Essay by Eric Worrall
Don’t pay attention to all the fossil fuel, that’s just a stepping stone to our glorious AI enabled green energy future.
Chinese scientists develop new AI method to control plasma in ‘artificial sun’ … Fusion energy, often described as the “ultimate clean power,” aims to replicate the process that powers the sun by fusing light atomic nuclei to release massive amounts of energy without carbon emissions. … https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-10-11/China-develops-AI-model-to-control-plasma-for-fusion-energy-1HnvzSGkNck/p.html
AI Datacenters Need Nuclear Fusion … Two tech stalwarts—Microsoft and Google—have signed agreements to purchase power from yet-to-be-built fusion reactors, by 2028 for Microsoft, and by the early 2030s for Google … https://cacm.acm.org/news/ai-datacenters-need-nuclear-fusion/
Nuclear fusion: Delivering on the promise of carbon-free power with the help of AI March 26, 2025 … A collaboration with Microsoft is one of the ways ITER is preparing for the moment when it’s time to turn the ignition switch … https://news.microsoft.com/source/emea/features/nuclear-fusion-delivering-on-the-promise-of-carbon-free-power-with-the-help-of-ai/
Private Sector Advances Nuclear Fusion With AI – New Plant To Open Soon … Citing advances that outpace Moore’s law, Mumgaard suggested that a successful result in current research would lead to a plant that would outperform anything ever seen before. He explained that CFS purchased land on an inactive army base in Devens, Massachusetts, and created a commercially relevant demonstration facility called SPARC that uses high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. … https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwerner/2025/01/18/private-sector-advances-nuclear-fusion-with-ai–new-plant-to-open-soon/
Researchers build AI model database to find new alloys for nuclear fusion facilities September 19, 2024 … A study led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory details how artificial intelligence researchers created an AI model to help identify new alloys used as shielding for housing fusion applications components in a nuclear fusion reactor. … https://www.ornl.gov/news/researchers-build-ai-model-database-find-new-alloys-nuclear-fusion-facilities
President Trump’s energy secretary has been caught up in the hype;
US energy chief tells BBC nuclear fusion will soon power the world 12 September 2025 … Don’t worry too much about planet-warming emissions, the US Energy Secretary has told the BBC, because within five years AI will have enabled the harnessing of nuclear fusion – the energy that powers the sun and stars. … https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqlz5p314z0o
Let’s not forget the British government, which is going all in on a commercial fusion reactor they claim will revive Britain’s industrial heartlands in the near future.
The “new alloys” article is a bit of a hint that there are serious problems which likely won’t be solved anytime soon.
Even if the problem of controlling fusion plasmas is solved in the next few years, which seems a trifle optimistic, there is the more serious problem that the fusion containment system has a distressing tendency to crumble into dust. Despite their reputation for being “clean”, fusion plasmas produce a blizzard of fast neutrons, so much so they can physically wreck the structural integrity of the plasma containment chamber.
Covering the fusion chamber in tungsten, lead or elemental iron, or other radiation resistant material, poisons the plasma. The heavy ion contamination from erosion of the armoured chamber walls makes it difficult to keep plasma hot. Even at millions of degrees heavy element ions keep some electrons, which help provide an unwanted channel for radiation of heat away from the plasma.
What about covering the chamber with Lithium? Using Lithium as the fusion chamber wall lining would eliminate the heavy ion contamination problem, and some lithium will fission into tritium in a fusion plasma. But Lithium’s melting point is only 180c, so using a Lithium fusion plasma vessel lining presents some challenges.
Beryllium might be a better choice, although it is less likely to fission into tritium like Lithium, like Tungsten it is a neutron reflector. Beryllium has a melting point of 1287C, far higher than Lithium. But Beryllium is a major human health hazard, like working with asbestos but far worse. Beryllium is brittle, and easily crumbles into dust. Inhalation of dust causes a range of horrible symptoms, including cancer. Maintaining the Beryllium fusion reaction chamber liner would be a rather stressful undertaking.
The final choice of reactor chamber lining will likely be a complex alloy or ceramic. But there is a lot more work to do in this space, to find the right balance between reactor friendly elements, structural resistance to radiation damage, and not killing the workers with toxic dust every time someone opens the hatch on the reactor chamber.
There is also the problem of sourcing all the tritium which would be required for a commercial fusion plant. Tritium is rare – there is only around 25kg of Tritium in the entire world. Like other isotopes of hydrogen, Tritium leaks effortlessly through the most determined containment efforts. Even surrounding the fusion plasma with a bed of lithium may not be enough to produce the tritium required to keep the reactor running.
