Former fusion scientist on why we won't have fusion power by 2040
Вставка
- Опубліковано 15 тра 2024
- I refute some very optimistic claims about fusion power and discuss some of the challenges in making this long-sought after technology a reality.
Contents:
00:00 - Introduction
00:37 - Logistics
01:08 - Physics challenges
10:48 - Neutrons
14:18 - Good news
15:25 - Wrap-up
References
[1] www.powermag.com/fusion-energ...
[2] ccfe.ukaea.uk/research/step/
[3] www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/
Version from 21 April 2021 at:
[4] web.archive.org/web/202104211...
[5] techcrunch.com/2021/04/08/cla...
[6] firstlightfusion.com/media-ar...
[7] www.universetoday.com/115411/...
[8] • Lockheed Martin: Compa...
[9] Frankfurt Airport Timelapse by TheBlueMaxxx
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
[10] Welcome to Planet ITER: a technical tour of the worksite by iterorganization
• Welcome to Planet ITER...
[11] Periodic Table by László Németh
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
[12] Sun SparcStation 10 with 20" CRT by Thomas Kaiser
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
[13] Устройство осциллографической ЭЛТ by Д.Ильин
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
[14] Taylor Wilson’s Nuke Site www.sciradioactive.com/fusion...
[15] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_...
[16] science.nasa.gov/ems/13_radia...
[17] Red Apple by Abhijit Tembhekar
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
[18] ITER Cryopump www.iter.org/newsline/-/2721
[19] tae.com/2020/01/06/the-future...
[20] www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/wp-co...
[21] J. Jacquinot and the JET team “Deuterium-tritium operation in magnetic confinement experiments: results and underlying physics”, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 41, A13 (1999).
[22] lasers.llnl.gov/news/nif-expe...
[23] lasers.llnl.gov/about/faqs
[24] J. E. Menard et al. “Fusion nuclear science facilities and pilot plants based on the spherical tokamak”, Nuclear Fusion 56, 106023 (2016).
[25] 2016 NSTX-U is operational by PPPL Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
www.flickr.com/photos/pppl/25...
[26] Commonwealth Fusion Systems website
cfs.energy/technology
Someone once said that physics is math constrained by the limits of reality. And that engineering is physics constrained by the limits of money.
@Bri Ba Actually building something is a problem of money constrained by greed. AKA how much of the money will be pocked away with nothing to show for it.
Fusion tech is perfectly at home among vaporware projects.
Profitable Fusion energy that will solve all of our problems is always two decades away.
It was that way when my dad was born.
It was that way when I was born.
It will probably be that way when I die.
Love it!
@@hypothalapotamus5293 and that's ok :)
I don't think anyone in this comment string understands what money is. Money does not buy technological advancements, nor research results, nor human capital (knowledge). It does not matter If you "have" 5 trillion dollars to invest in fusion energy, the fact is, there are several issues that need to be solved, and this are extremely difficult problems which require time (from extremely intelligent humans). There is also a chance that the person that could solve these issues has not yet been born. Now, while it is true a large inyection of money translates to more brilliant minds working on the problem, in reality that translates to a slightly higher probability of solving said issues. However, considering many many intelligent humans have been trying to work these problems out for almost 80 years and have not achieved any significant advancement, I'm guessing the probability of creating a profitable fusion reactor is extremely low, no matter how much money you throw at it.
This project is worth keeping an ion.
You might get "charged" for that one.
@@davidastle9472 Are you positive about that?
Superb.
Yeah, I see what you did there, bruh.
Nerd.
Wow. A guy who has a reasoned attitude towards fusion AND cites sources. I think you're my hero. :)
But this fortune teller has been proven wrong already.
I disagree. This is the dumbest video I've seen on this topic in quite a long time.
* Spends most of the video talking about the absolute basics of fusion power rather than his hypothesis (no fusion power by 2040)
* Literally the only support for his timeline is "airports take a decade to build". Hey, have I news for you, Tesla builds entire car factories (some of the world's largest) in 1-2 years from announcement to first customer-vehicle production. Now, there's usually at least a year of non-public negotiations and planning behind the scenes, but your notion of "airports take a decade means fusion power plants will take much more" is beyond ridiculous.
* Fission power plants can take a decade, but unlike fusion they face the risk of runaway reaction (whereas with fusion the challenge is keeping it going at all) and massive production of *extremely* toxic materials. Whereas with fusion you not only produce far less, far slower, but you have control over what gets produced via what the reactor is made out of (rather than "essentially everything" as per fission and its decay chains), and thus can ensure that nothing remains "hot" for long periods. Fission *should* take far longer than fusion to permit and certify!
* He spends his entire video attacking straw men rather than mentioning *actual, specific fusion projects* and criticizing said actual projects.
* He then goes on to praise ITER at the end as a great example of success. When even ITER scientists I've spoken with see it as an over-budget behind-schedule dead end that produced useful science but is pursuing a technologically obsolete dead-end rather than making use of lessons learned and advancements elsewhere.
* His one commercial project he praises is Commonwealth Fusion, and how he thinks they're legit and a solid approach (but says he couldn't find a timeline from them). Hey, guess what? Their CEO *has* talked timelines, and he said that if everything goes well, they could have a commercial reactor by 2030. Now, expect delays, but still: the ONE time in his "refuting of very optimistic claims" that there will be fusion power before 2040, in which he actually mentions a commercial company, he says that they're legit, and it turns out, said company is targeting as early as *2030* .
This video is terrible.
