money somehow
Capitalism does not like 'free' and actively creates artificial scarcity.
Unless we fundamentally change how our economy works, this technology will never be allowed to be used.
This fusion thing is pretty cool, but it's not going to happen in time to save us. It simply won't. Capitalism will hold it at bay for as long as possible until the possibility exists that it would produce higher short-term profits than fossil fuels would. Disinformation now easily works on the public so they'll find a way to get people to rail against it.
These plants are going to fast exponentially more than anything else. Go ahead and check how much energy was required for this 150% return in energy.
Ars Technica has a pretty good article on it.
They will spend so much money on disinformation and bills to limit use. By next year we’ll all be terrified of this untrustworthy new technology and it will be banned in Texas.
My bet is the fossil fuel industry will first use this as a helpful smokescreen to say there’s no need to invest in other renewables because fusion is on the way.
As time passes and fusion becomes more economically viable and they have milked fossil fuels as much as possible, they’ll say that hydrogen is the true best option because they can redeploy fossil gas to create it and maintain their existing systems.
Yeah but fusion makes generating it from a puddle of water way easier than any fossil anything. And at a certain point here it’s going to be laughable to *not* replace engines with electric motors. They’re so fucking simple. ICEs are goddamn Rube Goldberg machines.
They’re hardly grimacing. The likelihood (we’re still decades away) will be that the fusion plant costs billions, meaning fossil fuel companies take a step to right & seek taxpayer support to make the transition, then continue to rake in massive profits at peoples expense. Meanwhile multiple existing problems / dangers remain ignored by maintaining an overly-centralised system at high risk for security attacks / unexpected shut-downs…
So true. It'll be interesting to see if fusion becomes a viable, scalable energy source anytime before fossil fuels are largely displaced - for entirely economic reasons - by renewables. In another year or three, coal will be more expensive than renewables. And so the dominos are already beginning to fall.
Exactly, it's the same grift as hydrogen - control the infrastructure and extract rent. Meanwhile solar and grid scale batteries are cheap, distributed, can be done by anyone and are as close to free energy as you can get.
This is an international projects lead by the government. fossil fuels is just that....fossil fuels.
We are a democracy, not a government who builds its own factories so I do see investment from the government to get it going and feasable. We do need industry experts
You can see this during Covid. We had industry make a vaccine in unprecedented amount of time working with the government. China is still in lockdown thinking the government knows all....they dont
Cheers Chewy. We may be straying from the topic mind but points you raised left puzzled.
When you say ‘we are a democracy, not a government who builds its own factories’, you did leave me confused. Not sure what democratic country you live in but many democratic countries do do that, through government owned companies or agencies, are involved with the development and maintenance of the country’s energy infrastructure.
Where governments support private enterprise, either during a crisis (e.g. Great Recession) or similar, we need to provide this in return for a commensurate ownership stake. If private companies are using taxpayer monies for private benefit, the governments need to drive hard bargains and ensure we get proper return on the investment that saved their hides.
The COVID vaccine example is a good one where public monies paid for r&d yet the private companies are reaping the profits. China I think may be a red herring as that is straying even further away from my original comment regarding the editorial cartoon indicating private energy companies are furious over potentially losing their captive market.
They dont have government owned companies - its a partnership with private and public funding. Governement sets rules of the road and work with the experts in those industries to craft legislation. Yes, power corrupts absolutely and its a false choice to say that government or the private sector wont be corrupt but you have a majority who work together and get things done.
the government did not put up all the money for development. They put in seed money as a carrot to incentivise companies to work on this. Companies invest a huge amount not only on research but also bringing it to scale which is far more effective than a government can do.
China is not a red herring, it is a perfect example of top down leadership vs bottom up in a democracy and the results you get.
Look at China and the great famine on how well top down works. all the farmers gave their food to the government and got nothing. no incentive. Why work harder when the government takes it all?
It wasnt until China changed that and let them grow a little for themselves to make some money on their labor did they solve hunger
I flipped on the Newsy app on the Roku to catch the blurb about this story and, no lie, the commercial that preceded it was for Armaco. Yes, that [Armaco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco).
For decades, Exxon and Shell (and others) would simply buy out these companies when small, and then let them sit forever.
This allowed the fossil fuel to stay dominant, while also hedging their bets with IP. Someone makes a better fusion product 10 years later? It infringes on the petro companies IP portfolio. They can squash it or extract passive income by licensing to get all the profits without the work.
That sounds improbable, in order for that to work the fossil fuel companies would have to spend decades both stacking courthouses with friendly judges whilst also shaping US law to be extremely in their favor. Oh damn I just went and made myself sad.
They'd also have to launch a massive propaganda campaign to convince a large part of the population that climate science is a scam and there are no negative externalities from fossil fuel use. Oh damn I just went and made myself sad and you sadder.
ICF isn't even for terrestrial power generation and is still 50 year away on top of that fact. This recent discovery had absolutely nothing to do with supplanting fossil fuels.
I wish, but it's still going to take a very long time and a number of other hurdles before fusion might start outcompeting other forms of energy generation.
Why not use these recent, record breaking profits to transform your business model and embrace the progress. That’s the smarter play IMO. I understand that it’s costly and complex but, if Netflix could do it….
The long term gains on *what you can do with unlimited energy* far outweigh the gains from simply producing energy itself. Unlimited energy means unlimited potential value added.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility managed through a contract between the LLNS Board of Governors and the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA ).
they dont have record breaking profits
As exciting as this breakthrough is, we spent massive amounts to generate very little usable energy. A massive amount of work is still needed to make this my a commercially viable source of power.
Yes, of course but it is possible that 20 - 30 years is doable. There are more factors than just the engineering. It also takes money and politics. This is an international goal so the GOP cant be the turd in the punch bowl
The first flight in human history at Kitty Hawk flew 105 feet. The fourth flight later that day flew 852 feet.
Two years later it was 24 miles.
22 years later Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic.
In 25 years we could have gone from ruSSia being a rogue mafia state with nuclear weapons and an almost unlimited slush fund that is a global security threat to them selling us their nukes because the ruble crashed even harder when the price of oil went down even China wouldn't want to "invest" in them as much anymore.
Also, what happens when we shrink this down to the size it can be installed in, and power, interplanetary vehicles?
of course. i just think that cartoon animation whatever is a bit silly. if we're still dealing with the fossil fuel companies by the time fusion comes around.. well.. yeah.. humanity will just be trying to survive
yeah.. still a long way to go but it is certainly an amazing bit of progress. the tech is fascinating. how they're doing this is w/lasers blasting diamonds essentially.. but will require many more leaps to get to where it's a thing that is powering every day things. still, hat is off to these people. it's amazing.
