MIT scientists say nuclear fusion will be viable energy alternative within 15 years

The dream of nuclear fusion is on the brink of being realised, according to a major new US initiative that says it will put fusion power on the grid within 15 years.

The just-over-the-horizon timeframe normally cited is 30 years, but the MIT team believe they can halve this by using new superconducting materials to produce ultra-powerful magnets, one of the main components of a fusion reactor.

“The aspiration is to have a working power plant in time to combat climate change. We think we have the science, speed and scale to put carbon-free fusion power on the grid in 15 years.”

The promise of fusion is huge: it represents a zero-carbon, combustion-free source of energy. The problem is that until now every fusion experiment has operated on an energy deficit, making it useless as a form of electricity generation. Decades of disappointment in the field has led to the joke that fusion is the energy of the future – and always will be.


Prof Howard Wilson, a plasma physicist at York University who works on different fusion projects, said: “The exciting part of this is the high-field magnets.”

Fusion works on the basic concept of forging lighter elements together to form heavier ones. When hydrogen atoms are squeezed hard enough, they fuse together to make helium, liberating vast amounts of energy in the process.

However, this process produces net energy only at extreme temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees celsius – hotter than the centre of the sun and far too hot for any solid material to withstand.

To get around this, scientists use powerful magnetic fields to hold in place the hot plasma – a gaseous soup of subatomic particles – to stop it from coming into contact with any part of the doughnut-shaped chamber.

A newly available superconducting material – a steel tape coated with a compound called yttrium-barium-copper oxide, or YBCO – has allowed scientists to produce smaller, more powerful magnets. And this potentially reduces the amount of energy that needs to be put in to get the fusion reaction off the ground.

“The higher the magnetic field, the more compactly you can squeeze that fuel,” said Wilson.

The experimental reactor is designed to produce about 100MW of heat. While it will not turn that heat into electricity, it will produce, in pulses of about 10 seconds, as much power as is used by a small city. The scientists anticipate the output would be more than twice the power used to heat the plasma, achieving the ultimate technical milestone: positive net energy from fusion.

Unlike with fossil fuels, or nuclear fuel like uranium used in fission reactions, there will never be a shortage of hydrogen.

The reaction also does not create greenhouse gases or produce hazardous radioactive waste of the sort made by conventional nuclear fission reactors.

theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/09/nuclear-fusion-on-brink-of-being-realised-say-mit-scientists

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Dangers of fusion compared to fission

The fusion reaction releases neutrons, the energy of which will be used in future power stations to heat water to heat drive the power plant. The neutrons would be quite dangerous to humans, but when the plant is turned off the production of neutrons ceases within milliseconds.

The neutron bombardment also affects the vessel itself, and so once the plant is decommissioned the site will be radioactive. However the radioactive products are short lived (50-100 years) compared to the waste from a fission powerplant (which lasts for thousands of years). Also, the radioactivity in a fusion powerplant will be confined to the powerplant itself, there will not be any waste needing to be transported for disposal, storage or reprocessing.


Unlike a fission reaction, loss of control mechanisms in a fusion reactor (heat and pressure) will not result in a runaway nuclear chain reaction. Fusion reactions cannot sustain themselves without that incredible amount of heat and pressure but fission reactions will continue to occur long after you lose control or power in a fission reactor.

Fission reactor plants are designed to control, cool and contain the ongoing fission reactions because if you don't then you are going to have a big problem.

Fusion reactors would not need as much emphasis on redundancy and safety systems as there is almost no chance of a runaway reaction. Losing containment pressure on the reaction or losing cooling water flow would likely irreparably damage the reactor because of the massive amounts of energy they deal with (thermal stresses on containment and/or explosive decompression) and they also contain lots of radioactive AND explosive gases (hydrogen isotopes).

The main advantage in terms of safety is that if you pull the plug on fusion, it stops. Pull the plug on fission and it just keeps on fissioning. Another big bonus is that the radioactive elements at play in a fusion reaction decay over a matter of years rather than centuries or millenia as the do in a fission reaction.

every 15 years some MIT engineering lab comes out and says fusion 15 more years. let's cut the welfare and put the money towards more r&d and get this ball rolling.

What a surprise

I came to say this, but user was faster

The meme used to be "in 20 years" every 20 years, so we must be making progress.

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ARCHIVE YOU STUPID NIGGER

yeah, and in 15 yrs they'll say 15 more

go fuck yourself. For what the US spent on the military in ONE FUCKING MONTH in Iraq, it could have bought solar panels for every American household (ie. "free" electricity for everyone for ~ 20 yrs). Or, let's not forget that Exxon Mobil hasn't paid any taxes in - i'm not sure how long - decades. Tax those faggots and put that money toward technology that we know works, like solar, wind and geothermal.

Why would you even want fusion? It's extremely centralized and takes tons of government regulation and involvement. Have they even proven that its cost effective? We have the tech and we have the money - we just don't have the political will

Physics user here, they’re right this time. Fusion is quickly becoming a reality. We need to use every source of energy we can. Including fission, renewables, and non-renewables. The moon will be mined for He3 in your lifetime.

No it couldn't have. We're $22T in debt. If we never went into Iraq to fight Israel's wars in the first place, we'd still be in massive amounts of debt. Over half of federal tax expendetures go to welfare programs like Medicaid. You could cut the entire military out of our budget and we still wouldn't bring in enough in taxes to pay for the rest of the budget. The issue isn't how the money is spent, it's that there isn't nearly enough income to spend on half the shit we pay for.
Same for Amazon. All these companies should be taxed, I agree. But that money will need to go towards paying bills, not spending more money we don't have. Buy your own fucking solar pannels you lazy faggot.

sterilize the niggers and poor

I wouldn't argue with this policy.

