I can hear Bob Mumgaard ok so I don't need to see him, I NEED TO SEE THE CHARTS AND GRAPHS THAT HE KEEPS POINTING TO AS HE MAKES HIS POINTS!! The camera man or director needs to back to film school to learn what's important about how to film a lecture!
Big use of fossil fuels started in the 19th century, not 1945, and it was definitely a good thing compared to the alternatives available at the time giving us the industrial revolution and preventing tens of thousands of deaths in cities each year from diseases spread by flies on horse manure. Don't let current problems make you forget past problems and make you unjustly critical of our ancestors. As you said, we're not going back to using less energy as we did in the 19th century. :-)
I agree with you on the horse front, I live in Melbourne Oz and it was nicknamed Smell-bourne in the horse and buggy days. I disagree in part on your statement that we were not going to go back to our energy use in the 19th century, as if we don't get our act together on climate change we are likely going to be extinct or very close to it, in any case our civilisation will be back in the dark ages. Don't underestimate how much can go wrong due to our inaction. 20 degrees increase in average temperature if we pass a few tipping points is not unexpected. I read once that there is 6000 times more methane than oil, coal and gas combined tied up in shallow parts of the Arctic oceans and methane is 20-50 times more potent a green house gas depending on who you listen to.
Actually we already are. LED uses less power for the same lighting. Mini split heat pumps use less power than resistance heating for the same heat. EVs use less energy than the same vehicle powered by fossil. And our communications systems use far less power than what we used to use, especially when you count printing & going to places to find things out So you are advocating waste?
@@crhu319 one of the biggest problems we have is that our population is growing sooooo fast that the improvements we are making are occurring considerably slower than the rate we undo those improvements through that growth.
Our use of energy from fossil fuels began in the 19th century, not 1945, and it was vastly cleaner than the alternatives available at the time (remember tens of thousands of deaths each year in New York City from diseases spread by the flies on tons of horse manure) Using fossil fuels wasn't a mistake; It addressed bigger and more immediate problems that have been forgotten thanks to the use of fossil fuels. Now let fusion and other clean energy sources address the problems caused b using fossil fuels. :-)
@@VerisimilitudeDude It will be ... with no way to convert this energy into usable form. Fusion is simple. Making electricity of 14 MeV neutrons from TOKAMAK is the challenge.
Is there any hope of using something analogous to solar panels to directly convert x-rays from fusion into electricity more efficiently than using heat to generate steam for powering a turbine? The real Q is electricity out to electricity in. :-)
I don't think there is anything that captures X-rays as a way of generating power. There are some solid state devices that detect them for imaging or measuring purposes, but that is low power stuff. In many ways, X-rays are produced as part of a wide spectrum light by-product from the plasma, as is UV, IR, normal light. It is not the way the majority of energy comes out of a fusion reactor. That is high energy neutrons. These are captured variously by lithium blankets or other shielding and the momentum converted to heat. This is then used, as you say, to drive generators. X-rays are, in some machines, used to initiate the fusion by providing a heat pulse which heats and compresses the fuel to fusion levels - NIF in US is one. The X-rays themselves are created as a part of the reaction with strong lasers.
Even if we work out a net positive energy fusion reactor, it still boils down to the construction cost. It will cost billions for one of these plants and will price itself out of the market just like fission. With the almost daily news of cheaper battery storage designs and the still falling price of solar, Fusion is going to have to come down huge in cost.
fission is NOT priced out of the market moron. Fission is FAR cheaper than solar, wind, et al. It competes favorably with other methods too. See France.
There are no substantially better battery technologies in sight in the near future. It is a common misconception that the super battery is just around the corner.
@@patrickeh696 Ehh Natural Gas is far cheaper, and with subsidies provided by the US, renewables are catching up. France has Nuclear because it is government owned and they do not care about the costs, they only care about the reliable output output of power. If you want to see the economics in the US for energy gen, check out the ATB 2018 posted by the NREL: atb.nrel.gov/ The main issues for Fission are political though.
@@alcatorc DIPSHIT! The US gov pays NOTHING to the gas companies you FUCKING LIBTARD IDIOT. The gas companies pay BILLIONS of dollars to the Gov in taxes. The US PRIVATE nuc plants are VERY profitable YOU FUCKING DIPSHIT.
if the plasma is held in place with crazy big magnets, how do you extract the heat energy to make power? I know a fair bit about fission reactors but never studied fusion in detail.
Basically what you want to do is capture the kinetic energy of the neutrons coming out of the fusion reactions. The neutrons are not affected by the magnetic field because they are..well..neutral. So they will burst out towards the walls with very high energies. This kinetic energy can be converted into heat (various processes available/being designed) which will be used to...boil water to turn a turbine. Just as in every other energy source on Earth, except for solar cells..
*Video starts at **8:00**. Kiddy bullshit until then. **13:44** if you REALLY want to skip to the point.* The real answer though, it's 30 years away, and always will be.
They said the same about quantum computers, yet now they say Google achieved quantum supremacy. People who said that, did it because in that time there were neither supercomputers as powerful, nor our narrow AI (machine learning) or in future possibly quantum computers to assist us in this endeavor. People also said that Musk will not sell even 50 000 of his electric cars... It's stupid.
We are likely less than a year from break even and 4-6 years from having small container sized fusion reactors that can be built in factories. I mean sure, if you are so uneducated in the topic that you think that Tokamaks, ICF and that german stelarator are the only viable reactor types then i can understand your pessimism. But being uneducated is not a logical argument. The bigest problem with fusion research is the so called plasma physicists who doesn't even learn about basic plasma instabilities. Who think plasma physics is as simple as "plasma tends to move along magnetic field lines and towards areas of weaker magnetic fields". Some dumb fucker said that the Tokamak is the best fusion reactor alternative and the rest where dumb enough to agree that we should only fund Tokamaks and reactors similar to Tokamaks.
No, asshole, the new superconductors give his company a pretty safe path to fusion power on the grid by around 2030. If you'd take your head out of your ass, then you might learn something. :-( Nuclear fission went from lighting its first light bulb to providing 26% of the US electricity supply in less than two decades; fusion use will grow even faster because fusion power plants won't have the huge safety risks that fission power plants have: If a bomb, earthquake, or human error damages a working fusion reactor, then it just goes out and maybe releases a little hydrogen and helium into the air, where both being lighter than air they'd both head for the clouds; the only radiation would be low-grade and in the steel of the fusion reactor itself. :-)
We already have a fusion device for the world and a magnetic shield and PV devices that are close to 40% efficiency in collecting this energy. For less than a penny / watt this power can be collected and stored on cost plummeting batteries for every home and business in the world. We need this SPARC where the sun don’t shine. Deep space bases and craft for exploration.
Almost true. The penny per watt does not include storage. Short time storage maybe, but how about storing light, heat and power for your car for those cloudy weeks in winter? Not sure if intercontinental power lines will be enough.
We have never been closer...and its not really about going green, thats just the advertisement fluffery - Its about technological progress and the final test for the industrial civilisation. Also, some fusion designs may give us new propulsion technologies (FRC configuration etc etc)
ITER is much bigger than LHC. ITER was projected to cost $22 billion. However, the (US) DOE is suggesting it will cost about 3 times that amount, over $60 billion (split between the contributing nations, I guess). The cost of building the LHC was around $5 billion in 2010. It recycled an existing tunnel, which kept some costs down. The annual cost of running CERN is about $1.1 billion.
Wastes the first half of his speech explaining fusion to children, or at least he must have assumed they were as ignorant of fusion of children. When the speaker did have something to say, he'ld present slides or graphs, but the camera folks Wernt interested, and NEVER BOTHERED TO ZOOM IN TO THE SLIDES!! Just focused on him in a close up pointing to things off screen. So essentially they reduced his slide presentation to a audio cast. Past that he really only had a couple minutes covering status of programs, and countering the cynical "we never did it before, so we'll never succeed" by saying it's like saying we'll never climb Everest, and ignoring that each new expedition gets significantly closer then the last, and they have passed all the really hard parts.
Making small steps towards a concrete wall may convince you and others that you can walk through it, but it just might not be possible. (I do believe that fusion exists, I do hope that fusion will solve our energy problems, I just don't believe in analogies and urban legends as an argumentation to convince me that the solution is near.)
Adrie Kooijman problem is no one sees a wall. Just a lot of political, econmic, and engineering issues. But certainly progress has been as fast as normal for a new power system. This isn't like solar where you have to scrape off huge fractions of land, and build city sized batter packs, or reengineer the Planet.
Adrie Kooijman lol!! Cover roofs?! Dude you need to cover states. The land area needed for solar to take over half the US power grid is greater then all the land area of all the cities, burbs, and towns in the nation.
scientist don't like it because it's not complicated enough and they can't drag out the concept for 50 years or so. They also will lose out on billions of free money for nothing but a pile of scrap.
See there is a hook somewhere... if they can build a free energy source, why not selling the produced energy for a hefty price? They don't even need to lay down how it work. But have you seen even ONE company doing that? No? Free energy is a red herring. There is nothing like a free lunch.
So what type of energy is put into this to get energy out? I was always under the assumption that you can't get more energy out of something than you put into it?
08wolfeyes basically it’s something called binding energy so hydrogen has “extra “ mass that it loses when it fuses to form helium and since that mass is lost it is turned into energy since e =mc^2
Actually Fusion make from two Hydrogen atoms one Helium atom. So its kind of matter transmutation. There is a mass difference between two Hydrogen atoms and the resulting Helium. These mass is turned into energy. So in a way you burn mass to create energy. And its a lot energy you gain that way... However in its life time the Sun will burn only about 2% of its mass in total. Seen over the 8 billion years it lives. So the amount of fuel you need to create vast energy with Fusion is laughingly small. Its in the range of Kilograms / year..
@The Dude you are right, and actually I can see that I didn't answer the actual question. So in short, energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can be converted though, and that's what happens in the sun and in fusion reactors.
We are never any further away from fusion energy than 30 years, im sure that in 2049 we will still be 30 years away from fusion power plants. Why don't we use Thorium as a lifter reactor fuel, Molton salt reactors they had one in Oakridge Tennessee it would be a fraction of the cost that we have spent throughout the years on fusion and we could have an actual power plant that makes electricity
India is the biggest producer of Thorium; also the only one which have government approval for testing and usage of the same instead of Uranium for nuclear fission. They plan to be 60% Thorium dependent by 2025 if I am not mistaken.