He doesn't even address the reasons *why* there's suddenly a boom in interest in fusion power. Perhaps the biggest one being the commercial availability of REBCO tapes, which simply wasn't the case when ITER was in the design stage. Decreases the size of a tokamak or other forms of magnetic confinement by literally an order of magnitude for a given gain factor, as well as providing a number of other benefits, such as in usable magnet coolants and liner replacement processes. The thing about tokamaks is, the gain factor is readily computed. There's no magic to it; the challenge is that to get a good gain factor requires massive scale. But reducing the scale by an order of magnitude reduces costs likewise by an order of magnitude, and dramatically simplifies peripheral aspects as well.
They have enslaved and fooled you 👉 The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 💖
@@VeganSemihCyprus33 I'm rolling on the floor laughing at you.
@@VeganSemihCyprus33 How do you know if someone is a vegan? - Don't worry they'll tell you.
Has anyone considered harnessing the energy produced by the power of friendship?
Guns do have a lot of power
Commeees tries that 😂
So... Soviets were originals fans of My little pony?
Not enough true altruism for that to be viable
Seems like the real fusion was the friends we made along the way
Thumbnail implies that OP is the reason we won't have fusion power.
Someone should stop him.
lmao
He’s too powerful to be left alive
The Antifusion, we must stop him.
The video implies otherwise, you should watch it.
@@HangTimeDeluxe Couple things.
1. You're adorable.
2. Video is clearly propaganda.
Improbable Matter: "If there is enough interest I will make a follow-up video..."
UA-cam algorithm: "you are now a fusion-power youtube channel, bitch."
Nah, it's more like:
Me: "Hey, this video that just popped into my feed looks interesting, I wonder what it's ab...uh oh."
UA-cam and Google: "Lol, interested in fusion, eh? Good to know, good to know..."
@@Myndale I like the first iteration a little more.
The topic must be EVIL if UA-cam likes it.
@@truthsRsung is this really the way you think?
@@napoleonbonerfarte6739 ....Use examples to persuade me otherwise.
I like numbers. Tell me, after Einstein demystified the power of the sun, how many nuclear reactors we built as opposed to how many nuclear weapons?
Now go look at the most popular uTube videos and rate them on their potential of EVIL on a fifty shades of grey scale.
I was not expecting the goat on a treadmill. Delighted you included it.
Agreed. A beautiful and very telling change of pace.
I love how the thumbnail implies one man is responsible for the delay of fusion power.
Great video:: I remember when I was a young electrical engineering student in the 1950s in the UK when I read an article about a fusion machine which I think was called ‘Zita’ that was supposed to have achieved fusion and was predicted that this would eventually be able to supply the world with unlimited energy. Later it was decided that the machine had not achieved fusion but that within 10 or 20 years of development it would. I am now 85 years old and i am still waiting.
I hate to break it too you but fusion reactors that produce enough power to make them worth it are over 100 years away.
The machine was called "Zeta", if you want more information.
@@Veritas-invenitur never , we haven't got 100 years !
@@MyKharli You know, if humans really wanted fusion to work then they could accomplish it in 5 years. They just do not want to accomplish it in such a dirty and contradicting manner. The real problem with fusion is not getting it to produce more power than you put in. The real problem is getting it to produce more power than you put in without utilizing dirty technologies. You see. You can build a fusion reactor that nets a gain if it also utilizes additional fission reactions to maintain the containment field. But no one wants to use such dirty and dangerous methods.
@@MyKharli not with Biden in charge
"You will be lucky to build an airport in 9 years"
This guy knows Berlin!
AHAH true! Also look at London Heathrow extension (new runway) will probably take 10 years!
And BER is a terrible airport ! So many problems. And special shout-out to the confusing signs
Or how long it takes to get a subway built in Toronto
HAHA!!- Damn right you are! Greetings from Germany.
not in China
Just discovered your channel! Fan already! Thanks a lot for sharing!
its a bunch of misinformation
Important note about the graphs around 8:40 is that the figure assumes classical low temperature superconductors with significantly reduced magnetic fields than are available in modern high temperature superconductors. That GREATLY reduces the major radius required and so changes the graph significantly.
Hugh Loweth once quipped over lunch, "There's probably a reason the closest functioning fusion system is 98 million miles away." Classic Loweth.
I understood that reference!
It didn't work well in spider-man
@@gabrielesteves7498 Loweth was a classic.
Thermonuclear bombs are basically inertial confinement fusion systems.
@@ThePocketMedic minus the "confinement" ...
I remember when I was in 5th grade during the 1968/1969 school year watching a video about fusion energy and it stated that it will be about 50 years away. In my young mind I could not even imagine being alive a half century later. Half a century came and went and fusion energy is still not a reality but what is a reality is I am still alive and kicking.
I hear you. I’ve had a life of extremely poor health requiring many many surgical procedure, I’m just flabbergasted that I’ve made it past 60 and what’s more I’ve fathered many children. See all things are possible, even nuclear fusion.
@@no3ironman11100 Where did you get that stereotype from?
@@no3ironman11100 This comment was so unnecessary
@@no3ironman11100 Imagine when you will be old... how will you feel when people who don't even know you will spew shit on you just based on prejudices. Absolutely disgusting
@@no3ironman11100 you have done your very best to contribute here. You can do no better. Congratulations
I work for CFS, thanks for the shout out haha.
Explained very well and understandable. Thank you for this good video
I worked on a fusion reactor back in the 80’s. They swore the next version would be a full scale commercial reactor. Parts of it were already on site! Here we are nearly 40 years later and it’s still 20 years away…
It's a large site, takes a while to move the parts into position and assemble them.
I blame the construction permits.
would be foolish to buy into that far back. Fusion isnt fission lol. If fission is taking a sledgehammer to smash something, fusion is a doctor using a robotic scalpel to operate on an ants brain. like 1 to 100 difficulty change.