2006 Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Russian space corporation Energia, was reported to have said that Russia is planning to mine lunar helium-3, with a permanent Moon base to be established by 2015 and industrial-scale helium-3 production to commence by 2020.

American plans from the early noughties to "establish a permanent base on one of the Moon's poles by 2024", with helium-3 signalled as one of the reasons behind this mission


The practicalities associated with getting to the Moon, mining and super-heating large quantities of lunar rock (Space.com have reported a suggestion of roughly one million tons of lunar soil being needed to be mined and processed for every 70 tonnes of helium-3 yield), and then getting the precious cargo back to the Earth.

ok nigger

lmao maybe fix the starvation and poverty in your country first, eh?

Someone screencap this onto a stone tablet.

how long until they get murdered by big oil?

Very little of remaining electricity generation is oil-based. And, big oil killed the electric car long ago. This would more directly affect coal, which has been getting its ass kicked for quite some time now

Bullshit. You're including social security (ie your grandma's retirement check) in that stat, which is an insurance program. Half of all federal DISCRETIONARY spending goes to the current military spending or financing the national debt (previous military spending) - even more if you include all the worthless, corrupt alphabet soup agencies. Furthermore, if Bush wouldn't have pushed through those tax cuts for richfags then our fiscal position would be much more manageable. Learn before you speak retard.

Agreed. We need to cut military spending. The only reason we haven't is because of
and China, although thats something of a legitimate threat I suppose

Forgot to finish my reply to
The electric car is making a big come-back. Mark my words, we're seeing a lot of investment in it currently because (((they))) have realized the cattle can't keep using gasoline-fueled cars forever.

Pray your god you never get poor

It's illegal to use the payroll tax, which is earmarked for SS/Medicaid, to fund the General Revenue dipshit, so cutting social security or medicaid would not provide additional funds for paying down the debt. Furthermore, payroll taxes + interest on the "trust fund" has never been less than total Social Security Administration expenditure - ie. Social Security has never run a deficit. There's no way in hell you can blame SocSec for the deficit, you mouth-breathing troglodyte. How fucking stupid are you?

Are you really so stupid that you think national debt operates the same as personal debt?

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the answer is "yes," but you shouldn't even start that argument. You have to strike at the point of departure: blaming so-called "entitlement" spending for the national debt. Entitlements are called that because those who receive them are "entitled" to the benefits in the same way you're entitled to a payment from your car insurance company when you have a wreck. It's contractual. Social Security is literally an insurance program. It's called SSI - Social Security Insurance. The revenues which fund SSI come exclusively from the payroll tax. By law, the payroll tax cannot be used to fund anything but the Social Security Administration (SSA), because these revenues are literally insurance payments. If the SSA has a surplus (which it always does) those revenues are used to buy government bonds. The government bonds are commonly referred to as the "social security trust fund." Payroll revenues minus SSI/medicaid expenditures has only been negative a handful of times - last I checked 3 times. BUT, if you add interest payments from the trust fund social security has never run a deficit. For all these reasons, you cannot justifiably say that the SSA has contributed even one penny to the national debt.

The rest of the federal budget is called "discretionary spending." Last I checked this was about 35% military, 15% interest on the national debt and most of the rest goes to alphabet agencies. TANF and some other welfare programs are paid from this fund, but they are small compared to other expenditures. Discretionary spending comes out of the General Revenue Fund which is mostly income taxes (income, corporate, capital gains and a few others – basically everything but payroll tax). Expenditures from the General Revenue routinely exceed revenues from the income tax et al. Therefore, discretionary spending needs to be cut or the income tax (corporate tax, capital gains tax etc – but not payroll tax) needs to be raised. PERIOD

You need only donate another 3 billion to our foundation and we'll invent viable fusion within the next 15 years!

...

MIC and corporations getting tax money

Raising the corporate tax is stupid, you need to lower it further to encourage business some more.

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I remember when I first read about fusion reaction research , it was in an Italian science magazine in 1998 , they already had the donut shape reactor and magnets and they said it will viable in 15 years

maybe 15 years is the ideal time span for empty promises? it's close enough to be 'near future', but far enough to be completely forgotten promise when we'll get there, climate hoax seems to work in a same way

Once you include tax breaks, the US has the lowest corporate taxes in the first world (excepting perhaps Ireland). Stop cucking yourself to the corporate managerial class homo

How about you stop being a Trumpcuck and realize you're ideology is a meme first, you massive la la homo man?

NOT AN ARGUMENT!
complete non sequitur. wtf does any of this have to do with trump?

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that's what they say now

All nuclear produces waste and is a disaster for the public its a shitshow.

There is easy enough green energy to run the country in hydro wind and biomass/gas (which can be the so called "stock load".

you can literally split water and burn the resulting hydrogen. people do it right now including the us navy.

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actually, you can easily power the whole country with wind, hydro and solar. The problem is not about "enough" but about "reliability." Hypothetically, if you had enough hydro damns you could probably do it, but environmentalists won't let it happen


sage bc I suspect this is OP making a stupid comment to save a dead thread

That's a game changer

France banned all oil cars by 2040

Kinda like in 6 years how the world is going to end by massive Earthquakes?
Or is it the volcanos?
Or is it the hurricanes?
Or is it the tornados?
Or is it the sun exploding?
Or is it a meteor?

muslim country can't ban oil

That's not much of an issue in a small country whose cities were designed before cars were invented and has lots of public transportation that people use. The US has states larger than France so it's a completely different situation in America. Imagine banning all gas cars from Europe - and that would still be a smaller problem than banning them in America since it's larger and less able to adapt.

french commute by train