Deuterium / Deuterium fusion would solve the fuel supply problem, the oceans contain enough Deuterium to power the world until doomsday. But pure Deuterium fusion requires triple the temperature of Deuterium / Tritium fusion, and even at this elevated temperature, if I have understood correctly, has 20x less fusion events than Deuterium / Tritium. Triple the temperature which is already in the millions of degrees might not seem like much, but consulting our old friend Stephan Boltzmann, 3x the temperature makes the fusion plasma wants to lose its heat 34 = 81x faster than an equivalent Deuterium / Tritium plasma. Given keeping plasma heat at the level fusion occurs is one of the main stumbling blocks to maintaining a long life stable fusion plasma, so tackling a problem which is between 81x and 20 x 81 =1,620 times harder than the currently marginally solved Deuterium / Tritium plasma problem doesn’t sound like a physics problem which will be ready for industrial deployment by 2028.
Helium 3 fusion has an advantage in terms of radiation. Helium 3 fusion reactions do not produce the blizzard of neutrons which would pose such a threat to the structural integrity of the fusion reactor chamber. But the nearest abundant source of Helium 3 is the surface of the moon, so we’d need to build an extensive Lunar mining operation to support Helium 3 fusion. In addition Helium 3 fusion suffers similar high temperature disadvantages as Deuterium / Deuterium fusion.
Inertial confinement fusion has made some impressive advances – but they are a long way from genuine break even, let alone energy production.
Electrostatic confinement fusion is a fascinating idea which sadly appears to be a dead end. Whenever you hear of some high school student building a desktop fusion system, the device they built is an electrostatic confinement system. Surprisingly Electrostatic fusion does have a real use – as an industrial source of fusion neutrons. But as an energy production system, Electrostatic confinement appears to suffer fatal flaws. From what I’ve read there are too many ways for energy to leak from electrostatic confinement systems, so the energy required to maintain the confinement field always exceeds the energy output.
Robert Bussard, one of the founding inventors of electrostatic confinement, claimed to his dying day that a large enough Polywell fusor electrostatic confinement fusion chamber would produce more energy than it consumed, and his ideas were plausible enough that the US Navy threw $21 million at his idea, so who knows – maybe somewhere in the future there is a currently unconsidered configuration of electrostatic and magnetic fields which can maintain a stable energy producing fusion plasma. But finding that unknown gem in the sea of wrong configurations seems more like hoping for a lottery win than a guaranteed near future breakthrough.
What about Rossi’s E-CAT? I believe there is compelling evidence E-CAT is nonsense. If Rossi’s low energy fusion invention is as ready as he claims, why can’t we buy E-CATs in Walmart? In my opinion these kinds of ideas have had more than enough time to prove themselves, if there was anything there to prove.
I love the idea of nuclear fusion. I would really like to be proven wrong about how distant we are from practical fusion energy. I have no problem with investment in fusion research. I’d love to power my house with a Mr. Fusion reactor, which looks like a cleaning bucket yet which according to Hollywood can generate enough energy to power a DeLorean Time Machine. But barring a new physics breakthrough, like an improved method of producing enough muons to catalyse energy producing room temperature fusion, a genuine cold fusion breakthrough, or significant advances in non-mainstream fusion technologies like pyroelectric fusion, I just don’t see industrial grade fusion happening by the end of this decade. Or maybe even by the end of this century.
So why the sudden uptick in expressions of confidence in imminent nuclear fusion? Why do so many people believe we are on the brink of a fusion breakthrough? Perhaps I have missed something big – please educate me in comments if this is the case. But I truly believe imminent fusion is the new fig leaf of the tech company environmental movement. I believe former environmentalist tech leaders are driving this uptick in confidence, because they are clinging to irrational hopes for an imminent fusion breakthrough like a shipwrecked sailor clings to a life raft. The alternative to belief in the imminence of nuclear fusion is to accept they are utter hypocrites, that Big Tech’s AI push is a total betrayal of their once precious green energy ideals.
Update (EW): A few people have mentioned Helion Energy’s approach to fusion. I’d like to draw attention to a concern I have with their “technology” page.
Why run before you can walk? Helion, make Tritium Deuterium fusion energy producing, and I’ll take your claims about scaling up to Helium 3 fusion seriously.
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What they want to ignore is that fission is fairly well developed, and the vast majority of the issues are political/religious. Religious, as most of the Green Blob’s objections are both specious and immune to evidence.