@@Andytlp the main issue is field strength... and ITER has relatively weak magnets to what is currently available which is why projects starting to be built today at smaller scale with more powerful magnets are probably going to reach fusion before ITER does...
@@Wingnut353 I thought they used electromagnets
I worked at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL) for 32 years leaving in 2011. When I started in 1979, they said "We'll have fusion commercially in 20 years"! We did achieve fusion with a D T reaction in 1996 and we did produce 14 MeV neutrons. It was a lot of fun working there!
I made a fission reactor in my garage but if anyone finds out they’ll come for me
@@monkmoto1887 this comment was sponsored by Nord VPN
@@monkmoto1887 Is your real name Sheldon Cooper?
In other words, nothing that benefited society.
@@yourlogicalnightmare1014 Exactly . Its all 'Pie in the Sky '
This video was very useful to understand recent breakthrough.
Thank you for taking the time to explain this, and especially for your honesty in the fact that it’s not entirely safe(nothing is)or figured out yet. It looks maybe promising for the future, although i must say I like renewable energies.
isn't a fuel cell that combines oxygen and hydrogen to make water and power technically fusion in and of itself?
@@raven4k998You are the type of person that would say the covid shots were "technically a vaccine" or that "real communism hasn't technically been tried". It's 2023 and you don't remember the news about fusion "technically" happening?
@@raven4k998No it isn't.
@@tehhappehhaps then what is it magic?🤣
cause it's not burning it🤣
it's not using power to make water with it so I would assume it's fusion since your combining lighter elements to make a heavier element and getting power out of it as well simple🤣
@@raven4k998 Water isn't an element, it's a molecule! The atoms of hydrogen and oxygen still exist once they are locked into water. Fusion is where two atoms combine to create a new element. A fuel cell works with a chemical reaction, fusion is a nuclear reaction - the difference is the behaviour of the subatomic particles which make up the atoms involved :)
As a mechanical engineer, I want to thank you for pointing out how efficiencies play into this struggle; they are rarely discussed. Nevertheless, I feel that the hype generated by small gains is still important. The excitement attracts funding for further research, which is needed for many years to come.
You assume that the funding won't be wasted.
@@JonFrumTheFirst You should put foot in a real experimental lab before talking about wasting funding. It's extremely insulting, and shows you know nothing, nothing about research, which is generally nothing but dramatically underfunded.
It’s a fools errand..put effort on Fission
@@raffaeledivora9517 Don't cry, baby - you'll get over it.
You think it should be funded? YOU pay for it.
@@JonFrumTheFirst bruh, return your Papa's phone to him and go do your algebra homework .
I love one of the listed Direct Costs of coal: "Souls payment processing at the Company Store".
You're the first person to comment on that little joke, I was hoping more people got the reference.
@@ImprobableMatter paging Tennessee Ernie Ford…
@@ImprobableMatter I noticed it too, but LordZontar commented first. Congrats!
Ya load 16 tons and whaddya get, another day older and deeper in debt...
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo do doo dooooooooooo...
Wow! Excellent explanation! Thank you!
Brilliant! I really liked this. Thorough science and engineering analysis, WITH equal consideration towards Human values. AND exposé of the financial operators conning their clueless investors in the guise of revolutionary scientists.
AS WELL the long list of references. Altogether a powerful and valuable piece of work. Thank you!
An incredibly sober take on the whole subject of actually commercially viable fusion energy.
Chaim Goldbaum I keep trying to leave this site and the author keeps bring up valuable points. I guess I will stick around. Yes he is making a lot of incredible points. Here is a link on another topic, a topic of mine on a topic of importance. Worth a look thanks. these videos are not on topic but they are important
they are worth a quick look
studio.ua-cam.com/users/video0i1fekgBW6Q/edit
ua-cam.com/video/DkOReIytOP4/v-deo.html
its insane how muc hfalse information is in the system...
Bums me out.
This can't be true. I saw a working hydrocarbon based Mr. Fusion running on the back of a DeLorean, and it was producing at least 1.21 Jigawatts.
It's actually gigawatts no idea why they said jigawatts because that ain't a thing.
@@gwh0 But I saw it on T.V. so it must be true.
@@champ8605 Gigawatts is correctly pronounced with a soft ‘g’, similar to the word ‘gigantic’. It may also be pronounced with a hard ‘g’ since there is no soft form in Greek. The English word is not old enough to have a preferred pronunciation.
Jigga what?
@@elefanny1106 Jigga who?
I enjoyed a fascinating visit to the UK’s Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. I did manage to cause a helmet fire when I asked one of the researchers how the energy produced would be harnessed to generate electricity.
I almost didn't watch this video when I saw the title... now I'm glad I did!
XKCD Researcher Translation: "10 years" means "We haven't finished inventing it yet, but when we do, it'll be awesome."
Something being invented is also not at all that it will be instantly brought into use on a large scale. We finally achieved energy neutral fusion recently. I genuinky think energy positive fusion by 2040 is a gimme, very uncomonly in laboratory like test settings. Still gonne be a lonnnnnnng time for it to be usefuly integrated into any national grid as anything other than a vanity or similar project.
@@sc149 We didn't achieve what you think we did. Look for Sabine Hossenfelder nuclear con fusion video to understand what they really did.
* if only you'd give us all the money
yeah anything 10 years away is just vaporware
@@sc149 yeah no shit. you kinda missed the point there
Energy efficiency = 100%
(Rounded up from 70%)
Love that bit
That there is some real maths
Need 0. Before that 70%
100% is not possible according to simple physics. The best thermal to electrical conversion efficiency is ~ 60%.
