io9.com — It seems like we're constantly just around the corner from fusion power, and that soon it'll solve our energy woes. While we're not quite there yet, three new reports all indicate we're at least getting a little closer.
Jan 29, 2010 View in Crawl 4
burrduggJan 31, 2010
Cold Fusion sucks big time./obligatory
consterxnationJan 31, 2010
I'm skeptical (sort of) about how close we are to building a working fusion reactor myself, but I wonder if any of any of the people so sarcastically expressing their doubts on Digg actually believe that we shouldn't be studying this?We may be centuries away from a working fusion reactor (or, to fit the metaphor, we may be thousands of miles from our destination), but if we want to get there, we have to keep making progress, step-by-step, year-by-year. Scientists won't simply "invent" fusion at some point in the future without all the years and centuries of research behind it.People make the same jokes about the potential of AI, quantum computing, spaceflight, and cybernetics, but the same truths apply; each step gets us closer to the goal, no matter how far away, and--no matter how far we still have to travel--we are so much closer than we ever would have been without the seemingly fruitless steps that have been taken before.As long as we're still burning ancient plant and animal corpses for energy we're in a very precarious position. Any advancement, however small, out of this hole we keep digging for ourselves is a welcome sign.
solamenJan 31, 2010
Technically if we never reach FTL travel or teleportatioin, than your statement is wrong because you can't get closer to something that doesn't exist.
nullcodesFeb 1, 2010
@AppleTheBEstThe chemicals cause pollution, it's not just an efficiency issue. You retard. lolTry actually reading the post you are replying to next time, or get a grown up to help you.
berkanaFeb 1, 2010
If you want to be fancy-shmancy, you use a work cycle that is far more efficient than the Rankine cycle (steam turbine cycle). For a lot less research money, we could have gotten a lot more energy if we were to have invested it in advanced cycles.Consider, for example, the Stirling cycle. The Stirling cycle is Carnot equivalent. Yet the Stirling cycle is pretty much not being used for power generation:<a class="user" href="http://challenge.bfi.org/sites/challenge.bfi.org/files/CarnotandStirlingCycles.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://challenge.bfi.org/sites/challenge.bfi.org/f ...</a><a class="user" href="http://challenge.bfi.org/application_summary/380" rel="nofollow">http://challenge.bfi.org/application_summary/380</a>
Closed AccountFeb 1, 2010
Yup - for a real fusion reactor, I wouldn't run in D-T mode. I'd run in D-D mode, even though this requires higher energies. A reactor has to be economically viable. Plus it appears to be a lot easier to get high gain with ICF than mag fusion.
berkanaFeb 3, 2010
True, but considering the amount of money invested in fusion (tens of billions), which has yet to break even in terms of energy generation, I contend that the same amount of money could have been invested in energy storage research to store excess solar generated electricity for use when the sun goes down and for cloudy days, and that such an investment would have yielded more usable research and engineering than what has been spent on fusion.Nuclear fission research paid off fairly quickly but fusion seems to require the solving of intractable problems, which is why I'm so skeptical. Nuclear fusion using a tokamak to suspend a ring of plasma requires million-degree fusion-reacting plasma to be in close proximity to near zero degree superconducting magnets, whose fields keep the hot plasma contained. Unless the laws of thermodynamics can be overturned, I don't think there will ever be any good way of sustaining such a reaction with such extreme heat in such close proximity to extreme cold for any extended period of time. And the time and money it takes to solve such an intractable problem could probably be invested into storage technology for wind and solar with much better returns. That's all I'm arguing.
abram730Feb 16, 2010
I wouldn't call 1-4KW/KG resource intensive... What beats that?Thin film solar from a manufacturing standpoint make sense.. a bit less efficient for now, but it uses very little material. much higher efficiencies can be had later.... 80% efficiencies can be done at the collection point by targeting a specific band. Nanoantennas can do this.<a class="user" href="http://solarpowerauthority.com/is-the-future-of-solar-a-tiny-antenna/" rel="nofollow">http://solarpowerauthority.com/is-the-future-of-so ...</a>