Shouldn't we give up on fusion?

[StringJunky]

30 minutes ago, swansont said:

It will be the demand though, not the 5G itself, which is more energy-efficient than 4G

https://www.viavisolutions.com/en-us/resources/learning-center/what-5g-energy-consumption

“Based on data bits per kilowatt, 5G networks are 90% more efficient than their 4G predecessors.”

~140,000 cell towers in the US

https://www.lightreading.com/digital-transformation/us-cell-towers-and-small-cells-by-the-numbers

and one site said 5G towers use of order 10kW, so that’s 1.4 GW, which is not a lot over the whole country

 

From your first link:

Quote

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry currently accounts for approximately 4% of the world’s electricity consumption. With 5G projected to increase capacity up to approximately 1000-fold and high frequency millimeter wave (mmWave) transmission driving exponentially higher cell density, this percentage could potentially exceed 20% by 2030, or an astounding 150 quadrillion Btu each year. 

Although it is far more efficient, It'll still drive up absolute energy demand by 5X up to 2030, which is what I was trying to say.

Edited June 26 by StringJunky

[swansont]

5 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

From your first link:

Although it is far more efficient, It'll drive up absolute energy demand by 5X up to 2030, which is what I was trying to say.

I missed that. It is quite a bit. (though I wish they’d use proper units)

[Ken Fabian]

On 6/25/2024 at 8:57 PM, dimreepr said:

It takes vast amounts of energy to even get a second or so of actual fusion and how costly that energy is, in terms of cost to the planet.

The money is better spent on something achievable in terms of clean energy, perhaps fission.

I'm not suggesting we entirely give up on the potential benefits, we mothball the project until the energy cost is not on the planet.

 

Until the clean energy problem is solved by other means? Well yes, looks like we have no choice but do that anyway because fusion still doesn't work, so absolutely we should not stint on other clean energy related research even, arguably, at the expense of fusion programs. But I think that in the bigger scheme of things what we spend on it, including energy consumed by it isn't that big. Still I sort of agree that it shouldn't be sacrosanct, when by most standards it is gets very well funded despite still no reasonable expectation of working reactors any time soon. Anything else but the fusion dream and we'd have dumped the whole thing as a failure long ago.

 

On 6/25/2024 at 9:10 PM, J.C.MacSwell said:

Why don't we wait until we know how to do it successfully before doing any more R & D on it?

Interesting use of the word "wait". I think we will be doing clean energy successfully before we get working fusion - more confident of the former than latter. (still short of high confidence though but not for technology limitations)

We can never know for sure that it won't work - so can argue funding should never cease, ever. But falling for the sunk cost fallacy is expensive.

There are spin offs from major R&D like that of course, but other kinds of R&D get them too and the funding pie is finite; it is reasonable to ask where we draw the line. It is even reasonable to put the case that fusion still has no reasonable pathway to deliver abundant low cost energy and that funding fusion gets on that basis should be diverted to more achievable objectives.

But as I said earlier I think we can afford a serious fusion development program or two as well as fund other areas of research; spending more elsewhere rather than cutting fusion research back.

[swansont]

9 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

There are spin offs from major R&D like that of course, but other kinds of R&D get them too and the funding pie is finite; it is reasonable to ask where we draw the line.

The funding pie, as it were, is finite, but there is more than one pie.

In the US, government-funded fusion research comes from the Dept of Energy. It's competing with other energy research, not research funded by the Dept of Defense, life sciences from NIH, or basic research from the NSF. And diversity of projects is risk mitigation - it's not like only fusion is getting funded. Solar got funding, and it paid off.

There is also private research funding for fusion, from people who think it will become profitable. They get to choose where to spend their money.

[dimreepr]

17 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Until the clean energy problem is solved by other means? Well yes, looks like we have no choice but do that anyway because fusion still doesn't work, so absolutely we should not stint on other clean energy related research even, arguably, at the expense of fusion programs. But I think that in the bigger scheme of things what we spend on it, including energy consumed by it isn't that big. Still I sort of agree that it shouldn't be sacrosanct, when by most standards it is gets very well funded despite still no reasonable expectation of working reactors any time soon. Anything else but the fusion dream and we'd have dumped the whole thing as a failure long ago.

