Private Fusion

[GeoffF100]

Why Private Billions Are Flowing Into Fusion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp6W7g9no0w

[odysseus2000]

Some kind of interesting approaches. There have been rumours that a Fusion reactor has been created as a dark project in the US, some time last century, but has not been released which seems very unlikely.

The most interesting fusion ideas are those where energy is extracted without needing the boiler and turbine approach which leads to a lot of expense and poor heat engine efficiency, best being about 50% and one of the ideas was of this kind of approach.

Will any of the ideas work?

I have no idea, but the history is not encouraging. If it becomes possible then there is all the troubles of dealing with the effects of heat and neutrons on the structure of the machine.

As of now I still believe that free fuel renewables will dominate energy production for at least the next 20 years.

Regards,

[GeoffF100]

Will any of the ideas work?

Some of them might lead to something useful. The body language of the spokesman for the team that produced 50 neutrons said it all.

As of now I still believe that free fuel renewables will dominate energy production for at least the next 20 years.

I believe that fossil fuels will dominate energy production for at least the next 20 years.

[odysseus2000]

Will any of the ideas work?

Some of them might lead to something useful. The body language of the spokesman for the team that produced 50 neutrons said it all.

As of now I still believe that free fuel renewables will dominate energy production for at least the next 20 years.

I believe that fossil fuels will dominate energy production for at least the next 20 years.

The uk is at 45% renewables & 16% nuclear for electric production. Now fossil fuels no longer dominate electric production.

If the rate of battery cars increases as of now they will reach over 50% of new car sales by 2035 or sooner.

Fossil fuels are so 20th century!

Regards,

[GeoffF100]

Will any of the ideas work?

Some of them might lead to something useful. The body language of the spokesman for the team that produced 50 neutrons said it all.

As of now I still believe that free fuel renewables will dominate energy production for at least the next 20 years.

I believe that fossil fuels will dominate energy production for at least the next 20 years.

The uk is at 45% renewables & 16% nuclear for electric production. Now fossil fuels no longer dominate electric production.

If the rate of battery cars increases as of now they will reach over 50% of new car sales by 2035 or sooner.

Fossil fuels are so 20th century!

Regards,

Electricity works out to about 18% of our energy consumption (301.7 TWh vs 1,651 TWh):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in ... ed_Kingdom

There is no chance that most of that 1,651 TWh will come from renewables in the next 20 years, and every chance that our consumption will increase.

[odysseus2000]

Will any of the ideas work?

Some of them might lead to something useful. The body language of the spokesman for the team that produced 50 neutrons said it all.

As of now I still believe that free fuel renewables will dominate energy production for at least the next 20 years.

I believe that fossil fuels will dominate energy production for at least the next 20 years.

The uk is at 45% renewables & 16% nuclear for electric production. Now fossil fuels no longer dominate electric production.

If the rate of battery cars increases as of now they will reach over 50% of new car sales by 2035 or sooner.

Fossil fuels are so 20th century!

Regards,

Electricity works out to about 18% of our energy consumption (301.7 TWh vs 1,651 TWh):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in ... ed_Kingdom

There is no chance that most of that 1,651 TWh will come from renewables in the next 20 years, and every chance that our consumption will increase.

Yes, but these figures are misleading. Hydrocarbons are about 30% efficient in cars, up to about 50% in electrical power plants. Of the 1651 TWh consumed, over 50% is wasted leading to at best low grade heat that is often just lost.

Electric systems are around 80% efficient, transitioning to electricity saves a huge amount of waste. Moreover, it is currently impossible to store electricity in meaningfull amounts causing a lot of generated power to also be wasted. By creating a smart grid with ample storage the over all efficiency goes up significantly.

The opportunities and cost reductions from transitioning to a renewable energy economy with grid scale storage are so large as to make them inevitable imho.

