ITER Fusion Reactor - Was Excited, less so now.

"sn4cktimes" (snacktimes) 08/05/2020 at 14:22 • Filed to: None

0

21

As per usual I went down a rabbit hole and found only the skeletons and poops the weasels leave behind. Dammit.

As a disclaimer: I like ICE vehicles and own several, I like EV’s and currently own none but am considering converting one 9or maybe HEMI it) . I think we should be greener individually and as a society, and that we need to pick up the pace and make some sacrifices to do so. I’m also fairly in-compassionate towards humanity at large, and think we’re a plague... but I like stuff, fun, eating meat, and come from a coal mining/logging town in the Rockies from Canada. I like shooting guns, but hate the idea of public guns in general. I’ve owned a Jeep (even in a Jeep club) , own a dirt bike, like being in nature and think we should both protect it AND use it. I’m both left leaning and right leaning, sometimes on the same topic. There you go. I’m a standard hypocritical person. Now you know some stuff about me and can carry on w ithout thinking I’m a card carrying member of some particular group or another.

I was pretty jazzed by ITER’s current progress and then started to question some stuff, the how’s, the why’s, the what-isn’t-being-said’s. ITER itself doesn’t really discuss a lot of the inherent downsides to using a Tokamak design; no surprise really. Nobody really does that. Here’s two pretty coherent (AKA light on the super tech talk ) articles. One from a someone who designed fission reactors, and studied fusion processes, and another who worked in the Princeton F u ssion La b .

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! - circa 2015

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! - circa 2018

Turns out there a quite a few considerably large downsides, AND they aren’t even going to pump energy into France’s grid. Like at all. Like ever. It’s all just a giant proof of concept project. It’s cool and all, but ITER definitely slides a lot of PR crap around. I’ve watched plenty of videos on it, and I’ve just started to scrap past the glorious icing and get into the blasé cake underneath it all .

Basically another giant, overpriced, underproducing boondoggle. We should just make   fission fast breeders like Bill Gate s’ company designed and get over a “forever” fix and do something “ doable” now. Science is rad, but don’t pretend it’s something it’s not.

Oppo- inions? I’d like to hear thoughts for sure.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > sn4cktimes 08/05/2020 at 15:06

1

Toka maks seem to be the most viable fusion source, and it’s important we keep working on this . It’s very unfortunate that this particular project has gotten mired in beaurocratic hell.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > sn4cktimes 08/05/2020 at 15:09

3

I agree, with no useful reactor in sight they should build the must better ones we do know how to build. I remember reading about two of three nuclear reactor designs that are far better than what we have now. Why can’t we put smart people in charge of things?? Instead we have an orange orangutan trying to promote coal. 

Just Jeepin' > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 08/05/2020 at 15:26

0

I wish we’d throw some money at cold fusion. Sure, it’s a long shot at best, but holy hell if there’s something to it that would be a real game changer.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > 415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) 08/05/2020 at 16:08

0

Well, here, “the market” let a lot of non-compatible ideas into the “marketplace”, all of which don’t really bring in 60 years of better ideas and refinement.

The French standardized early and tweaked one base design a lot to get to a pretty reliable system=-= with relative few issues.

Over here? We suffered through Chalk River and Three MIle Island and the near disaster near Detroit and Ft St. Vrain and a dozen other “near misses” nobody talks about.

Gates and Myrvohld are actual geniuses. Let them refine the next gen, then roll it out en masse. Bonus round? All the free hydrogen we need to power planes, trains and trucks....

ClassicDatsunDebate > sn4cktimes 08/05/2020 at 16:10

0

We’ll get fusion reactors when we get flying cars.

sn4cktimes > ClassicDatsunDebate 08/05/2020 at 16:15

0

Yeah... I’m leaning towards this line of thinking a lot more now.

sn4cktimes > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 08/05/2020 at 16:17

0

I think as a scientific project ITER is amazing. I don’t like the PR lean  towards it producing energy though. It’ll produce heat energy, sure. But we need useful electricity. The Large Hadron Collider is cool too, but nobody claimed it was anything but scientific pursuit.

sn4cktimes > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish 08/05/2020 at 16:20

1

French systems seem fairly good for when they went online. I think the issue with the French is how they go about getting their  supply of Uranium from African nations through some pretty unscrupulous corporations. Environmental and humanitarian concerns are tossed out the window south of the Mediterranean.

sn4cktimes > 415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) 08/05/2020 at 16:27

0

The Leftist side of me says there should be government oversite to deal with this, the Rightist is surprised corporations don’t get in on it. The R ealist in me comes to the conclusion that people are stupid and don’t deserve nice things.