Thank you for addressing the question I asked, +1

9 hours ago, swansont said:

The funding pie, as it were, is finite, but there is more than one pie.

In the US, government-funded fusion research comes from the Dept of Energy. It's competing with other energy research, not research funded by the Dept of Defense, life sciences from NIH, or basic research from the NSF. And diversity of projects is risk mitigation - it's not like only fusion is getting funded. Solar got funding, and it paid off.

There is also private research funding for fusion, from people who think it will become profitable. They get to choose where to spend their money.

I understand that that piece of the pie is tiny, but as I said this is an ethical question; for instance, is money better spent on advertising the benefits of fission over fusion?

It's like the NHS, in Britain, everyone has a claim to free treatment; but if the drugs cost too much... 

[swansont]

4 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I understand that that piece of the pie is tiny, but as I said this is an ethical question; for instance, is money better spent on advertising the benefits of fission over fusion?

It's like the NHS, in Britain, everyone has a claim to free treatment; but if the drugs cost too much... 

I didn’t say tiny, I said finite. 

Fission is a little like combustion - it’s been in use a long time, and a lot of improvements have already been developed. But the DOE budget for fission research is more than that for fusion — north of $1.5 billion a year.

https://www.energy.gov/ne/our-budget

One thing to understand is that bigger research budgets don’t magically result in more and better research. Research programs don’t just appear out of thin air, or expand that easily. You need trained people and it’s not like there are a bunch of unemployed fission researchers just waiting around. You also need something new to research. If all you’re doing is the exact same research that others are doing, it’s a really inefficient use of the money. You want to investigate different approaches, to ensure the best solution is found. 

 

[dimreepr]

7 minutes ago, swansont said:

I didn’t say tiny, I said finite. 

Indeed, as was my implication...

11 minutes ago, swansont said:

Fission is a little like combustion - it’s been in use a long time, and a lot of improvements have already been developed. But the DOE budget for fission research is more than that for fusion — north of $1.5 billion a year.

Yet fission has less respect, while providing a much more viable product...

[StringJunky]

51 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, as was my implication...

Yet fission has less respect, while providing a much more viable product...

I'd say just keep using and developing all the current options, and then when fusion is viable phase out fission.

[dimreepr]

12 hours ago, StringJunky said:

I'd say just keep using and developing all the current options, and then when fusion is viable phase out fission.

When is the operative word here, there is no realistic prospect of a 'when'; it's akin to a perpetual motion machine, if a respected physicist said "there's no law in physics to say it can't work.".

If the private sector want to chase the rainbow, then all power to their elbow, I just think my taxation is better spent...

[StringJunky]

58 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

When is the operative word here, there is no realistic prospect of a 'when'; it's akin to a perpetual motion machine, if a respected physicist said "there's no law in physics to say it can't work.".

If the private sector want to chase the rainbow, then all power to their elbow, I just think my taxation is better spent...

A perpetual motion machine is theoretically impossible though. Fusion isn't.

[dimreepr]

25 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

A perpetual motion machine is theoretically impossible though. Fusion isn't.

Indeed, nothing is ever free...😉

[swansont]

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

When is the operative word here, there is no realistic prospect of a 'when'; it's akin to a perpetual motion machine, if a respected physicist said "there's no law in physics to say it can't work.".

If the private sector want to chase the rainbow, then all power to their elbow, I just think my taxation is better spent...

I guess Edison’s lab should have given up on finding a viable filament for the incandescent light bulb after a thousand tries.

People worked on inventing a telephone for decades before success. They should have quit, though. And cellphones - the basic technology existed in the 1950’s. They couldn’t do a decent job of it in a few decades, so they should have moved on.

 

 

 

[dimreepr]

20 hours ago, swansont said:

I guess Edison’s lab should have given up on finding a viable filament for the incandescent light bulb after a thousand tries.