@@tuttt99 lol, it is not about thermal to elecricity, but energy in/out reactor.
Very Confusion 🤔
No wonder you are a former fusion scientist. We need to hear more from future fusion scientists. /s
Love your work, can you cover recent breakthroughs in nuclear fission energy
I think the takeaway is we should see how possible it is to scale up goats walking on treadmills to solve energy demand issues...
I'm on it. All I need is 12 billion dollars for 8 goats, and my project will show 8-times the output efficiency of all the best fusion reactors yet created. Number go up!
That's not the takeaway. Fusion *IS* a very, *very* good energy source. It's just *very* difficult to make it work. Goats on treadmills would be easy, except that it *can't* work.
@@TheReaverOfDarkness bet you're fun at parties.
@@mikedrop4421 Oh I'm definitely not.
Not usually anyway.
@@TheReaverOfDarkness Sounds like your parties need more goats! ;)
“Despite humanities best effort to cover the earth in blanket of greenhouse gasses” I ducking died.
Poor duck
Get well soon.
It is interesting to see you mention ITER in a positive light. I was under the impression the ITER project was mostly a "show off" nuclear fusion reactor using a bunch of untested, experimental technology and approaches, but without any intent to achieve real fusion breakthrough, the real purpose would be to test other technologies. Glad to know there are people actually commiting to the original view and what was written on the paper.
Please do have a follow up video to talk about the technical aspect of fusion, looking forward to it.
I have three videos in a series up already starting with this one: ua-cam.com/video/2DzKXN1pcwY/v-deo.html
I wish advanced fission had the same hype and financial backing as some of these fusion start-ups. It's honestly remarkable how much more progress can be made with fission technology, both in terms of efficiency, fuel utilisation, and waste managment.
i used to be against fission nuclear power until the quote that I heard was"we cannot control co2 emissions but we can control waste" it's the lesser of 2 evils. fusion generating grid power will never happen, it simply exists to suck up funds for research that pays mortgages.
If anything, the current perception of nuclear fission power (i.e. Simpsons nuclear power where every nuke plant is nothing more than a bomb that didn't go off today) is evidence that _disinformation_ is more powerful than even the best efforts at informing the public about nuclear. Before _Radio Bikini_ and TMI, the main concern environmentalists had vs. nuclear was the loss of wilderness. But because people like David Brower convinced moms that nuclear plants would mutate their babies, we now have a fleet of aging reactors with no concrete plan to build better plants or reprocess spent fuel-- our plan is to kick the can down the road so our grandchildren can deal with the problem with the climate burning down around them and no resources to even get started solving the problem.
@@mightyfinejonboy That might be more accurately put as we _could_ control waste, but we won't.
We refuse to employ safer reactors as originally developed by the Air Force in 50s.
Molten Salt Reactors offer more hope than Fusion and they already have a proof of concept. The famous Thorium Reactors hype of last twenty years could work as a fuel. Silence from media but offers greater benefit to cost.
@@dilbertjunkmail You blame media, but the truth is, if the power companies wanted Thorium reactors, they would build them.
It's similar in chemical industry - a yield over 80% of a single step in organic synthesis is considered very good, and over 90% excellent. If just one step has say 50% yield, then the total yield of the whole process gets halved.
So walter white is a god? Hehe
There’s a company that got 120 millions Celsius for 101 second. Any progress here?
@@jendlti Pretty much yes. Just the chemical workup (getting the products out from rxn mixture) and purification have significant losses. One would have to go for some fancy enzymatic process to get 97+% efficiency of an organic reaction and then some very tedious and energy-intensive workup the get all the product out of the reaction medium. It's never like baking a pie, where you just shove it in the oven, bake it (and shake it :D) and you're done. Even if the reaction efficiency is very high, the yield will be lower due to workup.
Thanks! Slightly over 15 minute video which answered the question I had because I couldn’t remember why it was bad for neutrons to hit things if they weren’t stopped by the lining of the fusion reactor. I would rather not become radioactive.
Excellent video! More, please! 😊
One of the biggest downsides of overly optimistic fusion predictions is it delays or stops new modern fission plant development. I think somebody will crack the nut on fusion with some novel approach, but in the meantime we should be building GEN3+ fission plants that we actually know how to make. It is also entirely likely that even if the fusion nut is cracked the cost to build will be economically prohibitive. Fusion is the hail-Mary, but fission should be 6 yards over the middle, again and again.
Yes, but we need to switch to entirely Thorium-based fission. I think it’s the only way to obtain public support and also try and reduce the radioactive shit we’re making until we get fusion. Also renewables need to be used more on small scale grids (I.e. neighborhoods and stuff)
@@ptrkmr hell yeah, put the "breed" in "reactor"
@@ptrkmr Thorium certainly has promise, but we could have/should have been using breeder reactors and re-burning waste for decades. Thorium remains largely unproven on industrial scale. I would argue we need a combination of technologies and not put all the eggs in one basket.
@@ptrkmr does public prefer to have no electricity?
Never thought I’d read someone using football plays to describe nuclear fusion, but I’m definitely here for it.
Actual Fusion Researcher: The problems facing fusion power are real and significant. I see no current technology that can solve these problems, nor can I reasonably predict when such technology will be developed, if ever.
Commenters: But have you tried just like... THINKING HARDER???
While generally I do agree with your statement pointing out the responses of commenters. At the same time, perseverance, hope, creativity and many failures is how new technological advancements throughout history have been born. As a scientist, if you ever want to be successful you need to not be pessimistic or even realistic, you need that optimism in order to make the impossible possible. So it actually makes me sad seeing videos like this. Great things are never easy and always seem impossible.
You're not thinking hard enough! For shame.
