20 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
maccam94Dec 2021Strongly recommends
Commonwealth Fusion Systems has addressed all of those issues: 1. The higher field strength from the new HTS magnets eliminates turbulence. 2. The ARC reactor will use a FLiBe molten salt blanket to capture energy from neutrons and breed tritium to be used in the fusion reaction. 3. The ARC reactor is designed to have a swappable 2cm thick vacuum chamber, which is the component subjected to the most neutron radiation (everything else is shielded by the molten salt blanket). These chambers are expected to last a year, and while they are moderately radioactive waste, the amount of material is relatively small and they should become safe in the order of a decade. I highly recommend watching Dr. Whyte's talks on YouTube, he discusses the challenges, design, and performance in an approachable way. There's a timestamp index in the comments on this video: ▶ this video
in “After years of doubts, hopes grow that nuclear fusion is near” · View on HN
runnerupNov 2021Strongly recommends
> “People say nuclear is expensive in the West, but they forget to say it’s expensive because of interest rates,” Morin said. It's still a valid criticism if: - They could get those high interest rates from the return on other capital projects (nuclear less return than something else) - All externalities are included in costs We only have so much labor/material/energy available, and we do have to have some way of allocating them to the things with the most return. The big issue, obviously, is that tons and tons of negative externalities aren't priced in to most economic endeavors, that might make fission look a lot better. It might make it look a lot worse. Personally I'm hoping Elon/Mackenzie/Gates/Buffet/etc decide to throw a few dozen billion at fusion. I think its time truly is nigh. If you haven't watched this yet, it's definitely worth your time. Rather than being a super opinionated think-piece, it instead does a fantastic job walking the viewer through: - high level nuclear fusion engineering performance curves / the engineering design contraint space - the current state of nuclear fusion research (as of 5 years ago) and - breaks down why some new smaller reactors will likely begin construction soon and counter-intuitively, the most recently started ones may be completed before a fusion reactor that first broke ground 25 years ago and is still very much being actively built ▶ this video Also worth noting that interesting things happen when you assume you can have "large" a
in “China to build 150 nuclear reactors- more than rest of world over last 35 years” · View on HN
cromwellianDec 2020Strongly recommends
Watch Robert Whyte's presentation. ▶ this video The basic problems have all been solved, the science has been solved too. Tokamaks have already made net fusion power. The only difference between JET, which already succeeded, and ARC, is using Magnets with 2.6x the field strength. The B^4 power scaling, gives you about 50x the power, so ARC will generate 500 MW of power whereas JET (remember, already proven engineering), generated 10MW. So without a doubt, this is just an engineering problem at this point. A prototype device that didn't have to be maintained, could be built exactly like any other Tokamak, just with REBCO magnets, and you'd have the required fusion power. To get the required electric power, and add in maintenance, you need to at the FliBe liquid blanket, replacable toroid sections, and a heat exchanger, but again, these are known engineering problems with known solutions, akin to knowing that landing a rocket is possible, but figuring out the grid fins, heat shield, landing legs, and guidance software. Fusion devices on a small scale have been proving the plasma physics since the 90s. We don't have fusion yet simply because of people being conservative and sticking with traditional "known to work" magnets, which is why ITER is a huge, hulking monstrosity. As Dr Whyte says, cost scales by R, R can be reduced by a factor of 10 from ITER simply by using different magnets, so ARC will produce the same power as ITER, but significantly smaller and cheaper. The basic paper
in “South Korea's fusion device KSTAR runs for 20 seconds at 100M degrees Celsius” · View on HN
TaylorAlexanderJun 2024Recommends
I’ve been following them since they were giving promising lectures at MIT and I absolutely think they have the most solid approach! Tokamaks are well understood, they supposedly have the same plasma physics as ITER which has been heavily scrutinized and supported by work at JET, and their concept is simple - Tokamak but with very high field superconducting magnets using technology that wasn’t available when ITER was conceived, and apparently higher field strengths mean a smaller reactor for the same power gains. As a lay person the story is simple and that’s good! Then they demonstrated their magnets and got $2B in funding and now they’re deep in the construction phase for SPARC. I encourage anyone curious to look up videos on SPARC on YouTube. It’s very encouraging! It seems honestly very reasonable that they will see sustained net energy gain for their entire power plant before 2030 (tho SPARC is still a demonstrator not designed for continuous service, so “sustained” means like one minute). Here’s some videos: 8 years ago: ▶ this video 2 years ago: ▶ this video Latest update posted yesterday: [link]
in “HH70, the first high-temperature superconducting Tokamak achieves first plasma” · View on HN
reapermanMay 2023Recommends
