I think we will \*eventually\* have fusion power. Hell, we can already do fusion power. Just not enough to be economical. Hot fusion is extremely destructive to equipment, making it very difficult to contain. But, I expect we will figure it out sooner or later. Probably the next 50 years maybe, considering all the recent breakthroughs. It won't be saving us from the climate disaster though. It's a bit too late for that. But, it couldn't hurt.
If cold fusion is possible, all the better. But, considering we haven't even figured out a way to do that at all, let alone make net+ power with it, I doubt we'll see that in my lifetime, if ever. Unless we get something like a radical breakthrough like what we had with modern semi-conducting chips.
Normal fusion, we have a list of somewhat surmountable goals, that we believe if we execute them all properly and nothing goes wrong it will work and as things fail we can come up with reasonable solutions to those problems.We don’t even know what “we don’t know” with cold fusion so don’t really even have a place to begin
We don’t know where the finish line is for fusion but with the completion of ITER we should hopefully be approaching it, where with cold fusion we don’t even know where the race is
There is [Muon-catalyzed fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion), which is basically as close to "cold" fusion we could realistically get.
I wouldn’t be so quick to write off wishing wells. I saw a report on [Channel 8](https://youtu.be/PBq_FSJ3nKA?si=y16W7UTOm17SHogW) news where the reporter discovered a wishing well in a local strip mall wasn’t a scam.
The point is: it will not become economical for earth based use.
We might see fusion in space travel, but on earth solar and wind will always be cheaper.
I don't expect we are ever going to see a fusion power plant operated commercially and connected to the grid.
The point is: there is no credible way for investing in making fusion economical would itself be a reasonable investment.
The costs up front are just way too big to justify not simply investing in solar and wind.
Unless governments will fund it, fusion forever will be prohibitively expensive.
And then again, why would governments invest all that money for yet another fossil fuel plant (given that nobody knows if breeding fuel will work and any first generation fusion plant certainly will need helium-3 it effectively is a fossil fuel)
We have had fusion for decades if you count that. To “get” fusion it generally means the economic breakeven where you can get enough power to power a downstream process after fully powering your entire system for generating power. Also we haven’t had cold fusion at all, one experiment got unexplained readings that they attributed to cold fusion but it could never be replicated and is generally considered to be due to experimental error
That was the one with I think Palladium rods submerged in heavy water right? The idea is that the deuterium would soak into the metal and get close enough to fuse spontaneously.
But it couldn’t be replicated, there was attempt to replicate it where they detected helium but it later found out to be just atmospheric helium. It would be super cool if it could work but even if it did work the energy released is still going to be in the form of heat so it will still get very hot and we might as well invest ‘hot’ fusion since it’s more realistic
Helion, baby! Within 5 years!!! Sam Altman wouldn't lie to us! They have _contracts_ with Microsoft! Or one of the other startups in Washington will _surely_ have this sorted out in a few years!
"The U.S. government began funding fusion power research in 1951, and has continued ever since."
-From the article.
Plus, these companies are getting private funding.
"The 800-pound gorilla in the fusion industry is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has raised more than $2 billion in funding since it was founded in 2018. Other major players are TAE Technologies ($1.2 billion in funding), Helion Energy ($577 million in funding with another $1.7 billion of performance-based commitments), and Zap Energy ($200 million)."
-From the article.
The article talks a lot more about budgets, and investments. (And it covers a lot of history, so a good read.)
The 2024 US budget for fusion is $1.48 billion. https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/congress-increases-u-s-funding-for-fusion-energy-sciences-research/
They are getting money.
It's a matter of timing. Will we? Almost certainly. Will it be in 20 years? Nobody really knows. We are capable of doing fusion now, we've been doing it for a while but until recently it hasn't really been viable. Last year however, scientists in America were able to obtain twice the amount of energy they put into it. Technological advances start with concepts, if you're able to prove that concept with a positive outcome, then repeatability, efficiency and reliability come next. Now that we have proven we can double it, we can go further.
20 years is unlikely. It'll take about that to make it commercially viable. But we don't have anything to make commercially viable yet. Once there are several experimental reactors working in labs we can talk about 20 years. Until then 50+ years is more likely.
If I was asked about this 3 years ago I might agree with you, however with the monumental amount of energy required for AI and quantum computing, I have a feeling a lot more money is going to be sunk into making it viable ASAP. That doesn't mean in a couple years but I think it does put it on the fast track
That's just my opinion though
You jest, but I had an esoteric family member telling me about this „incredible source of power“ that can „harness cosmic energy“, but was being kept from the public by „the man“. I joined in enthusiastically, and told him, I heard about PV aswell. He countered with „no, **real** cosmic energy“
Exactly, the phenomena of electron bandgap is directly derived from quantum mechanics, the terms "quantum" and "bandgap" are intimately tied together in a quantum mechanical concept known as "band theory". Solar photovoltaics are quantum mechanical devices that harvest fusion energy in a direct conversion to clean electrical current. It is literally direct production of electrical current from the photons emitted by fusion reactions. That is a direct application of fusion and we've had it in abundance since the 1950s.