That stupid movie poisoned majority of the world to nuclear power. For that alone Jane Fonda should be sitting in the mud with no electricity, running water or sewage for the rest of her life.
Of course, Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukishima Daiichi (2011) had nothing at all to do with people’s attitude toward nuclear power.
In reality not much happened from most of those items if you remove the LNT scare.
Of course they did, but because of a scaremongering media. If the fatalities per MWh of electricity are added up, nuclear is way safer than anything else. I think wind is probably the most dangerous today.
You are correct, the lies about those 3 accidents have had a big impact on people’s attitudes.
TMI and Fukushima were big nothing burgers in which nobody got hurt.
Chernobyl was a design that was never approved in the west because it was inherently unstable, it was operated by people who weren’t properly trained, they were trying to perform a test that should have been performed prior to the plant being liscensed, however the operators lied and said it had been so they could complete it on time and get their bonuses.
FInally there was no containment building, that is required in the West.
And still fewer direct deaths than an average month of gang violence in Chicago.
“Chernobyl was a design that was never approved in the west because it was inherently unstable”
With a computer so slow it was almost of no use of driving the reactor
I believe that the evacuation after Fukushima killed or injured more people than the reactor itself.
I take that comment to mean you think those nuclear disasters/accidents never happened, or instead wish that nobody thought such.
Pity.
BTW, interesting that you assert the single criteria for judging the severity of an event is “nobody go hurt”.
More’s the pity.
“I take that comment to mean you think those nuclear disasters/accidents never happened, or instead wish that nobody thought such.
Pity.”
Reading comprehension is not your forte, I take it. Pity.
Reading comprehension, eh? So what is YOUR comprehension of the specific lies that MarkW referred to in his post above?
I don’t think I miscomprehended that he failed to mention what those “lies” actually were . . . but perhaps you can read between the lines to tell me.
If not, more’s the pity.
What are your criteria for the severity of an event? Government overreaction and political hype? Media hype? Exposure of the scientific ignorance of the media and the general population?
IMHO, these things related to nuclear power plant explosions (such as Chernobyl) or accidents having breaches of a reactor’s containment vessel (such as multiple reactors at Fukushima) impact a far greater number of people than those just working at the power plants, so I maintain they are criteria for assessing the severity of a nuclear power plant explosion or accident (in addition to simply the number of people injured or killed directly by such):
— the number of people that may have accumulated exposure to radiation released into the environment from the explosion/accident to suffer health effects of such (such as cancers) long after the event,
— the number of people forced to evacuate the proximity of the power plant to a “deemed safe” distance, and the financial costs of such (e.g., having to abandon already-paid-off/family homes),
— the number of square miles contaminated by the accidental release of radioactive debris, dust/particulates, and water/liquids in proximity to the site, and the financial costs of any resulting attempts of cleanup or isolation of the contaminated areas over XX number of years,
— the direct economic impact over a large area as the result of forced closure of businesses (including single-home businesses) that were forced to do so by virtue of being located in the radiation-contaminated area, as well as the loss of wages for those inhabitants that were displaced; also possible loss of income from agriculture or animal farms shutdown too because they were in the contaminated zone,
— the lasting mental/psychological impact on all people, particularly young children, that were directly affecting by being near the explosion/accident, having one or both parents or relatives being in that situation, and by resulting after-effects, such a forced separation from dear friends/ playmates.
China Syndrome absolutely had more to do with it than Chernobyl or Fukishima. Don’t be any sillier than usual, look at the calendar. Three Mile and release of the movie were within days of each other. You really should try and keep up.
Duly noted, for what its worth.
P.S. I don’t think the movie “The China Syndrome” resulted in any deaths, forced evacuations, radioactive contamination of thousands of square miles of land/ocean waters, or huge economic losses as occurred at Chernobyl and Fukishima. But perhaps I haven’t been “keeping up” on such matters.
When you are wrong you just double down on stupid. Good job, buddy.
That’s the best you got?
And please don’t call me buddy, Shirley.
Whatever, buddy. My favorite part? I don’t have to down vote you, just stand back and watch you self destruct. Told ya so.
Oh, you completely run off the rails with how I view receiving down-votes.
I actually appreciate receiving them because they are an obvious sign that:
a) someone actually read my posted comment,
b) moreover, that my comment actually disturbed the world-view (aka confirmation bias) of the person down-voting to the extent they had to positively react to that perturbation, and
c) down-votes are seldom accompanied by an equal number of reply comments that provide an intelligent rebuttal, thus reflecting on those that freely issue down-votes.