@@kresimircosic9035 I know this and I hope that they succeed in making it a reality hopefully they can industrialize the Thorium research that came from Oakridge Tennessee back in the 1950s and 1960s , America's energy policies are controlled by the energy companies and they have invested in nuclear/ uranium light water reactors a Thorium LiFTeR would be way to go LIQUID.FLORIDE. THORIUM. REACTOR. Is possible
@@nickjames9555 Yes you can. It makes U233 which is a great fissile material. The main reason why no one bothers to use Thorium now is because it's another way to get Uranium. Why not just use uranium and skip the Thorium to Uranium Cycle entirely? India pushed for Thorium in the past because they did not have access to Uranium for political reasons. If they continue to work with Thorium then it is for political reasons only. All other countries that have developed nuclear programs have relatively easy access to U235, so there is no reason for them to use Thorium. Corrosive resistant metals that also fair well in radiation environments don't really exist either. So that's an issue.
@@alcatorc Thanks for the explanation. From memory, I though the uranium produced from thorium was excessively difficult to make a good bomb from, so 'they' stuck to U-235 and Pu-239. It is good for reactors, though, which was an attraction. I had not heard that particular explanation about India's reactors, thanks.
The connection between the three is: Nuclear fusion produces the sunlight. Sunlight is consumed by plants via photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is part of the Krebs Cycle.
@@Rainer67059 Apologies. how does the krebs cycle produce energy for the cell? does it mimic a nuclear fusion process? Or is photosynthesis more like nuclear fusion?
@@richtmason3792 The Krebs Cycle is the entirety of how the cell produces energy and uses it up. Photosynthesis is the part where it produces energy. Nothing in the cell is nuclear. The entire process is pure chemistry. That means, the law of conservation of elements is kept up.
SO many Trillions of dollars have been spent on building nuclear missiles capable of destroying the entire planet 100 times over. Imagine if that money had been spent on research into fusion and other ideas intent on growth instead of death. ugh its all so depressing. This video gives me hope though. :)
I agree with you 100%, Stephen. In regards to your comment: 'Yours...is the superior' - Joachim, 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan' (1982)...sorry...I'm a huge Star Trek fan. On a serious note...Carl Sagan had stated in the 'Journeys in Space and Time' episode of Cosmos that had the Alexandrian Library not been destroyed back around 320 A.D...humans would be 1000 yrs ahead of where they are now...and looking at most future projections...interstellar travel would be happening at present for our species...
They keep the plasma in a vacuum chamber for a few reasons, the vacuum also keeps the heat reasonably contained. The surface temperatures on the inner wall are far less than the 150 Million C in the center of the plasma, they can "just" boil tungsten at the inner surface lol. The superconducting magnets are kept far enough away from the plasma so that they can be cooled. The High Temperature Superconducting Magnets that Commonwealth Fusion Systems use can be kept at much higher temperatures (40-60K) compared to the Nb3Sn Low Temperature Magnets in ITER (They are kept at 4K I believe). It all boils down to spacing. The magnets are kept far enough away and are shielded from the heat behind layers of metal and salt. The main issue confronting the magnets are the neutrons that are not stopped in the blanket of the reactor!
This is the same investor relations hype I witnessed in the 1990s regarding clean hydrogen for use as 20 to 100 kilowatt micro-generators. I talked with numerous startups in those years touting the fact that they were all " just around the corner"and "we are very close to commercializing hydrogen gensets" with just a few more millions "we are nearly there". I work in chemistry and material science , and actually developed Micro- power steam turbine gensets for remote Island nations. There are so many hurdles to overcome. What is the kilowatt per hour cost? What is the actual energy density? Will it compete economically with nuclear, hydro- electric, diesel, LNG?? When will the first technology demonstrator be actually running? Are we talking efficient powered units that produce in megawatts? Kilowatts? What? Just build a 100 to 500 kw unit using this technology and run it for several months. Then return to us with real facts. Power point animations are just vapor ware until you can build a scalable prototype folks.
The fact that you’re asking these questions shows that you do not grasp the scale and importance of the project (“What is the energy density?”?? Seriously?). This is the biggest international collaboration, the biggest science experiment, the biggest project ever attempted by mankind. This is not your bullshit energy startup storage solution your questions would fit.
@John B it's not france alone, and usa participate, from wikipedia : The project is funded and run by seven member entities-the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing about 45 percent of the cost, with the other six parties contributing approximately 9 percent each.
Very little news here or idea of when it becomes anywhere near usable. Why more money isn't put into LFTR and the Thorium cycle is puzzling as it would yield much better results and much quicker.
Gareth Hughes The scientists and engineers working in nuclear power didn’t have that money either, they have investors who listened to those scientists and decided it was potentiality feasible. If Thorium was such a great opportunity there would be scientists and engineers touting it, and large amounts of money would be invested. So if you really are more knowledgeable regarding Thorium power than the top scientists working right now, you should explain your process/theories to investors. If it’s legit, or really even close to legit, you’ll have no problems raising half a billion dollars. That, or you’re full of shit and think you’re an expert from internet “research”. PS, my family has been deeply involved with nuclear power since the 1950’s, and the ones alive have told me that Thorium could never be practical or useful. It was heavily researched and abandoned for good reasons. Fusion is our only hope, which is why that’s where all the focus and investment is.
If you're confining hydrogen nuclei (a gas plasma, the electrons stripped away) in a magnetic field then I believe it's always done in a vacuum. It''s inefficient to mix with other gases when you're trying to squeeze it and raise the temperature to millions of degrees, and I imagine a surrounding gas that can conduct heat to the container's walls would instantly melt them. (I'm unclear why the experiment doesn't melt down anyway.) There are other fusion ideas like firing lasers at targets; I'm not sure if a vacuum is as important to them.
The huge power production plant saddens me, Smaller would be better: Smaller would be cheaper and much more likely to be able to lift itself into orbit. :-)
@@obban12 Whatever the energy is, it ain't free! Putting anything in space is HUGELY expensive - maybe $5,000-$10,000 per pound to orbit. And you beam it back how? At what efficiency to collect it again? Far better to just do a large amount of solar panels and wind turbines.
what if they contained the plasma by using multiple toroids to allow the plasma to expand and allow plasma to flow into the parallel toroids as needed for containing the plasma easier
@@MarkVickers1 Asshole. X-rays and electricity are both low-entropy forms of energy. Heat is the highest-entropy form. There might well be an advantage to using x-rays directly. x-rays probably mostly just go through normal solar panels, but something cruder might work well with them. I went to MIT and have a PhD in math, asshole, so what makes you such an expert?
@@steve25782 There are no x-rays produced by D-T Fusion. All x-rays present are secondary in nature and at most 1/1000 of the energy released as neutrons. Cool idea, but not possible with this type of fusion.
Yes - they single-handedly caused an entire revolution in human technology, and all this asshole businessman can do is snidely remark as if he's wise for acknowledging it damaged the environment - and then goes and says nothing but horseshit for 18 minutes. Wannabe Elon Musk if I've ever seen one
It should be noted that energy COSTS will not be reduced with fusion. Generating electricity is rather cheap. It is the transmission and distribution and all the infrastructure required that's the real killer.
Wrong. Fusion energy once it gets to the efficiency they want, will be over 4 million times more efficient than coal, and 4 times more efficient than fission.
How about a small fusion reactor producing 500KW that runs (once it is started) on tap water where it finds hydrogen and enough deuterium to operate. Impossible?
Fifty States :in ten years we will be no closer to fusion power plants than we were back in the 1970s but Thorium research could give us some results at least as a mox fuel in a LiFTeR reactor
@@marvinmontgomery1291 Thorium / molten salt, kind of a `bird in the hand` if you ask me, successfully tested, many benefits, safety first. Sure, engineering hurdles, but it's passed the first test.
@@marvinmontgomery1291 Today I listened to an interview with former DOE Secretary Earnest Moniz. He said something like "in ten years we'll know whether fusion is going to be possible." He also mentioned the tremendous number of industry companies creating fission and fusion technologies (without naming any.) Hopefully DOE is keeping up with industry on licensing. Everybody's learning at the same time, just like when Rickover and Weinburg were starting it all.
@@fiftystate1388 I hope that you are right about fusion but I have my doubts , for 1 the petroleum industry and the fossil fuel industry in general pretty much control the energy sector and look at the way they tried to short Tesla stock knowing that they will lose money we're trying to throw doubt on Tesla they make so much money they can afford to do that, I do not think that they would be willing to give up a 4 trillion-dollar year business model and all the power that goes along with the crude oil for clean energy so the deck is stacked against us but I still hope that you are right
@@fiftystate1388 I would like to see the GRAPHENE REVOLUTION then we could really store solar and wind generated electricity in small batteries you could also power a full size automobile with a battery the size of a laptop
I'll save you from wasting your time: we're about thirty years away from workable fusion. Same distance it's always been, since the dawn of time - and probably always will be :D That said, we've recently got to 150 million degrees: www.newswise.com/articles/recent-breakthrough-on-diii-d-enables-major-step-toward-economical-fusion-energy
One wonders what part of Gee Wiz found this thing that works so let us it... I mean if they had Fusion one hundered years ago we would be using it now but it still does not work so why the attitude.
perhaps.. but the greed of the exploiters is keeping us from moving on.. when we could have long ago.. we're stuck on dirty ineffficent energy cus it profits a few.. at all of our expense. time to dump oil and coal for renewables. Cost of the iraq war the nation could have build an electric car and plug in free for every taxpayer.. thus ramping up that industry which we then could have lead the world by exporting them. instead we squandered the money largely into 1 or 2 obsolete companies and a bunch of private pockets.
Very true. We (mankind) needed fossil fuels to move forward to industrialisation etc over the last 200 years. Big benefits all round. The problem is we are now finding the down side to the huge amounts of fossil fuels we are burning. Everybody (except the US) agrees that climate change is real and dangerous. Glaciers retreating, extreme rainfall and drought, extreme temperatures, more tornadoes, rising sea levels (warm water expands - who knew?) and acidity - all due to CO2. In the US, the coal, gas and oil industry has a very strong and corrupting grip on politics and propaganda. They pay lots of $$$$ to politicians to pass laws and policies to make them richer and protect their market. They get huge subsidies from government. They actively try to stop other forms of energy production, including nuclear, fusion, wind, tidal and solar from taking their market. They also lobby against fuel efficiency, home efficiency and insulation. They help prevent individuals putting solar panels on their own roof. They even send very distorted (i.e. lying) science books to every school in the country. Like a lot of things, the end result will be a few people will have a huge number of pieces of green paper and the rest of us can go hang on a ruined and hot planet.
