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How Close Are We, Really, To Nuclear Fusion?
StartsWithABang writes: The ultimate dream when it comes to clean, green, safe, abundant energy is nuclear fusion. The same process that powers the core of the Sun could also power everything on Earth millions of times over, if only we could figure out how to reach that breakeven point. Right now, we have three different candidates for doing so: inertial confinement, magnetic confinement, and magnetized target fusion. Recent advances have all three looking promising in various ways, making one wonder why we don't spend more resources towards achieving the holy grail of energy.
Achieving practical nuclear fusion for power generation would be a very nice step forward. But "holy grail" is rather overselling it, I suspect.
Even when practical, we're still talking very big, very expensive plants that depend on a long supply chain for all its parts, the high-purity fuel and so on. When you consider the building, running and maintenance costs, and the cost of dealing with the spent fuel (much better than for fission plants of course) the energy won't be all that cheap. Hopefully cheaper than fossil fuels at least, but I would not be surprised if a first generation of plants, at least, become more expensive than that.
And they'll be competing with rapidly dropping costs for solar and other renewables. A big, expensive plant like that will need a 40-50 year lifetime to pay for itself. If you can't show that it will likely run profitably for that time period few or no companies will be willing to take on the very major investment. We may well see a technical breakthrough for fusion, and still get no plants actually built.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Except when it's a cloudy day.
Except when it's night time where you need power.
Except where it's not practical or possible to have solar panels.
Except that, I surmise, the power density and lifespan of a practical fusion reactor will make it many times more practical than littering every available horizontal surface with solar panels that will have to be replaced in 20 years or less.
Oh, and don't tell me 'battery banks!' because unless someone comes up with a way of directly storing electric power that scales up very, very cheaply, it's not really a practical solution to have bank after bank after bank of Li+ (or whatever) batteries, which in way less than 20 years will have to be junked and replaced, too.
I suspect you're the environmentalist type, like the Sierra Club or similar, and really are going to be against any type of centralized power generation; get over it already. We need nuclear power, if we're going to get out of the downward spiral that will turn the Earth into a copy of what Venus looks like now: A searing, lifeless black hell hot enough to keep lead molten on it's surface.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Not everyone in Saudi Arabia are bedouin; in particular the ruling House of Saud is descended from town dwelling Arabs.
I'll go out on a limb and guess that not everyone in Saudi Arabia is worthless. Even people involved in managing their oil. And as for the elite they don't seem to be worse than anyone else who's inherited oil-based wealth; they've managed that for the long term benefit of themselves and their families. If they're ostentatious with their wealth, well they have a lot of it and it hasn't bankrupted them yet.
So there's no rational reason to want to destroy Saudi Arabia. But there's every reason not to want to be so dependent upon them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.