So, Shirley, to the extent you may have down-voted me, thank you.
I have not down voted you at all, buddy. And you just continue to show everyone how clueless and idiotic you are.
Very few people were irradiated in Chernobyl and Fukushima and any irradiated land recovered pretty quickly. Plus the designs were not very good by contemporary standards. Nothing is perfect
Hmmm . . . according to Google’s AI:
“— approximately 1,000 on-site emergency and recovery workers received high doses on the first day of the Chernobyl disaster, with about 134 suffering acute radiation sickness and 28 dying within months,
“— another estimated 200,000 cleanup workers from 1986-1987 received doses ranging from 1 to 100 rem (100-1000 mSv)*,
“— about 115,000 people were evacuated from contaminated areas and received doses that, while lower than the on-site workers, were still elevated,
“— about 6.4 million people in contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine were exposed to radiation, with doses varying by region.”
*Note that the normal dose of natural background radiation at Earth’s surface for an average person is approximately 2.4 to 3.1 millisieverts (mSv) per year, though this can vary widely depending on geographical location. So, a minimum radiation dose of 100 mSv is equivalent to receiving about 30 years of average natural, background sea level radiation.
Very few, huh?
googlyai? Hahahahahahahaha You truly are clueless.
But everything to do with the hysterical media coverage.
Ummmm . . . would that “hysterical media coverage” include this reporting by WUWT:
“Nuke Tsunami Makes Clean Coal Look Better”, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/18/nuke-tsunami-makes-clean-coal-look-better ?
Not many people under 50 could tell you who Jane Fonda was or what the movie CS was about.
Yes, but the half-life of the scare they caused is not as short as the memory of the incident.
And yet they “know” nuclear power is bad. As for Hanoi Jane, yes they do know her, she is on their favored social media telling them America is evil on a routine basis and China Syndrome has been an intricate part of the leftist, anti-nuclear power talking points in schools/colleges. Pull your head out and wake up.;)
We might be imagining a different “them”. I’d say not a lot of under 50 usa citizens could tell you where the name “Hanoi Jane” came from without google.
If they weren’t draft age when there was a draft, I can’t blame them. Tragic waste of brain energy that memory would spend.
Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean everyone else doesn’t.
Nuclear fusion has been “imminent” since at least the late seventies, early eighties. Scientists and bureaucrats in Omni magazine were full of it (so to speak). We were supposed to have throwaway tokamaks providing at hundreds of megawatts by 1984. If we’re lucky, we’ll have it before our current fusion reactor explodes.
Fusion and Graphene can do everything – except for leaving the prototype status.
And I wonder what may go wrong if such an energy potential fuses just a bit too fast and too much?
But I guess it’s better to chase after humanities little big bang than to use its existing small brother that is being ugnored like Bidens dementia.
I don’t think fusion is at the “prototype” stage.
Well, there’s a full-scale working unit located about 93 million miles away.
What is the containment vessel made of?
Gravity.
Ahem – you can buy useful products that contain graphene, such as heat spreaders. Fusion is still in proof of concept.
Material for the “first wall” was a concern in the late 70’s, as fast neutron flux in breeder reactors was turning out to be a challenge.
Had a Sr ME professor, who’s son was working at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab on fussion.
First time ever hear, “Ya, fussion is just 20 years away”
That was in 1978.
“Larry Niven popularized the Bussard ramjet in his Known Space stories, where it served as a powerful interstellar propulsion system. Proposed by physicist Robert W. Bussard, the ramjet uses a large electromagnetic field to scoop up interstellar hydrogen, compress it, and fuse it for propulsion, theoretically allowing for near-light-speed travel without carrying massive amounts of fuel. Niven first used the concept in his 1966 short story “The Warriors” and featured it in other works like his novel A World Out of Time.”
Fistional, but wriiten of in 1966, about 60 years ago.
Fussion? Interesting. Never heard of that.
As Tom Halla says , fission is here , now . And getting better . Also in today’s email : https://rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/whos-winning-the-smr-race .
Fusion is another ” anything that’s impractical ” diversions .
And we’ve got plenty of that black , beautiful coal & oil , too .
Fusion-generated electricity is many decades, if ever, away from reality. This is just hype as you speculate to divert attention away from AI-compute centers’ voracious appetites for cheap, reliable electricity. Done to mollify the ignorant greenies who are both innumerate and lack any credible science-engineering skills to see thru the bunk.
