Hmmm

BS

I've seen no indication that fusion technology has progressed to the point of the scalability and sustainability required.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/20/climate/nuclear-fusion-energy-breakthrough-replicate-climate

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68233330.amp

https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-long-road-2667181033

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105813

https://www.helionenergy.com/technology/

put kamala in charge she will get the job done.

Rex Racer said:

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I remember when some Texas A&M scientists thought that they had achieved cold fusion.

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Me, too. And one of my HS teachers, an Aggie, told us how it was going to revolutionize energy. He was a great teacher, but he got sucked in by the hype.

Would love for this to work out.

Rossticus said:

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I've seen no indication that fusion technology has progressed to the point of the scalability and sustainability required.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/20/climate/nuclear-fusion-energy-breakthrough-replicate-climate

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68233330.amp

https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-long-road-2667181033

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105813

https://www.helionenergy.com/technology/

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Scalability might not be as needed as sustainability. If it took building as big an installation as the NSA has, if it was powering a portion of the country, it would be worth it. It will be interesting to see if this has any truth to it. If so, Texas should definitely look into it.

I'm not a tin foil hat guy for the most part but I do think Fusion is being very intentionally slow rolled into the energy economy so that it doesn't utterly destroy it (and the fortunes of a lot of wealthy powerful people)

Get Off My Lawn said:

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I smell boondoggle.

I'm not wishing for failure, but we've been 30 years from Fusion for my entire lifetime and although I've heard some promising advances I have yet to hear of a legit break through regarding a self sustaining, stable, and durable technology.

I'd love to be wrong.

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Same here, and I'm 70. My graduate research involved fusion.

If there were some breakthrough that allowed commercial scalability, it would be huge news and well known.

I smell a scam, but it could be legit. Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Quote:

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As of October 2024, SPARC was targeted to begin operations in 2026, with the goal of demonstrating net power (Q > 1) in 2027.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Fusion_Systems#cite_note-:4-32][32][/url] CFS also plans to build a power plant based on the ARC design[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Fusion_Systems#cite_note-:0-2][2][/url] at the beginning of the 2030s.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Fusion_Systems#cite_note-33][33][/url] Both SPARC and ARC plan to use deuterium-tritium fuel.

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Q > 1 is the 80 year old goal. My (very primitive) research was using a fission blanket around the plasma to generate enough neutrons for a net positive. It would seem really ambitious to got from net positive to commercial power production in a decad or so. But... wow.. if they do and it's commercially viable (wonder how much all that superconducting stuff costs), energy needs should eventually disappear.

Rex Racer said:

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I remember when some Texas A&M scientists thought that they had achieved cold fusion.

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Was that Dr. Bockris? I remember seeing news footage from a press conference, I believe from a third floor lecture room in Zachry. That was a day I was proud to be wearing an Aggie ring.

aggiehawg said:

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Tramp96 said:

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Phatbob said:

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I'll be expecting my Mr Fusion unit soon.

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Too bad Ron Popeil and Billy Mays passed. They would sell the crap out of those.

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Buy one for $99.95 and they throw in a Veg-o-matic for free

GREAT SCOTT! 1.21 Jigawatts!

Progress is being made (at a painfully slow rate) we've gotten over the positive energy hump and can now generate power via fusion. Unfortunately at this point the most ever produced was 69 megajoules or just enough to power one small apartment or house for a day

Maroon Dawn said:

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I'm not a tin foil hat guy for the most part but I do think Fusion is being very intentionally slow rolled into the energy economy so that it doesn't utterly destroy it (and the fortunes of a lot of wealthy powerful people)

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This is where I am at. What I am most excited about is the work on super small scale fusion reactors (roughly the size of a briefcase currently). We have put an insane amount of resources into energy transportation and storage. Imagine if the real new paradigm was just individual power creation. Not batteries, not gas... but each thing that needs power just generates it with it's own fusion reactor. Electric cars wouldn't need batteries, they would just be wheels and a smartphone attached to a fusion reactor.