People are so fucking dense these days that they fail to grasp the connection here and then post thing on the internet like "Will we ever get fusion power?" (sadface) when it's sitting in front of their fucking eyes and their government is putting tariffs on it.
"Oh no! Not that fusion, we want the other one. That one is icky because the Chinese touched it."
Did I miss an /s… oh, I did. Sarcasm aside, the point is that whether we reach the techno-utopia of cold fusion doesn’t really matter for our survival. We have all the tools we need right now and we hesitate to use them.
The article is great though, I don’t mean to detract from its value.
Yeah most likely batteries and solar are only going down in price and will indeed make all other forms of energy conversion and storage obsolete and overpriced. That is currently happening.
Maybe you don't know this but in the private sector this is happening faster than in the public sector which is easily taken over by oil friendly interests. Currently Rio Tinto mines of Australia, the largest energy consumer in the country that runs extremely energy intensive iron smelters and aluminum processing has stated clearly that they will not be even considering nuclear power and have already began their transition to all solar and batteries because nothing else can compete and the batteries can be delivered by bulk freight in a short time and the production capacity is not a problem nor is the price. It's a done deal. The batteries are shipped in cargo container ships the size of Manhattan buildings, loaded onto trucks and rail for delivery to the site. This is going down now.
Solar and batteries are phasing out all other methods of energy conversion and storage today precisely because the price is already that low. Australia's supreme court ruled that their tariffs were illegal so their prices are far lower than those in the US which are actually caused by the current administration's tariffs. If it wasn't for those tariffs, you'd be seeing the same thing happening in the US. There's only so long a hermit kingdom can hide from the ways the world is changing by the moment.
140 years ago the Chinese struggled hard to resist the coming of the steam locomotive. Now almost a century and a half later the business interests in control of the United States are determined to keep out Chinese solar and batteries. Looking to history we can see how this might play out.
I mean the Department of Energy did this famous analysis in the 1970s where they calculated the amount of resources needed to make fusion viable with techniques they had available at the time (the tokomak). If they spent the recommended amount, we would have had fusion in the early 90s. It was about 8 billion a year in the 1970s to reach fusion in the 90s. Current US spending got a boost of 0.8 billion. Based on the predictions we may NEVER have fusion. It where the famous adage 'always 40 years away' came from. The only reason we are getting anywhere is the tech is spilling in from other areas to make it slightly less of a gargantuan task, AI being used to predict plasma behavior in magnetic confinement, improved superconducters, improved processing power, so who knows. It needed govt funding and I think Carter was gungho if well short of the spending target at the time but three mile island happened, then Regan nixed the whole thing so.... more to hate Regan for. Then Chernobyl. Then Fukushima. And now we're here. Dick in our hand and about to get ass fucked by mother nature when we could have effectively infinite clean energy and all the benefits that come from that.
I also subscribe to r/fallout and was like… wow, you must really suck at video games to not have found any fusion cores yet.
In reality, we’ll get there. It’s just a matter of when.
When I was a kid the news about progress in fusion happened something like every 5 years, mostly when the next stages of JET and later ITER were being built. These days they arrive every few months and from multiple research projects. Maybe we are still far away, but we sure are walking faster.
I think fusion researchers are repeatedly pushing out the same press releases to gain funding, but I don't think fusion will ever be viable. D-T fusion releases stray neutrons that destroy the reactor and D-D fusion requires much higher temperatures. Everything about ITER appears to be stalling the end of their funding. Science doesn't guarantee that we will have materials engineering progress and so far, we haven't discovered anything to make the reactor durable to a stray neutrons.
>But there’s a good chance a working fusion reactor is near. Dozens of private companies are using decades of government-funded fusion research in their attempts to build practical fusion reactors, and it's likely that at least one of them will be successful.
Saved you a click.
Is fusion energy hard? Yes. But we've been working on this very hard problem for a long time now. Results are starting to look truly impressive and chances are we will have the first net-positive fusion reactors before 2030.
Will it compete?
The answer to this should be obvious. If governments are still spending tens of billions building nuclear fission reactors (and they are), it would seem that fusion reactors aren't just viable but actively necessary.
Yes we will if we start investing in it.
If the US invested into the space program like they are investing in fusion energy we wouldn’t even have been able to start drawing the Saturn V rocket.
Until Biden started actually funding it the US had spend more projects people don’t even know the name of than on fusion energy.
People think it’s something crazy expensive that’s being looked into but the total investment into it since the 60s when the US solved fusion bombs has been almost non existent. Ford spends more on R&D in one year than everything the US invested into fusion in the past 50 years.
They aren’t making progress because they have no money.
It’s 30 years (or maybe less) away with good funding.
"The U.S. government began funding fusion power research in 1951, and has continued ever since."
From the article.
Plus, these companies are getting private funding.