The problems for a viable, commercial large scale electricity generation system is the fast neutron flux from most fusion approaches that have reachable temps.
The aneutronic Helium-3 process was mentioned above, but the required temps are far higher (and thus further out of reach) than deuterium-tritium fusion, which then brings in the fast neutron flux.
Over months of operation, the neutron flux would slowly destroy any solid metal containment vessel needed to hold the reaction vacuum (whether laser-inertial or magnetic confinement in a tokamak) and allow the energetic radiation to pass thru to a transport working fluid. This container degradation destroys the commercial economic viability of any such reactor to deliver affordable electricity when far cheaper, reliable sources such as fission reactors and natural gas turbines are available.
Large scale, commercial scale electricity from Fusion is a pipe dream for sci-fi stories. And will remain for for a long time.
Seems to be a lot on Con-fusion, though ! 😉
I’m sorry, Joel, but fusion is only 10 years away. A rolling 10 years away.
or it’s happening right now 🙂
https://www.helionenergy.com/polaris/
or by the end of the year, at least
see the D-He3 reaction profile on Fig 15 here https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10894-023-00367-7
It needs to be understood that some things we can think of, will never be a reality.
Fusion power may well be a problem that cannot be solved.
We have had a welter of just around the corner energy promises on these pages, and as many of us predicted, they were all pure BS.
None of the fusion experiments are actual power plant prototypes.
I have seen no hard evidence any progress has been made in terms of time until a working power plant is built.
It is still an idea for something no one has any idea how to build.
Like Faster Than Light travel. Or just interstellar travel however you do it. I know otherwise intelligent and educated people who think these are just around the corner.
Not just around the corner, but I’m convinced we’ll find a way eventually. We always do, even if it requires a fundamental change in understanding of the universe. Quantum mechanics is probably going to reveal a lot more than currently expected.
There is a working theory, that the math says could work.
The problem is it would take the output of a small sun to power.
Aka a fusion reactor
The potential of our elements is limited , while our phantasy isn’t.
But many dumb smart people think that everything can be built and solved at one point in time .
Though the very first limited thing is intelligence, especially the one that has no clue how limited it is.
Therefore the dreams about reaching the type 3 on the Kardashev scale or travelling nonexistent wormholes will go on and on.
And some other stuff may even be possible but impractical or deliver phyrric results..
Of course, Earth currently gets almost all of its energy from fusion power.
To work and be kind of safeish, it needed to be a million miles wide and over 90 million miles away.
Another way is bombs detonated in a subterranean cavern, but I doubt that idea will ever catch on.
I keyed into the sun when I was about 12. I had kind of a complex for a while about the stability – I was worried the sun would do something untoward.
The sun does do something untoward every few years, they are called coronal mass ejections.
Even our Sun’s gravitational containment system fails from time to time. And given how badly the EPA botched the Gold King mine cleanup, I don’t think we want the Feds following up on the subterranean cavern idea. In short, fusion is a cropper.
Oh ye, of little faith!
MC Escher sketched out those steps…
NB: If you click on the image, it will expand and be come clear. Click on the “X” in the circle to return the comment text.
Escher was a prophet at sketching the path to the green future
Exactly!!
We know how to build nuclear fission plants, they provide clean, safe and affordable power. Work to make fission the best it can be, if fusion has a future fine but let’s build what we know works in the meantime. AI is being used as a crutch to lessen the disappointment of the cost and lack of progress of fusion so far.
Fusion is the most expensive, and therefore the stupidest, way to generate electricity ever proposed.
I asked Google AI how much has been spent on fusion research. You’d think something like this would have better accounting.
Probably, although green hydrogen can give it a run for its money 💰
I lost interest in fusion power when I belatedly learned that the amazing million plus degree heat of the plasma bubble is not what will be used to generate electricity.
Nope, that comes from the neutrons that escape the magnetic bubble, release their energy when they strike and heat up the containment wall, which heats up the wall’s circulating cooling fluid, which is sent to an exchanger to make steam to run a turbine to make electricity.
Kind of seems like an overly complicated and expensive way to boil water.
My thoughts exactly. We need a way to convert the neutrons directly to electricity and finally give up on steam. Don’t get me wrong I love an old steam engine but it seems very silly to have all this extremely high tech energy generator only to use it in an inefficient external thermal steam generator. 🤔😞
Or a way to directly convert the millions of degrees of heat energy into electricity, which in my ignorance was what I thought they were trying to do.