Hold on 100 million degrees Fahrenheit? The hottest start known by man in the Universe is merely 72,000 degrees...so how do we get to where a blue hyper-giant star can't?
Well actually most of the time you read about fusion experiments you see numbers in the range of 100 mil. to 200 mil. Degrees Celsius (180mil. to 360mil. Degrees Fahrenheit). That's as you implied: INSANE. And it's actually more than the temperatures you were talking about! As to how you get to these temperatures I remember hearing about these three ways of doing that: 1. Huge amounts of Currents 2. Compression (That's what General fusion is doing) 3. Lasers (In the US they use the most powerful laser in the world to get to these temperatures)
@@antoniosteiger9443 I have read the same things but it says those temperatures only reach right before a star dies. Now China according to some news outlets were saying that they have reached 180 million degrees. Has anyone reached out? or are we that STUPID? not too work together on this?
@@AlexGutierrezPhotography China is working on iter together with Russia, Eu, Korea, Japan, USA and India, which will supposedly be able to reach 200mil. °C.
I dont understand the concept of fusion and in no video is this properly explained. As far as I get it you create a plasma field in a tokamak (with electricity?) and then you add some substance which burns and sustains plasma? Plz somebody explain in lamens terms :)
@danijel124 Basically they push together two neutrons and the following reaction realises s huge amount of energy, the plasma is used to heat it up so that the hydrogen isotopes can get close enough together to collide on a molecular level
Nah, it's different this time. I can't believe no one thought of using high temp superconductors for fusion but now these babies will make semi truck sized fusion possible
But the thing is If you need a great reaction you need good insulation but in order to use the energy you need to something that conducts that energy out of the confinement ...
What is wrong with our current Fusion reactor? Zero building costs, Zero maintenance costs, Zero research costs, available 24 hours a day world wide, we just need to collect the free energy supplied, what is it? The sun!
@@basjansma6658 there is more than enough we simply have not built it yet. The Saharan Desert is 9,064,958 square kilometers, or 18 times the total required area to fuel the world. landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
@@edwyncorteen1527 I will say the no maintenance costs is actually 100% wrong, most solar panels die after a set amount of years. Also, much much better battery technology must be invented or were gonna have major issues.
Problem of fusion is the large amount of gamma rays and that magnets can explode if they stay long time at almost 0 kelvin. Moreover, its hard to maintain plasma for tens of yrs. A better approach is to make fission so advanced and safe (by making fast breeder reactors), that we will never need to push the tech so far. Hence, we will have fission reactors that can last for 100 yrs.
We all know its 30 years away... But perhaps it will be too expensive anyway. With the steady price drop in solar and wind power, fusion might not be very useful on Earth. But a future powersource for space travels?
They will get more energy out than they put in by 2025 definitely. The issue is how they can sustain it, but currently I'm rather optimistic about fusion.
@@lkrnpk Lets hope Fusion will be relatively cheap and abundant one day. The world is in big demand for more energy. Today its hard to see how we can solve all this with solar and wind.
I found it to be a good presentation meant to be a general introduction. Why all the discontent in the comment section. There will be other source materials for more in depth information.
Because this is a botched, mumbling, stumbling presentation that doesn't attempt to answer it's own question - completely useless as per its described intent, and equally nonsenical to those looking to undertand the basics of fusion.
ITER was projected to cost $22 billion. However, the (US) DOE is suggesting it will cost about 3 times that amount, over $60 billion (split between the contributing nations, I guess). Still peanuts in real terms and about 1% of trump's tax giveaway to corporations and the 1% over the next 5 years. The cost of building the LHC was around $5 billion in 2010. It recycled an existing tunnel, which kept some costs down. The annual cost of running CERN is about $1.1 billion, but that does not include the costs of many of the research staff that use it from their home universities. Interestingly, US is not a Member State of CERN but did contribute to some equipment and experiments, of the order of $300 million.
There are now several competing projects whose backers predict will achieve net energy gain within the next five years or so. Let's just check in around 2025 and see how that's going. I'm willing to cut them that much slack. Beyond that, if there is not some solid success-well, I won't say it will never, ever happen, but it would be a much harder sell, for sure.
I collect fusion energy every day on my roof. You should focus fusion research on small portable devices so you can stick them where the sun don’t shine.
Depends on how serious you are. If you really want to learn about Fusion, first learn the Maxwell Equations and Multivariable Calculus (and their prerequisite knowledge), then check out the lectures on Plasma Physics 1 on MIT OCW :ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-611j-introduction-to-plasma-physics-i-fall-2003/ You can also check out Jeffrey Freidberg's Text on Fusion Energy. Most youtube videos are over simplified. Avoid them until you know the above.
Bob Mumgaard ...That was an epic, edge of my seat presentation on Fusion !!! Thank you. I'm a Wounded Warrior and prolific Inventor of underwater supercavitation engines, underwater (whitewater river) gold mining machines, and underwater robotic construction methods. You easily discussed a complex Fusion topic and I listened to every bit of it. Do me a favor please, instead of looking at a Fusion process as giant and complicated....think of it in its most basic and simplest of forms...think how to make Fusion with a Nano sized reactor based upon ultra simplified molecular theories. For example; SonoFusion , water physics, micro bubbles, and SuperCavitation are 99% confusing to everyone. AND most physicists admit they have no idea how things work most of the time. Have no idea if water has a "memory" or how "SonoLuminescence" works. Bob, always keep on kicking buns out there in the physics world, there are people like me that get it, and I encourage you to use your imagination to create and produce.
Also could you please do a follow up presentation that discusses engineering details, materials research, and most importantly how dynamic modeling/simulation has helped in the Fusion journey. I would very much like to use the Idaho National Lab's simulator or the nuke simulator at Washington State....heck any good quality system. I'd love to get a presentation on the technical aspects of fusion and how your're using (publicly available?) simulators to solve problems in advance and test design theories BEFORE actually building it. More engineering, more details, and please more about fusion simulation.
Nuclear fission with molten salt reactors is a good energy source that is hard to make nuclear weapons and it's hard to meltdown and the reaction can be stopped from a plug unlike in lightwater reactors that are used today yet not as efficient as in fusion reactors but it's a energy source that can move the human race forward not destroying our environment until we can make fusion reactors viable because cost is a problem for a reaction that isn't proven to work when we have an energy and environmental crisis on the rise
Jet has tested this concept to and its producing a crap ton in much smaller volume vs iter fusion reactor. Also the superconductors to make these reactors possible only were discovered in the late 1980s and are now only being made in quantities large enough. It'll take a decade to make molten salt a reality but I have always been a huge supporter but we have fusion in our hands now its never been this close. We can push this and have it in 15 years we got to do this
Yes he said that the powers that be already have the technology but they got to figure how to triple your energy bill before they let it out,because if they can bleed you dry they can take your property.
I'll save you from wasting your time: we're about thirty years away from workable fusion. Same distance it's always been, since the dawn of time - and probably always will be :D That said, we've recently got to 150 million degrees: www.newswise.com/articles/recent-breakthrough-on-diii-d-enables-major-step-toward-economical-fusion-energy
+arturo0727. yea, the scientists overestimated how hard fusion would turn out to be, plus in the 90's they didn't have anywhere near the computing power of modern processors and GPU's. To put that in perspective, comparing 90's era cpu's and gpu's to 2019 cpu's and gpu's is like comparing a volkswagen beetle to a bugatti veyron.
Nah - children would see straight away that he's bulshitting - he just wanted to put something on TH-cam so that he can listen back to it when he feels lonely.
As fusion is basically unlimited clean energy once you get a reaction going that gives off more energy than you put in, I really fail to understand why we aren't pumping untold billions into developing functioning reactors. Achieving viable commercial fusion is basically our key to becoming a post-scarcity society. It should be seen as a common goal for everyone on the planet.
There is no *fuel* for fusion. Every successful fusion reaction, to date, involves deuterium and tritium because using ordinary hydrogen is *much, much, much* harder, it requires much higher temperature and pressure. *All* tritium comes from fission reactors, ordinary nuclear reactors, and it has a short half-life of only 12 years. It's not safe, you can't store it long term because it's radio-active as hell, and if you have enough fission reactors to generate the fuel, you have at least 100 times the fission energy ready as you can conceivably harvest from fusion. It is *stupid* as a fuel source.
You forgot the needed masses. A complete fusion reactor filling is 2 grams.... Also Deuterium is easy to get from water... its called heavy water.. The half life times are so much better compared to 24.000 years of plutonium and 4 billion years for Uran.. The reduced masses in a fusion plant also produce less waste in general... So its win win.
The first Fusion Reactors, like Hansjorg said, only need a few grams. Once they are up and ready, they will have TRITIUM BREEDING RATIOS of over 1. This will be done by capturing neutrons in a Flourine Lithium Beryllium Salt blanket, there will be two isotopes of Lithium in the blanket. Lithium 6 and 7, and Beryllium to multiply the neutrons. Li6 has an exothermic (energy releasing) reaction with neutrons to release a Tritium and an Alpha particle. Lithium 7 has an endothermic reaction with neutrons that will release an alpha particle and a neutron plus a Tritium (Go to Section 5 of the ARC Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920379615302337?via%3Dihub ) These reactions will release energy in the form of heat and heat up the Blanket to around 800K (Although realistically this must be higher if they want to have good thermodynamic efficiencies in the Brayton Cycle) and then the heat will be siphoned out to heat up steam like a normal fission plant. Therefore the first Fusion Reactors will produce the Tritium needed to sustain the fusion reactor and serve as fuel production facilities for other fusion reactors being built. 12 years for a half life is more than long enough. They make batteries out of it (Look up Tritium batteries)... It is not stupid as a fuel source. There is a reason why it is being picked and why it is being pursued. Read the ARC paper.
www.justodians.org/SphericalMagnet/01ElecMagPic1.htm Too much energy is lost in a torus to sustain fusion. A sphere is better. In this design the plasma is rotated like the armature of a motor with the axis of rotation constantly changing. The counter emf inside the plasma compresses it toward the center. The link is not working here but the address is good. Just paste the address in your browser to see the design.
