this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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We really should stop talking about "net energy gain" and not taking into account ALL the energy that goes into the process, just the initiation.
It's like saying you get net energy gain from pushing a boulder down a hill, not taking into account having to get the boulder up the hill, but just the pushing itself.
Don't get me wrong, it's good news, but misleading.
The objective number will never be net positive. All that energy has been around in some form since the big bang started. Any measure of the energy "we" put in is subjective by definition. That said, I don't think the scientists are trying to spin some bullshit. If you're designing an experiment that measures energy, your starting point must be well defined and precisely measurable or it wouldn't be repeatable. You don't want to muddy up the results worrying about where all the materials and equipment come from. That's the engineering that comes after the science.
I wouldn't say never, but you're right that we should measure the system based on it's output once it starts running. The important thing is to prove that the concept can be net positive. If you can get a long enough life out of it then the manufacturing impacts are negligible
Well, the typical way of measuring q does measure the energy it takes to get the boulder up the hill, but not the inefficiency of the machine to get the boulder up there and the ineffency in extracting its energy as it goes back down.
There's a lot of unsexy research that could make fusion come a whole lot sooner. More efficient powerful lasers, better cooling methods and design for superconducting electromagnetics, more efficient containment methods and more thought on how to extract energy from the plasma efficiently, and then making it cheap enough to build and maintain that we can actually afford to build them.
A lot of incredible science would be involved. And much much more money and a lot of time.
If we (humanity) could achieve that, that would be really cool.
But: how much solar-, wind- and battery-farms could we built with the same money and in much less time?
Fusion is great, but it will probably not be the solution of the energy demand we currently have. Nevertheless it’s something we should pursue furthermore. But we shouldn’t bet everything on it.
Why would it have to be either / or? Fusion research funding is frankly ridiculously low as it is, so it's not like it's eating into funds that could be used for building renewable power stations.
In fact, fusion funding is so low, it's frankly surprising we make any progress at all.
Fusion funding projections from 1976.
Yeah it's mind-boggling how underfunded fusion research is, considering the potential payoff. Fission is great in many ways, but it requires finding and handling spicy rocks & their by-products that will make your DNA fall into pieces if you're not careful, which is not so great.
Fusion would be clean and damn near free energy (in the sense that the fuel isn't rare or expensive), and unlike renewables you'd get output practically 24/7 and at massively better W/m^2^ (eg wind generator parks take up a lot of space). We need both renewables and a reliable and non-polluting steady state generation method, and regular nukes have a lot of downsides (even the modular designs.)
Though the vast majority of this space can still be used. I live near a wind farm and the area under the turbines still is ranchland. There are cows just chilling under them. The wind company pays farmers for the land in a long term lease agreement: https://www.wri.org/insights/how-wind-turbines-are-providing-safety-net-rural-farmers.
Oh yeah absolutely, I just meant that you need a lot of land for both wind and solar (and solar's worse in this regard)
Slightly misleading, but... look, when up until now the boulder would just fall back crushing you each time you tried to push it down the hill... then having it roll down a few feet is an accomplishment. Not a great accomplishment, not particularly practical either... but still a big difference from getting crushed by it 🙂
I don't think scientists care about how lamens percieve their accomplishments.
Edit: lemons not lamens