@@TherandusGaming Yeah, no. "Just ignore reality." That's not how science works.
At the end he pointed out that the technology being developed at the moment is making steady progress. He didn't say the technology might never be developed.
In my view, fusion technology is showing steady progress and will start to be available around 2050. ITER has a great contribution in this, although I hope that Wendelstein 7-X will provide scientists and engineers sufficient knowledge to create a new generation stellerator which supplies more energy than the whole system uses.
meanwhile in India: fusion power? what do you mean problems? ours works just fine!
I love how the thumbnail for this video implies that you are the reason we won't have fusion power by 2040
I like to joke that this is my hidden "Among Us" reference.
Excellent summary! Thanks!
One prominent soviet physicist once said about that matter: "fusion power will be there as long as humanity will need it". The amount of money spent on fusion problem in 10 years is 50 times less than Pentagon spends every single year!
And it's still more than enough to build 30+ nuclear power plants every year that will be producing power constantly, cheap and safe.
@@alexii911 yes and no, it would be cheap and safe if they used thorium, but thorium was never really used because it wasnt as good for nuclear weapons. i guess its way better for power plants and less radioactive if there was a meltdown. we could have endless power already from thorium
@@alexii911 just make sure to advocate thorium if you talk about nuclear power. using uranium is bad and creates loads of waste(although im sure they could find use for the waste) but keep thinking THORIUM THORIUM THORIUM lol
@@matthewfors114 could you please elaborate on loads of waste? Because as far as I know byproducts of nuclear fission mostly get recycled. If you don't know, please end this argument, because you are very likely to make a fool of yourself.
@Alex Hell Yeah. If people actually wanted clean and safe energy, they would have already replaced most power plants with nuclear. Radioactive waste has nothing to do with this, it's safe when it's surrounded by meters and meters of concrete, which is how they contain it as far as I know.
"... just as soon at their time machine division completes their project."
lol
What do we want? Time travel. When do we want it? It's irrelevant.
Logical, get the time machine, go back with info, evolve tech faster… love the concept, but like politics, it’s just saying stuff to get a positive response.
Ah good old nerd humor.
Step 1: Invent time machine
Step 2: Go to the far-off future of 2015
Step 3: Buy a Mr. Fusion brand home fusion reactor
Step 4: Return to the present year 2019 to show your new compact fusion reactor to the world
Thx for the video. Greatly explained.
I would enjoy hearing just 2 minutes on your views concerning Helion's fusion gun concept. They say they are already creating and storing electricity. Do they simply "bus in" external tritium and don't actually independently generate it?
I'm happy there are actual scientists talking about this stuff, not just DNews or the other 500 channels like them
Scientists are talking about this stuff all the time, just through peer reviewed journals and not youtube.
@@sgtjonmcc Why not both?
@@ImprobableMatter yeah with the succes of two minutes paper. There is really a need (and market ;-) for peer viewed video for us UA-cam scholar
How you managed to make this subject entertaining, and not only entertaining, but hysterically funny, will always be beyond my reach. You, sir, are indispensable to the sciences. I wish I could ring the notification bell, like fifteen times.
Thanks. I'm running out of ideas for dry humor for the upcoming video, but I will try.
@@ImprobableMatter Don't worry. It's more important to be interesting than humorous. Besides, I think the humor may sometimes happen unbeknownst to even you. Just don't stop educating, no matter what. You, and others like you, are all we've got left.
@@ImprobableMatter Why do we need to bother with cold fusion and all this stuff ? Because of people's ignorant sentiments about conventional nuclear waste ?
You mentioned Commonwealth Fusion Systems favorably. What about Type 1 Energy which plans to build a stellarator? It took 9 years just to assemble W7-X! Thank you.
maybe a dumb question, but anyhow. What about if the reactor would be set up in space, would that allow us to forgo the energy needed to create vacuum and the cooling of the whole thing?
Not saying that we should go to space to do it, but in case we do make it there in some higher capacity would this be more feasible there?
There are a few problems, not least that it is very expensive to launch a reactor into space. Some of the fuel recombines into a gas at the edge of the reactor. You would still need to have some sort of wall to keep this fuel (it's not confined by magnetic fields because it's not a plasma) from escaping. You also would need to pump out the Helium-4 produced. So not much of a benefit for a huge cost.
It would be even harder to cool it in space what are you on about?
I've followed this topic now since the mid-1970s, and we have been told consistently that fusion power is 'twenty years away'.
I am inclined to suspect that two hundred years would probably be a closer estimate.
Then look at the facts....
I think its a mental trick we play to make us do the hard early work we will never live to see the results of. We tell ourselves that fusion will be here in 20 years so that people dont get discouraged and stop work on it as i suspect many would if they realised it would take 400 years to finish and not even their grandchildren might live to see it.
@@nia.d3356 There is a clear timeline now. It's not science anymore, it's engineering.
@@holretz1 No, it's not just engineering. The tech to make workable fusion still doesn't exist. The timelines that exist are for the most part complete BS someone pulled out their ass, except for some of the timelines that don't yet have an end date.
@@DBZHGWgamer I think you should keep your paranoid conspiracy theories for yourself....
The fact that he doesn’t say it will never be possible is really encouraging.
I would be curious what influence the invention of superconductors at room temperature would have on fusion.
Won my sub with the quote "Now you might think that I just pulled some numbers out of my behind"
This is a very comprehensible and straight forward take on the whole fusion phenomenon. Thank you a lot!
It's always hard to find some decent information on a hyped topic. Yours is outstanding helpful, honest and well sourced.
Corruption that is, Merkel, Putin, Communist skum, Allah!
Shell Exxon BP, we love dirty people in power!
