Fusion power deniers

No
*devours your post and digests it into a block of onions*

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Not making your own power from geo-thermal heating in 2018.

Every german/swiss homeowner i know has looked into that for energy and heating.

The cool thing is it can also cool down your house in the summer and doubles as air conditioning.

Alot of new apparent complexes are constructed exactly because they can share the heating and drilling costs.

Geo energy is the solution for a lot of hassles and decentralization issues that centralized fusion can't solve.

Unless you get a small fusion reactor going in the next 5 years (unlikely) we should stick to drilling for heat.

Won't help with industry demand.

Fusion might take awhile to research.
In the meantime we should switch to Thorium.

It will be free energy but Jews will charge a premium for it

>uranium
welcome, time traveler from the 50s
in the year 2018 we have available alternatives like thorium, and utilize breeder reactors to make use of even "burnt out" nuclear fuel

>very large nuclear fusion reactor already exists
>We still don't use it

The fucking sun people. Why the fuck is new mexico not covered in panels? It's fucking sunny there.

As renewable energy takes a bigger roll on the energy matrix it will become necessary to add more base power plants (hydro, gas, thermal) to help stabilize the grid from the intermittency of renewables. You can't just replace the big power plants with distributed wind and solar, even with microgrids you still need them to maintain frequency/voltage stability.
Fision isn't completely dead yet, and we're getting closer and closer to fusion production. We have already gotten net positive energy back in 2013 from a laser contained reactor, at a lab level tho. I don't want to say ITER is d.o.a. but they will need to step up their game when they start operating.
Either way fusion will still rely on steam turbines to produce power, so there needs to be improvement on that too, steam turbines are old technology so there's not much to do beside Ultra Super Critical steam conditions.

Ha! Stupid Germans. We had a similar issue recently, but not nearly as large scale. Only the hippies and other delusional enviromentalists got their asses blasted. An enviromentally consciuous electricity company that only used renewables had trouble generating enough power when the winter began getting cold.

fusion will never be net positive, hint: even the sun is not net positive

Australia is basically a giant sunny desert but solar only accounts for 5.5% of the produced electricity. Boggles my mind

This.

Are you dense? bbc.com/news/science-environment-24429621

>This is a step short of the lab's stated goal of "ignition", where nuclear fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply.
Not him, but it is close but not quite a true net positive in terms of energy in vs energy out yet. You would still be putting more energy in than comes out.

>not realizing the sun is electrically powered from the outside

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>the sun is absorbing energy instead of releasing it!
>from where?
>gnomes

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unlimited energy = unlimited waste. i dont really care, but thats would be my intuitive conclusion

Jews and Arab oil barons will fuck it up to protect their investments like they are now

This. Thorium reactors can consume spent fuel from conventional nuclear fission reactors.

This is bullshit. An unreal amount of uranium is dissolved in seawater. If the price of uranium rises due to scarcity, it becomes economical to tap. The cost of fuel in a fission plant is reativly minor, so the increased cost does not matter.

Not to mention we could reprocess if we had to.

So hydrogen atoms have feelings now? What next? Stop burning oxygen because it has feelings too?

> youtu.be/p8lY-AIhGbU?t=111
Because NPCs in suits and red hats think that it's fun to go against the grain even if it ends up hurting the entire populace.

1970s
> Fusion is right around the corner goy, fund my research institute.
1980s
> Fusion is right around the corner goy, fund my research institute.
1990s
> Fusion is right around the corner goy, fund my research institute.
2000s
> Fusion is right around the corner goy, fund my research institute.
2010s
> Fusion is right around the corner goy, fund my research institute.

>free
check this goy out.

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Fusion would be great but it's not coming anytime soon, our best shot for a commercially fesable reactor is ITER in France and the costbsink is already enormous and it's years from completion and the projected power output honestly isn't even that terrific for that amount of energy.

user is right nuclear honestly is our best option now with promising experimental reators using thorium which is by far more abundant than uranium being a better shot in our life time.

To be clear of course theoretical fusion reactors once they are mature and properly developed are going to be orders of magnitude better than nuclear for power demands,however I don't see that level of maturity coming anytime soon.

For the right now new modern reactors need to be built to supplement the otherwise very unstable levels of power you get from renewables.

Only ITER itself costs €20 billion.

I don't know about other countries, but the UK government has been stockpiling civil-grade plutonium for half a century, largely because they were working on fast-breeder reactors that could use it.

The program was postponed in the 90s because the discovery of more uranium deposits made it non-urgent, but there's still 110Tonnes of plutonium in storage at sellafield - which would be sufficient to power britain in its entirety for over 1000 years.

20 billion is doable with the funding levels in the graph. 2 billion for year for ten years is within even the "moderate" funding level.

limitless power is not economically viable in the long term
same thing with curing diseases verses treating symptoms

one may say all one likes about the free market pulling through however the fact of the matter is it isn't free
big oil and coal have already manipulated the hand of the state to crush nuclear power

>all uranium is the same
Did you even highschool?