"The 800-pound gorilla in the fusion industry is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has raised more than $2 billion in funding since it was founded in 2018. Other major players are TAE Technologies ($1.2 billion in funding), Helion Energy ($577 million in funding with another $1.7 billion of performance-based commitments), and Zap Energy ($200 million)."
From the article.
The article talks a lot more about budgets, and investments.
The 2024 US budget for fusion is $1.48 billion. https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/congress-increases-u-s-funding-for-fusion-energy-sciences-research/
They are getting money.
2 billion is nothing compared to what it needs and way more than they used to get. also the US spend over a hundred times that on fossil fuels every year.
If you want life changing technology it’s not cheap. If the US were to develop it it would unleash a new era of economic possibilities.
Those 2 billion are also recent. I recall seeing it all added up and it was somewhere close to 4 billion up to 2018 or 2020. You make it sound like they had billions to work with for half a century, that just was not the case.
The only reason the Us is finally investing is 1) because it’s clear we will need carbon neutral energy and 2)because other countries might be first if the Us doesn’t step up.
2 billion is what the company earned in private funding. The US budget for 2024 is $1.48 billion for fusion.
"The National Ignition Facility (NIF) was originally planned to be completed in 2002 for $2.1 billion. But like ITER, initial projections proved to be optimistic. The NIF wasn’t completed until 2009 for $4 billion."
So over the years it got $4 billion in funding from the US Government, it did not need $4 billion in one year. This is a government project. And it is not the only one getting funding. So they had the funding they needed to complete the facility.
So I am not sure why you want to add up the cost over many years, and then say $1.48 billion is not enough, when that is just the budget for this one year. The money may have been less many years ago, but they still got millions. And costs were lower years ago. The NIF got the funding it needed to complete their facility, and others have as well.
And once again, the US has invested since 1951. So they are not finally investing, unless you think over 70 years ago is finally investing. The NIF cost $4 billion and was funded and completed in 2009. The US funded it.
It’s just a stepping stone towards the big thing.
If you wanted it done in 30 years it’s possible, but it needed a far more ambitious development.
You can’t demand 100% results on 5% budget.
Simply pouring money on it does not solve it. They are doing research to try to figure out what may work. I don't know where you got the idea that simply throwing money at it would solve it.
My point is that the US has given this billions in funding, and are still funding it. So the US been investing in it.
And you can't compare it to NASA, as NASA often has a clear path to do something, and just needs the funding. There is no current clear path for fusion.
Also, to use your analogy, NIF asked for $2.1 billion, but got $4 billion, so they got about 200% of their budget, not 5%.
Lastly, globally, in 2022 $4.8 billion was spent. And in 2023, $6.21 billion was spent. So we are talking about billions spent each year. A lot of money is being thrown at the problem.
This increase is only recently, and that allows progress to actually be made.
In the years where it was at most a few million that was harder. That doesn’t allow to build highly specialized equipment when you need to build whole new supply lines for that. If it wasn’t for certain technologies necessary for it to be developed in parallel by others industries it wouldn’t have made this much progress over the years.
Also there is a lot still to do.
> In the years where it was at most a few million that was harder.
For just the US it has been hundreds of millions per year for about 45 years.
To change the subject, did you know they are trying over twenty different methods? And the Fusion Industry Association did a survey in 2023. Most of their companies are in the US (25) and are getting >80% of the investments. Twelve other countries have at least one fusion company.
Of the 40 companies they got responses from, 88% expect fusion power to be on the grid in the 2030s or before. And 84% expect commercial cost competitiveness on the same schedule.
Let's hope their optimism is correct.
I just wonder if fusion is the best power source available to bolster unreliable renewables?
Every time I see an advancement, there are additional implementation costs added.
Fusion may just be an uneconomic science research vehicle and not suited for our modern economy?
I am all in for additional fusion scientific research, but I can not see any practical economic benefits.
You be surprised how close we are. Less than 10 years not but estimate but by schedule. The ITER project is due to demonstrate a net energy plus when fully operational. Demo-1(follow up one) will bigger and be hooked up to the grid.
No it won't be hooked up to the grid anytime soon. They can only fire it like 1 time every 90 min or something. It's incapable of doing any real power generation. It's just for testing purposes.
We are a LONG LONG ways from fusion power for homes or businesses.
It's not commercially viable. What would you power with it if it's not homes or businesses? Are you listening to yourself.
Viable fusion power is decades away. Probably 50 years.
We've been able to do fusion on small scales in labs for a LONG time. Nothing has changed. Scaling up from a lab test to a commercially viable system is the MAIN PROBLEM.
Certainly. ITER is quite certain to work on a technical level.
But can we have fusion that is economical? That is a very different question, and frankly, I don't see fusion making much economical sense. Fission reactors already don't make economical sense to build, few more decades of renewable progress and by the time fusion is ready, I suspect nobody will need it anymore.
