Elusive fusion reactors to be commercialised by 2025-2030... Or so they say

[BananaDunka]

I know we've been reading about this for years and years but could the advent of machine learning and AI finally bring us into new energy territory?

https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/...lve-nuclear-fusion-thanks-to-cutting-edge-ai/

Assuming this is all going as forecast and they do finish a commercial unit by 2025 thanks to AI. The implication of near limitless energy are profound. We won't be seeing cars and transport using it for a long time after because of the need to downsize a fusion reactor, but powering infrastructure would be a huge thing. Considerably cheaper electricity being the by-product for us and manufacturing plants having less power overheads means cheaper products all round as well. There's also a huge benefit in environmental terms since fusion has no radioactive waste and the exact moment the conditions break for fusion to happen, the reaction ends so it's also very safe.

Seems SciFi was wrong, machines/AI won't wipe us out after all.

Although it's worth noting that the CEO of TAE back in 2019 said they expect to start commercialisation by 2023, and now it's 2025.... So maybe this new lease of life thanks to AI requires more funding, hence the media coverage... Who knows

Would be nice though to live the rest of our lives without having to worry about energy costs.

For those still not sure wtf all this is, here's a very recent and easy to understand video covering everything to date.

Looking at the timeline of progress, it does seem like our generation is the one that should finally see the real world use of fusion power and all thanks to AI and quantum computing especially after ITER goes live working full pelt in the 2030s.

Hopefully we are out of lockdown by then

 

[BananaDunka]

Eh???

I mean fission reactors have been around for a while now and you don't get people saying we won't be seeing them in cars for a long time... why would anyone expect to see a nuclear reactor in a car in the first place? They're in some navy ships and that's about it...

As for "thanks to AI" - sounds more like that firm got help with inverse problems/optimisation...

What did quantum computing have to do with any of this?

It would be great if there was a commercial fusion reactor created within the next few years - people will get skeptical about this stuff though as claims about fusion being around the corner have been made for a while now.

You are confusing fission with fusion in the first bit of that comment I think, nobody in their right mind would pub a fission reactor (even if it were remotely possible) into public transport lol.

There are companies out there working on portable fusion reactors that could be used for transport or deployment in areas without fixed infrastructure.

Quantum computing as per the article and a few others, Google using their computers to analyse fusion iterations and AI being able to spot more efficient ways to analyse in the process and project better ways to do the same tasks. As mentioned in the video linked, AI has helped re-look at older methods with modern technology because even a few years ago today's AI wasn't there to analyse and predict the massive amounts of data these experiments produce in an efficient way.

 

[BananaDunka]

I thought that's what Googles hand was playing in this since a lot of what they've been helping out with in various fields has been through using their quantum computing power to churn through data. Either way, quantum computing in this area isn't brand new and has been talked about for a short while at least since the benefits are said to be compelling.

There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in this space. There are several ways to skin the proverbial cat that is fusion, and - a continuing theme across technology it seems - the private sector has really advanced to a point where they are now leading the charge with a few key technologies that are key to making each implementation viable. I specifically really like Tokamak Energy's concept, which is to create comparatively small reactors which are easier to produce, manage and use in a modular fashion, as opposed to a gigantic hulk of a single unit which has many single points of failure. The success of a small tokamak would mean it's one step closer to being used in transport (obviously beginning with fringe applications first such as military subs, ships, and potentially space).

Yeah there are several reactor designs by private firms that seem to be itching to get to the end first, along with ITER which brings together the collective minds of the world for the joint project. That's still being built in France but with a Qof 10 that's gonna provide a lot of valuable research data to speed things up further for sure.

 

[BananaDunka]

Look at projects like LIGO, professor Weiss had been thinking about how to test Einstein's gravitational waves since the 1970s even though Einstein himself said we'd never be able to detect them at such a small scale yet the project came to be through funding in technology which lead to his team detecting the waves and earning him the Nobel prize (Noble, if you're Trump ). The detections didn't happen until only a couple of years ago and like Fusion, it had spent decades as a theory until the funding (and so technology) was applied.

Whilst the more mass media articles will always likely be a means to add more investment interest to these projects, the more deeper you read each year on what's been progressing, it seems the closer we are getting and this generation could certainly be the one that sees it start.

Wouldn't it be amazing? We will have lived through the start of several global game changers within our generation.

 

[BananaDunka]

I am somewhat dubious of the claims made in the article. The video is very good though, although at the very start he repeats a few common tropes about seawater being the fuel for fusion and that fusion is "clean". I work at ITER, so have a vague idea of the state of things...

Fusion is not exactly fuelled by sea-water. He is referring to Deuterium-Tritium fusion reactions. It is true that deuterium can be extracted from seawater, but the other isotope of hydrogen required, tritium, is only available in trace amounts in the environment and is a fast decaying radio-isotope (half-life 12.3yrs). There is only ~3.5kg of tritium naturally available at any one time on the planet. Instead, the required tritium must be bred inside fission or fusion reactors by neutron activation of lithium.