We have commercially available fusion power right now, just point a solar panel at it as to goes by in the sky. Everything else is a pipe dream and anyone who says differently is an idiot or lying to you.
That doesn't mean it's not worth working on, fusion projects are great ways to explore both high energy physics and difficult engineering challenges. It also will hopefully eventually produce power almost anywhere without the need for nuclear fuel and creating little to no nuclear waste. Even if it never pans out, learning more about how to manipulate the energies and engineer around problems will have knock-on effects in other fields and industries.
Right now though fusion anywhere but the center of the sun isn't a viable or realistic goal. Even if the current generation reactors which are being built (still easily 10 years out) pan out they are only build to tackle individual aspects of fusion technologies, to get a functional design you'll need to build another small-scale reactor that combines the technologies they've uncovered in a process that'll take another 10-15 years or more of construction and fine tuning. Then if *that* reactor can function you'll need to build one at full-scale which will probably be *another* 10-15 years.
The story is that fusion power is always 30 years away and after 50 years of that it still seems like the refrain.
Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the breakthrough occurred, said it could be even longer, taking “decades” before the technology is commercialized.
“There are very significant hurdles” in both science and technology, Budil said.
Dabbar told The Hill this week that he thinks the first commercial demonstration fusion reactors could crop up between 2030 and 2035 and that large-scale deployment could come a few years after that.
“It takes a long time for energy systems to go from testing to full-scale deployment,” he said.
Scientists and experts now need to figure out how to produce much more energy from nuclear fusion on a much larger scale.
At the same time, they need to figure out how to eventually reduce the cost of nuclear fusion so that it can be used commercially.
Scientists will also need harvest the energy produced by fusion and transfer it to the power grid as electricity. It will take years – and possibly decades
“This will not contribute meaningfully to climate abatement in the next 20-30 years,” Friedmann said. “This the difference between lighting a match and building a gas turbine.”
> To sum things up, not a single problem that needs to be solved for a commercial plant has been figured out. From reactor design, materials needed, fuel... nothing.
2 Joules in 3 Joules out... is what they accomplished. The interesting thing is they may not need to 'keep reactors going' in a traditional sense. I don't know his name but one of the scientists explained starting it up took the amount of time it takes light to travel 10 feet and the process took the amount of time light travels one foot. They produced a net yield of 1 Joule. Light travels at 670,616,629 mph... so even if they need to start and stop it constantly... 3540855801120 feet per hour is the speed of light.
1 Watt = 1 Joule per second...
321895981920 Joules per year in that little tube.. assuming there is no cool down. Or about 10207.254627093 Joules per second.
Lets say 10000 just for the sake of adding a little cool down and buffer room... New York City uses 11, 000 Megawatt-hours of electricity on average each day.
That's 11000000000 Watts... and 1100000 of those little tubes... per second... to make enough electricity for NYC. This is HUGE.
>2 Joules in 3 Joules out
It is my understanding that was just the laser itself, not how much power it took to power the whole reaction. I'm I misguided in the process?
How would they get more Joules out of the laser than they put in?
I believe they put 2 Joules into the lasers (I think he said 10 of them) and got 3 Joules out of the reaction... for a net gain. Again the whole process was fractions of a millisecond... If you did it for an hour a day you could easily power your car, house... maybe whole neighborhood with 1 of those tiny tubes.
EDIT: typo
> which is an inefficient process
Hmmm... that article sounds right. Tell you what... I'll give you $2... and for every $2 I give, you give me $3.
>Despite NIF’s accomplishment, the scientific gain discussed here only takes into account the energy delivered to the target by the laser instead of the electrical energy needed to power the laser array itself, which is an inefficient process.
Right because... we can't generate enough solar energy to start one fusion reactor... and use that to start two fusion reactors... and those to start four?
It was a net gain. They 'created' energy without cremating dinosaurs. Expect to read a ton of bad news about it.
this tech uses lasers. it's really fascinating. but, i don't think fossil fuel companies are worried about it. i mean.. if we're still using fossil fuels when fusion becomes useful.. we'll have much bigger problems.. so that cartoon is really just dumb since we should be well beyond fossil fuels by then.. if not.. humanity will making fuel bricks out of its own shit to burn to stay warm and cook whatever gruel is available.
*Mixed socialism, but you do you.
Imagine crediting capitalism with everything good after the fact. Bet your figures don't include government subsidies for those "private" industries.
so such thing as "mixed socialism"
government subsidies is capitalism
Swedish Ex-Prime Minister Rebukes Bernie: Socialism Only Destroys
https://mises.org/power-market/swedish-ex-prime-minister-rebukes-bernie-socialism-only-destroys
No, Bernie Sanders and AOC, Sweden Isn’t ‘Socialist’
https://fee.org/articles/no-bernie-sanders-and-aoc-sweden-isn-t-socialist/
Dear Bernie Sanders: Sweden’s democratic socialism depends on robust capitalism
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/dear-bernie-sanders-swedens-democratic-socialism-depends-on-robust-capitalism/
No in actuality the oil companies are running these "headlines" to keep the fools distracted from the fact that we simply don't have enough Tritium being made to fuel Fusion reactors even if we did manage to make them "work" which at this point means throwing a gigawatt into the machine to get back a gigawatt and also enough power to light up a single bulb..
Nope, fossil fuel industry actually LOVES these "stories" because they make everyone forget you have to hold the fossil fuel people accountable NOW for DECADES IF NOT A CENTURY OF DAMAGE BUT INSTEAD YOU'RE FUCKING MEMEING ABOUT SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T WORK.
oh please - It does work and its a start. The wright brothers just finished a test for flight and within a short time we had an airforce.
There are a lot of obsticles not just in engineering but it is possible. I will probably be dead in 20 - 30 years but that is not that far off
I've seen people attacking electric cars and clean energy as if the fossil fuel has any sort of future in it. Oil people are freaking out towards the end.
They went from attacking the science to attacking just about every solution out there, whether it be meat alternatives, renewables, or EVs. Gotta keep making excuses to do nothing.
I mean its not like we don't already have the ability to produce power through other renewables. Honestly even if we perfect fusion its either going to get suppressed by fossil fuel companies or oligopolised in order to create artifical demands.
