Clean energy could be 'closer than ever' after a nuclear fusion machine smashed a record (qz.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 00:00
https://lemmy.world/post/11770700

Clean energy could be ‘closer than ever’ after a nuclear fusion machine smashed a record::JET’s final nuclear fusion experiment produced a record-breaking 69 megajoules of heat. Nice.

#technology

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terminhell@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 00:10 next collapse

Nice

jordanlund@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 01:27 next collapse

newsweek.com/energy-nuclear-fusion-test-jet-world…

“By my estimate this is enough energy to make over 600 cups of tea,” professor Stuart Mangles—a physicist from Imperial College London, England—said in a statement.

rambling_lunatic@sh.itjust.works on 10 Feb 2024 02:19 next collapse

The most English measurement.

TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 09:46 collapse

The British version of Americans measuring things in football fields

CaptainMcMonkey@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 16:19 collapse

Wait, how big IS a football field?

hydration9806@lemmy.ml on 10 Feb 2024 17:20 next collapse

It’s 20.7 Ford F150s long

very_well_lost@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 20:21 collapse

About 50 bald eagle wingspans.

cyd@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 02:02 next collapse

Needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Actually capturing the heat for electricity, and getting more electricity out of it than required to run the reactor itself, remain massive open questions that this generation of research reactors does not even begin to tackle.

saruwatarikooji@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 02:48 collapse

IIRC, this is a big deal because they are achieving more energy out than they put in.

If I’ve been reading these correctly they are achieving it with tiny amounts of fuel and slowly working up as they achieve success. I’m seeing these as proof of concept and fantastic steps in the right direction.

holycrap@lemm.ee on 10 Feb 2024 05:49 next collapse

It doesn’t look like they’re generating electricity with that energy yet, so while you are correct the person you responded to is also correct in that we still need to prove we can harness it efficiently enough.

I think they’ll get there, it just boils down to investment and time.

cyd@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 07:43 collapse

In this context, the “energy that they put in” only counts the heating of the plasma. It does not include the energy needed to run the rest of the reactor, like the magnets that trap the plasma. If you count those other energy needs, about an order of magnitude improvement is still required. Possibly more, if we have to extract the energy (an incredibly hard problem that’s barely been scratched so far).

So yeah, it’s nice to see the progress, but the road ahead is still a very long one.

Cocodapuf@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 12:24 collapse

I feel like the big scary problem is capturing the heat. The proposed method I’ve seen involves a beryllium “blanket” that captures the heat to send it off to a boiler. The problem is beryllium is quite expensive and quite limited in availability. And in fact we may only have enough beryllium (in the world) for a dozen or so reactors. But it’s worse, because these blankets absorb high energy neutrons, and become radioactive over time. And that means two problems, you need to replace the blanket and you need to dispose of radioactive waste.

When you put all that together, I just think “shouldn’t we stick with fission power?”

QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 16:32 collapse

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the problem that Uranium has a half-life of a couple hundred million years, while the half life of beryllium is less than a second?

Only Beryllium-10 has a long half-life for beta decay. Adding another neutron drops that back down to a few seconds and additional neutrons drop it back to a fraction of a second. So as long as that specific type of Beryllium isn’t used, it would be fine, right?

Edit: www.thoughtco.com/beryllium-isotopes-603868

Cocodapuf@lemmy.world on 11 Feb 2024 14:04 collapse

Those quick half-lives decay right away, losing a neutron, right? So that Berillium-11 just decays back into Berillium-10.

The problem is that the blanket is constantly absorbing neutrons from the fusion reactions, that’s it’s job. So despite using simple berillium 5 to build your blanket, you end up with these heavy isotopes over time, and because the heavier ones quickly decay into lighter ones, you basically end up with a whole lot of berillium-10.

RubberElectrons@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 06:29 next collapse

Excellent news. Small steps to hopefully thread the needle with. Don’t be discouraging, people, we need success and vigor.

itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 10 Feb 2024 13:21 collapse

We need renewables now, not viable fusion two decades from now.

7heo@lemmy.ml on 10 Feb 2024 14:03 next collapse

Why not both? 😅

itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 10 Feb 2024 15:46 collapse

Sure, I’m on board with that. But unfortunately all to often hype around fusion is a red herring by the fossil fuel industry :c

RubberElectrons@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 15:57 next collapse

Sorry, that’s false. Is it potentially being co-opted as a distraction by those industries? Yes, in fact probably because of how scummy fossil fuel industries are.

That doesn’t mean anyone is under the illusion that this is a replacement for renewables now. Grow up.

This is still, long term, research ave development which needs to be done.

7heo@lemmy.ml on 10 Feb 2024 16:03 collapse

I think the point itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone was trying to make is that we see news of countries abandoning renewables everywhere, recently, and that the fossil fuel industry is probably partly at play there. And then, they use such red herrings to stop the public from worrying. I can totally see this happening, to be honest.

RubberElectrons@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 16:06 collapse

Why not state it the way you did? Succinctly, I’d have said “we need the current renewables effort to continue, along with this great longer-term research”. Bam, done.

Not “we need renewables now, not fusion in 30yrs” with the accompanying clown sounds.

itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 10 Feb 2024 17:05 collapse

may I ask why you’re so hostile?

As for my point:

Fusion is still a long way from being scalable and commercially viable, and every year we continue burning coal drives us closer to extinction. So we need to work with what we have now, and fast. When we get viable fusion in the future, great, we’ll have secured energy stability even more and maybe made it cheaper (that’s a maybe). But at the moment, we need to invest into renewables more. Orders of magnitude more.