In total a land area about the quarter of the size of California was contaminated with over 37 becquerel of radiation due to Chernobyl, including 10,000 farms in the UK alone. The solitary story was to get people to read the book. The debate is if fission is sustainable for the environment. I talked about contaminated agriculture and how much that was covered up and missing in the statistics — people still living in contaminated land and eating contaminated food today. “The huge numbers of people” is what I’m concerned about and why I advocate for wind and solar. I’m not in favor of the fossil fuel status quo. The radiation and pollution from coal ash and effects of global warming on agriculture are massive. But that’s not an argument for “fission is ecologically sustainable”, that’s an argument for “even though it’s not, we should still build dams and fission power plants anyways”. Which is a fine argument. It’s just a different one. A fission disaster or attack on a fission plant can take half of Californias agriculture out of the picture over night. You can’t say fission and wind have similar risk at the tail ends. Yeah, statistically it hasn’t happened, but the risk exists. Besides, new fission plants will take 20 years to build and by then we'll have actually clean baseload energy from fusion reactors. This video[0] is from 7 years ago, but it provides an amazing breakdown of the physics of fusion energy. The timeline and physics predicted in the lecture have come to pas
in “Renewables supplied 65% of new US utility-scale generating capacity in Q1 2023” · View on HN
hangonhnMar 2021Recommends
The MIT Club of Northern California posted a video a few years ago on this exact topic and reactor: ▶ this video This thing came out of MIT, at least according to the video, and was really the collective efforts of a bunch of MIT grad students who made the breakthrough partially by taking a very Silicon Valley startup approach of using off-the-shelf parts, experimenting with new ideas, and starting small. I don't know if Professor Whyte framed it that way to appeal to the crowd or not.
in “Fusion startup plans reactor with small but powerful superconducting magnets” · View on HN
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DesiLurkerSep 2020Recommends
yes thats true. ITER is obsolete already because it actually cannot use these high-temp-high-Tesla superconductors. at the moment ITERs best hope is that it 'proves' that fusion is viable & then do a full redesign for DEMO to do proper scaled operation. here is the original presentation by Dr Whyte of MIT behind this Sparc project: ▶ this video he talks about the impact of these newer magnets at around 26min mark.
in “Compact nuclear fusion reactor is 'very likely to work,' studies suggest” · View on HN
mastaxJul 2018Recommends
"Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion?" - Professor Dennis Whyte. ▶ this video The title threw me off, but it's a very interesting and grounded talk about the different approaches to scaling fusion energy.
in “Ask HN: What talks or videos do you suggest to watch on a long flight?” · View on HN
scottmsulMar 2018Recommends
The real deal is here, from MIT: ▶ this video Apparently there was a recent breakthrough in superconductors, which allows significantly more current in the inductor coils while still maintaining superconductivity. This in turn allows for much stronger magnetic fields, hence tighter confinement of the plasma and therefore more fusion. A standard tokamak with these new superconductors should produce more energy out than energy in, and be a viable source of energy.
in “Lockheed Martin has obtained a patent for a compact fusion reactor” · View on HN
JumpCrisscrossMar 2018Recommends
Eye opener is the chart at 18:03: "from 1970 to 1995, [fusion] power and energy increased much faster than computing power (Moore's Law)" [1]. Magnetic-confinement fusion stalled, according to Dr. Whyte, because to get more power (and efficiency) we need stronger fields. To get stronger fields we needed bigger magnets. To support bigger magnets one needs bigger structures. Big magnets and big structures will absorb more magnetic and neutron flux; that increases maintenance frequency, complexity and cost. Better superconductors let us get stronger fields without bigger magnets. That changes the cost function. [1] ▶ this video
in “Lockheed Martin has obtained a patent for a compact fusion reactor” · View on HN
maxharrisNov 2017Recommends
Instead of trying to reduce options for people, why not put your energy toward something positive, like this? ▶ this video
in “For the love of Earth, stop traveling” · View on HN
GudAug 2023Cites it
Any solution to climate change will take decades to implement. There is no turning this around quickly. CFS are working on their first prototype reactor to be finished within a few years, but their factory to begin mass producing will take another decade. It is of course possible CFS will fail. However they have been on track for a while now. ▶ this video
in “Carl Sagan testifying before Congress in 1985 on climate change [video]” · View on HN
DennisPJun 2022Cites it
Can you provide a source for that? Because here's the head of MIT's fusion program, claiming the exact opposite: ▶ this video
in “Progress toward fusion energy breakeven measured against Lawson criterion” · View on HN
dkbrkFeb 2022Cites it
I understand there's a bit more to it than that. Here's the section in Professor Whyte's talk: ▶ this video > It's even more subtle than that, in fact this is really one of the things we've studies at MIT, is that there's other things that come in terms of benefits, particularly when you make the magnetic field very high, it basically starts to tame, just all of the whole suite of plasma instabilities that exist.
