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2024-11-11
They still need to figure out how to harness that plasma, right now its creating plasma but sadly this is the easy part. Extracting energy from that contained plasma will be 100x harder than creating it in the first place. If only we had some other type of reactor that was far simpler and could be up in running and producing electricity for the masses in a relatively short time span...
Taken these smart people and have them work on MOLTEN SALT REACTORS FFS
MSRs are a boondoggle, a waste of effort.
What are the claimed benefits? Simplified piping, abundant fuel, self limiting power, etc.
Trivial engineering counterpoints:
MSRs: nah.
Extracting energy from fusion: some systems can be solid state. Depending on the process and the inputs, it's possible to directly extract electrical energy from neutrons crossing a charged grid, and dump that power (after some filtering and such) right into the national electrical grid, no steam needed.
Need to find a working fusion reactor? Look up.
Need to find a working fusion reactor? Look up.
Oh me so smart. Did we creatbthe sun? Seriously bad argument. Best solar panels are only 30% efficient.
Also things that are worth it are hard, and expensive. Look at the average cost of a Light or heavy water reactor. Another moot argument
Yes salts are corrosive but that's what Hasteloy-N solves along with Inconel
And maintenance can be done by robots as they currently do in current reactors where the radation is so bad humans can't go there.
You are the worst at this
🤭 Try making clear points instead of mucking several things together, you can do it!
Robots can do the maintenance! Who maintains the hopefully mildly activated bots? How do we ensure mission-critical systems can come back online in a timely manner without lots of expensive redundancy? Have you observed how long robots can survive exposure to intense radiation?
Sorry little guy. MSRs take all of LWR/BWR issues and adds extremely corrosive components into the highly radioactive mix. Try talking to the rest of us when you're more experienced actually building things that are economically/environmentally contributory.
Fusion reactors will ALWAYS be 30 years away. Not only that they will concentrate energy resources with in the very wealthiest of nations because they are EXTREMELY hard to build and expensive. Molten salt reactors or even light water reactors are the solution too our energy needs. They are available now and the waste can be managed despite the endless fear mongering. Fusion is a waste of time for now. Even fission reactors are wildly expensive to build and you think we as a species can move on to fusion reactors in the near future? Changing mildly radioactive value or dealing with corrosive materials is 100000x less of an engineering feat than achieving cheap and reliable nuclear fusion. The reason it's not wide spread is because counties love their oil and have fear mongered fission so that little to no research goes that way. Fusion is a pipe dream
The reason fusion is always 30 years away is because that statement is always accompanied with the subtext of 30 years at the current funding rate. Funding consistently decreased for decades as optimism in the tech fades.
However, this decade will be marked with a number of breakthroughs. Last year we achieved the first net energy gain from fusion ever, there are a number of fairly well funded startups with very promising tech, and ITER will be the closest we have ever gotten to a real working fusion plant with (hopefully) large scale net energy
Now is precisely the right the time to increase funding to fusion to push us over the hump into usable power production