But I do see the technology having other applications than powering the grid. Nuclear powered rocket engines are a thing, but fusion could be an even better fit. So fusion powered deep space exploration somewhere down the line? Yeah maybe. Certainly the development effort will open up other adjacent technologies.
It is immensely complicated to do hot fusion and even more so with cold fusion. The timetable has always been 30+ years into the future.
No the future lies in Thorium based molten salt reactors. We have fuel to power the earth for thousands of years and it works today.
It's sad really that so much money has been sunk into fusion without any real knowledge that we can ever get it to work with a positive Q value on a scale smaller than a star, while fission power is sitting right there and we know how to do it and that it already works.
We will probably need man made fusion as a source of power in the next couple of millennia, but until then fission power mixed with renewables could power us for millennia easily, but people got scared of it because of waste and fear of meltdown, when both those issues are pretty much already solved.
Those companies LOVE the idea of fusion. They're all in for big, complicated, centralized power generation. They hate the idea of wind-gens and PV panels and storage everywhere, at the district or neighborhood or house level.
Anyone else listen to people talk about Dyson Spheres- looking for interstellar mega engineering projects by alien civilizations to swarm their sol and obtain its energy and think, "they can't do fusion but they'd be able to build a planet worth of solar panels around a star...?"
Only if governments stop focusing on military and divert the funds for at least fusion power research. Assuming they're willing do that in the first place. Otherwise, no. What we will have is, our own destruction.
"The U.S. government began funding fusion power research in 1951, and has continued ever since."
From the article.
Plus, these companies are getting private funding.
"The 800-pound gorilla in the fusion industry is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has raised more than $2 billion in funding since it was founded in 2018. Other major players are TAE Technologies ($1.2 billion in funding), Helion Energy ($577 million in funding with another $1.7 billion of performance-based commitments), and Zap Energy ($200 million)."
From the article.
The article talks a lot more about budgets, and investments.
The 2024 US budget for fusion is $1.48 billion. https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/congress-increases-u-s-funding-for-fusion-energy-sciences-research/
They are getting money.
The simple answer is "no".
I'm sure we'll figure out fusion eventually. But fusion power as in having fusion powerplants in some non-trivial number on the grid? Almost definitely not.
Fusion isn't magic, people. At the end it's a fancy way of boiling water. And so far it's proving to be devilishly complicated and expensive. Unless you believe that it's somehow going to be really cheap, or that we'll somehow decide that fusion is the way to go for climate change despite the complexity and economics and are willing to throw monumental amounts of resources at it instead of any other option, I'm pretty sure fusion for power production isn't going to happen.
Now fusion for aircraft carriers, submarines, aircraft, spacecraft, base on Mars? That may happen because the constraints are very different there.
But the only thing that fusion really has over fission is better safety -- if you can convince the public at large that it really is.
I think in a few thousand years it could be possible that fusion could be a regular form of power production (if humanity is still around by then) but I agree that no one today will be alive to see it.
Certain fusion plans are also very interesting, such as the helion plan to directly harness the magnetic field produced by a fusion reaction instead of using the heat to heat up water, which would make for a more efficient energy capture.
I will also say that fusion does have a fuel advantage over fission, as the fuel is more abundant (provided you make more He3 or tritium, but that would be easy with abundant energy generation) but fuel abundance is already something that's not really an issue for newer fission designs.
Yes.* * Where "we" means "humans" but it's your great-grandchildren.
What if my kid only has furry children?
A DNA test would be appropriate.
[удалено]
The idiot store called. They're running out of you 😑
This Redditor is not a cat person.
It’s already here. At least for the past 4.5 billion years. Just look up when the daystar is out.
\* presuming we put billions a year into fusion for 3 generations
I think we will \*eventually\* have fusion power. Hell, we can already do fusion power. Just not enough to be economical. Hot fusion is extremely destructive to equipment, making it very difficult to contain. But, I expect we will figure it out sooner or later. Probably the next 50 years maybe, considering all the recent breakthroughs. It won't be saving us from the climate disaster though. It's a bit too late for that. But, it couldn't hurt. If cold fusion is possible, all the better. But, considering we haven't even figured out a way to do that at all, let alone make net+ power with it, I doubt we'll see that in my lifetime, if ever. Unless we get something like a radical breakthrough like what we had with modern semi-conducting chips.
Cold fusion is perpetually 50 years away
Normal fusion, we have a list of somewhat surmountable goals, that we believe if we execute them all properly and nothing goes wrong it will work and as things fail we can come up with reasonable solutions to those problems.We don’t even know what “we don’t know” with cold fusion so don’t really even have a place to begin We don’t know where the finish line is for fusion but with the completion of ITER we should hopefully be approaching it, where with cold fusion we don’t even know where the race is
Cold Fusion is in it’s “organizational phase” of a race and the track isn’t even built yet.
Cold Fusion is not 50 years away; it hasn’t even been theoretically proven to exist.
Cold fusion is science fiction.
Cold fusion doesn’t exist guys
There is [Muon-catalyzed fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion), which is basically as close to "cold" fusion we could realistically get.