I’d say leave it up to “the people” but they’re no better than the leaders they elect in the shitty “democratic” systems we’ve got. There’s no win there. Pretty glass half empty thought today I guess. Natural Gas is better than coal, but it seems like a pretty crappy stopgap. I think we should just drill every single oil/gas shaft deeper and turn used sites into geothermal and suck at the core until our future progeny can get a better handle on this. I’d rather see the countryside dotted with tiny geothermal plant , solar panels, and wind turbines than burning fossils. Long term we need oil to make stuff, not to be burned.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > sn4cktimes 08/05/2020 at 17:05

0

I’m still excited about it....this is a new technology that we’ve never really been able to TRY before, properly. Even if this is a proof of concept, it’s still exciting in that if they can get it to start sortof working reliably, we can only improve, simplify and shrink the technology from there!

Jb boin > sn4cktimes 08/05/2020 at 17:29

0

Keep in mind that the E on ITER is for experimental and there has been experimental and research reactors for a long time (there is even one in my city) that helped develop more efficient and safer designs , nuclear f usion is not something that you want to botch.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > sn4cktimes 08/05/2020 at 17:45

0

Yeah, it’s a pretty dirty process, too...

Jb boin > sn4cktimes 08/05/2020 at 17:47

0

Nuclear plants in France are owned by EDF with is owned by the state at 80% and an independent administrative authority ( L’Autorité de sûreté nucléaire ) is checking that everything is safe (at least as it should be) and that in formation about risks and incidents are shared with the public .

—

The technology keeps on improving but to be fair, the 3rd generation (called EPR ) is taking way l onger (and cost way more) than expected.

—

While there has been stories about the uranium mines in Africa, i doubt that it could be done sensibly better as it’s happening on unstable regions crippled with corruption.

I f we stopped supplying there, others would take the spot and i doubt they would be doing any be tter .

MrSnrub > sn4cktimes 08/05/2020 at 18:07

0

Fission fast breeders like thorium molten salt? I can’t find a lot of downsides for those, which makes me wonder why they’re not in more widespread use. We desperately need some kind of replacement for fossil fuels for baseload power, and my understanding is that there’s probably not be enough uranium reserves to convert most of the world’s electric supply to conventional fission . The only explanation I’ve read that seems vaguely plausible is that you can’t use them to make weapons-grade material, so the US and USSR never bothered, but that would also be a huge positive for other countries for obvious reasons.

BigBlock440 > sn4cktimes 08/05/2020 at 20:26

0

Lockheed Martin also supposedly has a smaller reactor design they’re working on, haven’t heard anything about it in the past year or so though.

sn4cktimes > Jb boin 08/06/2020 at 16:16

0

Yeah, I doubt the issues in Africa are directly tied to France or the Corporations. But have more to do with how labour, safety, and environmental issues are addressed in many African nations .

sn4cktimes > MrSnrub 08/06/2020 at 16:18

0

I think less “nukes” would be a good thing in general. I feel humans are already pretty good at killing one another, we don’t need specific extinction-level-event weapons kicking around .

sn4cktimes > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 08/06/2020 at 16:20

1

I’m still excited about the tech in general. Just less excited for it solve energy needs now.

sn4cktimes > Jb boin 08/06/2020 at 16:21

0

I thought it was more of a “working” experiment per say. N ot so much of just conceptual proof scenario. Oh well.

sn4cktimes > BigBlock440 08/06/2020 at 16:26

0

I checked around for more info on their project but haven’t heard much... perhaps they’ve figured out it’s trickier than they originally thought....

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > sn4cktimes 08/06/2020 at 17:31

0

Yeah, it’ll be awhile....then again, the first functional nuclear reactor was in 1942 and we had submarines powered by them by 1954, so I think once they manage to get one working reliably, the tech will improve quickly!