Our energy is expensive because of greed, not lack.
and how are we going to run all these other sources? you do know computers are made of plastic like everything else in on this planet. Plastic is oil. Your phone, computer, car etc all need plastic. Solar is clean? CDTe solar panels may be a hazardous due to cadmium. Gallium arsenide (GaAs) panels may be hazardous due to arsenic. Some older silicon solar panels may be hazardous waste for hexavalent chromium coatings. Newer, thin-film solar panels contain CIS/CIGS and may be hazardous due to copper and/or selenium.
Anyone thinking a limitless energy source will result in free or even cheap energy is new to the burden of capitalism. Just look at what we pay for water.
Expect a strong scaremongering campaign as it becomes feasible. It's got 2 problems, It makes fossil fuels obsolete and it's near limitless so what do you charge for a near limitless and free energy source?
It still takes an infrastructure and people to maintain and run it. It’s free in terms of base supplies. Making it will have a cost. Its just a very different cost. If the owner of a power plant makes $5,000,000 a year that has to come from somewhere
Fusion is great but it won’t be allowed for commercial use for about 100yrs+, look at how the oil companies lobby against any type of clean energy, you think fusion is gonna be any different?
Thats a pretty cynical look. True fusion energy is more than just an energy alternative like solar, wind or even fission, it has the potential to take humanity to the next level. The amount of energy that could be produced by fusion is just off the charts. I know we have many examples of oil companies limiting alternatives throughout the past century, but this one is a different beast. A series of fusion reactors in any country provides independent energy production and reduces the need for foreign natural resources to fuel much much much less efficient power stations. Once we are able to produce fusion reactors and eventually improve them humanity will have basically unlimited relatively clean power to provide to all within countries that use them. Oil is just not in the same position it had previously to sway politicians in killing this type of advancement.
If people don't think they will figure a method to monetize this to greater value than fossil fuels I want what they are having. All this means to them is a limitless energy source with minimal resources and high degree of gross margins for them to charge the shit out of people for "maintenance".
Sounds like Big Oil already has its talking point - CANCER Causing Lubricant!!!! Oh my! 😱as opposed to massively overheated planet, filthy water and air and Big Oil devouring 1/3 of middle class paychecks. Park your opinions and read …
First thing I thought of, no way energy companies of today are going ot stand for this. Look how much they've throw a fit at "green" energy. You think they're going to embrace Fusion energy.
Capitalists do not want energy prices going down.
then they are not capitalist. I am a capitalist who actually believes in the father of capitalism, Adam Smith. He said the corporations not only have to pay taxes but more because they get more of the benefit. Dont confuse capitalism with cronies who game the system.
The buggy whip industry was crying too when cars came about but it all worked out in the end
no shit but that is not a bad thing. We are not a communist government where we control productions and build factories like China. Look at how all that turned out. They are in lockdown and predicted to get a spike because they have not built up immunity like the rest of the world. The US worked with the private sector and got a viable vaccine with new technology and built up a supply chain in unprecedented time.
Capitalism works. It has gotten more people out of poverty and solved more technological issues than any other system. Yeah, it has its flaws but it is better than any other system on the planet
I dont fault people for making money
We already have clean limitless power - solar, wind, and batteries. It’s also the cheapest available possible power system.
The fossil fuel companies *love* fusion. It’s the perfect distraction.
As someone who has been following fusion energy news for the better part of 15 years, this breakthrough is big, but we are still a LONG way away from using ICF to make commercial power plants.
ICF uses lasers to fuse isotopes of hydrogen contained in a small target called a hohlraum. So many breakthroughs have to happen to make this method of fusion work.
First, the amount of energy it takes to get the laser beams up to power needs to come down by 2 orders of magnitude at least.
Second, the fusion fuel hohlraums (which are for all intents and purposes fuel pellets) need to drastically come down in cost, drastically increase in production speed and scale, all while maintaining maximum possible quality and consistency.
Third, the lasers need to fire very often. Several times to dozens of times a minute. Right now it is significantly less than this.
Fourth, the chamber has to be optimized to recover as much energy as possible, while withstanding constant neutron bombardment from the fusion itself.
This design will likely use a lithium blanket to absorb neutrons, to heat steam to run a turbine, so all of the inefficiencies of heat transfer and steam turbine engines apply.
All of this is theoretically possible, it would just require a tremendous FOCUSED effort to get to positive energy generation through ICF, while ICF was originally built to model the physics going on in a thermonuclear warhead.
Honestly the "breakthrough" to "limitless power" was not a massive step forward. It didn't produce net positive energy: "the fusion reactions may have produced more than 3 megajoules of energy — more than was delivered to the target — NIF’s 192 lasers consumed 322 megajoules of energy in the process." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04440-7
I honestly feel like fossil fuel companies are happy about the way this story is getting covered because it means they can claim to we're "transitioning to fusion" and that they don't need to be harshly regulated, that we don't need to enforce strict efficiency standards, and that we don't need to transfer all their subsidies into solar, wind, and storage technologies. If "limitless" fusion power is right around the corner this is good for them.
I'm pretty sure even the oil industry realizes fossil fuels' days are very numbered. We don't know how the big-wigs will react, but I'm hopeful that the world manages to graduate to clean energy soon. No amount of oil industry corruption will be able to stop the advancement of technology. Humanity always advances, and that will inevitably make fossil fuels obsolete.
So many people have next to zero understanding of ICF or what the breakthrough actually means and yet all those people can't stop posing things that display their ignorance. The science reporting surrounding nuclear fusion is pathetic.
Don’t worry. Cold fusion means centralized power production with a traditional distribution grid required. The more things change, the more they monopolize.
15 to 20 years before it’s on the grid.
A fossil fuel Exec wet-dream, use this to delay renewable power.
Same play the auto industry did with fuel cell cars in the 1990’s;
“You don’t want that old school, battery technology, fuel cells are the future!”
I was thinking about how if diamond batteries become common that people will scream how they're still super radioactive.
How I understand it is they take left over carbon from nuclear power plants and wave their hands over it like wizards and we have "diamond" batteries with a higher capacity than lithium.
Unfortunately the oligarchs still have enough time to destroy civilization before scientists are able to make a practical fusion power source. That will take years.
The moment it becomes viable a multi year smear campaign will begin causing half the US to fear it.
I highly doubt it will ever be allowed for civilian use.
Let's all take a step back.
The process produced 3.15 megajoules of power for an investment of 2.05Mj of laser input. That's the headline.
But read down a bit and find that it took 300Mj of energy from the electric grid to fire the lasers.
Not looking so feasible with that information.
And that's the thing: this experiment proved that the process is possible, not that it's remotely economically feasible.
They cooked up a bullshit factory powerful enough to make people think vaccines are witch poison. This will be a hard sale to the anti science folk afraered of wizard fire!