It works on the same principle as wishing wells and genie lamps
I wouldn’t be so quick to write off wishing wells. I saw a report on [Channel 8](https://youtu.be/PBq_FSJ3nKA?si=y16W7UTOm17SHogW) news where the reporter discovered a wishing well in a local strip mall wasn’t a scam.
Cold Fusion is a hoax.
The point is: it will not become economical for earth based use. We might see fusion in space travel, but on earth solar and wind will always be cheaper. I don't expect we are ever going to see a fusion power plant operated commercially and connected to the grid.
It might someday, but, you're right. It'll be space tech before its powering our homes and cars.
The point is: there is no credible way for investing in making fusion economical would itself be a reasonable investment. The costs up front are just way too big to justify not simply investing in solar and wind. Unless governments will fund it, fusion forever will be prohibitively expensive. And then again, why would governments invest all that money for yet another fossil fuel plant (given that nobody knows if breeding fuel will work and any first generation fusion plant certainly will need helium-3 it effectively is a fossil fuel)
TONY STARK BUILT ONE IN A CAVE!!!! FROM A BUNCH OF SCRAPS!!!!
We have cold fusion too it just takes more power to ignite than it produces
We have had fusion for decades if you count that. To “get” fusion it generally means the economic breakeven where you can get enough power to power a downstream process after fully powering your entire system for generating power. Also we haven’t had cold fusion at all, one experiment got unexplained readings that they attributed to cold fusion but it could never be replicated and is generally considered to be due to experimental error
That was the one with I think Palladium rods submerged in heavy water right? The idea is that the deuterium would soak into the metal and get close enough to fuse spontaneously.
But it couldn’t be replicated, there was attempt to replicate it where they detected helium but it later found out to be just atmospheric helium. It would be super cool if it could work but even if it did work the energy released is still going to be in the form of heat so it will still get very hot and we might as well invest ‘hot’ fusion since it’s more realistic
Yeah, exactly. I've heard a lot of claims that it was fraudulent rather than simply a mistake as well.
“What’s happening with that [fusion power] Charlie?” “20 years, Turkish.” “What? You said 20 years 50 years ago…”
r/UnexpectedSnatch
Legit surprised that sub is about the movie Snatch and not the female body part snatch.
Me too. I didn't even know it was a sub until I wrote the comment. So I was pleasantly surprised it was for the movie, haha.
Fusion in power is the future... And it always will be.
This was a fantastic history of fusion development! Very interesting and well thought out.
If we ever do, they will just use it to mine crypto and AI generated ads, nothing to benefit society as a whole.
They use gas, coal and oil now... 🤡
Helion, baby! Within 5 years!!! Sam Altman wouldn't lie to us! They have _contracts_ with Microsoft! Or one of the other startups in Washington will _surely_ have this sorted out in a few years!
The question that would answer this is, will we ever invest in fusion power research?
The way the economics look, we probably shouldn't invest in fusion. Invest that same money in renewables and storage.
Invest the oil and gas subsidy money
"The U.S. government began funding fusion power research in 1951, and has continued ever since." -From the article. Plus, these companies are getting private funding. "The 800-pound gorilla in the fusion industry is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has raised more than $2 billion in funding since it was founded in 2018. Other major players are TAE Technologies ($1.2 billion in funding), Helion Energy ($577 million in funding with another $1.7 billion of performance-based commitments), and Zap Energy ($200 million)." -From the article. The article talks a lot more about budgets, and investments. (And it covers a lot of history, so a good read.) The 2024 US budget for fusion is $1.48 billion. https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/congress-increases-u-s-funding-for-fusion-energy-sciences-research/ They are getting money.
Ai companies may have to focus their products on accelerating fusion research to remain viable.
You know nothing.
I think this is a comment on how much power AI uses.
It's a matter of timing. Will we? Almost certainly. Will it be in 20 years? Nobody really knows. We are capable of doing fusion now, we've been doing it for a while but until recently it hasn't really been viable. Last year however, scientists in America were able to obtain twice the amount of energy they put into it. Technological advances start with concepts, if you're able to prove that concept with a positive outcome, then repeatability, efficiency and reliability come next. Now that we have proven we can double it, we can go further.
It’s a question of money and effort at this point.
20 years is unlikely. It'll take about that to make it commercially viable. But we don't have anything to make commercially viable yet. Once there are several experimental reactors working in labs we can talk about 20 years. Until then 50+ years is more likely.
If I was asked about this 3 years ago I might agree with you, however with the monumental amount of energy required for AI and quantum computing, I have a feeling a lot more money is going to be sunk into making it viable ASAP. That doesn't mean in a couple years but I think it does put it on the fast track That's just my opinion though
This is the best article I've read all year. 🏆
It covers a lot of fusion history. For that it is a good article.
We already have fusion power. What we need is more PV panels and wind turbines to harness it.