I used to think ITER will solve the world's problems, but now I have to ask whether paying an order of magnitude less for the same constant power solar/wind+battery system as they hope to generate there (or maybe cheaper) is not already possible. I know successful or not ITER will continue to serve as a laboratory to improve the technology and who knows maybe make it cheaper. But... By gosh in 30 year's time solar, wind and batteries will be on another level altogether. How much for a constant 500MW supply renewable+battery solution now? Some analysts predict that if trends continue then in the future the cost of transmitting the power will be the biggest expense! ie... It will probably get almost literally dirt cheap. Other technologies as well. Even if it works out expensive fusion like ITER will have some rather stiff competition I dare say. Maybe one of these smaller flexible approaches will find the happy middle ground. A constant, clean base load is after all highly desirable. And probably more so if it's a smaller, more flexible solution. I'm just worried scalability will be held back by the cost of large fusion stations. This is simply a practical opinion. I would love for fusion to be a viable part of our technological capacity. As somebody who has always followed ITER with great interest I was actually a bit astonished to come to the realisation that we probably have something better already. Ultimately solar is fusion power. We just don't have to keep the star it is from bottled up. Also... If you are going to 'bottle up a star'... Maybe it's possible to develop PV materials that can harness that level of energy inside the reactors. I'm sure it's quite a challenge to harvest the energy from a stable plasma while containing it. Maybe there's a type of PV that can be developed that can deal with a few megawatt per square meter. Then one would be able to keep the plasma contained at all times and simply harvest the radiant energy that shines from it. From a quick search I see PV materials have been developed that can remain highly efficient at one or even several thousand times as much irradiance as sunlight on Earth. Have they looked into this for use inside fusion reactors?
Solar sails, and large scale solar mirrors, are already possible. They're the only potential source for the deuterium and tritium to *power* large scale fusion. But if you've bothered to build such large scale solar mirrors, there is no *point* to harvesting the hydrogen isotopes, and harvesting the solar energy far more directly and efficiently.
@@pullybungieharder The plan is to harvest the fuel material from the Ocean if I'm not mistaken. Not sure where the mirrors and solar sails come in to be honest.
ITER is not supposed to be a Power plant. Its a experimental Fusion reactor that aims to achieve producing more energy than used to heat the plasma. So having a positive energy balance... And exactly that i call stalling. They don't even try to build a power plant, yet. That'd be DEMO, planned for 2040-2050 earliest.
@@hansjorgkunde3772 Oh of course. I even mentioned it. However a large Tokomak will always (as far as we know) need large rare earth magnets and other expensive components. As I said. Hopefully they will be able to make it cheaper. But as far as we know... I am of course fully supportive of the endeavour. It is vitally important to see it trough. I just think we should not be fixated on it as the only hope for the future. Especially not considering where renewable+batteries already are, and even conservatively projecting where it will likely be in 30 years if the current trends continue. If the trends continue even for 10-20 more years at the current pace then renewable + battery will be ludicrously economic at the largest scale. A good measure of practical agnosticism should always prevail.
@@joeblack4436 Re PV Material: The inside of the reactor will be in excess of 1000C. It's hard enough to find materials that survive in those conditions. PV cells would be nearly impossible and would not do anything. All the energy released from the DT reaction are in the form of neutrons (14.1MeV or 4/5 of the total energy) and Alpha particles (He4, at 3.5 MeV, which is 1/5 of the total energy released and will be used to sustain the plasma at around 10-14keV, or 150M Celsius). It doesn't seem intuitive, but the stronger the magnets, the smaller the reaction can be. increasing the magnetic field allows you to run at higher pressures, but there are a few engineering limits that force high B_field reactors to be small. This is both cheaper and more efficient than designs like ITER. ITER was made to be huge to take advantage of having large confinement times (It increases almost linearly with Radius), increasing the confinement time, increases your Fusion Power Density and your Q value by proxy. The reason ITER does this is that REBCO magnets were not a thing back then, they could not take advantage of huge magnetic fields (Which allow you to have higher thermal pressures, which increases the Fusion Power density by approximately 8* thermal Pressure^2 . Where Thermal pressure scales with the magnetic field^2. Increasing magnetic field therefore has almost a 4th order increase effect on the Fusion Powder density, where Q is Fusion Power Density/Heating Input. Does that make sense? PM me if you have more questions.
I hope this guy isn't designing a fusion power plant because he is sloppy, imprecise and occasionally flat-out wrong. How can he be a PhD physicist? It would have been pretty simple to fix this. I've just got a MA in science and I'm seeing stuff all over. 3:48 misleading. "Zero emissions" - a whole lot of hot water which is very bad for the environment. Also, the emissions from all of the (incredibly enormous amount of) energy used to build and maintain the power plant. On the same order as for a fission power plant. "No long-lived nuclear waste" - TOTALLY wrong. The reaction chamber and other bits of the reactor become VERY radioactive. Certainly less radioactive waste than nuclear fission, though. 4:02 "All the way up to lead." Totally incomplete. Anyone taking an undergrad class in astronomy knows that all the heavy elements on the entire periodic table are created by fusion in supernova--including every element larger than lead. 17:21 "That has enable human happiness". No, it hasn't. That has enabled much higher standards of living. That's not the same thing. Very few people get that, and it makes a huge difference. Were people much more miserable in the 1950s even though their incomes were just a fraction of what they are now? Are people so much happier now than they were in the 1980s when I was growing up?
@@MarkVickers1 Watch Prof Dennis Whyte's explanation of the technologies being developed that started this company. Much more detailed and stays on point. Here is an old longer format version of Whyte's talk: th-cam.com/video/KkpqA8yG9T4/w-d-xo.html
A good thing about Fusion is that when it fails, the reaction simply stops. No meltdown. No catastrophic release of radiation.
the bad thing about fusion is all the neutrons making the rest of the structure radioactive. It is not really cleaner than fission.
@@lorenwilson8128 Bollocks. Fusion of hydrogen to make helium does not have leftover neutrons.
@@philipgage1072 Tell that to the guys who work on these things.
@@philipgage1072 Page 51 of the ITER report "Safety and radiation protection considerations for demonstration reactors that follow the ITER facility".
@@lorenwilson8128 So where do these rogue neutrons come from???
I thought content was informative, but OMG camera placement and angles made it impossible to follow in places.
I can hear Bob Mumgaard ok so I don't need to see him, I NEED TO SEE THE CHARTS AND GRAPHS THAT HE KEEPS POINTING TO AS HE MAKES HIS POINTS!! The camera man or director needs to back to film school to learn what's important about how to film a lecture!
He'll be someones nephew (job) "you can be a camera man ruppert" You know the score Napolian.
Ineptocracy/neptocracy bla bla waffle bla. HAhahaha.
For the love of god, overlay the charts.
Big use of fossil fuels started in the 19th century, not 1945, and it was definitely a good thing compared to the alternatives available at the time giving us the industrial revolution and preventing tens of thousands of deaths in cities each year from diseases spread by flies on horse manure. Don't let current problems make you forget past problems and make you unjustly critical of our ancestors. As you said, we're not going back to using less energy as we did in the 19th century. :-)
It was used in small amounts and use grew slowly. After WWII the slope of the graph goes > 1, and gets much steeper. ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels
Nice data - thanks!
I agree with you on the horse front, I live in Melbourne Oz and it was nicknamed Smell-bourne in the horse and buggy days.
I disagree in part on your statement that we were not going to go back to our energy use in the 19th century, as if we don't get our act together on climate change we are likely going to be extinct or very close to it, in any case our civilisation will be back in the dark ages. Don't underestimate how much can go wrong due to our inaction. 20 degrees increase in average temperature if we pass a few tipping points is not unexpected. I read once that there is 6000 times more methane than oil, coal and gas combined tied up in shallow parts of the Arctic oceans and methane is 20-50 times more potent a green house gas depending on who you listen to.
Actually we already are. LED uses less power for the same lighting. Mini split heat pumps use less power than resistance heating for the same heat. EVs use less energy than the same vehicle powered by fossil. And our communications systems use far less power than what we used to use, especially when you count printing & going to places to find things out So you are advocating waste?
@@crhu319 one of the biggest problems we have is that our population is growing sooooo fast that the improvements we are making are occurring considerably slower than the rate we undo those improvements through that growth.
Our use of energy from fossil fuels began in the 19th century, not 1945, and it was vastly cleaner than the alternatives available at the time (remember tens of thousands of deaths each year in New York City from diseases spread by the flies on tons of horse manure) Using fossil fuels wasn't a mistake; It addressed bigger and more immediate problems that have been forgotten thanks to the use of fossil fuels. Now let fusion and other clean energy sources address the problems caused b using fossil fuels. :-)
Stephen Brackin that face
I'd love to work on Fusion, seems like the power of the future.
In Russia, fusion works on you!
That's exactly what my science teacher said when I was in the 7th grade. In 1977.
@@ericanderson4801 Yes but they didn't have ITER like we will have soon. That _will_ be the first reactor to achieve positive energy efficiency.
Then learn physics!
@@VerisimilitudeDude It will be ... with no way to convert this energy into usable form. Fusion is simple. Making electricity of 14 MeV neutrons from TOKAMAK is the challenge.
Very good to hear some positive news about fusion energy!
So this guy just explained fusion to a room full of people who already know the concept.
yeah, but not us.
What do you think of Kirk Anderson and Thorium lftr molton salt reactors?
This is much bettet
Is there any hope of using something analogous to solar panels to directly convert x-rays from fusion into electricity more efficiently than using heat to generate steam for powering a turbine? The real Q is electricity out to electricity in. :-)
Or we could use cheese.
I don't think there is anything that captures X-rays as a way of generating power. There are some solid state devices that detect them for imaging or measuring purposes, but that is low power stuff.
In many ways, X-rays are produced as part of a wide spectrum light by-product from the plasma, as is UV, IR, normal light. It is not the way the majority of energy comes out of a fusion reactor. That is high energy neutrons. These are captured variously by lithium blankets or other shielding and the momentum converted to heat. This is then used, as you say, to drive generators.
X-rays are, in some machines, used to initiate the fusion by providing a heat pulse which heats and compresses the fuel to fusion levels - NIF in US is one. The X-rays themselves are created as a part of the reaction with strong lasers.
Even if we work out a net positive energy fusion reactor, it still boils down to the construction cost. It will cost billions for one of these plants and will price itself out of the market just like fission. With the almost daily news of cheaper battery storage designs and the still falling price of solar, Fusion is going to have to come down huge in cost.
fission is NOT priced out of the market moron. Fission is FAR cheaper than solar, wind, et al. It competes favorably with other methods too. See France.