Most effective electricity generation methods are exactly this
Hmmmm . . . according the https://cacm.acm.org/news/ai-datacenters-need-nuclear-fusion reference cited in the above article, yet-to-be-built fusion reactors will be coming online to supply power to Microsoft in 2028 (i.e., in about 3 years from now) and to supply power to Google “by the early 2030s” (no longer than about 9 years from now).
No possibility in either case . . . too bad those “smart” Chinese scientists can’t recognize an AI hallucination when it bites them in the, well, the posterior.
Besides, in the US it will take at least 3 years to get an approved EIS and to secure the regulatory permits (imagine, for a moment having to conduct an extensive, independent safety review covering all that brand-new fusion technology!) for siting and operating any large scale fusion power plant . . . and that after the basic design, materials of construction, and operating parameters/margins are finalized!
Of course, the overall thermal efficiency of a fusion-power-plant-yet-to-demonstrated-at-even-subscale is currently unknown, so if such were to achieve, say, 30% operational efficiency, how and where is that 70% of waste heat going to be dumped (this a major problem facing so called “transportable” small modular reactors that are fronted for operation away from large bodies of water that could supply liquid cooling).
Yep, article author Eric Worrall tagged it correctly: hype . . . and nothing more.
“No possibility in either case . . . too bad those “smart” Chinese scientists can’t recognize an AI hallucination when it bites them in the, well, the posterior.”
Having done quite a bit of coding with “AI” in the last few months, I’ve found that it will eagerly suggest something that it can’t even remotely deliver.
A shipwrecked sailor clinging to a life raft would have a better hope of rescue than those relying on an imminent successful commercial nuclear fusion power supply.
Tungsten, lead, elemental iron, Tritium, Beryllium, and lithium all have problems as lining materials for a fusion confinement system.
I can solve the problem by selling (to the highest bidder) my large stock of Unobtanium.
I’ll undercut you with my Impossibilium price.
Non-refundable 100% up front payments are receivable now. Delivery when you have completed the rest of your fusion plant.
Can you trust me? Of course you can. I’m a scientist!
In the interests of furthering competition for fusion scam funding, I will undercut your price for Impossibilium with a lower price for Irredeemium — but will demand payment in gold, a method of exchange in which gold can be quickly converted to cash in places too far away and too corrupt to allow easy tracking of such criminal fraud activity.
As for me, I’m trying to corner the market in Givemebucksium.
I cannot compete with such as you – your business acumen is beyond compare!
I have a pile of antimatter, the unleaded type.
I am firm in my belief that there will not be an operating fusion reactor until we can control gravity. This is based on my observation of gravity being what is used in the actually fully operational unit in our solar system. 🤷♂️😉
Unless what we perceive as gravity is really just a phenomenon of mass bending space? Then we will be SOL on ever controlling it.
Unless, we can master the bending of Space and Time?? It worked in Dune.
According to Albert Einstein, and as experimentally confirmed by Sir Arthur Eddington in 1919, it’s currently happening in our universe—hence on Earth—right now, although I daresay humans are not the “master” of such.
When we manage to control gravity, a huge area of science and engineering will become available to us.
No problem, we just need to mine some Element Zero. That will give you the mass effect you need…
The biggest problem is that all those emitted neutrons render the entire apparatus radioactive. In a water cooled nuclear fission reactor, yes, the fuel and cladding are radioactive, but the surrounding primary water blanket while irradiated, is easily controlled. The two main daughter products of neutron bombardment of fission are Nitrogen-16 and Tritium. You can pump the water and clean it up continuously.
In a fusion reactor, there is no possibility for a direct water blanket, so the metals of the reactor come into direct contact with the emitted neutrons. The first serious fusion reactor, the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor in Princeton, New Jersey became so radioactive that it could not be safely approached by humans. This was, fortunately, planned for, as the entire apparatus was enclosed in a hermetically sealed containment. The reactor was sat unattended for several years while the radioactive components “cooled off”, and was then cut into sections using remotely operated gigantic diamond cable wire saws. The sections were trucked across the country to Hanford Washington to be buried as radioactive hazardous waste in the landfill there, where they remain to this day.
Not a great example for the future energy source of fusion, I’m afraid. To my knowledge, there is no proven way to avoid this eventuality.
I would like to add that there are also problems with newer non water-cooled fission plant designs. These mostly use sodium or molten salts which present several problems. First, the molten salts and sodium are solids at room temperature, which means they will freeze and block plumbing lines unless carefully controlled. Second, sodium is highly reactive with water, producing both Hydrogen and Coulomb energy leading to intense explosions. Again, great care must be taken to prevent the whole cooling loop from conflagration. In molten salt reactors, the coolant salt can also freeze, and will become highly radioactive, or is itself the fission fuel. All this means that the radioactive salts must be perfectly controlled to prevent leakage into the environment.
