As an engineer and nuclear astro physics student, I simply can't understand the love afair with fusion instead of the infinitely more practical fission. All of the fusion programs will need to generate temps of 100M K and will require fuels that don't exist, Tritium or Helium3. Fission on the other hand should be done at around 1000K ie Molten Salt reactors with abundant fuels for millenia. All fusion plants will create radioactive waste in the form of neutron irradiated containment vessel, it's in the physics. Almost all fusion plants require several dozen impossibly difficult technologies yet to be developed, while fission is pretty mature technology. Personally I hate hearing when fusion gets more funding, because fusion will suck all the oxygen out of the room, ITER will go through 100s of billions of $ before it achieves commercial energy output. Every ITER that produces no output for a century can fund possibly 100GWe of molten salt reactors. As for Gov Newsom, he isn't a physicist, he is an idiot like all politicians. Fusion and fission are both highly radioactive by nature, they both involve neutrons. If you believe fusion is clean, you are a simpleton. Learn something about neutrons for x sake. And also learn something about fuels, uranium/thorium 1000s of years worth of fuel. Tritium/Helium3, 0 sources and don't talk about making it breeding it or mining on the moon. All those processes are impossible and below unity. Fission has a natural 3 fold neutron gain per fission event. Fusion as per ITER with blanket breeding has a net gain 2 orders below unity, it consumes tritium hundred times faster than it can ever breed it. The only practical fusion fuel is lithium deuteride which releases tritium and deuterium in situ when the lithium is smashed so no breeding needed and unity gain of neutrons. That is why it is used in thermo nuclear weapons. Oh wait, fusion power is now related to hydrogen bombs, same fuel source, damn. Read Dr Daniel Jassby on why fusion is essentialy dead, he was involved in it for his entire life at Princeton. To believe in fusion is about as bad as believing humans can travel and live on Mars without understanding energy costs and realities. The earth bathed in sunshine subsidizes our 300GJ/yr per capita energy use it amplifies it. On Mars no subsidies at all, energy use on Mars for a city will need to be orders more than on earth because nothing is subsidized, no water, no air, no dirt, no safety from cosmic radiation, no chance to escape. Fusion fans are pretty darn close to people that believe hydrogen is a fuel or that water powered cars are real.
Several points here seem to be factually inaccurate. For example, fusion researchers, I think, believe the breeding blankets can achieve tritium production of perhaps 30% above parity. Don't forget the blanket would incorporate neutron multipliers like lead and beryllium. Jassby is pessimistic because he thinks tritium leakage will make parity difficult to achieve in practice. Jassby, who has been quoted extensively in the popular science media in recent years as a fusion skeptic is generally pessimistic that the engineering challenges of fusion can be overcome in a commercially viable way; at least, in the near future. But, I get the feeling he bases most of his skepticism on the ITER. I think ITER is indeed a boondoggle, but mainly because it's a bureaucratic mess, designed by politicians. It's design was set in stone perhaps 20 years ago, so I think it's become already technologically obsolete. There are many fusion projects incorporating major advances in plasma physics and technology that could leave ITER in the dust (eg. Commonwealth's high-temperature superconducting tokamak among many others). The appeal of fusion is that it has the highest energy density (I think, about 100x that of fission by mass). And, in general, it seems less "messy" than fission. I've been hearing about molten salt reactors for a dozen years and, unlike fusion, little progress seems to have been made. They have their own technological difficulties. Still, I totally support fission, but hope that fusion could supplant it eventually, as a base load energy source.
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As an engineer and nuclear astro physics student, I simply can't understand the love afair with fusion instead of the infinitely more practical fission.
All of the fusion programs will need to generate temps of 100M K and will require fuels that don't exist, Tritium or Helium3.
Fission on the other hand should be done at around 1000K ie Molten Salt reactors with abundant fuels for millenia.
All fusion plants will create radioactive waste in the form of neutron irradiated containment vessel, it's in the physics.
Almost all fusion plants require several dozen impossibly difficult technologies yet to be developed, while fission is pretty mature technology.
Personally I hate hearing when fusion gets more funding, because fusion will suck all the oxygen out of the room, ITER will go through 100s of billions of $ before it achieves commercial energy output. Every ITER that produces no output for a century can fund possibly 100GWe of molten salt reactors.
As for Gov Newsom, he isn't a physicist, he is an idiot like all politicians. Fusion and fission are both highly radioactive by nature, they both involve neutrons. If you believe fusion is clean, you are a simpleton. Learn something about neutrons for x sake.
And also learn something about fuels, uranium/thorium 1000s of years worth of fuel. Tritium/Helium3, 0 sources and don't talk about making it breeding it or mining on the moon. All those processes are impossible and below unity.
Fission has a natural 3 fold neutron gain per fission event. Fusion as per ITER with blanket breeding has a net gain 2 orders below unity, it consumes tritium hundred times faster than it can ever breed it. The only practical fusion fuel is lithium deuteride which releases tritium and deuterium in situ when the lithium is smashed so no breeding needed and unity gain of neutrons. That is why it is used in thermo nuclear weapons. Oh wait, fusion power is now related to hydrogen bombs, same fuel source, damn.
Read Dr Daniel Jassby on why fusion is essentialy dead, he was involved in it for his entire life at Princeton.
To believe in fusion is about as bad as believing humans can travel and live on Mars without understanding energy costs and realities. The earth bathed in sunshine subsidizes our 300GJ/yr per capita energy use it amplifies it. On Mars no subsidies at all, energy use on Mars for a city will need to be orders more than on earth because nothing is subsidized, no water, no air, no dirt, no safety from cosmic radiation, no chance to escape. Fusion fans are pretty darn close to people that believe hydrogen is a fuel or that water powered cars are real.
Excellent comment. It sums up the whole nonsense of the fantasy world of fusion.
Several points here seem to be factually inaccurate. For example, fusion researchers, I think, believe the breeding blankets can achieve tritium production of perhaps 30% above parity. Don't forget the blanket would incorporate neutron multipliers like lead and beryllium. Jassby is pessimistic because he thinks tritium leakage will make parity difficult to achieve in practice. Jassby, who has been quoted extensively in the popular science media in recent years as a fusion skeptic is generally pessimistic that the engineering challenges of fusion can be overcome in a commercially viable way; at least, in the near future. But, I get the feeling he bases most of his skepticism on the ITER. I think ITER is indeed a boondoggle, but mainly because it's a bureaucratic mess, designed by politicians. It's design was set in stone perhaps 20 years ago, so I think it's become already technologically obsolete. There are many fusion projects incorporating major advances in plasma physics and technology that could leave ITER in the dust (eg. Commonwealth's high-temperature superconducting tokamak among many others).
The appeal of fusion is that it has the highest energy density (I think, about 100x that of fission by mass). And, in general, it seems less "messy" than fission. I've been hearing about molten salt reactors for a dozen years and, unlike fusion, little progress seems to have been made. They have their own technological difficulties. Still, I totally support fission, but hope that fusion could supplant it eventually, as a base load energy source.
ASK what you dont See, ASK about Shadow Programs. Hot Fusion has another puporse, nukes? What about cold or Solid state Fusion?