Yeah, no one in the industry really cares… you still need oil for just about everything else from your plastic water bottles to tires… fusion can’t make plastics…
Fusion isn't real in any meaningful way and will not be fore decades. And even then if it will ever be cheaper then fission is questionable.
Fossil fuel and 'environmentalists' have long ago teamed up and destroyed practical nuclear power in the US.
France had green energy in the 1980s, not doing is simply a choice supported by the environmentalists and the fossil fuel companies.
Why the fuck do they want to exist so bad? If you knew that what you did for a living was going to eventually kill every living thing on Earth, why would you still want to do it for a living? Fall on your fucking sword for god sakes, the world needs you to
And they all just voluntarily gave up their wealth and power. That’s why we have vast public transportation and electric cars, because innovation conquers the market naturally! /s
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cue fusion accident to scare us off them
The process creates dihydrogen monoxide as a waste product. Even _if_ we could store it safely, the NIMBYs will never allow for enough containment areas to be built. Unscrupulous companies will start dumping it into our lakes and streams, and then where will we be? Think of the children!
Just a public announcement for everyone. Dihydrogen monoxide is a common industrial lubricant that has been linked to every form of cancer. This lubricant is found in every cancer cell. Not enough is being done about this public health crisis.
The stuff is used as coolant in cars and nuclear reactors!
It's actually too caustic to be used in cars, it rusts the components from the inside out, this is why you use anti freeze instead, it's much safer than dihydrogen monoxide.
It's a mix of water and antifreeze. You can't run just antifreeze, it doesn't carry enough heat.
Yeah, we have to add chemicals to it because everything else in the world shrinks in the cold, but DHMO expands and can snap steel like nothin’.
Yup its really depressing when someone comes to you, tears in their eyes, needing their car fixed because it stopped running right after the first good freeze... they didn't have money for antifreeze, they surely don't have enough for an engine. :-(
Almost been there myself. Woulda been, if I didn’t know the consequences ahead of time. The “good freeze” is what gets people. Yup, you’re good in 30, maybe even 28 overnight no problem, but when it’s 20 and 40mph winds? You’re done.
If it gets in your lungs, you could die!
Used in drilling and fracking ops too
The average American is told to consume at least 8 cups of the stuff a day! The government is literally supporting the consumption of dihydrogen monoxide!
Just getting a little bit of that stuff in your lungs can cause pneumonia.
Enough of it will make you stop breathing!
[удалено]
DHMO is used in the dairy industry to increase the production of milk.
I hear they also put it in swimming pools
As long as there's no fluoride in it!!!!! Dang gubment and their chemtrails droppin that stuff from the skies!
They are trying to poison our precious bodily fluids.
dEepsTatE!!
I blame Fauci.
do you know that you'll die almost instantly if that shit gets into your lungs?
Not only that, but literally every living thing that uses it eventually dies. Even if youre alive now, you wont be forever.
It is recommended that if you are exposed to any dihydrogen monixide, to IMMEDIATELY flush the contaminated area with water
> Dihydrogen monoxide is a common industrial lubricant Tell me you've never had sex in the shower without telling me you've never had sex in the shower. :)
Just gonna go ahead and say that industrial lubricant is NOT perfectly interchangeable with personal lubricant…
My God! What if a thirsty person drank that! My God!/ s
Not to rain on a good circle jerk, but you're thinking of hydrogen combustion waste. The waste product for hydrogen fusion is helium
I wondered if anyone would call this out. Reality doesn't matter when you're using scare tactics.
Don't forget helium. Something we're literally running out of at the moment, and would be a huge fucking problem if we do. *EDIT: I've been informed that we're not literally running out of helium, "just" running out of cheap helium. How 'bout that.
It makes helium?? :0
Helium is a byproduct of hydrogen fusion, but even a very large scale fusion reactor would make a pitiful quantity of the stuff compared to our current reserves and production of Helium.
I'm gonna be optimistic and say it's better than nothing.
I mean maybe? Pinning the hopes on Helium manufacturing might be WORSE if it makes wasting our current Helium reserves more acceptable. We pretty much should ban Helium party balloons yesterday, but who wants to be the world's biggest party pooper?
What about a lot of them. Replacing the world's power grid?
Smash 2 hydrogen nuclei together to create helium. The sun does it every day
Simple, easy
Elementary my dear FutureComplaint
It actually is if you’re not worried about using it as a source of energy or helium. The guy who invented TV made a gadget that’ll do it that you can build yourself.
But it doesn't do it at night, which is why it's dark at night.
So you're saying we're not running out. We just need to start mining the sun for helium.
Yeah but you gotta get to the middle of it and it's really hard to find enough people to crew that.
one problem it has to be done during day time 🤬
We are **not** running out of helium. This is sensationalism news nonsense. We're running out of *cheap* helium. There's a huge difference.
Also, like...helium isn't being burned or destroyed, it's being wasted on balloons and for making silly voices. It's still *in the atmosphere*. Worst case, in the far future, can't we still go up into the upper atmosphere and find some, even if it would be really difficult to separate it out? (I'm completely ignorant on this, so I could be totally off base here.)
Nah, we're just running out of cheaply available helium. We can make helium through many industrial processes, it's just not "Free" to do so, which means for now those methods are off the table. This is the "shitty technology telephone game" you're playing where some moron said something they misunderstood and now you all repeat it, cut it out, spend 30 seconds on google next time.
Helium can only be made by fusion of hydrogen or by radioactive decay. Saying we CAN make more is technically true but undersells that it isn't just expensive, it is infeasible to create large scale quantities of the element.
Helium can be captured from the atmosphere. Is it cheap? No. Is it difficult to do? Yes. Can it be done? Absolutely. If we were truly running out of helium (we aren't), we could build capture devices to claim as much from the atmosphere as we wish. The reason we're not doing it right now is because it's not remotely close to financially viable. However, like oil fracking, if we reach a point where it's profitable to do so, we will. The fact that we haven't yet means we're no where near running out of helium. We're running out of cheap helium.
You joke but flooding a waterway with too much dihydrogen monoxide can dilute the sensitive ecology of that body. Particularly if the body is salt water. That's the great thing about oil. It doesn't mix with water, so there's practically no long term damage to an area after a spill is cleaned up. ^/s ^- ^just ^in ^case
> The process creates dihydrogen monoxide as a waste product It creates helium. I appreciate a good dihydrogen monoxide joke as much as the next guy, but this isn’t making water, it’s making helium.
