cctt23

Ah, it was fun at any rate. I miss you, Lanfear!

It’s a bit wearying to hear the old chestnuts trotted out here of all places. It seems like bad arguments and FUD never really change, they just finds new adherents.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronchiolitis_obliterans#Dia...

I... I... need get to bed.

To claim otherwise is, as you would have it, lying.

More importantly, both are solved issues from a purely technical standpoint, it’s just that everyone wants someone else to deal with it. As a bonus, we can actually use fission to produce energy, right now. There’s no issue of, “it will be great when...” grid storage is solved along with intermittency for renewables. There’s no, “it will be great when...” fusion is producing energy rather than heavily parasitizing from the grid. There’s no waiting until we’re completely screwed by climate change effects.

@csallen: Be willing to actually dispose of it. We need to commit the money and political will to set up a single disposal site. Right now it’s a NIMBY nightmare so we get the worst outcome.

Edit: I’d love to hear a counterpoint, although of course I accept that’s not required. Like the discussion about fusion, people seem to argue from a point in the future when all of the problems and limitations of today are gone. Let’s try arguing from what’s possible now instead.

-Sputtering of shielding and every other part of the reactor from fast neutrons. If your reactor is becoming brittle as it’s in operation, and requires constant maintenance, it won’t be operating enough to be cost effective.

-Breeding blankets. If we’re not breeding tritium in the blanket (and no one has been able to sustain a reaction that way yet) then we’re just using fission a lot. Expense becomes an issue, as does radiological issues.

-The plasma diverter is very much an unsolved problem. I can get into more detail here, but in short this is the part of the reactor that “skims” some of the hot plasma off to do the work. The dynamics of very hot, magnetically constrained plasmas still escapes us, and when you throw a rock into that stream, the complexity increases. Current divertes wouldn’t last a day in an operating plant. Disassembling your whole plant every day and reassembling it is a non-starter.

-Containment of plasma at sufficient energies is still something measured in seconds, or fractions of seconds. The usual metaphor is trying to uniformly squeeze a balloon; it will just “squirt” out. For s research reactor a second or two of fusion is an achievement. For power generation it’s nothing.

-Neutron activation of otherwise inert materials means you’re going to have serious radioactive waste. It’s unclear just how dirty D-T fusion would be from soup to nuts, but “pretty dirty” seems like a good bet.

-Tritium penetration.

-Most of the energy produced is in the form of neutrons, and we don’t know how to use that as a source of power. Those neutrons, in addition to destroying the reactor itself and activating materials, represent a loss.

-What we really need is aneutronic fusion through alternative cycles to D-T, like p-p, but that’s a much hotter plasma and no one has a clue how to make it work yet.

-Coolant for a constantly running reactor is a boring, but unsolved problem.

There’s more, but these are the ones most poeple on HN probably are aware of when they dismiss this article.

Some further reading https://thebulletin.org/fusion-reactors-not-what-they’re-cra...

If you’re in the UK try +44 (0) 8457 90 90 90

If you’re in AU try 08 93 81 5555

If you’re somewhere else I’ll find a number for you if you’d like. No one is going to judge you for calling, you’re not going to be wasting anyone’s time. @pedalpete is giving good advice too.