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.

Comments

the real question

[slashmydots]

Can any of the three methods fuse practically any matter like a Mr Fusion? Or do they all take ultra-pure atom mixes or tritium or something else ridiculously hard to get?

Cannot scale anyway

[Antique Geekmeister]

I've explained this on Slashdot before: Even if such plants reach "break even", creating more available energy than they use to run, they can't possibly scale to production use because the tests that are even _slightly_ successful use tritium as a critical fuel component. And the only viable source of tritium is ordinary nuclear fission reactors: there is no scalable natural source for it.

There is _no_ fusion technology ever tested, nor realistically proposed that does not rely on tritium. And every source of tritium itself, either earth-bound fission or potentially solar sail collectors for solar tritium, is _itself_ far more efficiently used as a straight power supply by itself. Sustainable fusion is interesting as a technological accomplishment, but it's not a viable power source unless the need for tritum is eliminated.

Furthermore, Saudi Arabia must be destroyed

[benjfowler]

Besides my own personal interest in fusion, what really excites me, is the chance to finally destroy Saudi Arabia. These worthless Bedouin brigands do and contribute nothing besides sitting on top of their Allah-given oil (which they can't extract without Western technology anyway), yet they attack, bully and undermine the world at every opportunity.

Fusion won't ever be "too cheap to meter". However, it scales limitlessly, unlike just about every other energy source out there. And this is excellent news for Western civilization, which currently faces real constraints on how much energy it can generate and consume (renewables aren't dense; fossil fuels are unsustainable and ruin the environment; fission nuclear is dirty and dangerous, etc).

When fusion power plants are finally in production and being scaled up, we will no longer be forced to tolerate these barbarians. At this point, we should cut the savages off without so much as a cent or a trinket.

Re:Furthermore, Saudi Arabia must be destroyed

[maeka]

Besides my own personal interest in fusion, what really excites me, is the chance to finally destroy Saudi Arabia

Don't worry. With sub $40 oil Saudi Arabia has far less than 5 years of cash left. OPEC is gone, US frackers keep cutting production cost quickly moving shale oil from mid-price to low-price, and so the chance of seeing 60 oil (S.A.'s break-even point at the current level of government spending) before 2020 is slim slim slim.

It's not that S.A. can't produce oil and make money at $40, it's that they can't maintain their stability spending at $40. Love them or hate them, they are a stabilizing force in the region. With them gone or impotent the region is going to change, fast.
 

Mission accomplished

[duckintheface]

We already have a huge controlled fusion reactor with (on a human time scale) an unlimited fuel supply. And on top of that, this reactor has a distribution system that reaches most of the earth with abundant supplies of usable energy. The reactor has been nicknamed "the sun" and why don't we call the distribution network "sunshine"? So rather than "re-inventing the wheel" why don't we, for a small fraction of the cost of building a dangerous earth-bound version of the sun, just use what we already have?

Re:Mission accomplished

[kilodelta]

You do realize that there are proposal to build an orbital solar capture satellite. It'd be very cool to do that by the way.

Re: Mission accomplished

[haruchai]

Are you that incapable of thinking or reading or just that lazy?
I mentioned weather forecasting - stand the panels up before the snow starts falling if its going to be heavy or do it after its going to be light.

"Think outside the box" - take your own advice. Or if you need to generate heat, put some batteries in the box.

Every method of power generation has downsides. Do gas pumps work without electricity these days? After Hurricane Sandy, there were quite a few New Jersey residents who got more quickly back to functioning even though the grid was in horrible shape.
Why?? Because they had.....wait for it.....SOLAR PANELS. Some of the unprepared folks with generators couldn't get fuel.

No system is perfect and just because you find flaws that make it unattractive personally doesn't make it worthless.
"Heating is the same problem, when it is - 30 and snowing" - I've lived in a few places with severe winters.
There's usually VERY FEW times where you have temps that low AND lots of snow.