People worked on inventing a telephone for decades before success. They should have quit, though. And cellphones - the basic technology existed in the 1950’s. They couldn’t do a decent job of it in a few decades, so they should have moved on.

That's got nothing to do with the point I'm making, we live in a world that has artificial light that can be powered by clean energy, we don't need to chase the ultimate incandescent filament...

[swansont]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

That's got nothing to do with the point I'm making, we live in a world that has artificial light that can be powered by clean energy, we don't need to chase the ultimate incandescent filament...

Clean energy is only a small fraction of total energy — 80% of energy is still from fossil fuels. Even if we just look at electricity, renewables only account for 29%

https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/raising-ambition/renewable-energy

How can you be sure we don’t need to pursue fusion? Do you have some crystal ball that can see into the future? Your “knowledge” isn’t based on any facts or analysis that you’ve shared. It’s just been rhetoric, with a vague assertion that this is an ethics issue.

Your points thus far has been that we’re using vast amounts of energy to achieve fusion, but we aren’t, that the money could be better used elsewhere but haven’t explained how. You’ve had several people explain how research isn’t fungible but that doesn’t seem to have had any effect.

Your point also seems to include the notion that since the efforts have not yet been fully successful that we should pull the plug, but somehow my examples of other efforts that took time and multiple iterations before success was achieved are somehow irrelevant.

One thing you haven’t discussed is the advances in technology that are part of any large multidisciplinary research effort, that can be exploited by others. The benefit is not limited to the end  product. Is it ethical to shut down research that has helped make (and could continue to make) e.g. medical device advances?

[Ken Fabian]

More than 70 years so far without success and still no emerging pathway to anything expected to work - a very different case to chasing better light bulbs from a starting point of light bulbs that already work but don't last long and trying various alternative materials. Without taxpayer funding. I think if it is so extremely difficult to do at all that doesn't auger well for doing it reliably at low cost; even if it can be made to work it may not be commercially viable. 

I don't agree that fusion research should be abandoned but I can understand how people could hold the view that it should and I admit to some ambivalence, given the high costs and ongoing lack of success. I wouldn't count  as indicative of a general lack of support for science and R&D to suggest it may be better to divert that funding and support to improving fission is a reasonable position to take - modular reactors (a technology that has been demonstrated to work) that can take advantage of economies of scale through mass manufacture are decades overdue.

Other high energy research would continue to have direct and indirect relevance - and deliver spin offs. And where those developments really can be turned to making fusion work it can be revisited with improved knowledge.

 

Edited June 29 by Ken Fabian

[MigL]

On 6/28/2024 at 8:32 AM, dimreepr said:

When is the operative word here, there is no realistic prospect of a 'when'; it's akin to a perpetual motion machine, if a respected physicist said "there's no law in physics to say it can't work.".

The 'when' was 4.5 billion years ago, when the Sun first lit up what would become our solar system.

We know exactly HOW fusion works ( not like perpetual motion at all ); what remains is the engineering task, 'finding the right filament', of containment and temperature.
No easy task, to be sure, but we are reminded that it is possible ( unlike perpetual motion ) with every sunrise.

[Ken Fabian]

17 hours ago, swansont said:

Clean energy is only a small fraction of total energy — 80% of energy is still from fossil fuels. Even if we just look at electricity, renewables only account for 29%

Yet the majority of new electricity generation being added globally is now RE by a very large margin. If you want the impression nothing much has changed look to existing generation stocks - and dismiss 29% as a small amount. But for projecting forward look at the relative rates of growth. It isn't primarily driven by climate concerns, though those are there, so much as driven by demand for electricity generation at least cost - a profound underlying change, a tipping point crossed where nothing is the same after.

Not that long since almost no-one would've believed that was possible - with a lot of people who still don't, let alone get a sense of the significance of that.

EU is above 40% RE electricity (44% last year). Here in Australia, around 35% - where almost nothing apart from RE is being added. And adding more has never been cheaper.