Chad ITER vs Virgin SPARC. Leaving the academic taunts aside, my uttermost respect to any of the researchers, investors and people in general that help our species climb the Kardashev scale.
If it's a dead end or not so possible tech, then we are not climbing the scale... We would be going the wrong way.
@@ToxicityAssured worst case scenario: we get really good at building superconducting magnets
@@ToxicityAssured Even in that case, that's how science works. The wonderful people that work in these projects will examine experimentally why it is a dead end or not possible, so that the next tech will flourish. The only true wrong way in science is to stop asking questions. Hopefully, it is the right way. But time will tell.
@@ToxicityAssured You never know what we may discover while in the process of trying to harness fusion reactions. NASA made major contributions to the creation of MRI's even thought they had no real interest or directive to research medical technologies.
Ah yes the kardeshev scale very cool comment I never thought of it like that have my like.
Good video! Thanks for the enlightenment
Great video. What do you think of General Fusion's approach? They have a built-in lithium blanket which helps with tritium breeding and they operate in a very different pressure and temperature regime relative to magnetic and inertial confinement.
They've yet to demonstrate anything like the timing precision they will need from their impactors. Once they have precision, they'd need to demonstrate reliability. I'm also highly sceptical how those impactors will survive the cyclic loading.
@@craq47 thanks for the reply. what kind of timing precision do they need? Seems similar to collapsing a ball of plutonium with explosives.
@@perfectlycontent64 from the General Fusion website, "Our margin for error between pistons is only ten microseconds." It could be that I'm out of date, because last time I looked, their precision was on the order of milliseconds. Now they're claiming "General Fusion has achieved piston timing of plus/minus 5 microseconds" but I wasn't able to find the data to back it up in any of their research publications.
I read at least one article back in the 1960s telling us that fusion could be as close as ten years away. By the 70s though, most of those in the know promised us fusion was just thirty years away. It's now fifty years later and guess what? Fusion is STILL thirty years away.
@Peter Cohen Yup, I think I read some of the same article(s?) back in the 60s as a kid. Now, as a 62-year-old, I just think of the real date as: "Not in my lifetime".
For 70 years, scientists have been unable to make a thermonuclear reactor. why? The answer is simple - wrong theory! The reactor is therefore not done correctly. Scientists do not yet know how to make a thermonuclear reactor that gives out commercial heat. When do scientists promise to make a commercial thermonuclear reactor? Promise in 40 years! And they don't guarantee that. But, there is a technology that will help make a commercial thermonuclear reactor in two years. The theory is correct, the reactor design is correct.. I offer the transfer of technology for free, under the contract. 70 лет учёные не могут сделать термоядерный реактор. Почему? Ответ простой - неправильная теория! Реактор поэтому сделан неправильно. Учёные пока не знают, как сделать термоядерный реактор, который выдаёт коммерческое тепло. Когда учёные обещают сделать коммерческий термоядерный реактор? Обещают через 40 лет! И это они не гарантируют. Но, есть технология, которая поможет сделать коммерческий термоядерный реактор за два года. Теория правильная, конструкция реактора правильная. Предлагаю передачу технологии бесплатно, по договору. n-t.ru/tp/ie/ts.htm Thermonuclear fusion in the Sun - a new version. Термоядерный синтез на Солнце - новая версия.
@@88Superphysics88 Scientists definitely have the right theory, otherwise they couldn't create fusion bombs.
@@wowalamoiz9489 Сами подумайте. Бомбы сделали, а коммерческий термоядерный реактор не могут сделать 70 лет. Почему? Технология реактора намного проще чем технология бомбы. Think for yourself. The bombs were made, but a commercial thermonuclear reactor cannot be made for 70 years. Why? Reactor technology is much simpler than bomb technology.
@@88Superphysics88 Because thermonuclear weapons use fission explosions to provide the necessary temperatures and pressure needed for surplus fusion. The reactors so far have not.
*BUT*
All the fusion reators have done fusion. Doing fusion is not hard, even a high schooler could do it. The only difficulty is to get SURPLUS energy from fusion. To have more output energy than input energy.
If the theory was wrong, as you say, these reactors would not achieve fusion reactions. The fact is that they DO.
The goal is not to achieve fusion, but to gain energy from fusion.
Thank you for this overview. I'm especially thankful that you clearly pointed out the logic of market manipulation for some of the more unscrupulous companies - the pump and dump that is well known from penny stocks and now crypto currencies - buy low, hype up, sell with profit and abandon the project.
That's what I was thinking. At least I'm not the only one who thinks so.
That sounds like how we have nuclear waste superfund sites all over the country or at fukushima where the money providers declare bankrutpcy and leave the cleanup to the government and working taxpayers or the one at Hanford Wa. Of coarse that was for defense research so its defendable. I wonder how soon Homers 3 eyed salmon will take
@@surfernorm6360 3 eyed fish? Um, forever? Don't get your facts from anti-nuke cartoons.
That my friend, is called an exit scam. Hyping a project to get investment then running away with the money
you DID understand, that he's doing exactly that? this is not a scientific video, this is a manipulatory, untrue and badly biased opinion video. the presented figures are partly wrong or outdated and show only limited aspects of the whole. I guess the author is profiting from traditional energy sources or even trying to manipulate the stock price of some fraudulent bogus "venture capital" funded "fusion energy is here" stock exchange construct share... as you said, but it works the other way around, too, like "buy low calls, realize it was an error, hype down the shares, sell the calls" - while the shares never get that low again. btw, what exactly is a "FORMER fusion scientist"?! what is he now?!
Thanks, very helpful in cutting thru the unrealistic claims of startups like He**** etc.