There are no substantially better battery technologies in sight in the near future. It is a common misconception that the super battery is just around the corner.
@@orlovsskibet I know. The "super battery" has been almost ready since my EE classes in the '70's.
@@patrickeh696 Ehh Natural Gas is far cheaper, and with subsidies provided by the US, renewables are catching up. France has Nuclear because it is government owned and they do not care about the costs, they only care about the reliable output output of power. If you want to see the economics in the US for energy gen, check out the ATB 2018 posted by the NREL: atb.nrel.gov/
The main issues for Fission are political though.
@@alcatorc DIPSHIT! The US gov pays NOTHING to the gas companies you FUCKING LIBTARD IDIOT. The gas companies pay BILLIONS of dollars to the Gov in taxes. The US PRIVATE nuc plants are VERY profitable YOU FUCKING DIPSHIT.
if the plasma is held in place with crazy big magnets, how do you extract the heat energy to make power? I know a fair bit about fission reactors but never studied fusion in detail.
Basically what you want to do is capture the kinetic energy of the neutrons coming out of the fusion reactions. The neutrons are not affected by the magnetic field because they are..well..neutral. So they will burst out towards the walls with very high energies. This kinetic energy can be converted into heat (various processes available/being designed) which will be used to...boil water to turn a turbine. Just as in every other energy source on Earth, except for solar cells..
oh cool, i heard the neutrons were an issue didnt realise it could be a feature, thanks
*Video starts at **8:00**. Kiddy bullshit until then. **13:44** if you REALLY want to skip to the point.*
The real answer though, it's 30 years away, and always will be.
yes 13:44 is what we want :)
They said the same about quantum computers, yet now they say Google achieved quantum supremacy.
People who said that, did it because in that time there were neither supercomputers as powerful, nor our narrow AI (machine learning) or in future possibly quantum computers to assist us in this endeavor.
People also said that Musk will not sell even 50 000 of his electric cars... It's stupid.
We are likely less than a year from break even and 4-6 years from having small container sized fusion reactors that can be built in factories.
I mean sure, if you are so uneducated in the topic that you think that Tokamaks, ICF and that german stelarator are the only viable reactor types then i can understand your pessimism. But being uneducated is not a logical argument.
The bigest problem with fusion research is the so called plasma physicists who doesn't even learn about basic plasma instabilities. Who think plasma physics is as simple as "plasma tends to move along magnetic field lines and towards areas of weaker magnetic fields". Some dumb fucker said that the Tokamak is the best fusion reactor alternative and the rest where dumb enough to agree that we should only fund Tokamaks and reactors similar to Tokamaks.
No, asshole, the new superconductors give his company a pretty safe path to fusion power on the grid by around 2030. If you'd take your head out of your ass, then you might learn something. :-( Nuclear fission went from lighting its first light bulb to providing 26% of the US electricity supply in less than two decades; fusion use will grow even faster because fusion power plants won't have the huge safety risks that fission power plants have: If a bomb, earthquake, or human error damages a working fusion reactor, then it just goes out and maybe releases a little hydrogen and helium into the air, where both being lighter than air they'd both head for the clouds; the only radiation would be low-grade and in the steel of the fusion reactor itself. :-)
So Basically, Thoughty2 watched this video and then made his own on it. Cool.
We already have a fusion device for the world and a magnetic shield and PV devices that are close to 40% efficiency in collecting this energy. For less than a penny / watt this power can be collected and stored on cost plummeting batteries for every home and business in the world.
We need this SPARC where the sun don’t shine. Deep space bases and craft for exploration.
Almost true. The penny per watt does not include storage. Short time storage maybe, but how about storing light, heat and power for your car for those cloudy weeks in winter?
Not sure if intercontinental power lines will be enough.
We have never been closer...and its not really about going green, thats just the advertisement fluffery - Its about technological progress and the final test for the industrial civilisation.
Also, some fusion designs may give us new propulsion technologies (FRC configuration etc etc)
In next 40 years as it was for the last 70 years.
Will ITER be a bigger construction project than the Large Hadron Colider?
Yes.
No.
He said the biggest in the world ever. It would be strange if he simply omitted the current record holder imho, but everyone makes mistakes.
ITER is much bigger than LHC.
ITER was projected to cost $22 billion. However, the (US) DOE is suggesting it will cost about 3 times that amount, over $60 billion (split between the contributing nations, I guess).
The cost of building the LHC was around $5 billion in 2010. It recycled an existing tunnel, which kept some costs down. The annual cost of running CERN is about $1.1 billion.
@@nickjames9555 But is it bigger?
Wastes the first half of his speech explaining fusion to children, or at least he must have assumed they were as ignorant of fusion of children.
When the speaker did have something to say, he'ld present slides or graphs, but the camera folks Wernt interested, and NEVER BOTHERED TO ZOOM IN TO THE SLIDES!! Just focused on him in a close up pointing to things off screen. So essentially they reduced his slide presentation to a audio cast.
Past that he really only had a couple minutes covering status of programs, and countering the cynical "we never did it before, so we'll never succeed" by saying it's like saying we'll never climb Everest, and ignoring that each new expedition gets significantly closer then the last, and they have passed all the really hard parts.
Most people are ignorant. It is a good idea to start from the lowest expectation and work up from there.
Making small steps towards a concrete wall may convince you and others that you can walk through it, but it just might not be possible.
(I do believe that fusion exists, I do hope that fusion will solve our energy problems, I just don't believe in analogies and urban legends as an argumentation to convince me that the solution is near.)
Adrie Kooijman problem is no one sees a wall. Just a lot of political, econmic, and engineering issues. But certainly progress has been as fast as normal for a new power system.
This isn't like solar where you have to scrape off huge fractions of land, and build city sized batter packs, or reengineer the Planet.
@@KellyStarks no land needed, fill the unused roofs first.
Adrie Kooijman
lol!! Cover roofs?! Dude you need to cover states. The land area needed for solar to take over half the US power grid is greater then all the land area of all the cities, burbs, and towns in the nation.
What do you think about the new Danzik engine that’s run by magnets?
scientist don't like it because it's not complicated enough and they can't drag out the concept for 50 years or so. They also will lose out on billions of free money for nothing but a pile of scrap.
See there is a hook somewhere... if they can build a free energy source, why not selling the produced energy for a hefty price? They don't even need to lay down how it work. But have you seen even ONE company doing that? No?
Free energy is a red herring. There is nothing like a free lunch.
So what type of energy is put into this to get energy out?
I was always under the assumption that you can't get more energy out of something than you put into it?
08wolfeyes basically it’s something called binding energy so hydrogen has “extra “ mass that it loses when it fuses to form helium and since that mass is lost it is turned into energy since e =mc^2
The sun works pretty fine though. Same principle.
Actually Fusion make from two Hydrogen atoms one Helium atom. So its kind of matter transmutation. There is a mass difference between two Hydrogen atoms and the resulting Helium. These mass is turned into energy. So in a way you burn mass to create energy. And its a lot energy you gain that way... However in its life time the Sun will burn only about 2% of its mass in total. Seen over the 8 billion years it lives.
So the amount of fuel you need to create vast energy with Fusion is laughingly small. Its in the range of Kilograms / year..
@The Dude you are right, and actually I can see that I didn't answer the actual question. So in short, energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can be converted though, and that's what happens in the sun and in fusion reactors.
We are never any further away from fusion energy than 30 years, im sure that in 2049 we will still be 30 years away from fusion power plants. Why don't we use Thorium as a lifter reactor fuel, Molton salt reactors they had one in Oakridge Tennessee it would be a fraction of the cost that we have spent throughout the years on fusion and we could have an actual power plant that makes electricity
India is the biggest producer of Thorium; also the only one which have government approval for testing and usage of the same instead of Uranium for nuclear fission. They plan to be 60% Thorium dependent by 2025 if I am not mistaken.
@@kresimircosic9035 I know this and I hope that they succeed in making it a reality hopefully they can industrialize the Thorium research that came from Oakridge Tennessee back in the 1950s and 1960s , America's energy policies are controlled by the energy companies and they have invested in nuclear/ uranium light water reactors a Thorium LiFTeR would be way to go LIQUID.FLORIDE. THORIUM. REACTOR. Is possible
You can't make bombs with thorium.
@@nickjames9555 Yes you can. It makes U233 which is a great fissile material. The main reason why no one bothers to use Thorium now is because it's another way to get Uranium. Why not just use uranium and skip the Thorium to Uranium Cycle entirely?
India pushed for Thorium in the past because they did not have access to Uranium for political reasons. If they continue to work with Thorium then it is for political reasons only. All other countries that have developed nuclear programs have relatively easy access to U235, so there is no reason for them to use Thorium.
Corrosive resistant metals that also fair well in radiation environments don't really exist either. So that's an issue.
@@alcatorc Thanks for the explanation. From memory, I though the uranium produced from thorium was excessively difficult to make a good bomb from, so 'they' stuck to U-235 and Pu-239. It is good for reactors, though, which was an attraction.
I had not heard that particular explanation about India's reactors, thanks.
Whats the difference between Nuclear Fusion, Photosynthesis and The Krebs Cycle ?
Nuclear fusion in a power plant is exothermal and a nuclear reaction. Photosynthesis is endothermal and a chemical process.
The connection between the three is:
Nuclear fusion produces the sunlight. Sunlight is consumed by plants via photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is part of the Krebs Cycle.
@@Rainer67059 Apologies. how does the krebs cycle produce energy for the cell? does it mimic a nuclear fusion process? Or is photosynthesis more like nuclear fusion?
@@richtmason3792 The Krebs Cycle is the entirety of how the cell produces energy and uses it up. Photosynthesis is the part where it produces energy.
Nothing in the cell is nuclear. The entire process is pure chemistry. That means, the law of conservation of elements is kept up.
@@Rainer67059 much better than the entropy of fusion don't you think?