He’s not entirely wrong. Stars can only undergo sustained fusion because of the force of gravity, which is kept in equilibrium by the outward pressure of the fusion,but in the end, gravity always wins. But an enormous amount of heat and light are released over the billions of years of a stars life, which is clearly more that the cumulative force of the gravity that they have to fight against in order not to collapse.

Are you?

The isotopic %'s of what is in seawater obviously matches natural ore.

>they'll need
they've already been doing it

Fusion's only waste is helium.

Solar panel efficiency only needs to improve from 20% to 50% to make it viable to replace all other forms of energy production.

Solar energy at high efficiency is literally the future. Unlimited* (*billions of years) source of power with close to zero impact on the environment, except for the materials used to create them.

Just because the fuel is free doesn't mean it won't be expensive as hell.
Reactors will cost billions to construct, and billions more to maintain.

People also claimed wind energy would be "free".

Fusion also puts out considerable neutron flux, which will cause the walls of the reactor to become radioactive over time. Probably not too worried about that, though.

I agree but there are a handful of places that aren't geologically suitable for our current reactor constructions. Honestly I have a hard time believing Japan thought it was a good idea to build a nuclear reactor on the coast of an island that has earthquakes and tsunamis as a threat. Likewise California, at least the separable mass that' most likely to be the epicenter for serious earthquakes probably shouldn't be considered, nor anywhere near Yellowstone if the prophecies are anywhere near correct. Coastal Florida, and even inland to some extent probably shouldn't be considered. Texan Gulf might ought to be excluded. Places with unstable water tables should probably be off the table in case of sink holes.

That remedies the only real argument against it, other than what do you do with the waste? How are you going to supplement non-local generation demand? Solar, wind, natural gas? Loss over line will be pretty tremendous bridging those gaps.

Where the fuck do you live that people use electric for heat?

Not really true. Deuterium tritium fusion releases most of its energy in the kinetic energy of neutrons, which activate and damage reactor materials. Iirc.

Fusion is a trick from ((big oil)) to stop us from researching thorium reactors.

Wrong.
We might only have '100' years is currently open and operating mines.
There is over 10,000 years of fuel buried in Australia - that's just for Uranium too.

Australia does it quite a lot - since it doesn't get cold often, gas heating has started to disappear in favor of reverse-cycle heat pumps.

Solar is sketchy in its current iteration, the panels quickly wear down and require replacement, even the newer panels bought consumer-side are really only good for their cost (e.g. for $10,000 invested you will return $10,000, though you could push it longer at greatly diminishing returns) on the plus side though they're highly recyclable, but very expensive.

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You fucking sub-equator humans...

Yeah guess why fusion was always just around the corner. Barely any funding at all, after all bombing sandniggers 20 years straight is much more important.

Yeah, the reactor innards becoming radioactive is easily the least of your worries. The more important part is that the reaction itself is an utter bastard to control, you need some incredibly stout and expensive materials to keep it running for any appreciable length of time, and in exchange for ludicrous power output from essentially free materials it also requires an absolute assload of energy to get there.

It's not like we're using resistive heat. (although, we sorta did, 40 years ago)

Plus, if you reprocess the spent fuel in a PUREX cycle, you can get enough plutonium to run a fast reactor for 50x as long.

I am all for nuclear, but there is no need for thorium in the near or medium term. Making molten salt reactors work is the hard part. I don't think the corrosion problems are solved.

So just like 5 years of the blue line funding? How long has ITER been a thing now?

> the panels quickly wear down and require replacement

Whereas fusion reactors spawn into existence spontaneously, never have to be replaced, and never require any maintenance.......

China is doing it regardless of the west's thoughts on it.
It's their only real way out of the the smog - plus they intend to make a market of it.

Maybe it won't work and it'll bankrupt China in the process - Buran to USSR style.

It's far more viable than fusion.
It never got any research funding, so naturally none of the challenges are solved yet, but we're still decades closer to making a thorium reactor than a fusion meme.

I think everyone did, that was one of the methods used when people still used plaster. They'd line the walls with resistive wire. Shit's a fucking nightmare.

Whereas we have dual-fuel generators on top of pre-existing nuclear reactors and more recently they were discussing (perhaps ineffectively) laxing the restrictions on building new reactors. Which cost next to nothing to run in relation to wiring in new generation facilities, let alone buying thousands of panels and mounts while hiring installation and maintenance staff which may or may not meet the cost needs of the company installing them, and so we can conclude it would not meet the needs of the consumers, either.

I don't think it will bankrupt them, but existing tech can work for 100+ years, and fusion is in the wings. ITER, nif, and others. I just don't think waiting for the perfect solution makes any sense.

Nuclear in the states has just gotten fucked by mismanagement of the new reactors in ga and sc. (Ga will finish theirs), and cheap ng, that is doing the same number to it as coal.

>natural uranium are uranium-238 (which has 146 neutrons and accounts for over 99%) and uranium-235 (which has 143 neutrons). Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements. Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead, and slightly lower than that of gold or tungsten. It occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite.[3]

>In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238 (99.2739–99.2752%), uranium-235 (0.7198–0.7202%), and a very small amount of uranium-234 (0.0050–0.0059%).