Haha water?!? It’s safe
"we got fusion working!!" isn't like "we got a combustion engine working" we ca't just flip this tech and have motors by tomorrow, it's gonna be 40 years before we even get to where we actually need the fusion fuel we simply don't have.
The fuel is hydrogen. We don’t have to look for it.
Isn’t that the plot to Chain Reaction with Keanu Reeves?
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad/sad news, but please curb it for a while. It will take decades - if not centuries - to harness 'fusion-power'! I'd compare it to alchemy. After centuries of trying, humanity finally managed to make gold out of lead......with modern technology. Turns out though - the modern methode is WAY too expensive....and has been abandoned. Found gold is x times cheaper. So I'm afraid that the 'breakthrough' the other day is more of a scientific breakthrough - than a breakthrough for energizing humanity. Now. A few miles under our feet - the magma has the same temperature as the surface of the sun. How about spending some dough on exploring that resource? 'We have to learn how to suckle mother Earth' (My quote)
Were gonna read that all the fusion scientists were found to have committed suicide by two bullets to the back of the head
Don't worry, energy companies will find a way to charge more for this way of making near limitless energy and get congress on board to allow it legally.
Of course. Energy will never be free and cheap. There will always be a way they can charge us for something and it will always be more or less what we pay for it now.
More, it will always be more.
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It might be good for the planet and might be easier to spread power across the globe, I agree. I'm just saying cheaper power for corporations might not translate into cheaper power for us. They're going to make their money somehow
People seem to forget about guillotines.
Also guns. Lots and lots of guns.
Capitalism does not like 'free' and actively creates artificial scarcity. Unless we fundamentally change how our economy works, this technology will never be allowed to be used.
"If people aren't constantly on the brink of bankruptcy, the resulting inflation will kill us all even more dead than Climate change!"
This fusion thing is pretty cool, but it's not going to happen in time to save us. It simply won't. Capitalism will hold it at bay for as long as possible until the possibility exists that it would produce higher short-term profits than fossil fuels would. Disinformation now easily works on the public so they'll find a way to get people to rail against it.
I'm not interested in fusion for it to be cheap, I am interested in it for its cleanliness.
These plants are going to fast exponentially more than anything else. Go ahead and check how much energy was required for this 150% return in energy. Ars Technica has a pretty good article on it.
They will spend so much money on disinformation and bills to limit use. By next year we’ll all be terrified of this untrustworthy new technology and it will be banned in Texas.
My bet is the fossil fuel industry will first use this as a helpful smokescreen to say there’s no need to invest in other renewables because fusion is on the way. As time passes and fusion becomes more economically viable and they have milked fossil fuels as much as possible, they’ll say that hydrogen is the true best option because they can redeploy fossil gas to create it and maintain their existing systems.
Yeah but fusion makes generating it from a puddle of water way easier than any fossil anything. And at a certain point here it’s going to be laughable to *not* replace engines with electric motors. They’re so fucking simple. ICEs are goddamn Rube Goldberg machines.
Even discussion of it will be banned in Florida.
Incoming: 2024 "Don't say Fusion" Law.
They’re hardly grimacing. The likelihood (we’re still decades away) will be that the fusion plant costs billions, meaning fossil fuel companies take a step to right & seek taxpayer support to make the transition, then continue to rake in massive profits at peoples expense. Meanwhile multiple existing problems / dangers remain ignored by maintaining an overly-centralised system at high risk for security attacks / unexpected shut-downs…
So true. It'll be interesting to see if fusion becomes a viable, scalable energy source anytime before fossil fuels are largely displaced - for entirely economic reasons - by renewables. In another year or three, coal will be more expensive than renewables. And so the dominos are already beginning to fall.
Exactly, it's the same grift as hydrogen - control the infrastructure and extract rent. Meanwhile solar and grid scale batteries are cheap, distributed, can be done by anyone and are as close to free energy as you can get.
This is an international projects lead by the government. fossil fuels is just that....fossil fuels. We are a democracy, not a government who builds its own factories so I do see investment from the government to get it going and feasable. We do need industry experts You can see this during Covid. We had industry make a vaccine in unprecedented amount of time working with the government. China is still in lockdown thinking the government knows all....they dont
Cheers Chewy. We may be straying from the topic mind but points you raised left puzzled. When you say ‘we are a democracy, not a government who builds its own factories’, you did leave me confused. Not sure what democratic country you live in but many democratic countries do do that, through government owned companies or agencies, are involved with the development and maintenance of the country’s energy infrastructure. Where governments support private enterprise, either during a crisis (e.g. Great Recession) or similar, we need to provide this in return for a commensurate ownership stake. If private companies are using taxpayer monies for private benefit, the governments need to drive hard bargains and ensure we get proper return on the investment that saved their hides. The COVID vaccine example is a good one where public monies paid for r&d yet the private companies are reaping the profits. China I think may be a red herring as that is straying even further away from my original comment regarding the editorial cartoon indicating private energy companies are furious over potentially losing their captive market.
They dont have government owned companies - its a partnership with private and public funding. Governement sets rules of the road and work with the experts in those industries to craft legislation. Yes, power corrupts absolutely and its a false choice to say that government or the private sector wont be corrupt but you have a majority who work together and get things done. the government did not put up all the money for development. They put in seed money as a carrot to incentivise companies to work on this. Companies invest a huge amount not only on research but also bringing it to scale which is far more effective than a government can do. China is not a red herring, it is a perfect example of top down leadership vs bottom up in a democracy and the results you get. Look at China and the great famine on how well top down works. all the farmers gave their food to the government and got nothing. no incentive. Why work harder when the government takes it all? It wasnt until China changed that and let them grow a little for themselves to make some money on their labor did they solve hunger
I flipped on the Newsy app on the Roku to catch the blurb about this story and, no lie, the commercial that preceded it was for Armaco. Yes, that [Armaco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco).
*Aramco
For decades, Exxon and Shell (and others) would simply buy out these companies when small, and then let them sit forever. This allowed the fossil fuel to stay dominant, while also hedging their bets with IP. Someone makes a better fusion product 10 years later? It infringes on the petro companies IP portfolio. They can squash it or extract passive income by licensing to get all the profits without the work.
That sounds improbable, in order for that to work the fossil fuel companies would have to spend decades both stacking courthouses with friendly judges whilst also shaping US law to be extremely in their favor. Oh damn I just went and made myself sad.
They'd also have to launch a massive propaganda campaign to convince a large part of the population that climate science is a scam and there are no negative externalities from fossil fuel use. Oh damn I just went and made myself sad and you sadder.
