Fusion at the Skunk Works

Stories about workable fusion reactors are a dime a dozen, but this one actually seems to be on the level, though--obviously--preliminary.

5 comments:

MikeD said...

This is truly outstanding. I think that without developing commercial fusion power, we are in for an energy crisis not seen since the 70s. Maybe not in this decade, but soon. Oil refineries in this country are not being replaced. Our capacity to process oil WILL be reduced in the coming years, and I have extremely serious doubts the EPA will allow new construction. Coal is being throttled by the current administration, and they are doing their best to kill clean coal in its infancy because they can't have people think that cheap fossil fuels can be anything but harmful. And due to the scare tactics used regarding fracking, natural gas isn't far behind. Renewables like solar and wind are still decades away from the efficiencies that would allow them to replace fossil fuels and I don't know that they're as "harmless" to the environment as we're told (ask the birds how harmless those wind turbines and solar plants really are). And nuclear? While here in Georgia we're building the first new nuclear plant in nearly four decades, the EPA is fighting us every step of the way, and no other plants are currently scheduled to replace others throughout the US. Oh, and did I mention, those are reaching end of life? So whether we want to keep them running or not is immaterial. They must be shut down when they reach end of life.

So where is all the replacement energy going to come from? biodiesel? Not hardly.

Ymar Sakar said...

The US Regime will sell the tech to Iran or China soon enough. Just like the West did when creating oil fields in ME and then lost them.

Grim said...

I also hope the technology will play out.

douglas said...

"Renewables like solar and wind are still decades away from the efficiencies that would allow them to replace fossil fuels and I don't know that they're as "harmless" to the environment as we're told..."

You know, I wonder, if you scale these technologies up to a level needed to become real primary power sources for the first world level societies we live in, what is that going to do to the environment? You taking energy out of the wind and using it as electricity- what was that wind doing environmentally before you slowed it a little? Remember that old saying about the flutter of a butterflies wing becomes a hurricane a few trips around the world later? Solar would seem more harmless, but what about the heat that's not going into the ambient environment because it's been turned into electricity? No effect on the surrounding environment when you do that on a really large scale? I suspect there are unforseen consequences yet to be discovered. Unknown unknowns.

E Hines said...

Solar would seem more harmless

To whom, and under what circumstances? The tree- and bunny-hugger crowds in California already have been holding up construction (only lately completed) of a solar farm in one of the California arid regions because 1) the collectors themselves interfered with a desert turtle's habitat, and 2) the power lines needed to carry the generated electricity to the cities would have necessitated cutting swaths through forests and across mountains in order to construct and then to maintain them.

You also worry about heat lost to the ambient environment--at those national-supporting scales, what about albedo and the reflection of all that sunlight back into space before it could reach the surface and be converted to heat?

Eric Hines