Fusion is also not clean. The neutrons produced in a fusion reaction activate elements in the materials of the machine to create radioactive isotopes. E.g. Cobalt-59 in stainless steel is activated to Cobalt-60 which is a gamma emitter with a half-life of around 6 years. Although we won't create High-Level Radioactive waste, we will produce vast quantities of Medium and Low-Level Waste which must be handled as radwaste and which still needs to be packaged and stored for several years.

One problem with articles such as these is that when scientists say XXX will be possible in YYY years time, the scientists often have not given much consideration to the future engineering challenges to be faced in actually realising the theory. A big problem with fusion is the time frames people have put on what is an incredibly complex challenge. It has always raised unrealistic expectations.

It is certainly interesting to see modern computing approaches helping, but in reality, if AI could solve it all then we have just wiped out millions of jobs across the world.... AI cannot solve all engineering design challenges. Engineering is a combination of creativity and logic. AI, I suppose, is cold, hard logic. There are thousands of engineers at ITER dedicated to design and analysis to support the science with perhaps tens of thousands of highly-specialist technicians and operators in the supply chain. AI would also not solve supply chain issues.

The major issues related to realising fusion, at least in Tokamaks are:

• maintaining a stable plasma - physics
• solving novel material science and engineering challenges to ensure that the machine doesn't just disintegrate and clog itself up with dust created from particles stripped-away from plasma-facing components by the neutron flux
• solving the very complex challenges of remotely-operated handling and maintenance operations inside the vacuum vessel, which are necessary just to keep such a machine running
• the huge material and engineering costs
• breeding sufficient amounts of the required tritium to feed the machine
• treating the radwaste

All of this is on top of the fact that a fusion reactor is a nuclear installation and must therefore be licensed by the state agency responsible for nuclear safety. This itself is a huge challenge, particularly for a novel plant like a fusion reactor. "Beginning commercialisation" in 2023 I guess means only just starting the design approval for the reactor, which will take years.

Very few of the above challenges could be solved by AI.

I am confident that we will see a commercial fusion reactor connected to the grid in our lifetime, but it won't be ITER and it won't even be the follow-up, DEMO.

ITER itself will not generate any electricity, it won't even have a turbine island, it is an experimental reactor. Instead, the purpose is to generate a plasma with fusion power ten times the external heating power applied to the plasma. ITER is essentially a proving ground for the plasma physics, materials science, and engineering solutions applied to the magnetic confinement approach to fusion in a Tokamak machine. At sometime during the life of ITER the member states will begin to construct their own demonstration (DEMO) reactor designs, which will be followed up by commercial reactors.

In any case, nobody I know at ITER would be upset if another organisation suddenly cracked fusion and got it to work. Everybody is working toward the same goal and solving the challenge can only be a good thing for humanity. Although personally, I believe it's probably better for everybody if it was cracked by an international collaboration than an investor-funded private entity...

Elusive, not illusive.

Very interesting and informative! Gonna be keeping an eye out for the yearly articles and announcements that come out. At leats one thing is clear, scientists are on the right tracks and the progress being made is still pretty substantial in the face of serious complexity as you've mentioned. Who knows, maybe some near-future great mind will come along one day and flip everything on its head and propose a novel solution to the current problems.

Title corrected, it was very very late at night

 

[BananaDunka]

No, it's Elusive. I pointed this out but my post was deleted


Illusive basically means made up. Fiction.


Anyway, I think today is an amazing time to be alive. We've got the LHC on the go, we've got people sorting out qbits for quantum computing, people are sussing out fusion reactors, Musk is prepping to colonise mars, it's genuinely amazing.

One thing I think the world falls short of is publicity. Back in the 90s there were science related promotional items everywhere. Remember when Andy Green broke the world speed record in the Thrust SSC? You couldn't move without bumping in to it somewhere. Beyond 2000 was a TV show which was all about new and future tech, I loved that show. Do we have anything like that now?

Today's kids seems more interested in what shape Kylie Jenner's eyebrows are today than making actual progress as a species. It's a shame, hopefully the silent nerds are still at it.

Not forgetting prime time shows like Tomorrow's World that helped guide people of all ages into an interest in technology and science. Cosmos by Sagan was before my time but I have watched many episodes and it's profound whilst Neil deGrasse Tyson takes over the reign now with his new series which is equally as good and focuses on a modern humanity and its history of achievements and what lies beyond for us.

 

[BananaDunka]

Going by new replies and insights it's pretty clear then that Fusion is absolutely feasible and will certainly be seen in our lifetime in one form or other. It's just going to take the time that it takes due to the immense complexities in engineering along with the process of testing, experimenting, analysing the results and so on. All of this takes years/decades. Looking forward to further advances in coming years. Who knows, some bright spark might come along and turn everything on its head with a genius idea.

 

[BananaDunka]

The Germans have turned on their stellarator.

Once again, Germany ahead of the curve!

 

[BananaDunka]

Oops, looks like I didn't notice the posted date since youtube popped it up on the front of the timeline so automatically assumed it was a recent event!