But, hey, I have been informed repeatedly that there is no problem with disposal or storage of nuclear waste in the US.
For reference, the TFTR ceased operations in April 1997, so that would be . . . yeah . . . 28+ years ago, but the radioactive structures are still too hot to recycle? Oh well.
This is an incredibly naive approach. By their very nature, neural networks are opaque in their execution. We cannot determine how they actually produce results. Allowing such a program to manage a nuclear fusion reactor is a ridiculously dangerous idea.
Let’s see, here are some of the notable, recent “successes” (/sarc) of hardware/software models:
— The aerospace engineering modeling of the Space Shuttle Challenger and earlier STS launches failed to predict that the O-rings sealing stacked segments of SRBs could lose elasticity at low temperatues to the point of allowing super hot combustion gases to escape and cut through critical structures.
— The aerospace engineering modeling of the Space Shuttle Columbia and earlier STS launches failed to predict that SOFI hitting the leading edge of a wing of the Orbiter could punch a hole through that critical area.
— The aerospace engineering modeling of the SpaceX Block 2 versions of Starship failed to predict the various in-space failures that led to test flights IFT-7, IFT-8 and IFT-9 either exploding in space, or being commanded to self-destruct prior to atmospheric reentry.
— The civil engineering modeling of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant failed to predict what might happen in the case of a tsunami generated by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, having its epicenter 80 miles away, hitting the power plant’s seawall and flowing down to lower levels where emergency backup electrical generators were (improperly, in hindsight) located.
— The pre-operating-service modeling of the Boeing 737 MAX software/avionics failed to predict the faulty automated system (MCAS) programming that could unexpectedly push the aircraft’s nose down despite pilot attempts to override this from happening, leading to two fatal crashes of passenger-carrying flights and a subsequent global grounding of the aircraft.
There are many, many other such examples (although maybe not as impactful) where “modeling” does not provide “accurate predictions”.
As a final take on modeling, just these phrases: garbage in, garbage out . . . accurate-but-insufficient data in, garbage out.
Will anyone believe that an AI got everything right before throwing the switch to start that fusion reactor?
Fixed it for ya
I don’t know if this will work, but there is some big money betting that it will
https://www.helionenergy.com/
It sounds impressive. Helion’s long-term goal is to produce electricity at $0.01 per kWh.
Here’s some information from their website.
“Our device directly recaptures electricity; it does not use heat to create steam to turn a turbine, nor does it require the immense energy input of cryogenic superconducting magnets. Our technical approach reduces efficiency loss, which is key to our ability to commercialize electricity from fusion at very low costs.
The FRC plasmas in our device are high-beta and, due to their internal electrical current, produce their own magnetic field, which pushes on the magnetic field from the coils around the machine. The FRCs collide in the fusion chamber and are compressed by magnets around the machine. That compression causes the plasma to become denser and hotter, initiating fusion reactions that cause the plasma to expand, resulting in a change in the plasma’s magnetic field. This change in magnetic field interacts with the magnets around the machine, increasing their magnetic field, initiating a flow of newly generated electricity through the coils. This process is explained by Faraday’s Law of Induction.
Helion is expected to start producing electricity by 2028 from its first commercial power plant which will provide electricity to Microsoft. The plant will produce at least 50 MWe after an initial ramp-up period.
We estimate that Helion’s fusion power will be one of the lowest cost sources of electricity. Helion’s long-term goal is to produce electricity at $0.01 per kWh.
There are four main components of electricity cost: 1) Capital cost 2) Operating cost 3) Up-time 4) Fuel cost. Helion’s fusion power plant is projected to have negligible fuel cost, low operating cost, high up-time and competitive capital cost. Our machines require a much lower cost on capital equipment because we can do fusion so efficiently and don’t require large steam turbines, cooling towers, or other expensive requirements of traditional fusion approaches.”
Helion is expected to start producing electricity by 2028 from its first commercial power plant which will provide electricity to Microsoft. The plant will produce at least 50 MWe after an initial ramp-up period.
Helion has scam written all over it. A very sophisticated scam, a well-planned and well-executed scam, but a scam nevertheless.
2028 is three years away. We should expect an announcement in late 2027 that Helion is very close to getting its fusion reactor into commercial operation, but that delays caused by unforeseen technical and regulatory issues have delayed commercial startup until late 2029 or early 2030.