in “Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy” · View on HN
matt2000Dec 2018Cites it
I strongly object to the language that's commonly used around fusion research. Much of it unfairly frames the discussion around what would be a world-changing technology if realized. For example, in this article: "the controversial ITER project, a hugely expensive fusion reactor..." There is no doubt this is an expensive project, estimated at ~$20B total cost ( [link] ) However, in terms of possible upsides or even compared to other projects it's _cheap_. Boston's "Big Dig" was $24B for example: [link] Which would you rather have? A 1.5m tunnel, or an energy source that would change the future of human civilization? I am being somewhat unfair here since the Big Dig was a case study of mismanagement and cost overruns, but as a society we should be willing to spend significant resources on world changing research instead of say $22.5B on three new boats: [link] All that being said, the way forward is probably to figure out ways to make fusion related projects smaller in scale and cost. Then multiple attempts can proceed in parallel without all the organizational and governmental overhead. More on that here: ▶ this video
in “United States should prepare to build a prototype fusion power plant, panel says” · View on HN
noetic_techyNov 2018Cites it
I've seen the MIT lecture that presented this. Here are the main hurdles: 1) Estimated $40 billion USD need to build a test reactor. 2) Not enough FLiBe fluid (Low-Z fluid) on the planet for the reaction chamber. Would need large scale manufacturing. Source: ▶ this video
in “A faster, cheaper path to fusion energy” · View on HN
sienMar 2018Cites it
Sadly, that joke is at least 30 years old too. There are lots of companies in the game now. Tri Alpha Energy, General Fusion, Lockheed Martin and there are quite a few more. There is the Wendelstein 7X stellarator and ITER. The increase in fusion magnetic energy has actually been faster than Moore's law. See this video at 18:30 ▶ this video The massive improvements in superconductive magnets are really making a huge impact. Check out ARC and SPARC from MIT. Humanity is going to get usable energy generated from fusion.
in “Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists” · View on HN
tim333Feb 2018Cites it
I had similar thoughts after watching the MIT video ( ▶ this video ). It would seem to make sense to scrap the $20bn ITER abd build MITs proposed $300m SPARC prototype instead [link] Quicker to make, cheaper, more modern tech and much closer to a possible commercial design.
in “ITER is a showcase for the drawbacks of fusion energy” · View on HN
visargaAug 2017Cites it
I watched a video about fusion where they say we have better superconductors now - the so called REBCO tape, that are cheap and most importantly - can generate stronger magnetic fields. So they can shrink the reactor 10x and make it cheaper and faster than the ITER project. Source: ▶ this video
in “Nuclear fusion is on the brink of a milestone, but faces lack of funding [audio]” · View on HN
paulmdDec 2016Cites it
Fusion being 20 years away was contingent on receiving an appropriate level of funding. Given the funding it's received (below the "fusion never" level), it's exactly on track. In fact, if anything it's ahead of "never" given the advances in superconducting materials we've made, since the director of MIT's fusion program seems to think that we're now only 5 years away from energy-positive fusion. [link] (source: [link] ) MIT director: ▶ this video Manned missions to Mars are also perfectly feasible. Like fusion, we just don't devote enough resources to it. Pretty much anything space-related would be much easier with two simple steps: first, you build a launch loop to drop launch costs. It's all the capabilities of a space elevator but doesn't require any exotic materials. Launch costs are estimated at ~$3 per kg for a 20GW system, figuring $30B construction cost with 5-year payback if you can hit 100% utilization. And no that's not a typo, that's 5 years to profit at $3/kg - where's Elon Musk when you need him, right? :P [link] [link] Then, you drag an asteroid into orbit and mine it, so you have a bunch of material that's not at the bottom of a gravity well. Both of those steps are in a similar category to a manned mission to Mars - feasible, but would take some serious engineering and serious resources. But once you do them, you also open some serious doors. There is a massive quantity of literally any metal you want in an asteroid. One small rocky asteroid has about 10x the tot
in “Is nuclear fusion poised to deliver?” · View on HN