That probably won't take much longer than 300 years to build.
What with hauling all of the building materials in from the
asteroid belt, and all...
Posted on 12/17/2022 5:19:13 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore Lab (LLL) in Northern California has recently gotten a lot of attention. It was just announced that they finally fused some hydrogen atoms and got more energy out than they put in — a net positive result. Drew Magary, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, throws a little cold water on the event by adding that the lasers causing the fusion reaction were powered by electricity generated at way less than perfect efficiency.
hrowing more cold water, I was told by someone who worked on the facility in question that they already had a net positive event about fifteen years ago. I suggested that they might be tooting their horn now in order to get a bump in funding. He agreed.
What's being left out of the discussion is the commercial viability of the whole concept. Some years ago, Scientific American ran an article that compared nuclear power generation to that from natural gas. Building a natural gas generating station is fairly cheap, leaving the cost of fuel as the primary expense for producing electricity. A nuclear plant is particularly expensive to build — while the cost of enriched uranium is insignificant when calculating the bottom line. The amortization of the construction cost over the life span of the facility is the primary expense for nuclear...which is still fairly cost-competitive with gas, coal, and hydro.
This brings us to the possibly immense cost of building a fusion power plant. Magary also mentions the continuing twenty-year time horizon reset. When projecting the real-world implementation of fusion energy, the goal posts are constantly being moved farther and farther away. Now that we know that controlled fusion is possible, making it economically feasible is the true challenge.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Darn. Looks like we’re still 30 years away.
TANSTAAFL
Getting real, nuclear is still going to be the only real cost competative “green” energy source. But people are not serious about climate change, its a false narrative.
A bit off topic, but did you know the first Harry Potter film was called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the US?
Apparently they thought we were too dim witted to go see Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
I was supposed to be in a flying car and sleeping with Judy Jetson by now.
Reality is crap.
What with hauling all of the building materials in from the
asteroid belt, and all...
How exactly does that 2nd Law work?
-fJRoberts-
Meanwhile LFTR (thorium) is within easy reach, but can’t get funding.
oh crap
im on the waiting list for a mr fusion
and my delorean is not getting any younger
This. Always. Happens!.
“I was supposed to be in a flying car and sleeping with Judy Jetson by now.”
You could be flying with a twice divorced Judy Jetson in economy section and sleeping in a car. Now that’s reality for you.
LOL...
The fusion sample released 3 megajoules of energy after being struck by 2 megajoules of laser energy.
Unfortunately, the laser equipment required 300 megajoules of energy to generate 2 megajoules of laser energy.
Just ten years away!
I was smart enough to NOT see any harry potter nonsense.
Yeah, it only made $7.7 billion...total nonsense.
It did. But I didn’t add to the total.
Reminds me of a George Carlin bit...
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