Nuclear Fusion Project, Iter begins assembly(theguardian.com) |
Nuclear Fusion Project, Iter begins assembly(theguardian.com) |
It's also not infinitely "clean" energy. A fusion reactor is not a black box that is built once and never again maintained or rebuilt, or doesn't use any consumable components besides fuel.
We already have the technology that gives us nearly clean energy, namely nuclear (fission) reactors. If we truly want to reduce CO2, we should be ramping up nuclear power, as a bridge to switching to renewables in the long term. If only nuclear power wasn't so politically... radioactive.
Fusion would provide (much) more energy, use (much) less radioactive inputs, and produce (much) less radioactive outputs. Fusion is significantly safer. In a failure mode the fusion reaction will lose containment and die out like a fire without oxygen. Fission rods will continue to produce heat & radiation in a failure mode, and all failure modes of a fission power plant need to account for this.
I’m actually pro fission, because the risks of fission are lower than the risks of coal, oil, and natural gas. Yes, the article was hyperbolic. However, you’re under-hyping the advancement of fusion. When fusion comes it will be politically palpable globally, cleaner than fission, and it will reduce the cost of energy significantly.
Not all fission designs require solid fuel rods, e.g. LFTR, which coincidentally has a failure mode that is much safer than solid fuel fission reactors.
All language exists in context. This isn't a math prof talking of 1/0-type infinity. This is a practical infinity, ie so much energy that we cannot contemplate how we would run out. With literal oceans of hydrogen at our feet, and more landing on earth daily in the form of comets/asteroids, speaking of infinities is understandable.
They just mean "a lot"
It’ll also enable unlimited desalination which would allow more crops and a lot more food, ending a whole mess of problems.
From the little I know about it, this damage you talk about only means getting CO2 levels back to normal. Great, but by the time that becomes realistic (seems no sooner than 2050 since that's about when there will be a demo, and only a demo) it's getting a bit too late for all side effects, i.e. global warming and all damage which comes with it. Add to that the whole latency of the system, and I'm not too optimistic.
In order to get that energy you'll have to build a hugely complex industrial installation. That won't be for free. It won't be easy. If it will even be possible remains to be seen. You'll still need transmission lines and other infrastructure that costs money.
Whether it'll work and if it works whether it will be cost competitive to renewable energy (still improving and getting cheaper) remains to be seen. But it almost certainly won't be "virtually unlimited".
Norman Borlaug on receiving the Nobel Prize for the green revolution, said it well:
"The green revolution has won a temporary success in man's war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.
Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the "Population Monster"...Since man is potentially a rational being, however, I am confident that within the next two decades he will recognize the self-destructive course he steers along the road of irresponsible population growth..."
We haven't steered away from that course. Fusion would accelerate us on it. If we have to come into balance at some point, why not now instead of when we exhaust fusion's potential? Why does this community think we can solve every technical problem from the moon to Mars to fusion, but we can't live in balance with nature?
If success was guaranteed money wouldn't really matter.
Though part from success we have deadlines etc. that complicate the matter further. Regardless, this is welcome news.
Then we'd have to put I guess hundreds of cubic kilometres of liquid co2 somewhere. I long ago lost any hope we will deal with it.
Doesn't help with the amount of gas you'd need to process, but the storage part is doable.
For what it's worth, it apparently is much easier to scrub CO2 from sea water than from atmosphere.
The thing about a fusion plant is that there likely won't be that many people on site. Failure modes for the most part ought to look like conventional explosions, which we largely know how to mitigate where they're likely.
What worries me, with the sequence of plants, starting with ITER and DEMO, is that because of the scaling laws that seem to be involved, we're heading towards very few gigantic generators, where they're each responsible for such a large proportion of the power supply that we couldn't cope with any one of them going offline. The immediate power loss itself could be responsible for loss of life.
And either way, energy-intensive practices wouldn't accelerate environmental destruction, they would enable us have a smaller footprint in the natural world through, for instance, vertical farming (currently infeasible because electricity is more expensive than sunlight), carbon capture, switching from aquifers to desalinated seawater, etc.
With greater prosperity comes reduced birth rates. This has been seen across the globe in a variety of cultures. The thinking goes that if fusion, cheap energy, can lift people out of poverty it will contribute to decreasing population growth.