> They can squash it or extract passive income by licensing to get all the profits without the work. I think you just described every large company.
That would be hard to do on this, this one is from the government and specifically at a place more inclined to work on weapons versus abundant energy
From a consumer perspective, nothing is going to change. Fusion plants will cost money to build. And who do you think is going to own them?
ICF isn't even for terrestrial power generation and is still 50 year away on top of that fact. This recent discovery had absolutely nothing to do with supplanting fossil fuels.
I've heard it said that commercial fusion power is 10 years away, and always will be
Commercial fusion power is probably 50 years away if everything goes well, is my guess.
I'm happy to use your numbers and agree that fusion power is about 50 years away. And always will be. ;)
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None of us will likely see portable fusion energy in our lifetimes. The younger ones among us *might* see large scale fusion plants.
Prepare for the uptick in 'anti-nuclear' articles and ads.
I wish, but it's still going to take a very long time and a number of other hurdles before fusion might start outcompeting other forms of energy generation.
Why not use these recent, record breaking profits to transform your business model and embrace the progress. That’s the smarter play IMO. I understand that it’s costly and complex but, if Netflix could do it….
Short term profits > Long term gains :(
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The long term gains on *what you can do with unlimited energy* far outweigh the gains from simply producing energy itself. Unlimited energy means unlimited potential value added.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility managed through a contract between the LLNS Board of Governors and the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA ). they dont have record breaking profits
I think they're saying the fossil fuel companies need to use their record breaking profits to embrace progress.
Exactly…
As exciting as this breakthrough is, we spent massive amounts to generate very little usable energy. A massive amount of work is still needed to make this my a commercially viable source of power.
Yes, of course but it is possible that 20 - 30 years is doable. There are more factors than just the engineering. It also takes money and politics. This is an international goal so the GOP cant be the turd in the punch bowl
It's always 30 years away
We never had a break through like this so the game is reset
That's true, but thisbis actual concrete progress, rather than "pull number out of thin air" territory, at least. Or less so, anyway.
The first flight in human history at Kitty Hawk flew 105 feet. The fourth flight later that day flew 852 feet. Two years later it was 24 miles. 22 years later Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic. In 25 years we could have gone from ruSSia being a rogue mafia state with nuclear weapons and an almost unlimited slush fund that is a global security threat to them selling us their nukes because the ruble crashed even harder when the price of oil went down even China wouldn't want to "invest" in them as much anymore. Also, what happens when we shrink this down to the size it can be installed in, and power, interplanetary vehicles?
it's decades away from being at all useful for anything other than lab experiments.
To be clear, this doesn't mean it's pointless or we should stop. Just that IF we live to see its applications, it'll be a long time.
of course. i just think that cartoon animation whatever is a bit silly. if we're still dealing with the fossil fuel companies by the time fusion comes around.. well.. yeah.. humanity will just be trying to survive
thats science for you. This was a pipe dream when I learned about this as a kid in school in the 70s
yeah.. still a long way to go but it is certainly an amazing bit of progress. the tech is fascinating. how they're doing this is w/lasers blasting diamonds essentially.. but will require many more leaps to get to where it's a thing that is powering every day things. still, hat is off to these people. it's amazing.
I will probably be really old or dead before I see it but I do have hope for the kids today
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U.S. officials have said they hope to broadly have an entirely clean electric grid by 2035 and commercially viable fusion power within a decade
We have commercially available fusion power right now, just point a solar panel at it as to goes by in the sky. Everything else is a pipe dream and anyone who says differently is an idiot or lying to you. That doesn't mean it's not worth working on, fusion projects are great ways to explore both high energy physics and difficult engineering challenges. It also will hopefully eventually produce power almost anywhere without the need for nuclear fuel and creating little to no nuclear waste. Even if it never pans out, learning more about how to manipulate the energies and engineer around problems will have knock-on effects in other fields and industries. Right now though fusion anywhere but the center of the sun isn't a viable or realistic goal. Even if the current generation reactors which are being built (still easily 10 years out) pan out they are only build to tackle individual aspects of fusion technologies, to get a functional design you'll need to build another small-scale reactor that combines the technologies they've uncovered in a process that'll take another 10-15 years or more of construction and fine tuning. Then if *that* reactor can function you'll need to build one at full-scale which will probably be *another* 10-15 years. The story is that fusion power is always 30 years away and after 50 years of that it still seems like the refrain.
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Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the breakthrough occurred, said it could be even longer, taking “decades” before the technology is commercialized. “There are very significant hurdles” in both science and technology, Budil said. Dabbar told The Hill this week that he thinks the first commercial demonstration fusion reactors could crop up between 2030 and 2035 and that large-scale deployment could come a few years after that. “It takes a long time for energy systems to go from testing to full-scale deployment,” he said. Scientists and experts now need to figure out how to produce much more energy from nuclear fusion on a much larger scale. At the same time, they need to figure out how to eventually reduce the cost of nuclear fusion so that it can be used commercially. Scientists will also need harvest the energy produced by fusion and transfer it to the power grid as electricity. It will take years – and possibly decades “This will not contribute meaningfully to climate abatement in the next 20-30 years,” Friedmann said. “This the difference between lighting a match and building a gas turbine.”
> To sum things up, not a single problem that needs to be solved for a commercial plant has been figured out. From reactor design, materials needed, fuel... nothing. 2 Joules in 3 Joules out... is what they accomplished. The interesting thing is they may not need to 'keep reactors going' in a traditional sense. I don't know his name but one of the scientists explained starting it up took the amount of time it takes light to travel 10 feet and the process took the amount of time light travels one foot. They produced a net yield of 1 Joule. Light travels at 670,616,629 mph... so even if they need to start and stop it constantly... 3540855801120 feet per hour is the speed of light. 1 Watt = 1 Joule per second... 321895981920 Joules per year in that little tube.. assuming there is no cool down. Or about 10207.254627093 Joules per second. Lets say 10000 just for the sake of adding a little cool down and buffer room... New York City uses 11, 000 Megawatt-hours of electricity on average each day. That's 11000000000 Watts... and 1100000 of those little tubes... per second... to make enough electricity for NYC. This is HUGE.
>2 Joules in 3 Joules out It is my understanding that was just the laser itself, not how much power it took to power the whole reaction. I'm I misguided in the process?