In other words, rather than commercial fusion always being twenty years away, or always ten years away, outfits like Helion will always be claiming that their commercial fusion technology is just two years away.
First commercial power plant by 2028. For this to happen there would need to be a prototype/developmental power plant in operation NOW. The fact this is not the case is proof it’s a scam.
Any website blurb that has to note “This process is explained by Faraday’s Law of Induction” is all the evidence needed for indicating a scam.
. . . corrected it for you, no charge.
“Expected to start producing electricity by 2028” . . . and there hasn’t even been a proof-of-concept subscale demonstrator yet???
ROTFL^42!
Whither tritium? Will enough fission reactors be built to produce it? Why don’t we just build fission power plants and be done with it?
Tritium, huh?
Haven’t you heard:
— The half-life of tritium is about 12 years . . . use it or lose it
— Some sources estimate that a 1 GW fission reactor (the typical size of a single fission reactor in a modern, utility-scale nuclear power plant), specifically a heavy water reactor, could produce around 200-260 grams of tritium per year, but specialized light-water reactors could produce up to 2 kg per year.
Let’s put that in perspective: it is estimated that 1 GW fusion reactor that requires tritium for its power production would consume approximately 55-60 kg of tritium per year.
None of the commercial nuclear power plant reactors operating in the US today use heavy water. Therefore, we’re looking at needing 28-30 (or more) specialized light water fission reactors to supply a single 1 GW fusion reactor that requires tritium for its power production. WOW!
Maybe just use coal and gas – seem to work well.
Finding this configuration is where the AI comes in.
That and quantum computers.
Unlike FTL drives and antigravity, this is physically possible with our current understanding of how the world works.
It’s an engineering problem, not a science problem.
It is the same problem as finding the Philosopher’s Stone.
“Why do so many people believe we are on the brink of a fusion breakthrough?”
Since so many people are now investing in it and doing the research- and since when it’s accomplished, it’s going to mean trillions in profits for those who invent the process. Now that there is motivation from the AI crowd, who are already spending trillions of AI, it all seems like it’ll fall into place. Maybe.
But people should also consider “zero point energy”. I know that here there is little to zero talk about UAPs- there is a great deal of discussion elsewhere- with 4 Congressional hearings in the past year. Supposedly the UAPs use zero point energy- and all the major powers on this planet are working on this issue. Lots of talk about Disclosure. Supposedly the American military has had retrieved UAP craft for several decades and has been working on anti gravity research- and they may very well have built copies of those UAP. Zero point energy might arrive sooner than fusion energy. I had a great sighting of a UAP in 1984 and it was no plane and it made no sound- seen by thousands in the Hudson Valley in the ’80s. I saw it on the Taconic Parkway, north of NYC.
followed Polywells since the early 2000s, they got some neutron counts out of small machines but sadly the wells did not scale… the current required to maintain a well is too high
but Helion is for real — they collide and compress a FRC plasma and extract energy directly using the magnets https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/more-on-helions-pulsed-approach-to-fusion/
no cryo, no superconduction, no breeding blanket, no steam turbine, materials are mostly silica and aluminum so the machine “cools down” within a month and suffers very little long-term activation (helps that the neutrons are lower energy than D-T)… it’s a very compelling cost argument
they are going to generate electric power from the Polaris prototype reactor this year
50MJ in from the caps, 55MJ out is my guess… 15 MJ of fusion gain, 5MJ losses to transport/resistance, 5MJ of neutrons
mind you this happens over less than 1 ms… this dodges all sorts of stability problems and renders the whole concept of “ignition” meaningless
they have a viable fuel cycle fuel to breed He3
with spin polarization they might be able to fit a 50MWe reactor in a shipping container in the next generation
of course, it’s high-risk and may not work but it’s a very elegant design with no obvious flaws
though getting to high frequency operation will be challenging (Polaris is only .1Hz)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10894-023-00367-7
the downside is their approach seems hardcapped at tens of MW per device… but they’re small and cheap enough that you could stack them, NuCor is apparently buying a dozen or so units
SPARC will work too, but CFS isn’t as exciting as they’re chasing ignited D-T which comes with huge drawbacks like 14MeV neutrons, superconductors, cryo, breeding blankets, drive current…
I read some on their progress. Yes, some interesting “milestones” have been demonstrated. However, the progression that is now necessary to advance to commercial energy generation is the level where (IMO) it will unravel.
they’re testing that phase right now, so we’ll know soon