 

[BananaDunka]

China is edging ahead it seems!

https://www.sciencealert.com/china-s-artificial-sun-fusion-reactor-reached-another-milestone/amp

 

[BananaDunka]

Let's not tar scientists of China with the same brush as other less eco-friendly areas of China, such as cheap labour cotton factories as mentioned.

Some things you simply cannot do on the cheap where science is concerned anyway.

Some more details/pics here: https://www.indiatoday.in/science/s...on-clean-energy-renewables-1810740-2021-06-04

 

[BananaDunka]

We will see it in our lifetime this is pretty much a certainty. The scientists all over are collaborating their efforts around the world on Fusion whilst playing for their own nations too of course. I mean they have gone from 20 seconds ish of sustained fusion to over 100 seconds in a relatively short space of time. Fusion being a constant 20-30 years away ever since the 50s actually seems very likely given the current rate of progress.

I predict in 10 years time we will see the first commercial reactor switch on. Bookmark this post for 10 years time

 

[BananaDunka]

From my experience in my work, you have to hold the Chinese nuclear industry massively at arms length. They have "developed" a radiation transport code called SuperMC, which is basically a gigantic rip off of Los Alamos National Lab's code MCNP6. It used to have an almost identical output to that of MCNP, yet was marketed around the world as their own code. It was just so shockingly blatant. They also wanted you to undertake your calculations using their code on their cloud server only and provide copies of your work whenever you cited their code. No thanks!!!!!!!

Hmm this I never knew, I really wanted their rep to not be true in all fields but stuff like this just doesn't help!

 

[BananaDunka]

Anyone care to ELI5 how something that is the hottest thing in the solar system by x10 @ 120million degrees doesn't melt the very thing containing it. I understand powerful magnets contain the plasma but does that mean that there is little to no radiated heat? If that's the case how do they actually get the energy out?

It doesn't get any more ELI5 than this:

Edit*

And ITER in some detail:

 

[BananaDunka]

In August a new breakthrough was made using laser based fusion, so no magnetic confinement needed for the plasma even though MIT a couple months previously successfully demonstrated new magnets that are smaller and more powerful and capable of stable confinement in tests.

The laser one appears to be on the right tracks faster still though.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/228373/major-nuclear-fusion-milestone-reached-ignition/

However, this process has never been fully realised before – until now. The results from the experiment on 8 August indicate an energy output of over one mega-joule, which marks one of the agreed thresholds for the onset of ignition and is six times the previous highest energy achieved.

With all these different types of reactors being worked on with a new breakthrough every other month now things feel more legit than ever before.

Gut feeling remains the same as before, in our lifetime we will see commercial ignition of fusion power if this rate of progress continues. Getting my head around it all has been and still is tough, but been reading and watching all I can to understand it all for ages now. Find it fascinating!

 

[BananaDunka]

Source of said article? Whilst no doubt many of these will include an element of weapons research, I can't believe for a moment that it's all hush hush given that many of these are being researched in educational institutes etc.

Source needed. until then I'm taking any such near conspiracy like claims with a pinch of salt

Many of these researchers have even published their papers into scientific journals that you can read so it's not just a PR cycle really but actual data and continued research. The only reason for recent breakthroughs is thanks to advances in technology that simply was not possible years ago.

 

[BananaDunka]

I can only link back to this thread on reddit where plenty of legit sources and reading materials have been posted on current progress among other things. Paints a nice picture really.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/com.../?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

[BananaDunka]

Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope which is common in the universe and extracted from sea water so no problem with supply there. Tritium is the other isotope of hydrogen but is more rare so needs to be produced for the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction to happen in the reactor. Tritium can be mined from the Earth's core and from sand which I did not know

This isn't the article but it explains. Bit about the discrepancy in numbers


https://bigthink.com/hard-science/nif-fusion-power-breakthrough/

Personally I like general fusions method atm.

Just boarding plane will google more later, the ignition lab seems one of the poorest methods so far though vs tomak and liquid metal

Hmm it does pose some interesting questions I guess - Mostly though no matter what the military will always be hot on the trail of anything that could give them an energy edge over another nation I guess. Kind of unavoidable in a way?

 

[BananaDunka]

The Tritium is produced by introducing Lithium into the reactor stages - Lithium is what can be mined from the core and sand is what I should have worded above, just read my post back and realised that bit was missing

So yeah, Lithium is what's needed to get Tritium produced in the reactor.

Edit* Correction, crust not core and salt desserts not specifically sand! Too much reading frazzling the mind lately.

Tritium is a radioactive isotope that decays relatively quickly (it has a 12-year half-life) and is rare in nature. Fortunately, exposing the more abundant element of lithium to energetic neutrons in a fusion reactor can generate tritium. A working fusion power plant could potentially use lithium to breed the tritium it needs to close the deuterium-tritium fuel cycle since lithium can be obtained from the Earth’s crust via ore mining and from salt deserts.

 

[BananaDunka]

At cop26 Fusion is going to be a talking point, another indicator that things are getting hot on this topic more than ever before:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fusion-energy-at-cop26