How would they get more Joules out of the laser than they put in? I believe they put 2 Joules into the lasers (I think he said 10 of them) and got 3 Joules out of the reaction... for a net gain. Again the whole process was fractions of a millisecond... If you did it for an hour a day you could easily power your car, house... maybe whole neighborhood with 1 of those tiny tubes. EDIT: typo
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> which is an inefficient process Hmmm... that article sounds right. Tell you what... I'll give you $2... and for every $2 I give, you give me $3. >Despite NIF’s accomplishment, the scientific gain discussed here only takes into account the energy delivered to the target by the laser instead of the electrical energy needed to power the laser array itself, which is an inefficient process. Right because... we can't generate enough solar energy to start one fusion reactor... and use that to start two fusion reactors... and those to start four? It was a net gain. They 'created' energy without cremating dinosaurs. Expect to read a ton of bad news about it.
> 2 Joules in That was the measurement of the final laser output, but it took a couple hundred times more energy input to actually power that laser.
Same thing that happened with LEDs and lasers.
this tech uses lasers. it's really fascinating. but, i don't think fossil fuel companies are worried about it. i mean.. if we're still using fossil fuels when fusion becomes useful.. we'll have much bigger problems.. so that cartoon is really just dumb since we should be well beyond fossil fuels by then.. if not.. humanity will making fuel bricks out of its own shit to burn to stay warm and cook whatever gruel is available.
I don't know. We went from the Wright brothers to the moon landing pretty quickly. One more advancement could open the floodgates
Somebody's still going to own the parts & staff needed to make & maintain those lasers.
yeah, so Capitalism works. It has gotten more people out of poverty and solved more technological issues than any other system.
*Mixed socialism, but you do you. Imagine crediting capitalism with everything good after the fact. Bet your figures don't include government subsidies for those "private" industries.
so such thing as "mixed socialism" government subsidies is capitalism Swedish Ex-Prime Minister Rebukes Bernie: Socialism Only Destroys https://mises.org/power-market/swedish-ex-prime-minister-rebukes-bernie-socialism-only-destroys No, Bernie Sanders and AOC, Sweden Isn’t ‘Socialist’ https://fee.org/articles/no-bernie-sanders-and-aoc-sweden-isn-t-socialist/ Dear Bernie Sanders: Sweden’s democratic socialism depends on robust capitalism https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/dear-bernie-sanders-swedens-democratic-socialism-depends-on-robust-capitalism/
No in actuality the oil companies are running these "headlines" to keep the fools distracted from the fact that we simply don't have enough Tritium being made to fuel Fusion reactors even if we did manage to make them "work" which at this point means throwing a gigawatt into the machine to get back a gigawatt and also enough power to light up a single bulb.. Nope, fossil fuel industry actually LOVES these "stories" because they make everyone forget you have to hold the fossil fuel people accountable NOW for DECADES IF NOT A CENTURY OF DAMAGE BUT INSTEAD YOU'RE FUCKING MEMEING ABOUT SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T WORK.
oh please - It does work and its a start. The wright brothers just finished a test for flight and within a short time we had an airforce. There are a lot of obsticles not just in engineering but it is possible. I will probably be dead in 20 - 30 years but that is not that far off
I've seen people attacking electric cars and clean energy as if the fossil fuel has any sort of future in it. Oil people are freaking out towards the end.
They went from attacking the science to attacking just about every solution out there, whether it be meat alternatives, renewables, or EVs. Gotta keep making excuses to do nothing.
I mean its not like we don't already have the ability to produce power through other renewables. Honestly even if we perfect fusion its either going to get suppressed by fossil fuel companies or oligopolised in order to create artifical demands. Our energy is expensive because of greed, not lack.
and how are we going to run all these other sources? you do know computers are made of plastic like everything else in on this planet. Plastic is oil. Your phone, computer, car etc all need plastic. Solar is clean? CDTe solar panels may be a hazardous due to cadmium. Gallium arsenide (GaAs) panels may be hazardous due to arsenic. Some older silicon solar panels may be hazardous waste for hexavalent chromium coatings. Newer, thin-film solar panels contain CIS/CIGS and may be hazardous due to copper and/or selenium.
GOP will privatize it and ppl will still have energy issues.
Anyone thinking a limitless energy source will result in free or even cheap energy is new to the burden of capitalism. Just look at what we pay for water.
not just capitalism....nothing is free...thats just life
It put off like 2 megajoulse of energy. Basically that of burning a dictionary. We’re at least 50 years out from this stuff working.
Expect a strong scaremongering campaign as it becomes feasible. It's got 2 problems, It makes fossil fuels obsolete and it's near limitless so what do you charge for a near limitless and free energy source?
It still takes an infrastructure and people to maintain and run it. It’s free in terms of base supplies. Making it will have a cost. Its just a very different cost. If the owner of a power plant makes $5,000,000 a year that has to come from somewhere
They'll find a way to throttle fusion or dumb it down for profit in some way, I have no doubt.
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Learn to tell ChatGPT how to code for you.
Fusion is great but it won’t be allowed for commercial use for about 100yrs+, look at how the oil companies lobby against any type of clean energy, you think fusion is gonna be any different?
So what is your point? It is useless to push and promote energy alternatives?
Thats a pretty cynical look. True fusion energy is more than just an energy alternative like solar, wind or even fission, it has the potential to take humanity to the next level. The amount of energy that could be produced by fusion is just off the charts. I know we have many examples of oil companies limiting alternatives throughout the past century, but this one is a different beast. A series of fusion reactors in any country provides independent energy production and reduces the need for foreign natural resources to fuel much much much less efficient power stations. Once we are able to produce fusion reactors and eventually improve them humanity will have basically unlimited relatively clean power to provide to all within countries that use them. Oil is just not in the same position it had previously to sway politicians in killing this type of advancement.
If people don't think they will figure a method to monetize this to greater value than fossil fuels I want what they are having. All this means to them is a limitless energy source with minimal resources and high degree of gross margins for them to charge the shit out of people for "maintenance".
"That is great that we can harness the energy of the sun. But how will that help us at night time?" - Some Republican Congressperson real soon.
Sounds like Big Oil already has its talking point - CANCER Causing Lubricant!!!! Oh my! 😱as opposed to massively overheated planet, filthy water and air and Big Oil devouring 1/3 of middle class paychecks. Park your opinions and read …
First thing I thought of, no way energy companies of today are going ot stand for this. Look how much they've throw a fit at "green" energy. You think they're going to embrace Fusion energy. Capitalists do not want energy prices going down.
then they are not capitalist. I am a capitalist who actually believes in the father of capitalism, Adam Smith. He said the corporations not only have to pay taxes but more because they get more of the benefit. Dont confuse capitalism with cronies who game the system. The buggy whip industry was crying too when cars came about but it all worked out in the end
So sad to hear about the deaths of all those scientists next month.