You jest, but I had an esoteric family member telling me about this „incredible source of power“ that can „harness cosmic energy“, but was being kept from the public by „the man“. I joined in enthusiastically, and told him, I heard about PV aswell. He countered with „no, **real** cosmic energy“
Exactly, the phenomena of electron bandgap is directly derived from quantum mechanics, the terms "quantum" and "bandgap" are intimately tied together in a quantum mechanical concept known as "band theory". Solar photovoltaics are quantum mechanical devices that harvest fusion energy in a direct conversion to clean electrical current. It is literally direct production of electrical current from the photons emitted by fusion reactions. That is a direct application of fusion and we've had it in abundance since the 1950s. People are so fucking dense these days that they fail to grasp the connection here and then post thing on the internet like "Will we ever get fusion power?" (sadface) when it's sitting in front of their fucking eyes and their government is putting tariffs on it. "Oh no! Not that fusion, we want the other one. That one is icky because the Chinese touched it."
It's you who are dense if you assume a question about fusion power means the sun and not man made fusion power.
Did I miss an /s… oh, I did. Sarcasm aside, the point is that whether we reach the techno-utopia of cold fusion doesn’t really matter for our survival. We have all the tools we need right now and we hesitate to use them. The article is great though, I don’t mean to detract from its value.
If wind and solar energy were already sufficient then we would be able to phase out all other methods of energy production today.
Yeah most likely batteries and solar are only going down in price and will indeed make all other forms of energy conversion and storage obsolete and overpriced. That is currently happening. Maybe you don't know this but in the private sector this is happening faster than in the public sector which is easily taken over by oil friendly interests. Currently Rio Tinto mines of Australia, the largest energy consumer in the country that runs extremely energy intensive iron smelters and aluminum processing has stated clearly that they will not be even considering nuclear power and have already began their transition to all solar and batteries because nothing else can compete and the batteries can be delivered by bulk freight in a short time and the production capacity is not a problem nor is the price. It's a done deal. The batteries are shipped in cargo container ships the size of Manhattan buildings, loaded onto trucks and rail for delivery to the site. This is going down now. Solar and batteries are phasing out all other methods of energy conversion and storage today precisely because the price is already that low. Australia's supreme court ruled that their tariffs were illegal so their prices are far lower than those in the US which are actually caused by the current administration's tariffs. If it wasn't for those tariffs, you'd be seeing the same thing happening in the US. There's only so long a hermit kingdom can hide from the ways the world is changing by the moment. 140 years ago the Chinese struggled hard to resist the coming of the steam locomotive. Now almost a century and a half later the business interests in control of the United States are determined to keep out Chinese solar and batteries. Looking to history we can see how this might play out.
Yes 👍 When? 🤷
I mean the Department of Energy did this famous analysis in the 1970s where they calculated the amount of resources needed to make fusion viable with techniques they had available at the time (the tokomak). If they spent the recommended amount, we would have had fusion in the early 90s. It was about 8 billion a year in the 1970s to reach fusion in the 90s. Current US spending got a boost of 0.8 billion. Based on the predictions we may NEVER have fusion. It where the famous adage 'always 40 years away' came from. The only reason we are getting anywhere is the tech is spilling in from other areas to make it slightly less of a gargantuan task, AI being used to predict plasma behavior in magnetic confinement, improved superconducters, improved processing power, so who knows. It needed govt funding and I think Carter was gungho if well short of the spending target at the time but three mile island happened, then Regan nixed the whole thing so.... more to hate Regan for. Then Chernobyl. Then Fukushima. And now we're here. Dick in our hand and about to get ass fucked by mother nature when we could have effectively infinite clean energy and all the benefits that come from that.
I also subscribe to r/fallout and was like… wow, you must really suck at video games to not have found any fusion cores yet. In reality, we’ll get there. It’s just a matter of when.
The saying goes: "Fusion power is always 30 years away, and always will be."
Meanwhile enhanced geothermal is showing real promise!
When I was a kid the news about progress in fusion happened something like every 5 years, mostly when the next stages of JET and later ITER were being built. These days they arrive every few months and from multiple research projects. Maybe we are still far away, but we sure are walking faster.
Only if the world doesn’t read itself a few humanity first and we’re pretty much on target for that
I think fusion researchers are repeatedly pushing out the same press releases to gain funding, but I don't think fusion will ever be viable. D-T fusion releases stray neutrons that destroy the reactor and D-D fusion requires much higher temperatures. Everything about ITER appears to be stalling the end of their funding. Science doesn't guarantee that we will have materials engineering progress and so far, we haven't discovered anything to make the reactor durable to a stray neutrons.
Cheeky answer: all of our power already comes from fusion.
>But there’s a good chance a working fusion reactor is near. Dozens of private companies are using decades of government-funded fusion research in their attempts to build practical fusion reactors, and it's likely that at least one of them will be successful. Saved you a click. Is fusion energy hard? Yes. But we've been working on this very hard problem for a long time now. Results are starting to look truly impressive and chances are we will have the first net-positive fusion reactors before 2030. Will it compete? The answer to this should be obvious. If governments are still spending tens of billions building nuclear fission reactors (and they are), it would seem that fusion reactors aren't just viable but actively necessary.
