Fusion power - just around the corner.

[Jethro_uk]

Initial results from a UK experiment could help clear a hurdle to achieving commercial power based on nuclear fusion, experts say.

The researchers believe they now have a better way to remove the excess heat produced by fusion reactions.

This intense heat can melt materials used inside a reactor, limiting the amount of time it can operate for.

The system, which has been likened to a car exhaust, resulted in a tenfold reduction in the heat.

The tests were carried out at the Mast (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak) Upgrade nuclear fusion experiment at Culham in Oxfordshire. The £55m device began operating in October last year, after a seven-year build.

[Jeff Layman]

Continued page 94...

[Tim Lamb]

The Times article mentions 2040 as a possible use by date:-(

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[Nick Odell]

Well, that's The Times for you: since the 1950s it's been known that fusion power has only been ten years away from realisation.

Nick

[GB]

I find it all quite exciting, and I'd really like to be around when it actually does get going. Now, how do I live to 150?

[newshound]

Stories like this almost every week. Written for bankers rather than scientists.

[Chris Hogg]

Are you sure you've spelt that right?

[newshound]

Although much derided, I actually think the bankers are pretty important. Financial services will still provide a significant part of our GDP even with Brexit. And the fact that we are still struggling to find a good model for funding either large or small modular nuclear plant is a real problem.

[Fredxx]

I feel obliged to remark that the phrase "too cheap to meter" was made in 1954.

The 2040 as a possible use by date seems fare enough ahead of us to ignore fusion power as a viable means of electricity generation.

[The Natural Philosopher]

They are also supremely ignorant of matters technical

Financial services will still provide a significant part of

Not true. What we are still struggling with is a government that refuses to remove unrealistic requirements for insurance, or give any guarantees that a future government will not either change the massive regulations during a build putting a project back 5 years, or simply declare all nuclear must stop, with no compensation.

No one builds a power station when it perfectly clear the political agennda (and the PM's prick) have been captured by renewable shysters using Greens as a lobbying arm who have no intention of ever letting a nuclear power station be built, as it would instantly result in a cry to scrap every overpriced unreliable windmill and solar panel.

[newshound]

Bankers are interested in commercial risk, they don't need to understand all the technical details, that's why we have the ONR. And as you say the biggest risk is political. The Chinese have the sort of balls that we had just after WW2, which is why they are building nuclear.

[newshound]

The wiki link has been hijacked to suggest the phrase might have been used by Walter Marshall, on the say-so of a BBC environmental correspondant! Which anyone in the UK nuclear industry knows is absurd.

The Strauss quote needs to be put into the context that he knew about fusion research at a time when most information was highly classified. He also of course knew how quickly fission had been achieved and, for bombs at least, the transition to fusion was fairly rapid. So he made the perhaps understandable assumption that civil fusion power might only be a few decades away.

[Paul]

That's not balls.

This effect is blamed, for the wrong things happening.

"Many countries have now liberalized the electricity market"

"However, more recent reports indicated that China will fall short of its targets."

One Chinese five year plan, if memory serves, promised the building of 50 nukes. The numbers now seem substantially less (revised plan).

Fusion power is still the domain of "angel investors", rather than "bankers".

Paul

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Yes, one issue though, if you can get the heat away, thensurely the reaction will stop? I've often wondered about this paradox. Plasmas are very hot. you use the heat from them, but assuming you have some unobtainium that does not melt, if you keep on cooling it, even adding the fuel, surely the whole process is kind of balanced on a knife edge? Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Well it always used to be it will be ready in 10 years and that has remained the same since 1960 as foar as I can see.

Each time a problem is fixed another one comes along in its place. If it was this easy one could simply grab some of the sun and use that. grin. The problem is that we are talking wide band energy, by which I mean when you break up matter you have released all the energy inside. I'm sure we all know the Einstein theory. It produces a huge number for just a small amount of matter. If you are using matter to contain that, it would seem bleedin obvious that it will be broken up too! Brian

[Pancho]

You want to get the energy away at the same rate it is produced, to create an equilibrium temperature.

Magnetic bottles, don't melt.

If only it were as easy as balancing stuff on a knife's edge.

[Chris Hogg]

Did you see this and similar, reported very recently?

[Pancho]

Yeah, in the OP. I liked the comments.

"I did Physics at school too and can see how this stuff will make Star Trek a reality. Probably."

Off the top of my head the big takeaway is:

1) Fusion doesn't work. 2) This is hype. 3) Even if the heat damage were controlled you would have neutron flux damage. 4) Fusion is not clean. 5) Fusion can be used to make plutonium/bomb proliferation. 6) It will be massively expensive. 7) Fusion requires large amounts of lithium 8) It is much easier to build fission reactors.

[The Natural Philosopher]

False.

Dunno, Its BBC. its crap almost by definition.

not really interesting or significant.

neither is any other form of energy generation.

bollocks. utter total crap

not necessarily. the expense is arriving at a design. Implementing it might be peanuts. how many generations of early hums toiled befire they learnt how to produce flint knives for almost nothing?

Not necessarily. Fusion doesn't require large amounts of anything. That's the point

At the moment that is true. but is it true forever?

[Pancho]

OK, it works in the sun and H-bombs, just not for generating the leccy to boil a kettle.

Neutron embrittlement, it's a problem for fission reactors as discussed previously, it is a problem for fusion reactors.

But people keep claiming it is?

Not really, just pack uranium 238 around the fusion core and it will absorb neutrons to make plutonium 239.

OK, you got me. Long after we are dead and technology has improved in many ways, it might become cheap.

The caveman should have been working on developing silicon chips, rather than flint knives.

Yeahbut, it seems to me fission requires uranium, fusion requires lithium. I don't know the reserves, but I'm guessing they are ball park similar. The idea that Fusion has limitless hydrogen fuel is a myth.

i.e. I making an argument something along the lines, If Fusion has enough Lithium, Fission has enough Uranium.

I'm a jam today kind of guy.