MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy

Re:MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion... by godelski on Thursday September 09, 2021 @01:31AM (#28466595)

Theoretically? Pure brute force. Fusion just generates that much electricity that it has the potential to be insanely profitable. There's a lot of ifs, but there's a good reason to bet big on it.

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Re:MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion... by tsimionescu on Thursday September 09, 2021 @03:24AM (#28467190)

People often make the mistake of looking at the reaction energy of fusion, and comparing that with fission or burning fossil fuels.

But the majority of the reaction energy is carried away by high-speed neutrons, which are pure waste - they can't be captured by magnetic fields, they are heavy and penetrate almost any material, leaving holes behind that make the structure brittle, and when they do get absorbed, they make the atom that absorbed them unstable, turning the material radioactive.

So, at least as long as we use neutri-producing fusion (and any realistic fusion reactor has to) the actually usable energy is not that impressive compared to fission.

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Re:MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion... by tuatoru on Thursday September 09, 2021 @01:46AM (#28466692)

Please explain how it generates that much electricity that cheaply.

Direct conversion is theoretically about 60% thermally efficient, on par with combined cycle gas generators.

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Re:MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion... by godelski on Thursday September 09, 2021 @01:27PM (#28472223)

> Please explain how it generates that much electricity

This is the non-theoretical part

> that cheaply.

This is the theoretical part. I think a lot of people are misinterpreting my comment. I have absolutely no idea if it can be done that cheaply. But I can say for a fact that the yield of energy is massive. The question is if it can be done cheaply. That's the bet. The question is if you want to take that bet. You have to make similar bets on tons of technologies. It usually takes 10-20 years after something is made till it starts to follow the S curve and become cheap. Even solar and wind followed this.

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