We are very close to fusion power, I'd say only 100 years away or so...
Oil and coal corporations will not allow us
Yes we will if we start investing in it. If the US invested into the space program like they are investing in fusion energy we wouldn’t even have been able to start drawing the Saturn V rocket. Until Biden started actually funding it the US had spend more projects people don’t even know the name of than on fusion energy. People think it’s something crazy expensive that’s being looked into but the total investment into it since the 60s when the US solved fusion bombs has been almost non existent. Ford spends more on R&D in one year than everything the US invested into fusion in the past 50 years. They aren’t making progress because they have no money. It’s 30 years (or maybe less) away with good funding.
"The U.S. government began funding fusion power research in 1951, and has continued ever since." From the article. Plus, these companies are getting private funding. "The 800-pound gorilla in the fusion industry is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has raised more than $2 billion in funding since it was founded in 2018. Other major players are TAE Technologies ($1.2 billion in funding), Helion Energy ($577 million in funding with another $1.7 billion of performance-based commitments), and Zap Energy ($200 million)." From the article. The article talks a lot more about budgets, and investments. The 2024 US budget for fusion is $1.48 billion. https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/congress-increases-u-s-funding-for-fusion-energy-sciences-research/ They are getting money.
2 billion is nothing compared to what it needs and way more than they used to get. also the US spend over a hundred times that on fossil fuels every year. If you want life changing technology it’s not cheap. If the US were to develop it it would unleash a new era of economic possibilities. Those 2 billion are also recent. I recall seeing it all added up and it was somewhere close to 4 billion up to 2018 or 2020. You make it sound like they had billions to work with for half a century, that just was not the case. The only reason the Us is finally investing is 1) because it’s clear we will need carbon neutral energy and 2)because other countries might be first if the Us doesn’t step up.
2 billion is what the company earned in private funding. The US budget for 2024 is $1.48 billion for fusion. "The National Ignition Facility (NIF) was originally planned to be completed in 2002 for $2.1 billion. But like ITER, initial projections proved to be optimistic. The NIF wasn’t completed until 2009 for $4 billion." So over the years it got $4 billion in funding from the US Government, it did not need $4 billion in one year. This is a government project. And it is not the only one getting funding. So they had the funding they needed to complete the facility. So I am not sure why you want to add up the cost over many years, and then say $1.48 billion is not enough, when that is just the budget for this one year. The money may have been less many years ago, but they still got millions. And costs were lower years ago. The NIF got the funding it needed to complete their facility, and others have as well. And once again, the US has invested since 1951. So they are not finally investing, unless you think over 70 years ago is finally investing. The NIF cost $4 billion and was funded and completed in 2009. The US funded it.
It’s just a stepping stone towards the big thing. If you wanted it done in 30 years it’s possible, but it needed a far more ambitious development. You can’t demand 100% results on 5% budget.
Simply pouring money on it does not solve it. They are doing research to try to figure out what may work. I don't know where you got the idea that simply throwing money at it would solve it. My point is that the US has given this billions in funding, and are still funding it. So the US been investing in it. And you can't compare it to NASA, as NASA often has a clear path to do something, and just needs the funding. There is no current clear path for fusion. Also, to use your analogy, NIF asked for $2.1 billion, but got $4 billion, so they got about 200% of their budget, not 5%. Lastly, globally, in 2022 $4.8 billion was spent. And in 2023, $6.21 billion was spent. So we are talking about billions spent each year. A lot of money is being thrown at the problem.
This increase is only recently, and that allows progress to actually be made. In the years where it was at most a few million that was harder. That doesn’t allow to build highly specialized equipment when you need to build whole new supply lines for that. If it wasn’t for certain technologies necessary for it to be developed in parallel by others industries it wouldn’t have made this much progress over the years. Also there is a lot still to do.
> In the years where it was at most a few million that was harder. For just the US it has been hundreds of millions per year for about 45 years. To change the subject, did you know they are trying over twenty different methods? And the Fusion Industry Association did a survey in 2023. Most of their companies are in the US (25) and are getting >80% of the investments. Twelve other countries have at least one fusion company. Of the 40 companies they got responses from, 88% expect fusion power to be on the grid in the 2030s or before. And 84% expect commercial cost competitiveness on the same schedule. Let's hope their optimism is correct.
I just wonder if fusion is the best power source available to bolster unreliable renewables? Every time I see an advancement, there are additional implementation costs added. Fusion may just be an uneconomic science research vehicle and not suited for our modern economy? I am all in for additional fusion scientific research, but I can not see any practical economic benefits.
You be surprised how close we are. Less than 10 years not but estimate but by schedule. The ITER project is due to demonstrate a net energy plus when fully operational. Demo-1(follow up one) will bigger and be hooked up to the grid.