I’m just tired of click-baity articles like this. Fusion’s been 10-20 years away for more than half a century now, and while I don’t doubt that we’re making progress towards it, it won’t be ready in time to be the replacement for coal we are hoping for.

RubberElectrons@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 17:32 collapse

First point is not relevant, fusion has been chronically underfunded for far too long. The money being spent on fusion r&d is far less than the money going to renewables deployment, and you advocate cannabilizing even that???

I won’t go down the list of how many technical contributions are coming out of fusion, just know that there are a lot, that help make both renewables and non-renewable more efficient. How do you switch tremendous amounts of current at extreme voltages, very quickly? The answer directly impacts overall efficiency of everything from EVs to micro & macro-grids. Usually it’s a pick-two-of-the-three, but switch systems are being used to solve these exact issues, successfully.

As for why I’m hostile? Read the previous two paragraphs again, maybe something will jump out at you.

7heo@lemmy.ml on 10 Feb 2024 15:59 collapse

It’s safer for their finances to have the public entertain a pipe dream, rather than a reality check.

RubberElectrons@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 15:57 collapse

It’s gonna be both. Only a simpleton would be worried others think that way.

lemmytellyousomething@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 10 Feb 2024 08:38 next collapse

“closer than ever”

We are now closer than ever at anything that hasn’t happened yet and will happen in the future.

ItsAFake@lemmus.org on 10 Feb 2024 08:42 collapse

We’re closer than you think.

rottingleaf@lemmy.zip on 10 Feb 2024 09:56 collapse

Obviously we are, because we do not think much of something which hasn’t already happened.

positiveWHAT@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 10:13 collapse

Are you guys in a flying circus?

LaggyKar@programming.dev on 10 Feb 2024 09:10 next collapse

So another site that makes it look like the article ends in order to inject some completely unrelated clickbait video in the middle

BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 09:39 next collapse

Why is the project ended? Is there a next prototype?

dee_dubs@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 10:20 collapse

It’s ending because it’s old. JET has been running since the 80s. It’s successor is ITER, which ran into some delays, but is expected to be finished sometime next year.

ianovic69@feddit.uk on 10 Feb 2024 12:58 collapse

And which we (UK) have opted to not be part of.

Instead, we are making a budget available to our own research facilities.

It will be the utterly enormous, mind-blowingly vast sum of…

…wait for it…

600…

million pounds!

(⁠༎ຶ⁠ ⁠෴⁠ ⁠༎ຶ⁠)

wewbull@iusearchlinux.fyi on 10 Feb 2024 10:15 next collapse

69 MJ is 19.17 kWh. About 86p of electricity at today’s wholesale price in the UK (£45/MWh: today is fairly average).

The research they are doing is great, but there’s so much engineering to be done to turn fusion into something practical; something capable of running streams of pulses, not just single ones.

This was the last experiment for this reactor running it outside of design limits.

RubberElectrons@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 16:41 collapse

Yes. That’s already being worked on, in forms other than just the tokamak as well.

riodoro1@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 10:54 next collapse

“Smashed”

Yeah, I’m not reading this.

Rubanski@lemm.ee on 10 Feb 2024 13:40 next collapse

Don’t you want to know how fusion slammed the nonbelievers?

Daft_ish@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 19:01 collapse

Nuclear fusion, this one weird trick.

Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com on 10 Feb 2024 18:38 collapse

I did it for you!

This heat output is about 20% higher than the previous record and twenty times higher than the net positive reaction that made headlines recently.

It’s worth noting that the “twenty times higher” isn’t the takeaway here as two different fusion methods were used. The article describes a significant, incremental milestone - not a ridiculously large leap forward.

The lab that conducted this experiment will be closing down soon, so this achievement is seen as the JET lab’s swan song.

Cocodapuf@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 12:34 next collapse

Tokamaks… sigh.

When it finally works, you will have invented the most expensive form of energy we’ve ever imagined. Congratulations.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m excited for fusion. Fusion has some amazing potential as a power source and propulsion for space ships. But outside of that application, I don’t know… I’m pissemistic. I do not think it will be the global energy revolution so many people seem to think it will be. It will not be unlimited cheap energy, not be a longshot.

DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.ml on 10 Feb 2024 15:56 next collapse

Because you don’t understand shit. This can be made self sufficient and eternally run.

Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 18:42 collapse

And if there’s one thing we’ve all learned, it’s that if it’s cheap to make, the trillionaire owners won’t overcharge for it.

Yes, I think we’ll have trillionaires first.

RubberElectrons@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 16:40 next collapse

There are several other topologies with promise. But even a tokamak can use its first wall latent heat to turn the archaic steam turbine.

While I also have low expectations for plasma density in tokamaks, they’re able to keep plasma at fusion temperatures for minutes at a time.

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 10 Feb 2024 18:15 collapse

its gonna be unlimited expensive energy, which is a start.

except we needed a start 20 years ago, not now lol

Cocodapuf@lemmy.world on 11 Feb 2024 13:53 collapse

Is it unlimited though? I mean sure, the fuel is abundant, we have hydrogen. But the other support materials are quite limited, berillium, helium, nuclear engineers. I don’t think we have enough of all of that for an energy revolution.

RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world on 10 Feb 2024 18:27 next collapse

If only it were leaps and bounds closer and not just a few inches.

trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.com on 10 Feb 2024 18:54 next collapse

We could have a functioning cold fusion reactor tomorrow and it’ll never see public use because the pieces of trash that run the oil industry still have an iron grip on all the politicians worldwide.

assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world on 11 Feb 2024 08:47 collapse

‘Closer than ever’

So perpetually 49 years away rather than 50 years.