Global solar cell production looks set to reach 1TW a year within the next two years - at 20% capacity factor (GWh terms) that much solar is like adding 200 1GW nuclear stations a year. And now there are growing fears Chinese makers are tooling up to flood the world with cheap EV's as well as cheap solar panels.

 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Ken Fabian said:

Yet the majority of new electricity generation being added globally is now RE by a very large margin. If you want the impression nothing much has changed look to existing generation stocks - and dismiss 29% as a small amount. But for projecting forward look at the relative rates of growth. It isn't primarily driven by climate concerns, though those are there, so much as driven by demand for electricity generation at least cost - a profound underlying change, a tipping point crossed where nothing is the same after.

And I wonder how that was achieved. Could it be by investing in R&D, even when the return on such investment wasn’t (yet) being realized? There are discussions here, from not too long ago, about how solar isn’t viable because it was so expensive. Good thing those calls weren’t answered.

 

[dimreepr]

9 hours ago, MigL said:

The 'when' was 4.5 billion years ago, when the Sun first lit up what would become our solar system.

We know exactly HOW fusion works ( not like perpetual motion at all ); what remains is the engineering task, 'finding the right filament', of containment and temperature.
No easy task, to be sure, but we are reminded that it is possible ( unlike perpetual motion ) with every sunrise.

You're missing my point, I'm not saying we stop understanding that, I'm saying we put it on the back-burner until we're out of the wood's and we spend that money on a media blitz, that would persuade even Australia to mine uranium instead of coal; only when we've achieved, 'at least', that do we stoke the fire again. 

[Sensei]

Quote

Shouldn't we give up on fusion?

No. We should not give up on the fusion.

ps. You should give up from posting stupid posts and stupids threads instead..

 

 

Edited June 30 by Sensei

[zapatos]

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

we spend that money on a media blitz, that would persuade even Australia to mine uranium instead of coal

What kind of media blitz would persuade Australia to do things your way instead of the way they have determined is appropriate? Do you think they simply haven't thought deeply about this subject and you are clearing things up for them? Or perhaps you can convince them to spend money they do not have?

[Sensei]

Australia must continue to mine Uranium because it is needed to produce fusion fuel.

Human thermonuclear fusion is a D+T reaction. It is an atypical reaction in the Universe/stars. But it gives much more energy than the typical H+H path.

 

 

 

Uranium is needed to create D and/or T. or an alternative path.

It is not possible to produce tritium in advance, since its half-life is 12.32 years.

If one wants to have fusion reactors, one must also have traditional nuclear reactors and Uranium mines.

[swansont]

6 hours ago, dimreepr said:

You're missing my point, I'm not saying we stop understanding that, I'm saying we put it on the back-burner

The problem with putting any particular research “on the back burner” is that knowledge diffusion kills it. The researchers move on to other projects and you won’t be able to reassemble the same researchers. Any institutional knowledge, any tricks of the trade, will be lost and have to be re-learned if you try and restart. If you decide you need fusion, however far away we currently are, you would have added extra years to reaching the end goal, since you’ll have to duplicate previous work.

[MigL]

I'm finding this thread, and the OP, more and more inane as it  goes on, especially the comparison to perpetual motion.
One is impossible, the other, we see a shining example of everyday, and billions ( depending on your eyesight ) at night.
I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which, Dim.

If the whole purpose of spending is short term gains, why do we fund the arts ?
Why do we fund/support families with children, and children's programs, when they won't be returning that investment for a good 20 years, till they're adults ?

Have some foresight, Dim.

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

The problem with putting any particular research “on the back burner” is that knowledge diffusion kills it. The researchers move on to other projects and you won’t be able to reassemble the same researchers. Any institutional knowledge, any tricks of the trade, will be lost and have to be re-learned if you try and restart. If you decide you need fusion, however far away we currently are, you would have added extra years to reaching the end goal, since you’ll have to duplicate previous work.

Yes. This is like the space program after the Apollo missions were ended. The momentum and skills were lost.