SO many Trillions of dollars have been spent on building nuclear missiles capable of destroying the entire planet 100 times over. Imagine if that money had been spent on research into fusion and other ideas intent on growth instead of death. ugh its all so depressing. This video gives me hope though. :)
I agree with you 100%, Stephen. In regards to your comment: 'Yours...is the superior' - Joachim, 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan' (1982)...sorry...I'm a huge Star Trek fan. On a serious note...Carl Sagan had stated in the 'Journeys in Space and Time' episode of Cosmos that had the Alexandrian Library not been destroyed back around 320 A.D...humans would be 1000 yrs ahead of where they are now...and looking at most future projections...interstellar travel would be happening at present for our species...
superconductors need extremely low temperature to work and plasma produces extremely high temperature. How they expect to make them work together?
They keep the plasma in a vacuum chamber for a few reasons, the vacuum also keeps the heat reasonably contained. The surface temperatures on the inner wall are far less than the 150 Million C in the center of the plasma, they can "just" boil tungsten at the inner surface lol.
The superconducting magnets are kept far enough away from the plasma so that they can be cooled. The High Temperature Superconducting Magnets that Commonwealth Fusion Systems use can be kept at much higher temperatures (40-60K) compared to the Nb3Sn Low Temperature Magnets in ITER (They are kept at 4K I believe).
It all boils down to spacing. The magnets are kept far enough away and are shielded from the heat behind layers of metal and salt. The main issue confronting the magnets are the neutrons that are not stopped in the blanket of the reactor!
if you watched the video you would know
This is the same investor relations hype I witnessed in the 1990s regarding clean hydrogen for use as 20 to 100 kilowatt micro-generators.
I talked with numerous startups in those years touting the fact that they were all " just around the corner"and "we are very close to commercializing hydrogen gensets" with just a few more millions "we are nearly there".
I work in chemistry and material science , and actually developed Micro- power steam turbine gensets for remote Island nations.
There are so many hurdles to overcome.
What is the kilowatt per hour cost?
What is the actual energy density?
Will it compete economically with nuclear, hydro- electric, diesel, LNG??
When will the first technology demonstrator be actually running?
Are we talking efficient powered units that produce in megawatts? Kilowatts? What?
Just build a 100 to 500 kw unit using this technology and run it for several months.
Then return to us with real facts.
Power point animations are just vapor ware until you can build a scalable prototype folks.
The fact that you’re asking these questions shows that you do not grasp the scale and importance of the project (“What is the energy density?”?? Seriously?). This is the biggest international collaboration, the biggest science experiment, the biggest project ever attempted by mankind. This is not your bullshit energy startup storage solution your questions would fit.
@@PiatraTare thank god someone said it
Honestly anyone who watches fusion videos on TH-cam already knows all of this. There was nothing new here
Seriously, this ain't nothing but a little pep talk.
@John B it's not france alone, and usa participate, from wikipedia :
The project is funded and run by seven member entities-the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing about 45 percent of the cost, with the other six parties contributing approximately 9 percent each.
Very little news here or idea of when it becomes anywhere near usable.
Why more money isn't put into LFTR and the Thorium cycle is puzzling as it would yield much better results and much quicker.
If you're certain it would yield much better results then why haven't you developed it yourself?
@@russcontactermmm total lack of about 500 million dollars initial development money..
Ridiculous comeback to a constructive point.
Gareth Hughes The scientists and engineers working in nuclear power didn’t have that money either, they have investors who listened to those scientists and decided it was potentiality feasible. If Thorium was such a great opportunity there would be scientists and engineers touting it, and large amounts of money would be invested. So if you really are more knowledgeable regarding Thorium power than the top scientists working right now, you should explain your process/theories to investors. If it’s legit, or really even close to legit, you’ll have no problems raising half a billion dollars.
That, or you’re full of shit and think you’re an expert from internet “research”.
PS, my family has been deeply involved with nuclear power since the 1950’s, and the ones alive have told me that Thorium could never be practical or useful. It was heavily researched and abandoned for good reasons.
Fusion is our only hope, which is why that’s where all the focus and investment is.
@@russcontact So that is why China and India are throwing hundreds of millions at it.
We are missing the boat on this one.
@@ghblues1970 Nobody shouted at you, you were simply told you were wrong. Grow a pair and move on.
Let's see...how many holes could we punch in the ground to harness what is ALREADY THERE AND AVAILABLE TO UTILIZE!!!!????
are these fusion units in a vacuum? or under vacuum? might be a stupid question but the suns in a vacuum right?
If you're confining hydrogen nuclei (a gas plasma, the electrons stripped away) in a magnetic field then I believe it's always done in a vacuum. It''s inefficient to mix with other gases when you're trying to squeeze it and raise the temperature to millions of degrees, and I imagine a surrounding gas that can conduct heat to the container's walls would instantly melt them. (I'm unclear why the experiment doesn't melt down anyway.) There are other fusion ideas like firing lasers at targets; I'm not sure if a vacuum is as important to them.
@@skierpage thanks :)
The huge power production plant saddens me, Smaller would be better: Smaller would be cheaper and much more likely to be able to lift itself into orbit. :-)
You need to get yourself together and stop reading science-fiction books.
Smaller is more expensive - that's where all the billions of investment are going,
Why should they go on orbit?
@@robertn2951 To beam down free energy to everyone on Earth!
@@obban12 Whatever the energy is, it ain't free! Putting anything in space is HUGELY expensive - maybe $5,000-$10,000 per pound to orbit. And you beam it back how? At what efficiency to collect it again?
Far better to just do a large amount of solar panels and wind turbines.
Who doesn't know this already? He's a very teacher of technology. we've heard prodigy kids who can explain it better.
okay. i had the same joke. but I DO like Eric Lerner's approach at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics.
what if they contained the plasma by using multiple toroids to allow the plasma to expand and allow plasma to flow into the parallel toroids as needed for containing the plasma easier
Or we could use cheese.
They might be able to produce electricity more efficiently from the x-rays produced by fusion than from the heat produced by fusion. :-)
You played hookey during all your science classes at infant school, didn't you? C'mon now, time to own up!
@@MarkVickers1 Asshole. X-rays and electricity are both low-entropy forms of energy. Heat is the highest-entropy form. There might well be an advantage to using x-rays directly. x-rays probably mostly just go through normal solar panels, but something cruder might work well with them. I went to MIT and have a PhD in math, asshole, so what makes you such an expert?
@@steve25782 There are no x-rays produced by D-T Fusion. All x-rays present are secondary in nature and at most 1/1000 of the energy released as neutrons. Cool idea, but not possible with this type of fusion.
Didn't we decide to use fossil fuels in the 19th century, and weren't they the cleanest and best alternative available at the time?
Yes - they single-handedly caused an entire revolution in human technology, and all this asshole businessman can do is snidely remark as if he's wise for acknowledging it damaged the environment - and then goes and says nothing but horseshit for 18 minutes. Wannabe Elon Musk if I've ever seen one
2:35 actually the first oil well in the US was up in Pennsylvania.
Phil Rabe thank you, I was looking through the comments hoping someone pointed that out!
It should be noted that energy COSTS will not be reduced with fusion. Generating electricity is rather cheap. It is the transmission and distribution and all the infrastructure required that's the real killer.
Wrong. Fusion energy once it gets to the efficiency they want, will be over 4 million times more efficient than coal, and 4 times more efficient than fission.
But that is already in place.
@@robertbrandywine What is?
@@VerisimilitudeDude The infrastructure to carry away the electricity produced by a nuclear fusion plant.
@@robertbrandywine Ah yes. So true.
Mr Mumgaard. please get your video tea sorted out. Very poor camera work.
How about a small fusion reactor producing 500KW that runs (once it is started) on tap water where it finds hydrogen and enough deuterium to operate. Impossible?
Can you tell me more.
Bob Mumgaard explained it perfect.
Fusion power is and always be, the energy of the future.
17:58 "In ten years we should see (the next to the last) step." Was that a bad choice of words? It doesn't really answer the question.
Fifty States :in ten years we will be no closer to fusion power plants than we were back in the 1970s but Thorium research could give us some results at least as a mox fuel in a LiFTeR reactor
@@marvinmontgomery1291 Thorium / molten salt, kind of a `bird in the hand` if you ask me, successfully tested, many benefits, safety first. Sure, engineering hurdles, but it's passed the first test.
@@marvinmontgomery1291 Today I listened to an interview with former DOE Secretary Earnest Moniz. He said something like "in ten years we'll know whether fusion is going to be possible." He also mentioned the tremendous number of industry companies creating fission and fusion technologies (without naming any.) Hopefully DOE is keeping up with industry on licensing. Everybody's learning at the same time, just like when Rickover and Weinburg were starting it all.
@@fiftystate1388 I hope that you are right about fusion but I have my doubts , for 1 the petroleum industry and the fossil fuel industry in general pretty much control the energy sector and look at the way they tried to short Tesla stock knowing that they will lose money we're trying to throw doubt on Tesla they make so much money they can afford to do that, I do not think that they would be willing to give up a 4 trillion-dollar year business model and all the power that goes along with the crude oil for clean energy so the deck is stacked against us but I still hope that you are right
@@fiftystate1388 I would like to see the GRAPHENE REVOLUTION then we could really store solar and wind generated electricity in small batteries you could also power a full size automobile with a battery the size of a laptop
30 years
The bright side seems to be, that everybody has stopped to speak of the good old "50 years joke".
Fusion energy has always been "30 years away". In 40s they said 30 years away which news media published. Same in 70s, and 2000.
I'll save you from wasting your time: we're about thirty years away from workable fusion. Same distance it's always been, since the dawn of time - and probably always will be :D
That said, we've recently got to 150 million degrees:
www.newswise.com/articles/recent-breakthrough-on-diii-d-enables-major-step-toward-economical-fusion-energy
We'd have still been in the stone age without fossil fuels.
One wonders what part of Gee Wiz found this thing that works so let us it... I mean if they had Fusion one hundered years ago we would be using it now but it still does not work so why the attitude.
@@davidbaldwin9830 Agreed.
perhaps.. but the greed of the exploiters is keeping us from moving on.. when we could have long ago.. we're stuck on dirty ineffficent energy cus it profits a few.. at all of our expense. time to dump oil and coal for renewables. Cost of the iraq war the nation could have build an electric car and plug in free for every taxpayer.. thus ramping up that industry which we then could have lead the world by exporting them. instead we squandered the money largely into 1 or 2 obsolete companies and a bunch of private pockets.
Very true. We (mankind) needed fossil fuels to move forward to industrialisation etc over the last 200 years. Big benefits all round.
The problem is we are now finding the down side to the huge amounts of fossil fuels we are burning. Everybody (except the US) agrees that climate change is real and dangerous. Glaciers retreating, extreme rainfall and drought, extreme temperatures, more tornadoes, rising sea levels (warm water expands - who knew?) and acidity - all due to CO2.