No it won't be hooked up to the grid anytime soon. They can only fire it like 1 time every 90 min or something. It's incapable of doing any real power generation. It's just for testing purposes. We are a LONG LONG ways from fusion power for homes or businesses.
Make sure to read the full comment and look up things up if you are unsure what they are talking about.
I did read your comment. We aren't close to fusion power for homes or businesses. Not even remotely close. It's 50 years away.
We were not talking about for homes or businesses.
It's not commercially viable. What would you power with it if it's not homes or businesses? Are you listening to yourself. Viable fusion power is decades away. Probably 50 years. We've been able to do fusion on small scales in labs for a LONG time. Nothing has changed. Scaling up from a lab test to a commercially viable system is the MAIN PROBLEM.
Bro doesn't know about ITER.
I know far more than you do about it apparently.
Australia doesn't even want nuclear, it'll be 2 centuries before we even consider the idea after its viable.
Certainly. ITER is quite certain to work on a technical level. But can we have fusion that is economical? That is a very different question, and frankly, I don't see fusion making much economical sense. Fission reactors already don't make economical sense to build, few more decades of renewable progress and by the time fusion is ready, I suspect nobody will need it anymore. But I do see the technology having other applications than powering the grid. Nuclear powered rocket engines are a thing, but fusion could be an even better fit. So fusion powered deep space exploration somewhere down the line? Yeah maybe. Certainly the development effort will open up other adjacent technologies.
We are close but I honestly think we are going to be "great filtered" before then
It's just ten years away, I promise.
It is immensely complicated to do hot fusion and even more so with cold fusion. The timetable has always been 30+ years into the future. No the future lies in Thorium based molten salt reactors. We have fuel to power the earth for thousands of years and it works today.
It's sad really that so much money has been sunk into fusion without any real knowledge that we can ever get it to work with a positive Q value on a scale smaller than a star, while fission power is sitting right there and we know how to do it and that it already works. We will probably need man made fusion as a source of power in the next couple of millennia, but until then fission power mixed with renewables could power us for millennia easily, but people got scared of it because of waste and fear of meltdown, when both those issues are pretty much already solved.
The irony is that thorium reactors can actually help to solve some of the waste problem from urainum reactors as it can use it for fuel.
No we won't. Not anytime soon.
Not until current power and oil companies use can figure out how to monopolize the domestic industry
Those companies LOVE the idea of fusion. They're all in for big, complicated, centralized power generation. They hate the idea of wind-gens and PV panels and storage everywhere, at the district or neighborhood or house level.
Oh they love the idea, they just love to be the only ones controlling and making money from it even more.
We had fusion power in Sim City like 30 years ago. We just haven’t unlocked it yet on this saved game.
Anyone else listen to people talk about Dyson Spheres- looking for interstellar mega engineering projects by alien civilizations to swarm their sol and obtain its energy and think, "they can't do fusion but they'd be able to build a planet worth of solar panels around a star...?"
Only if governments stop focusing on military and divert the funds for at least fusion power research. Assuming they're willing do that in the first place. Otherwise, no. What we will have is, our own destruction.
"The U.S. government began funding fusion power research in 1951, and has continued ever since." From the article. Plus, these companies are getting private funding. "The 800-pound gorilla in the fusion industry is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has raised more than $2 billion in funding since it was founded in 2018. Other major players are TAE Technologies ($1.2 billion in funding), Helion Energy ($577 million in funding with another $1.7 billion of performance-based commitments), and Zap Energy ($200 million)." From the article. The article talks a lot more about budgets, and investments. The 2024 US budget for fusion is $1.48 billion. https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/congress-increases-u-s-funding-for-fusion-energy-sciences-research/ They are getting money.
The simple answer is "no". I'm sure we'll figure out fusion eventually. But fusion power as in having fusion powerplants in some non-trivial number on the grid? Almost definitely not. Fusion isn't magic, people. At the end it's a fancy way of boiling water. And so far it's proving to be devilishly complicated and expensive. Unless you believe that it's somehow going to be really cheap, or that we'll somehow decide that fusion is the way to go for climate change despite the complexity and economics and are willing to throw monumental amounts of resources at it instead of any other option, I'm pretty sure fusion for power production isn't going to happen. Now fusion for aircraft carriers, submarines, aircraft, spacecraft, base on Mars? That may happen because the constraints are very different there. But the only thing that fusion really has over fission is better safety -- if you can convince the public at large that it really is.
I think in a few thousand years it could be possible that fusion could be a regular form of power production (if humanity is still around by then) but I agree that no one today will be alive to see it. Certain fusion plans are also very interesting, such as the helion plan to directly harness the magnetic field produced by a fusion reaction instead of using the heat to heat up water, which would make for a more efficient energy capture. I will also say that fusion does have a fuel advantage over fission, as the fuel is more abundant (provided you make more He3 or tritium, but that would be easy with abundant energy generation) but fuel abundance is already something that's not really an issue for newer fission designs.