Still the best summary video, approaching the problem from all angles. Even more relevant now that we are fed the clickbait news of ~1.5x gain, a.k.a. "ignition". And even though some outlets are talking about why it is not feasible with only 1.5x gain, still almost no one is talking about the challenges of breeding tritium, or why high energy neutrons are still a nuclear hazard.
This is what I like about Helion's approach. No ignition needed, He3 instead of tritium for fuel, and direct electricity generation without the thermal/steam intermediate steps.
Detail in this video was spot on, I also saw the CFS release on the MIT channel and was also very excited about its prospects in the future. Would love for more content on this subject and for a follow up video. Keep up the good work!
This is the best video I've seen on Fusion engergy production, why it's difficult and why a seemingly postive gain isn't good enough! Great work!
You deserve a lot of praise for the critical analysis. It has become a fashionable quasi-ponzi scheme for some startups to create hype and dumps shares on the markets! Venture Capatilasts and media ecosystem also play along as long as the markets are responding to the bubble!
Thank you for the clear analysis. What are your thoughts on the efforts of HB11 startup trying the hydrogen boron path?
It's certainly much harder (maybe theoretically impossible) to achieve a large enough gain; I cover it in my follow-up video linked at the end.
Thank you so much for this voice of reason. I can't believe I have never heard of the engineering efficiency when that is all that matters.
I get so sick of the UA-cam channels just blindly reading press releases with 0 thought. It is especially bad in the green energy field.
Just seeing the word green used as a pronoun for energy makes me cringe. It's such a bastardized topic, contaminated by clueless and hostile imbeciles.
"I get so sick of the UA-cam channels just blindly reading press releases with 0 thought."
um, YT is a great magnet for the largely ignorant yet still slightly curious. Do you expect more of YT?
Congratulations for this excellent presentation, thorough and realistically detailed with no hype
Interesting vid and great to see someone put some figures to it.
I’ve got some questions
1) Are you proposing that fusion will produce waste that will make the sites difficult?
2) Are you stating that a fusion SMR isn’t viable - because this again relates to the infrastructure and lead time critique. SMRs are designed to be modular and quick to deploy. If they’re fusion, then that’s all the better
3) Finally, are you discounting the investment it’s now attracting as a growth factor in research in this field?
Because the above 3 seem to be what the startups are counting on to get to their deadlines.
I will assume that only D-T fusion is viable in the near future; you can watch my follow-up video on why this is so. The following is simple and undeniable physics:
1) There is no question that fusion will produce radioactive material which will have to be handled. It will not be as bad ultimately as fission, but it will require a nuclear rated facility with all the difficulties that entails.
2) To block neutrons from D-T you will need (roughly) 1 meter of blanket in all directions. That means even if the reaction itself is confined to a volume the size of a grain of sand, there must be a 2 meter diameter sphere of blanket around it. More realistically if the plasma fits into say a 2 meter wide volume, that's a 4 meter reactor chamber, etc etc.
Finally:
3) It's hard to say how much each little startup is bringing to the table. A lot of funds are spent just on getting the site, starting construction and so on. They are probably not going to publicly share their results, successes or failures. Therefore, unless any given startup succeeds all the way there will not be a benefit - the sum total of all the startups is only as good as the best one.
This aged well
Yes?
Many thanks for this video. I’ve been trying to follow the progress of fusion research for 25 years now. The recent claims of start-up companies has left me bewildered. Your video is comprehensive and easy to understand 👍🏻😊
This video was extremely well made, I hope UA-cam blesses you with a larger audience.
I wish someone like you would make a quantum computing video. This really demystified an almost mythical technology, quantum computing can feel the same way.
One related to quantum computing is coming up, hopefully out next month.
@@ImprobableMatter I love you
New fusion start-up mantra: Fake it till you make it.
As an A grade Electrician with 33 years experience I find this absolutely fascinating ,I've been avidly following the Tocomac and other reactor designs so your simple concise explanations -
The analysis provided is clear and understood ,I'd be fascinated to see and actual breakdown of all the coils,pumps and other equipment to fully understand the power requirements of the input energy and then the outputs including losses and efficiencies .
Also permanent energy inputs versus generator outputs .
Follow up videos as you mentioned.
would be marvelous if you get the time .
Thanks for your well presented and informative work .
The ITER website has a good rundown. The coils in their reactor contain something like 100,000km of wire.
You're definitely right about overly optimistic dates being given, but its hard to say what the future holds. MIT's higher temperature superconducting magnets was a huge breakthrough. If we have another 3 or 4 truly major breakthroughs in the technology, that could significantly decrease the time to the first fully operational reactor.
That pesky cell wall material and tritium breeding is gonna bite our behinds. Plasma control too has got to be super tight.
@@marka1000 As far as I'm aware, ITER (being built in southern France) uses a hybrid design that's not tokamak, but called stellerator or something like that. But i think it's supposed to be more efficient at confining the plasma. Also, tritium will be easy money on the moon, it's everywhere up there. In fact, I think achieving effective fusion power would trigger a new gold rush to the moon, and kickstart the actual colonizing of the moon. Just food for thought!
MIT were only a "couple" of years from cracking cold-fusion and that was back when Val-Kilmer was a teen.
@@esahg5421 Cold fusion, uri geller bending spoons with his mind... the 80s were a strange time of silliness :D
@@wibblewobbler9104 can you believe it i was a fan of both lol, but been in every avenue i can imagine since. cold fusion sure cost alot of money just like zero-point energy and pyramid power yeah investigate everything but uri now uri was special. what he taught me was "no one trusts a magician" lol 🤣
please, more. good stuff
This is really well made
Great video, would love to hear about the other technical hurdles. Fusion does seem to be over hyped so it’s good to be brought back to ground
Oh fusion is amazing. How easily and cheaply it can be done is overhyped.
