Quote of the Day
We intend to have the world’s very first steady-state combination reactor up and creating electrical power within the next 10 years.
Takaya Taguchi
CEO of Helical Blend
August 31, 2024
Japan to launch world’s first steady-state nuclear fusion reactor (interestingengineering.com)
Okay… That sound great. But why are other organizations still spending billions to try and maintain break even energy production for a few seconds?
The answer may be later in the article:
However, he mentioned certain challenges in the execution of the plan. It includes difficulties in raising 1 trillion yen to build the pilot reactor, establishing high-temperature superconductivity technology for coils, and establishing security rules to get local construction approval.
Ah yes… that little problem of needing high-temperature superconductors. People have been trying to solve the problem for as many decades as the steady state fusion problem.
In the software world we use to call this vaporware.
In other words:
“Do we have any ice cubes?”
“Yes. They’re just not frozen yet.”
No wonder venture capitalists are cynical.
Yup, one should never let engineering and facts get in the way of a good funding drive.
Our research is critical to the environment!
Now do the AI fad / tulip investment. What’s the new killer application for these language model so call artificial intelligences again?
One other reason to consider this vaporware is that more serious people use ordinary superconductors. High temperature superconductors are interesting technology in the “dancing bear” sense, but for practical applications there isn’t any need for them.
Fusion reactors (the usual kind anyway) involve cryogenics right next to million-degree plasmas. Whether they are regular (4K) or “high temperature” (70-ish K) superconductors makes no difference whatsoever.
So “vaporware” is the charitable assumption; I’d say the more likely one is “snake oil”.
Commercially feasible “fusion power” has been “just around the corner” since I was a wee lad….and I’m no spring chicken. I seriously doubt that feasible fusion power can occur on planet earth under our current understanding of physics and our current level of technology and engineering. It’s quite possible that the ONLY way to achieve fusion that actually means anything economically is using MASSIVE amounts of gravity to overcome the natural repellant forces that keep atoms apart.
The kind of gravity that can only be found in the core of stars. So barring some
technological miracle odds are we will never see useable fusion on planet earth.
I hope I’m wrong….but odds are I’m right. Because if sustained fusion were possible outside of a sun we’d probably see it happening somewhere already.
The predominant fusion research is all about burning vast amounts of taxpayer money to build immense machines with no commercial future. They also inherently depend on the D-T fusion reaction, which is in no way a “clean” one (it produces high energy neutrons, far more energetic than you get from fission).
On the other hand, there are non-mainstream possibilities that might be better options, but they don’t get the big funds. I’ve spent some interesting hours reading the work of Robert Bussard, who proposed a scheme that may work in much smaller machines and also has the potential of using other reactions. An interesting one is proton plus 11-Boron, which produces 3 alpha particles. Those can be captured electrostatically, which directly converts kinetic energy into electricity — no steam turbines or the like needed. He built some prototypes (D-T type) but didn’t get enough funding to go further. But there’s quite a bunch of literature on the topic.
Fusion is the energy source of the future and always will be.
To me, the problem isn’t how power is generated. It’s once again, and almost always, who wants to control it.
We could have more than enough power tomorrow if we just started turning off some of these ignorant/unnecessary “Data centers”
Then drop this whole man-made climate change power grab.
We can very easily move into the natural carbon cycle through thermal depolymerization. And by rising the efficiency of how hydrocarbons are reduced to CO2 and water.
Fusion is a science dreamers answer to Blackrock and Warren Buffet’s psychosis. And Mr. Taguchi’s need for a retirement nest egg.