Nuclear fusion is the preferred deus ex machina in the minds of some who long for cheap, abundant energy, although fusion will never be either. The challenge: containing the plasma fuel that heats to millions of degrees inside a “bottle” made of magnetic fields produced by a superconducting magnet kept at absolute zero a few feet away. The concept’s been likened to trying to hold water inside rubber bands. A press release from MIT News entitled “New Insights on Fusion Power” celebrates the kind of esoteric advances that indicate that fusion lies somewhere beyond the Hubble Deep Field in the cosmology of future energy sources (i.e. just as distant as when I first wrote about it in 1978).
MIT scientists have discovered a way to “push the plasma around inside the [reactor] vessel” with radio-frequency waves. With this, they can prevent heat loss to the vessel walls, as well as the “internal turbulence that can reduce the efficiency of fusion reactions.” That, they say, could be crucial to the planned International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), currently being constructed in France. But these are just a couple of a number of issues preventing fusion reactors from producing more energy than they consume.
Another recent development which could help the ITER: a new way of injecting a blast of argon or neon into the reactor vessel– to quench “a kind of runaway effect that could cause severe damage to reactor components” (uh-oh)– by turning plasma energy into light. For the ITER, such a blast would require, for a mere thousandth of a second, the equivalent of the total electricity production of the United States. I can smell the grid frying from Caribou, Maine, to San Diego.
So, for the near future, EVs will depend on coal (which produces slightly less than half of US electricity), natural gas (21 percent), nuclear (19 percent), hydro (6.9 percent) and “other” (includes wind, 3.3 percent) and oil (1.1 percent).
Big deal, I create fusion here at home. Just requires some old bed springs and malt liquor.
I’ve visited this reactor at MIT and its actually really freaking cool. They run the thing for a fraction of a second at a time, and in that fraction of a second the reactor uses more electricity than the entire city of Cambridge MA uses in a day. They have their own dedicated giant flywheel (2 stories tall) which slowly takes power from the public grid and then provides the enormous amount of electrical power that the reactor uses.
The best part is that this is not some crazy way out there technology, fusion is possible, but still needs lots of work.
higher-power reactors such as the planned ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) now under construction in France,
My real issue is why is this being built in France? The US is providing some funding for this (along with many other countries), but why not push to have this built in the US? I’ll never forgive the democratic congress in the mid 90s for canceling the Superconducting Super Collider project. And ever since then it seems nobody in this country has the stomach for (admittedly risky) large scale scientific research projects.
Forget the bailouts, spend the $35 billion on basic scientific research towards new energy sources.
@GeeDashOff:
“My real issue is why is this being built in France? The US is providing some funding for this (along with many other countries), but why not push to have this built in the US?”
Then my question to you is how much is the US actually putting up? If it is the most, then you have an argument. However, if its equal to or less than everyone else then there is probably some other logical reason to have this thing in France.
@GeeDashOff
It does sound cool, but that doesn’t make it likely to happen in our lifetimes. They’ve been working on fusion for over half a century. It’s not going to happen in the time frame that would be critical for reducing carbon emissions soon enough to avoid hitting a climatological tipping point, and if/when it does happen, it is going to be extremely expensive.
Meanwhile, ten years from now, wind and solar will probably supply more power than nuclear. Texas alone will supply about 5% of current production in wind.
John R:
However, if its equal to or less than everyone else then they is probably some other logical reason to have this thing in France.
I would wager it’s a political thing more than a financial thing. Besides, aren’t they really gung-ho for nuclear in France?
My real issue is why is this being built in France?
France has the world’s safest, most comprehensive commercial nuclear program. The American system is pretty balkanized by comparison.
@psarhjinian
Fusion and fission are separate issues. The ad hoc nature of the US cmmercial nuclear program as compared to France is no reason why that fusion reactor couldn’t be built in the US just as effectively as in France. But France has much more central control over these sorts of things, and the government has long had a very favorable attitude towards nuclear generally.
I just can’t believe you mentioned Caribou, ME in the article — I didn’t think anybody outside of Caribou had ever heard of it. I lived there until about three months ago.
ITER is dead “Z machine” if the future: Originally designed to supply 50 terawatts of power in one fast pulse, technological advances resulted in an increased output of 290 terawatts, enough to study nuclear fusion. Z releases 80 times the world’s electrical power output for about seventy nanoseconds; however, only a moderate amount of energy is consumed in each test (roughly twelve megajoules) – the efficiency from wall current to X-ray output is about 15% [1][2]. Marx generators are slowly charged with energy prior to firing.
heck Id even setle for a fleet of fast-breeder reactors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Funding
Wow, that took all of one second on Google to avoid sounding like an ignorant idiot.
According to the wikipedia entry for the ITER its funded based on where it was decided to be built, with the host country paying 50% and the contributing countries splitting the rest. The US didn’t submit a proposal for a project site so it was never in the running.
According to that same page the thing is projected to cost about $10 billion. Even if the costs balloon to something like $35 billion, and even if the reactor never worked correctly, I’d still think it a better investment of money than the domestic auto companies.
Even if the thing never worked I’d rather send $35 billion down a scientific research black hole then send the money to companies that have shown they are completely incompetent at what they do. At least the scientific research could produce useful information in the process. Giving the auto companies $35 billion will just lead to more CEOs getting rich and just delay them filing for bankruptcy (or asking for more money) by what, another 5 or 10 years, maybe?
Oh, and today 20% of our electricity is Nuclear and totally carbon free. By contrast renewables provide 6% of our electricity today. I’ll eat my hat if in 10 years from now renewables combined are contributing 20% of our electricity. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see that happen, but without something akin to a renewable Manhattan Project its just not going to happen.