Regards,

[scotia]

Why Private Billions Are Flowing Into Fusion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp6W7g9no0w

Thanks for the link. My problem is that the "entrepreneurs" don't appear to understand the basic problem. It's easy to create fusion - lots of us have carried out experimental observations on fusion reactions, using particle accelerators. Even a simple Cockroft Walton or Van De Graaff generator will provide sufficient voltage to accelerate the particles (e.g. deuterium to a deuterium target) - and create lots and lots of neutrons. However for fusion to be a power source, you need to get more energy out than you put into it - which does not happen with such particle accelerator techniques. The Tokamak-Plasma approach currently appears to be the best bet, with the Joint European Torus achieving a 0.65 output to input energy ratio - but that didn't include any attempt to extract the output as useful energy. ITER hopes to achieve a 10 to 1 ratio, but it also will not extract the output as useful energy. Hopefully this may happen by 2035, and then, if it works, the next step will be prototypes which may actually produce usable output power.
Now back to the private billions. I think we have been here before - with cold fusion. When I first heard about it, I thought it was a joke that had got out of hand, and was amazed that it continued to run, even although the authors had detected no nuclear reaction products. So yes - power-from-fusion seems to attract lots of cash, no matter how dubious some schemes may seem.
However, I would not like to sound like a grumpy old man, so I'll wish all experimenters, and their funding sources, the best of luck. But I'm not likely to be an investor.

[ReformedCharacter]

Not private, but the Seoul National University and the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy:

Scientists in South Korea have managed to sustain a nuclear fusion reaction running at temperatures in excess of 100 million°C – nearly seven times hotter than the core of the Sun – for 30 seconds for the first time.

It marks an important advance in achieving viable fusion power, which promises near-limitless clean energy by mimicking the natural reactions occurring within the Sun.

A team from Seoul National University and the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy experimented with the reactor at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), managing to achieve an improved technique for containing the plasma at the core of the reactor.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nuclear-fusion-energy-clean-sun-b2162498.html

RC

[scotia]

Not private, but the Seoul National University and the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy:

Scientists in South Korea have managed to sustain a nuclear fusion reaction running at temperatures in excess of 100 million°C – nearly seven times hotter than the core of the Sun – for 30 seconds for the first time.

It marks an important advance in achieving viable fusion power, which promises near-limitless clean energy by mimicking the natural reactions occurring within the Sun.

A team from Seoul National University and the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy experimented with the reactor at the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), managing to achieve an improved technique for containing the plasma at the core of the reactor.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nuclear-fusion-energy-clean-sun-b2162498.html

RC

It is also reported in the new scientist - https://www.newscientist.com/article/2336385-korean-nuclear-fusion-reactor-achieves-100-millionc-for-30-seconds/
This concludes with a quote from Dr Brian Appelbe, a Research Associate in Inertial Fusion (an alternative approach using Laser confinement) at Imperial College
“The magnetic confinement fusion approach has got a pretty long history of evolving to solve the next problem that it comes up against,” he says. “But the thing that makes me kind of nervous, or uncertain, is the engineering challenges of actually building an economical power plant based on this.”
While I share his concern, I'm not sure that Inertial Fusion is showing more promise, although it has claimed a 0.7 energy out to energy ratio in a test in 2021 at Lawrence Livermore laboratory (in California).

[Bminusrob]

The reason the private sector is attracting so much funding is the timescales of the government funded schemes. ITER is under construction in France, but, as the video showed, it is unlikely to produce anything until 2035. What the video didn't say is that it was always understood that ITER is only a bigger prototype of the one used at JET, and will not produce useable funsion power. The next government scheme, if things haven't changed in the last year or so, is to build an even bigger version of ITER. The plan is to build this in South Korea. This may, and I emphasize "may", produce some useable fusion power, but the timescale is for it to first run in the mid 2050s.

This is why so much money is going in to private fusion schemes. It only takes one to work to produce huge benefits. Most of the private fusion systems are much smaler and scaleable than the government scheme, so if any do ever work, they would be much quicker to roll out than the government funded systems.

Each of the private fusion systems has some novel technology at its heart. One or more of these may work. I thought the woman in the video who poo-poo'd all the private schemes was appalling. She struck me as a pure EU style "gevernment knows best" character. I hope for all our sakes that she is proved to be as big an idiot as she came across to me.