Fusion has basically nothing to do with climate change. Even if Fusion were cracked tomorrow, the scale out would be such that you couldn't meaningfully supply a lot of base load power before you'd need to be net neutral. My take is that fusion, when available, alongside solar, would be used for carbon dioxide removal.
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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Technically the same goes for fission, as new reactors take well over a decade to build nowadays, which is too late for our climate goals and typically diverts resources away from renewables.
Yeah good point. The numbers are a bit closer for fission though. Like phase one we can do renewables but electrification needs way more power than available currently. E.g. green hydrogen. There are valid scale up scenarios where fission is part of the picture, but almost none of them make sense under capitalism.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Scientists in California shooting nearly 200 lasers at a cylinder holding a fuel capsule the size of a peppercorn have taken another step in the quest for fusion energy, which, if mastered, could provide the world with a near-limitless source of clean power.
This marks another significant step in what could one day be an important solution to the global climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
Brian Appelbe, a research fellow from the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London, said the ability to replicate demonstrates the “robustness” of the process, showing it can be achieved even when conditions such as the laser or fuel pellet are varied.
As the climate crisis accelerates, and the urgency of ditching planet-heating fossil fuels increases, the prospect of an abundant source of safe, clean energy is tantalizing.
Nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the sun and other stars, involves smashing two or more atoms together to form a denser one, in a process that releases huge amounts of energy.
In December, the US Department of Energy announced a $42 million investment in a program bringing together multiple institutions, including LLNL, to establish “hubs” focused on advancing fusion.
The original article contains 740 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Good job replicating, now work on getting more energy out than you're putting in.
They did.
tl; dr ☝️
You have to differentiate between fusion and fission, the first one is no doubt, while looking at the time spans these projects took previously it will not save the global Energy supply in the short term. Fission is difficult to tell, since the reactors have lots of concrete to build (that creates CO2) and humanity has not found any way to get rid of the waste and contaminated building materials. It might be "greenish" but probably not sustainable (also there is a limited amount of and political problems with digging up the needed radioactive materials)
I'm curious to hear people's takes on small modular reactors.
They look like a good idea, if done right. They have to be really well isolated and idiot-proof.