This is one of the best explanations I have viewed about the reality of creating a usable fusion reactor! This type of project makes for an interesting research.
You MUST do a sceptic video about each fusion company / effort, including the smallest start-ups
Because this IS exactly the type of information missing on fusion in youtube and the Internet overall
Don't tell people what to do.
I always think of the poor 50% efficiency on thermal-electricity conversion of Fusion Power, all that amount of thermal power wasted in a old steam turbines, but I think that many startup are working on this issue. One possible way to increase efficiency and usable power is to use heat for industrial heating and district heating as well as converting wasted low temperature heat to power again, in a cascade solution. One Startup is taking serious solution for Fusion like Helion , that claim a 95% efficiency of recovering electricity from their Fusion Reactor using Aneutronic fusion with He3. 1 fusion every 600 seconds. Next prototypes will increase this numbers. And they bypass the Ignition problem, because they are focusing Electricity production using Supercapacitors to ‘pulse’ Plasma and Fusion inside the reactor, and gain electricity Directly from magnetic field and fuel exhaust.
This is a great UA-cam video
Taking away the hype and leaving the hard nosed reality of wtf is actually happening
Thank you my friend, i have actually learned something 👍
I'd be glad to hear more about the challenges and progress (so far) around fusion reactors. This has already been very insightful
It is a waste of time. We already have nuclear power that works fine. The limits on it are political and sentimental
They have enslaved and fooled you 👉 The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 💖
Could you make a follow-up or comment regarding today's announcement of a fusion breakthrough at Lawrence Livermore? Is it mostly hype along the lines you suggested in this video?
Short statement at least: ua-cam.com/users/postUgkxWX37g3RoYMgZ4L6oI8RDRU8ghPEtIFjL
Thank you much- would love to hear you take on Helion Energy’s approach.
You're in luck, because I have two videos up about it.
@@ImprobableMatter I would also like a video on the first light fusion approach. The one with the bullet.
I am very suspicious of them, especially because of the claims they're making ... which happens way too much with fusion research.
But I would prefer someone with the necessary technical know how to explain whether or not that approach could work (and I suspect it's all hype no bite).
It's very refreshing to see this issue discussed in a knowledgeable and digestible way. I would add that the disparity in fusion investment between the 1970s (resulting in the JET data shown at 7:40) and now (we haven't repeated let alone defeated that record) helps to motivate optimism about what is possible if we decide to spend the money. Going from Q=0 to Q=1 at the plasma may turn out to be much harder than going from Q=1 to Q=100. There are many industries around the world which have successfully tackled these nuclear engineering challenges such as tritium handling, neutron blankets, etc., but the stuff we needed to get to Q=1 was entirely novel. Fingers crossed that MIT can make us optimistic again!
When I talk to people about the necessity of building new fission reactors they always say 'we don't need them because fusion will be here very soon' which of course is false.
This renewable energy shit without nuclear power is war on the poor. In germany prices skyrocket and we still buy nuclear power from the french. It's pure insanity.
@@mcmarkmarkson7115I thought we had to much electricity? The problem isnt the price of the energy, its the goddamm taxes!
Same with gas.
No one mentions how they plan to get the tons of deuterium needed to run fusion reactors either. Apparently electrolysis plants run off of lots of hamster wheels, rainbows, and dancing unicorns.
@@tetrabromobisphenol That would be part of the "reaching net positive energy production" thing.
You'd bleed some of the energy production from the reactor to power the electrolysis.
The fission reactor industry must conquer the two major problems of new nuclear power plants: overruns on the costs in the tens of billions, and the delays for more than 10 years before the plant is commissioned.
superconducters are one of the big energy consumers in a fusion reactor, there's a possibility right now of having room temp ambient pressure superconductors.
but they're still in testing though.
Yeah ended up being a bust. Doesn’t matter anyways because it was a ceramic so even if it was true it would be useless. Also, even current warm super conductors like YBCO (liquid nitrogen temps) are useless because they can’t handle high currents. There’s a reason why all super conductors used in these applications require liquid helium cooling.
Very well presented… and a nice dash of humor
I like this guy's humor, voice and way of presenting things
Thanks for this. All very interesting and informative! Fingers crossed that there will be some major breakthroughs in the years to come because it would be a great shame if Fusion Power becomes a dead end!
The thing is even if they do all this and do finally achieve net positive electricity, I fail to see how such mind bogglingly expensive high tech components that are needed in these facilities can ever be cost effective compared to renewables or fission.
Government subsidies obviously!
Very informative, thank you!
Lmao, fusion has already happened
Fascinating explanation, exactly what I was looking for to try to understand this area more. Plus you have such a great voice!
👍
This is the best and clearest explanation of fusion reactors I have seen yet. It's great that you are a fan and are highly critical (dare I say, sarcastic). I would want all researchers working on fusion to be highly critical. The last thing we need is for someone's sloppiness to go awry. We'd pay for that for centuries.
What about capturing the magnetic flux from the fusion reaction as electricity? It seems that Helion Energy in Everett, WA USA, seems to be doing this with their 7th generation fusion generator?
would love to hear more about how a mythical beryllium/lithium blanket is supposed to transfer that absorbed energy and generate electricity. As far as I have seen, fusion test reactors are simply expensive steel and concrete irradiation devices.
are they supposed to? if i took it correctly they are supposed to breed tritium which would mean the fusion can keep going even with a small amount of initial tritium
we can make tritium much cheaper than with a fusion reactor, the whole point is supposed to be making electricity.@@tothumn