In the US, the coal, gas and oil industry has a very strong and corrupting grip on politics and propaganda. They pay lots of $$$$ to politicians to pass laws and policies to make them richer and protect their market. They get huge subsidies from government. They actively try to stop other forms of energy production, including nuclear, fusion, wind, tidal and solar from taking their market. They also lobby against fuel efficiency, home efficiency and insulation. They help prevent individuals putting solar panels on their own roof. They even send very distorted (i.e. lying) science books to every school in the country.
Like a lot of things, the end result will be a few people will have a huge number of pieces of green paper and the rest of us can go hang on a ruined and hot planet.
Without watching.... Let's see it was 30 years last time... Annnd still 30 years to go. How about billing begins at deadline?
ITER $50 billion total or just so far?
TITR's on-board production of antimatter for rocket propulsion, highest energy know.
Hold on 100 million degrees Fahrenheit? The hottest start known by man in the Universe is merely 72,000 degrees...so how do we get to where a blue hyper-giant star can't?
Well actually most of the time you read about fusion experiments you see numbers in the range of 100 mil. to 200 mil. Degrees Celsius (180mil. to 360mil. Degrees Fahrenheit). That's as you implied: INSANE. And it's actually more than the temperatures you were talking about! As to how you get to these temperatures I remember hearing about these three ways of doing that:
1. Huge amounts of Currents
2. Compression (That's what General fusion is doing)
3. Lasers (In the US they use the most powerful laser in the world to get to these temperatures)
@@antoniosteiger9443 I have read the same things but it says those temperatures only reach right before a star dies. Now China according to some news outlets were saying that they have reached 180 million degrees. Has anyone reached out? or are we that STUPID? not too work together on this?
@@AlexGutierrezPhotography China is working on iter together with Russia, Eu, Korea, Japan, USA and India, which will supposedly be able to reach 200mil. °C.
I dont understand the concept of fusion and in no video is this properly explained. As far as I get it you create a plasma field in a tokamak (with electricity?) and then you add some substance which burns and sustains plasma? Plz somebody explain in lamens terms :)
@danijel124 Basically they push together two neutrons and the following reaction realises s huge amount of energy, the plasma is used to heat it up so that the hydrogen isotopes can get close enough together to collide on a molecular level
Nuclear fusion, excellent for propelling vehicles. Sooner than you think we will be driving such wonders.
Anyone who has any familiarity with fusion technology knows it's 10 years away. It doesn't matter *when* you ask the question. That is the answer.
Nah, it's different this time. I can't believe no one thought of using high temp superconductors for fusion but now these babies will make semi truck sized fusion possible
noun
1.
a fixed luminous point in the night sky which is a large, remote incandescent body like the sun.
synonyms: celestial body, heavenly body, sun
But the thing is If you need a great reaction you need good insulation but in order to use the energy you need to something that conducts that energy out of the confinement ...
Yes, they probably didn't think of that. You should tell them.
@@MarkVickers1 savage
Mr. Fusion on a Tesla Roadster?
The necksnap factor would be that of e=mc2
What is wrong with our current Fusion reactor? Zero building costs, Zero maintenance costs, Zero research costs, available 24 hours a day world wide, we just need to collect the free energy supplied, what is it? The sun!
not enough resources on earth to collect the amout of energy needed to power the planet
@@basjansma6658 there is more than enough we simply have not built it yet. The Saharan Desert is 9,064,958 square kilometers, or 18 times the total required area to fuel the world. landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
@@edwyncorteen1527 I will say the no maintenance costs is actually 100% wrong, most solar panels die after a set amount of years. Also, much much better battery technology must be invented or were gonna have major issues.
Will throwing unlimited funds at the problem get it solved faster?
How do I get in touch with you Bon?
As close now as we were then.
Problem of fusion is the large amount of gamma rays and that magnets can explode if they stay long time at almost 0 kelvin. Moreover, its hard to maintain plasma for tens of yrs. A better approach is to make fission so advanced and safe (by making fast breeder reactors), that we will never need to push the tech so far. Hence, we will have fission reactors that can last for 100 yrs.
These superconducting magnets require below 92 k not near 0
First comment with small jazz hands he mentions 1940 1945 and as he says that was after World War 2?
I know as little now about "how close we are" as I knew before watching this.
I think id had something to do with a mountain peak. :-)
We all know its 30 years away... But perhaps it will be too expensive anyway. With the steady price drop in solar and wind power, fusion might not be very useful on Earth. But a future powersource for space travels?
They will get more energy out than they put in by 2025 definitely. The issue is how they can sustain it, but currently I'm rather optimistic about fusion.
@@lkrnpk Lets hope Fusion will be relatively cheap and abundant one day. The world is in big demand for more energy. Today its hard to see how we can solve all this with solar and wind.
I found it to be a good presentation meant to be a general introduction.
Why all the discontent in the comment section. There will be other source materials for more in depth information.
Because this is a botched, mumbling, stumbling presentation that doesn't attempt to answer it's own question - completely useless as per its described intent, and equally nonsenical to those looking to undertand the basics of fusion.
Also, because shredding successful, real-world nuclear physicists makes all the internet geniuses feel SO SMART. 🙄
'shredding successful'?!
@@MarkVickers1 Shredding = verb. Successful = adjective describing the physicists. Reading comprehension 101.
@@MarkVickers1 by that he means "bashing on" a sucessfull physicist makes people feel smart.
The Large Hadron Collider is both larger and more expensive than ITER.
ITER was projected to cost $22 billion. However, the (US) DOE is suggesting it will cost about 3 times that amount, over $60 billion (split between the contributing nations, I guess). Still peanuts in real terms and about 1% of trump's tax giveaway to corporations and the 1% over the next 5 years.
The cost of building the LHC was around $5 billion in 2010. It recycled an existing tunnel, which kept some costs down. The annual cost of running CERN is about $1.1 billion, but that does not include the costs of many of the research staff that use it from their home universities. Interestingly, US is not a Member State of CERN but did contribute to some equipment and experiments, of the order of $300 million.
Who are the incompetent videographers doing these lectures?
Why not consult with David Adair?
There are now several competing projects whose backers predict will achieve net energy gain within the next five years or so. Let's just check in around 2025 and see how that's going. I'm willing to cut them that much slack. Beyond that, if there is not some solid success-well, I won't say it will never, ever happen, but it would be a much harder sell, for sure.
Take my word, invest into these companies 13:00
Why do we want lights on every spot of the planet. Are you planning on lighting up the wilderness?
No, just a fair share of wealth to those that lack it now. Energy seems to be part of it.
The future is starting now
I collect fusion energy every day on my roof. You should focus fusion research on small portable devices so you can stick them where the sun don’t shine.
This is incredibly interesting I'm new in studying fusion energy can someone refer me a great audio book or documentary on this subject
You can read the book Sun in a Bottle and/or Check out this video: th-cam.com/video/riOvBEEs9WY/w-d-xo.html
Depends on how serious you are. If you really want to learn about Fusion, first learn the Maxwell Equations and Multivariable Calculus (and their prerequisite knowledge), then check out the lectures on Plasma Physics 1 on MIT OCW :ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/22-611j-introduction-to-plasma-physics-i-fall-2003/
You can also check out Jeffrey Freidberg's Text on Fusion Energy.
Most youtube videos are over simplified. Avoid them until you know the above.
Fusion on earth, only 4 billion years any. When the sun envelopes the planet.
I'm going to remember to use that.
Harleyboys57 : I am sure that it would only be 30 years after the sun engulfed the Earth they would say we're almost there just another 30 years
Bob Mumgaard ...That was an epic, edge of my seat presentation on Fusion !!! Thank you. I'm a Wounded Warrior and prolific Inventor of underwater supercavitation engines, underwater (whitewater river) gold mining machines, and underwater robotic construction methods. You easily discussed a complex Fusion topic and I listened to every bit of it.
Do me a favor please, instead of looking at a Fusion process as giant and complicated....think of it in its most basic and simplest of forms...think how to make Fusion with a Nano sized reactor based upon ultra simplified molecular theories.
For example; SonoFusion , water physics, micro bubbles, and SuperCavitation are 99% confusing to everyone. AND most physicists admit they have no idea how things work most of the time. Have no idea if water has a "memory" or how "SonoLuminescence" works.
Bob, always keep on kicking buns out there in the physics world, there are people like me that get it, and I encourage you to use your imagination to create and produce.
Also could you please do a follow up presentation that discusses engineering details, materials research, and most importantly how dynamic modeling/simulation has helped in the Fusion journey. I would very much like to use the Idaho National Lab's simulator or the nuke simulator at Washington State....heck any good quality system. I'd love to get a presentation on the technical aspects of fusion and how your're using (publicly available?) simulators to solve problems in advance and test design theories BEFORE actually building it.
More engineering, more details, and please more about fusion simulation.
Nuclear fission with molten salt reactors is a good energy source that is hard to make nuclear weapons and it's hard to meltdown and the reaction can be stopped from a plug unlike in lightwater reactors that are used today yet not as efficient as in fusion reactors but it's a energy source that can move the human race forward not destroying our environment until we can make fusion reactors viable because cost is a problem for a reaction that isn't proven to work when we have an energy and environmental crisis on the rise
Jet has tested this concept to and its producing a crap ton in much smaller volume vs iter fusion reactor. Also the superconductors to make these reactors possible only were discovered in the late 1980s and are now only being made in quantities large enough. It'll take a decade to make molten salt a reality but I have always been a huge supporter but we have fusion in our hands now its never been this close. We can push this and have it in 15 years we got to do this
Like they say, fusion is the energy of the future--and it always will be
He pretty much didn't say shit.
If you unmute the video, you can hear him better.
Yes he said that the powers that be already have the technology but they got to figure how to triple your energy bill before they let it out,because if they can bleed you dry they can take your property.
The way he explains it for idiots who dropped out middle school makes me sceptical. Still want to see fusion happen in my lifetime.
Look Up and you see fusion happen every day!
Fusion is happening, it just requires more energy than it produces.
Tell me summit I don’t know.
Do you suppose that AI when it goes super smart, that will find a simple way forward for fusion that we never would have thought of being possible?
I'm guessing 30 years.