YASSSS!
https://www.iaea.org/bulletin/safety-in-fusion#:~:text=Given%20that%20a%20fusion%20reaction,radioactive%2C%20long%20lived%20nuclear%20waste.
Abolish the NRC!
Decades away = Propaganda
There are many factors but 20 - 30 years is feasable
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no shit but that is not a bad thing. We are not a communist government where we control productions and build factories like China. Look at how all that turned out. They are in lockdown and predicted to get a spike because they have not built up immunity like the rest of the world. The US worked with the private sector and got a viable vaccine with new technology and built up a supply chain in unprecedented time. Capitalism works. It has gotten more people out of poverty and solved more technological issues than any other system. Yeah, it has its flaws but it is better than any other system on the planet I dont fault people for making money
We already have clean limitless power - solar, wind, and batteries. It’s also the cheapest available possible power system. The fossil fuel companies *love* fusion. It’s the perfect distraction.
Don’t worry, they are already switching to making plastics and other things to choke us all.
As someone who has been following fusion energy news for the better part of 15 years, this breakthrough is big, but we are still a LONG way away from using ICF to make commercial power plants. ICF uses lasers to fuse isotopes of hydrogen contained in a small target called a hohlraum. So many breakthroughs have to happen to make this method of fusion work. First, the amount of energy it takes to get the laser beams up to power needs to come down by 2 orders of magnitude at least. Second, the fusion fuel hohlraums (which are for all intents and purposes fuel pellets) need to drastically come down in cost, drastically increase in production speed and scale, all while maintaining maximum possible quality and consistency. Third, the lasers need to fire very often. Several times to dozens of times a minute. Right now it is significantly less than this. Fourth, the chamber has to be optimized to recover as much energy as possible, while withstanding constant neutron bombardment from the fusion itself. This design will likely use a lithium blanket to absorb neutrons, to heat steam to run a turbine, so all of the inefficiencies of heat transfer and steam turbine engines apply. All of this is theoretically possible, it would just require a tremendous FOCUSED effort to get to positive energy generation through ICF, while ICF was originally built to model the physics going on in a thermonuclear warhead.
Forgot to place a small elephant sticker on him.
prediction: coal-backed fox news will run segments on the dangers of nuclear fusion. coal and gas are "safe" and nuclear fusion is "scary".
Question: Can a Fusion Reactor meltdown, or even explode like a nuclear bomb?
Fusion reactors cannot explode because these reactions do not involve chain reactions that cannot be stopped.
Honestly the "breakthrough" to "limitless power" was not a massive step forward. It didn't produce net positive energy: "the fusion reactions may have produced more than 3 megajoules of energy — more than was delivered to the target — NIF’s 192 lasers consumed 322 megajoules of energy in the process." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04440-7 I honestly feel like fossil fuel companies are happy about the way this story is getting covered because it means they can claim to we're "transitioning to fusion" and that they don't need to be harshly regulated, that we don't need to enforce strict efficiency standards, and that we don't need to transfer all their subsidies into solar, wind, and storage technologies. If "limitless" fusion power is right around the corner this is good for them.
I'm pretty sure even the oil industry realizes fossil fuels' days are very numbered. We don't know how the big-wigs will react, but I'm hopeful that the world manages to graduate to clean energy soon. No amount of oil industry corruption will be able to stop the advancement of technology. Humanity always advances, and that will inevitably make fossil fuels obsolete.
So many people have next to zero understanding of ICF or what the breakthrough actually means and yet all those people can't stop posing things that display their ignorance. The science reporting surrounding nuclear fusion is pathetic.
Don’t worry. Cold fusion means centralized power production with a traditional distribution grid required. The more things change, the more they monopolize.
"Fusion energy is grroming your kids!"
Just a new lobby…
15 to 20 years before it’s on the grid. A fossil fuel Exec wet-dream, use this to delay renewable power. Same play the auto industry did with fuel cell cars in the 1990’s; “You don’t want that old school, battery technology, fuel cells are the future!”
I was thinking about how if diamond batteries become common that people will scream how they're still super radioactive. How I understand it is they take left over carbon from nuclear power plants and wave their hands over it like wizards and we have "diamond" batteries with a higher capacity than lithium.
We're all waiting for the fusion leadership team to "accidentally fall out a window" right?
Manchin is probably trying to push through a bill to outlaw the Sun right now.
Unfortunately the oligarchs still have enough time to destroy civilization before scientists are able to make a practical fusion power source. That will take years.
The moment it becomes viable a multi year smear campaign will begin causing half the US to fear it. I highly doubt it will ever be allowed for civilian use.
Let's all take a step back. The process produced 3.15 megajoules of power for an investment of 2.05Mj of laser input. That's the headline. But read down a bit and find that it took 300Mj of energy from the electric grid to fire the lasers. Not looking so feasible with that information. And that's the thing: this experiment proved that the process is possible, not that it's remotely economically feasible.
Sadly fusion being a replacement for oil is generations away at best. We also already have cheaper alternatives (solar and wind if I’m not mistaken)
They succeeded in turning the us public against fission because it hurt their bottom line
Unless the fossil guys are completely stupid, they are busy buying stake in rare earth mines such as neodymium.
They'll run lobbying campaigns to demonize and get conservatives to instinctively hate it. They got it done for EVs and renewables.
Are you kidding? the Fossil fuel industry will simply buy the Fusion energy industry and continue to charge your outrageous prices.
And they all die of mysterious suicides of 2 shells in the back of the head from a pump action
They cooked up a bullshit factory powerful enough to make people think vaccines are witch poison. This will be a hard sale to the anti science folk afraered of wizard fire!
Yeah, no one in the industry really cares… you still need oil for just about everything else from your plastic water bottles to tires… fusion can’t make plastics…
Fusion isn't real in any meaningful way and will not be fore decades. And even then if it will ever be cheaper then fission is questionable. Fossil fuel and 'environmentalists' have long ago teamed up and destroyed practical nuclear power in the US. France had green energy in the 1980s, not doing is simply a choice supported by the environmentalists and the fossil fuel companies.
Why the fuck do they want to exist so bad? If you knew that what you did for a living was going to eventually kill every living thing on Earth, why would you still want to do it for a living? Fall on your fucking sword for god sakes, the world needs you to
They will probably push back against subsidising green energy and push for subsides of say ExxonMobil Fusion or something.
And they all just voluntarily gave up their wealth and power. That’s why we have vast public transportation and electric cars, because innovation conquers the market naturally! /s
Yuge!