Yep, it's all the same shit isn't it.

It's not artificial unless there is an arbitrary limit on the number of generators enforced by some assholes with guns (typically governments, mafias, or warlords). Saying pricing is "artificially high" due to a lack of competition means either everyone else just hates money (unlikely), there are insufficient resources (least artificial reason ever), or most people just can't do it so only a few do (many such cases).
Like how CEOs get paid "too much". If it's so damn easy then why aren't you a CEO? Protip: It's not. Why do they exist in the forst place? Protip: Shit doesn't get done without someome telling the lemmings what to do.

based and stollpilled

You speak the obvious. Chemistry does not help you wrt separation. For that reason the isotopic breakdown of uranium in seawater is the same as in land bound ore. Perhaps if you were being less obtuse and snarky I could understand your point, if any.

Is your point that you must still do the same level of enrichment from uranium pulled from seawater? Yes, of course.

Perhaps if there was a shortage of uranium, or if like India we had a massive reserve of thorium, but little uranium it might make sense to persue it. But thorium is not fissile, it is fertile - meaning it needs a neutron capture to be turned into u233 - which can be then fissiled into giving you energy back. And yeah, the reason it was never pursued was that it could not be turned into the bomb. But we still have lots of uranium around, so why not use that. Hell you can even run thorium in a normal pressurised water reactor - you don't have to have molten salt - it is just more expensive than old school uranium.

If you really want gen 4 molten salt reactors, you can do it still with a uranium fuel and transition to thorium, just as oak ridge demonstrated. What you use as fuel is not really important.

In my view the thorium guys are getting bent out of shape hoping to develop an unnecessary tech and fuel cycle. There is already an enormous body of knowledge developed over 70+ years on how to run, and how to not run a pbwr. And they may not be cool or shiny, but they do work.

Back to op's point, the angle that the left will use relates to the effect of the waste heat. As far as I know, all fusion reactor concepts would generate power by boiling water, and running the steam through a turbine. At that point, just like in any other steam based power system, you cool the steam (just a little) to condense it back to water - see the cooling towers at most power plants. If you have super cheap fusion power, you will have lots of cooling towers. Direct atmospheric heating. Oh, the humanity. Fucking hippies want us all dead.

> we have a stupid amount of space out in the deserts to store spent fuel
> store spent fuel
Wew lad

Why? The atmosphere has been apparently been a great place to store spent fuel for our power generation systems thus far.

>And yeah, the reason it was never pursued was that it could not be turned into the bomb.
Thorium obviously can't be turned, since as you said, Thorium isn't fissile. But U-233, that is pretty much required for a reaction can. For example in "operation Teapot", even though it wasn't pure U-233, the possibility is there. Just nobody bothers with that, since "standard" is simpler. IIRC Manhattan project actually proposed such device, but it was quickly dismissed since it would require complex implosion design...nowadays pretty much all bombs are implosion type in US.
There is also one small problem with neutron breeding required for Th—>U-233. U-238 (easily available) + neutron is exactly the way you make plutonium. Of course that does not concern US, but as you may understand that it can be easy for some actors in third countries to replace few samples of Thorium with Uranium leading to massive problems with nuclear nonproliferation.

>planet is getting hotter
>methane and co2 quantities increasing exponentially
>ozone layer almost collapse because of HAIRSPRAY
Fuck off retard

>didn't get the obvious, dripping sarcasm
>calls others retard
KYS you brain-damaged piece of fucking worthless dog shit.

>using PV for large scale solar power generation

>screencap this
And do what to preserve it? Engrave it in gold? Paint it on a cave wall? After WWIII,, I doubt there will be much technology left.

Holy shit I should invest in Australia.

There are only two major roadblocks to thorium.
First corrosion which the chinks have already claimed to have solved with new materials.
Second how to safely handle the waste material.
It would not take that much effort to get thorium working and there are many other benefits over uranium.
>There is already an enormous body of knowledge developed over 70+ years on how to run, and how to not run a pbwr.
Experience doesn't fix flaws inherent in the design. You still need active safety systems, costly containment structure, and you need a source of water nearby. There is no benefit to sticking to this shitty outdated reactor. The problem isn't money anyway the west is cucked by energy companies who don't want actual competition.

Jesus OP, you think that humanity will stop advancing forward and slow down when we have infinite clean energy because it's "immoral"? What the fuck are you talking about? Do you use less internet data now that everywhere gives you unlimited data because it's "immoral"? You're fucking retarded.

There's enough thorium to power the earth for thousands of years. There has already been a working thorium test plant, it's much simpler than fusion.

were

yep, it's simpler, can't melt down, produces no waste like uranium. they should hurry up

But couldn't we fly to Uranus with a elongated space module to start a deep Uranusium excavation and bring that shit back to earth?

It certainly would be possile to excavate Uranus with todays technology.