Lmao
Back in the 90's it was 20 years away. 😂
I'll save you from wasting your time: we're about thirty years away from workable fusion. Same distance it's always been, since the dawn of time - and probably always will be :D
That said, we've recently got to 150 million degrees:
www.newswise.com/articles/recent-breakthrough-on-diii-d-enables-major-step-toward-economical-fusion-energy
Mark Vickers thanks for that
+arturo0727. yea, the scientists overestimated how hard fusion would turn out to be, plus in the 90's they didn't have anywhere near the computing power of modern processors and GPU's. To put that in perspective, comparing 90's era cpu's and gpu's to 2019 cpu's and gpu's is like comparing a volkswagen beetle to a bugatti veyron.
Hello future..but, actually is the past😉🙂
God, at what kind of audience was this talk targeted? Kindergarten?
They want to cater to everyone, Including children.
Nah - children would see straight away that he's bulshitting - he just wanted to put something on TH-cam so that he can listen back to it when he feels lonely.
But he provide no details of their approch to positive Q factor fusion energy :/ quite delusional
It was dumbed down for ppl who don't follow it, I didn't really learn anything from this.
This machine still looks pretty big in relation to the power output. Big = expensive. Commercial Q factor is what matters.
As fusion is basically unlimited clean energy once you get a reaction going that gives off more energy than you put in, I really fail to understand why we aren't pumping untold billions into developing functioning reactors. Achieving viable commercial fusion is basically our key to becoming a post-scarcity society. It should be seen as a common goal for everyone on the planet.
Because it might be unlimited or clean, but that doesn’t mean it’s cheap.
@@Gomlmon99 price is just a value you place on things.. yet seeking an un limited energy is the trade mark of inheriting the DNA of God.
@@klytouch5285 what the fuck are you on about lmao
There is no *fuel* for fusion. Every successful fusion reaction, to date, involves deuterium and tritium because using ordinary hydrogen is *much, much, much* harder, it requires much higher temperature and pressure. *All* tritium comes from fission reactors, ordinary nuclear reactors, and it has a short half-life of only 12 years. It's not safe, you can't store it long term because it's radio-active as hell, and if you have enough fission reactors to generate the fuel, you have at least 100 times the fission energy ready as you can conceivably harvest from fusion. It is *stupid* as a fuel source.
You forgot the needed masses. A complete fusion reactor filling is 2 grams....
Also Deuterium is easy to get from water... its called heavy water..
The half life times are so much better compared to 24.000 years of plutonium and 4 billion years for Uran.. The reduced masses in a fusion plant also produce less waste in general... So its win win.
The first Fusion Reactors, like Hansjorg said, only need a few grams. Once they are up and ready, they will have TRITIUM BREEDING RATIOS of over 1. This will be done by capturing neutrons in a Flourine Lithium Beryllium Salt blanket, there will be two isotopes of Lithium in the blanket. Lithium 6 and 7, and Beryllium to multiply the neutrons. Li6 has an exothermic (energy releasing) reaction with neutrons to release a Tritium and an Alpha particle. Lithium 7 has an endothermic reaction with neutrons that will release an alpha particle and a neutron plus a Tritium (Go to Section 5 of the ARC Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920379615302337?via%3Dihub ) These reactions will release energy in the form of heat and heat up the Blanket to around 800K (Although realistically this must be higher if they want to have good thermodynamic efficiencies in the Brayton Cycle) and then the heat will be siphoned out to heat up steam like a normal fission plant.
Therefore the first Fusion Reactors will produce the Tritium needed to sustain the fusion reactor and serve as fuel production facilities for other fusion reactors being built. 12 years for a half life is more than long enough. They make batteries out of it (Look up Tritium batteries)... It is not stupid as a fuel source. There is a reason why it is being picked and why it is being pursued. Read the ARC paper.
The student that produced and edited this video should be kicked out of school.
The student who produced this video was okay. It's the supervisor that needs to be fired.
www.justodians.org/SphericalMagnet/01ElecMagPic1.htm Too much energy is lost in a torus to sustain fusion. A sphere is better. In this design the plasma is rotated like the armature of a motor with the axis of rotation constantly changing. The counter emf inside the plasma compresses it toward the center. The link is not working here but the address is good. Just paste the address in your browser to see the design.
I want 70% of the IPO. - Then I can start to find investors... OK?
gravity physics as a solar element genesis model is wrong. see THE SAFIRE PROJECT
I used to think ITER will solve the world's problems, but now I have to ask whether paying an order of magnitude less for the same constant power solar/wind+battery system as they hope to generate there (or maybe cheaper) is not already possible. I know successful or not ITER will continue to serve as a laboratory to improve the technology and who knows maybe make it cheaper. But... By gosh in 30 year's time solar, wind and batteries will be on another level altogether. How much for a constant 500MW supply renewable+battery solution now? Some analysts predict that if trends continue then in the future the cost of transmitting the power will be the biggest expense! ie... It will probably get almost literally dirt cheap. Other technologies as well. Even if it works out expensive fusion like ITER will have some rather stiff competition I dare say. Maybe one of these smaller flexible approaches will find the happy middle ground. A constant, clean base load is after all highly desirable. And probably more so if it's a smaller, more flexible solution. I'm just worried scalability will be held back by the cost of large fusion stations.
This is simply a practical opinion. I would love for fusion to be a viable part of our technological capacity. As somebody who has always followed ITER with great interest I was actually a bit astonished to come to the realisation that we probably have something better already. Ultimately solar is fusion power. We just don't have to keep the star it is from bottled up.
Also... If you are going to 'bottle up a star'... Maybe it's possible to develop PV materials that can harness that level of energy inside the reactors. I'm sure it's quite a challenge to harvest the energy from a stable plasma while containing it. Maybe there's a type of PV that can be developed that can deal with a few megawatt per square meter. Then one would be able to keep the plasma contained at all times and simply harvest the radiant energy that shines from it. From a quick search I see PV materials have been developed that can remain highly efficient at one or even several thousand times as much irradiance as sunlight on Earth. Have they looked into this for use inside fusion reactors?
Solar sails, and large scale solar mirrors, are already possible. They're the only potential source for the deuterium and tritium to *power* large scale fusion. But if you've bothered to build such large scale solar mirrors, there is no *point* to harvesting the hydrogen isotopes, and harvesting the solar energy far more directly and efficiently.
@@pullybungieharder The plan is to harvest the fuel material from the Ocean if I'm not mistaken. Not sure where the mirrors and solar sails come in to be honest.
ITER is not supposed to be a Power plant. Its a experimental Fusion reactor that aims to achieve producing more energy than used to heat the plasma. So having a positive energy balance... And exactly that i call stalling. They don't even try to build a power plant, yet.
That'd be DEMO, planned for 2040-2050 earliest.
@@hansjorgkunde3772 Oh of course. I even mentioned it. However a large Tokomak will always (as far as we know) need large rare earth magnets and other expensive components. As I said. Hopefully they will be able to make it cheaper. But as far as we know...
I am of course fully supportive of the endeavour. It is vitally important to see it trough. I just think we should not be fixated on it as the only hope for the future. Especially not considering where renewable+batteries already are, and even conservatively projecting where it will likely be in 30 years if the current trends continue. If the trends continue even for 10-20 more years at the current pace then renewable + battery will be ludicrously economic at the largest scale.
A good measure of practical agnosticism should always prevail.
@@joeblack4436 Re PV Material: The inside of the reactor will be in excess of 1000C. It's hard enough to find materials that survive in those conditions. PV cells would be nearly impossible and would not do anything. All the energy released from the DT reaction are in the form of neutrons (14.1MeV or 4/5 of the total energy) and Alpha particles (He4, at 3.5 MeV, which is 1/5 of the total energy released and will be used to sustain the plasma at around 10-14keV, or 150M Celsius).
It doesn't seem intuitive, but the stronger the magnets, the smaller the reaction can be. increasing the magnetic field allows you to run at higher pressures, but there are a few engineering limits that force high B_field reactors to be small. This is both cheaper and more efficient than designs like ITER. ITER was made to be huge to take advantage of having large confinement times (It increases almost linearly with Radius), increasing the confinement time, increases your Fusion Power Density and your Q value by proxy.
The reason ITER does this is that REBCO magnets were not a thing back then, they could not take advantage of huge magnetic fields (Which allow you to have higher thermal pressures, which increases the Fusion Power density by approximately 8* thermal Pressure^2 . Where Thermal pressure scales with the magnetic field^2. Increasing magnetic field therefore has almost a 4th order increase effect on the Fusion Powder density, where Q is Fusion Power Density/Heating Input. Does that make sense? PM me if you have more questions.
how close are we to CONFUSION?
And Germany is building windmills instead. I want to cry....
I hope this guy isn't designing a fusion power plant because he is sloppy, imprecise and occasionally flat-out wrong. How can he be a PhD physicist? It would have been pretty simple to fix this. I've just got a MA in science and I'm seeing stuff all over.
3:48 misleading. "Zero emissions" - a whole lot of hot water which is very bad for the environment. Also, the emissions from all of the (incredibly enormous amount of) energy used to build and maintain the power plant. On the same order as for a fission power plant.
"No long-lived nuclear waste" - TOTALLY wrong. The reaction chamber and other bits of the reactor become VERY radioactive. Certainly less radioactive waste than nuclear fission, though.
4:02 "All the way up to lead." Totally incomplete. Anyone taking an undergrad class in astronomy knows that all the heavy elements on the entire periodic table are created by fusion in supernova--including every element larger than lead.
17:21 "That has enable human happiness". No, it hasn't. That has enabled much higher standards of living. That's not the same thing. Very few people get that, and it makes a huge difference. Were people much more miserable in the 1950s even though their incomes were just a fraction of what they are now? Are people so much happier now than they were in the 1980s when I was growing up?
Not to be that one, but there is no working super nova model this far.
These are the guys that partnered with MIT, ARC design and a lot of brain power. I'd take him seriously.
We'd take him seriously if he had anything to say.
@@MarkVickers1 Watch Prof Dennis Whyte's explanation of the technologies being developed that started this company. Much more detailed and stays on point. Here is an old longer format version of Whyte's talk:
th-cam.com/video/KkpqA8yG9T4/w-d-xo.html
harmonic resonance is a factor they ignore
What kind of ring is he showing off ?
... and stellerator Wendelstein 7x isn't even mentioned. Pity, as it is very likely the most promising fusion technology.
17:30 Noooooooooooooooo
We don't want or need more light pollution!!!!!!!!