I am sure there is technology out there in the works or yet to be discovered that can provide cheap energy for America (or as said even just as with France’s policy towards current nuclear technology).
However the dirty secret is that is the last thing that the environmental left wants. They do not want cheap gas, cheap electricity, access to more coal, and basically a growing economy and more people. As my wife once said to me, “When the economy is good, everyone is having babies.”
And to think that the party of environmentalism is just about in full control of the American government and their laws that they make us live under.
I’m not the biggest fan of the ITER. I remember the dragged-out fight over where to build the contraption, and it came down to France or Japan. France won out through a combination of giving the Japanese a lot of concessions (work share, lab director I think by fiat will be Japanese guy) and outright Gallic temper-tantrums. It also soothed partners’ nationalist angst with the fact they are building the thing in the south of France about a hour’s (Peugot = 2 hours including real-time maintenance) drive from the Riviera and Monte Carlo. I doubt that’s because it helps the reactor’s chances…lol.
However, endeavors like this with a bunch of scientists from these countries via government hand-holding produces Epic Fails in big science. Look at the ISS, throw a Camaro on space-cinder blocks in front of it and the orbiting double-wide motif is complete. For $100 billion, that is not very impressive.
Fusion power is a holy grail, and it gets even holier and more unobtainable when you look at the ideal fuel for fusion, which I believe is the very high temp proton + boron fusion reaction. With that reaction, you get three charged He-4 alphas, each with an energy of ~4 MeV or so, and no neutron side-reactions. Magnetically decelerate the alphas and recover the juice, and that’s the holy grail because you have a solid-state reactor apparatus for recovering the energy at some ~80% or better efficiency without turbines or like components.
Sounds awesome, ’till you look at the 300KeV temps it takes to run that reaction. The dead-center of a detonating thermonuclear secondary isn’t even close to that hot. But oh boy, if someone figured out how to crank cheap muons without a 100 MeV accelerator, we’d be in bidness with that reaction.
There’s other ideas for fusion in addition to ITER as well, such as superlaser-powered-implosion of tiny fuel pellets in an analog of the way a thermonuclear bomb works, they’re working on that at LLNL and the Brits are cooking up something called HiPER which may even be more promising. Also, electrostatic confinement concepts hang out around the fringe of the mainstream in this esoteric business. But a widget I built for a high -school science fair way back when (and it won, and scared the sh*t out of the organizing teacher when I told her it was RADIOACTIVE) is a “fusor.” Look up “Farnsworth Fusor” on the googlewebs to learn about maybe the coolest thing a high school kid can build for physics class, and it really produces real fusion. Absolutely neat little machines those fusors are, and they LOOK COOL when they are operating, like something out of Dr. Who.
But France has much more central control over these sorts of things, and the government has long had a very favorable attitude towards nuclear generally.
Exactly. That means the political and bureaucratic hoops, not to mention NIMBYism, simply aren’t an issue. Plus you don’t have to get sponsors from several agencies, corporations and/or levels of government; you just have to talk to EDF.
I’ve always been of the opinion that the US has too much government, but only because they’re so afraid of Federal power that they beef up the autonomy of state and municipal systems to an alarming degree.
And to think that the party of environmentalism is just about in full control of the American government and their laws that they make us live under.
As an environmentalist, the best I can dignify that with is a snort of derision. Last I checked, the Greens didn’t win anything, and the Democrats only look green because they’re standing next to the Republicans, who are black.
I think you need to readjust the centre of you personal political spectrum a little, because I think it tilts a bit too far to the right by default.
If they perfected these gizmos tomorrow, it would not generate a single watt of power in the US until such time, if ever, as the last lawyer is strangled with the entrails of the last environmentalist.
RW in his testimony today:
“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads…”
Cue DeLorean and music
Speaking of spending 35 bil in a good way…
Working with composite materials is still rather labor-intensive. If enough money could be poured into educating former auto workers, two years from now Michigan would be building countless blades, motors, and posts for wind turbines. There’s your Manhattan renewable project. I bet it won’t cost 35 bil to educate a few hundred thousand on how to lay glass and wind rotors. This will create a gigantic industry (think fiberglass and carbon-fiber factories, chemical plants, steel, wire, engineering, and so on) out of nowhere, perhaps even big enough to dwarf the automakers.
But then again, you need big american trucks to eat gas so that the oil companies can get cash and keep funding election campaigns, so the above nevergunnahappen.
Robert Schwartz – “until such time, if ever, as the last lawyer is strangled with the entrails of the last environmentalist”
Man I hope I am alive to see that……
@GeeDashOff
the great thing about renewables is you don’ t need a manhattan project. It is being done in a decentralized manner. As I said above, already Texas has plans for wind equivalent to 5% of US electricity production, and Cape Wind will probably (finally!) be approved. In five years utilities may well be financing PVs on their customers roofs, and a number of forward-thinking utilities, such as PG&E, are working on renewables. See for example http://tinyurl.com/yrp88g
what’s so wrong with regular good ole clean, safe, nuclear fission?
You think a nuclear plant meltdown (now contained by modern safety measures) was a big deal back in the 80s?
Imagine what a fusion reaction gone bad could do (hint – create the sun on planet earth).
Imagine what a fusion reaction gone bad could do (hint – create the sun on planet earth).
There is no way a fusion reactor of any kind could create a disaster of that magnitude in a failure. Fusion reactors and reactions are totally different than their fission analogs.
Fusion is actually much like chemical combustion in its behavior, its just the fuels and their products are nuclear instead of molecular in energy-density. That also means it takes an very hot “spark plug” and high compression to both ignite and burn the fuels respectively.
I say we hand it over to Elon Musk. He’ll have a car running on fusion before the end of next year, priced at 100 000$, with a trillion mile range, 800 million horsepower, and a transmission made of diamond. Taking deposits now.