ETA Yes, I know I just described a gas engine, but there is a lot of processing required before my car gets a gallon of gas. Fusion has the potential to get the same thing without the huge processing required.

taking gov't money to enrich themselves and their buddies....they'll never deliver anything close to what they are promising

Is the ARC design dependent on helium?

Better question. Where do I throw a few hundred bucks in stocks that are directly linked here?

For all the Data Centers on every street corner in that area. They have DG beat up there.

Oh, and if you dissect their language in the video; they're trying to package a research facility as a power plant. They know full well this will be far short of a reliable generation facility.

cecil77 said:

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Get Off My Lawn said:

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I smell boondoggle.

I'm not wishing for failure, but we've been 30 years from Fusion for my entire lifetime and although I've heard some promising advances I have yet to hear of a legit break through regarding a self sustaining, stable, and durable technology.

I'd love to be wrong.

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Same here, and I'm 70. My graduate research involved fusion.

If there were some breakthrough that allowed commercial scalability, it would be huge news and well known.

I smell a scam, but it could be legit. Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Quote:

---

As of October 2024, SPARC was targeted to begin operations in 2026, with the goal of demonstrating net power (Q > 1) in 2027.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Fusion_Systems#cite_note-:4-32][32][/url] CFS also plans to build a power plant based on the ARC design[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Fusion_Systems#cite_note-:0-2][2][/url] at the beginning of the 2030s.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Fusion_Systems#cite_note-33][33][/url] Both SPARC and ARC plan to use deuterium-tritium fuel.

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Q > 1 is the 80 year old goal. My (very primitive) research was using a fission blanket around the plasma to generate enough neutrons for a net positive. It would seem really ambitious to got from net positive to commercial power production in a decad or so. But... wow.. if they do and it's commercially viable (wonder how much all that superconducting stuff costs), energy needs should eventually disappear.

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I asked a grad student at A&M about fusion in the late 1970s. You might know him if your graduate work was at A&M -- Richard "Dick" Beres who passed away in the late 1980s, I think.

More specifically, I asked why there was so much fusion research at the University of Texas but little or none at A&M. His response was something like: "Because we like to see our research have results during our careers."

Did anyone else notice in the video that when they described the community they were looking for they used the word "welcoming" with an eleventy-striped pride flag on one of the buildings?

I'm going to ask a very ignorant question...

Does fusion require very specific isotopes like fission does? Or is it more open to a wider range of isotopes? I'm assuming atomic mass still is a primary variable?

I believe Dr. Bockris "validated" the Cold Fusion success reported by Pons & Fleischman at the UofUtah. 1989.

By late '89... all results were refuted.

I believe Bockris made a claim to have made Gold from Mercury which was also disproven.

Ironically, I may... or may not have worked for him for a semester not involving actual research.

DallasAg 94 said:

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Ironically, I may... or may not have worked for him for a semester not involving actual research.

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Picking up his laundry?
Feeding his cats?

Maroon Dawn said:

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Progress is being made (at a painfully slow rate) we've gotten over the positive energy hump and can now generate power via fusion. Unfortunately at this point the most ever produced was 69 megajoules or just enough to power one small apartment or house for a day

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To my knowledge nobody has ever generated any electric power from a fusion reaction. They have however generated more heat than the energy they put into the system. It's a nice milestone but blasting a single pellet is very different from feeding a constant flow of fuel into a reactor and then extracting that thermal energy and putting it to use.

Tramp96 said:

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I'm going to ask a very ignorant question...

Does fusion require very specific isotopes like fission does? Or is it more open to a wider range of isotopes? I'm assuming atomic mass still is a primary variable?

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I believe the fusion in question involves combining deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen, into helium. You lose a neutron in the process, which is where the energy release comes from.

V8Aggie said:

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Better question. Where do I throw a few hundred bucks in stocks that are directly linked here?

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Might take more than a few hundred bucks but they are offering pre IPO shares for those not risk averse.
Commonwealth Fusion Stock

Ag87H2O said:

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Ehhh. Tony Stark built an ARC reactor years ago.

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Tony Stark built one in a ****ing cave

He also invented time travel in a night.