US To Announce Energy-Positive Fusion Energy

King of Terror said:
You guys all make it sound like Fusion Power is never going to be possible/viable...
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Not quite never, but as has been pointed out, Fission is easy: just get enough of fissile material in a large enough pile, and it will produce heat in a form that is easy to capture with, say, water. And hot water equals steam equals electricity, since steam is the basis of most traditional power plants. And if you moderate the reaction a bit, your temperatures never go beyond what common 20th century metallurgy can't handle. From there, it is a matter of optimization and safety, but the absolute basic process can in theory be as simple as "Get a big pile of radioactive stuff, dump it in a pool of water."

With fusion however, your starting point is that it actively does not want to happen: Physics is such that unless you happen to be in a core of a star where gravity does the work, the would-be fusioning atoms don't want to stay around each other. You need to contain them and force them together.
This takes a lot of energy and bighuge magnets and such. Magnets need to be kept cool in order to operate best.
The fusion really won't begin to occur until your fuel has been first heated to some millions of degrees.
So on one hand you need to go as far below zero as you can to keep the magnets running efficiently, while heating up the fuel next to them massively.
And you get heat, but that's inside all this machinery and very very cold magnets. Now you need to extract it to make it useful.
But you can't exactly run a water pipe through that bazillion-degree core, because no industrially producible material can withstand that temperature for any kind of period of time.

So with fusion your set of problems to be solved is massively different to even get to a stage similar to even just 'big pile of fissile materials in a pool of water'.
They can be solved and progress is being made as these latest news demonstrate. And if you can get it to work, it absolutely has massive potential advantages as an energy source, hence why fusion research has been funded to begin with.
But let's just say I'm not expecting fusion to commercially overtake fission in energy production within this century. And the future of fission itself is.... not as clear cut is people might have imagined 30 years ago. Cheap renewables are a helluva drug.
 
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King of Terror said:
What about Hydrogen Fuel Cells?
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Gimmick. Or rather, hydrogen is a gimmick. Fuel cells are actually an excellent replacement for internal combustion engines and the like in roles batteries don't do it, as they are twice as efficient in converting hydrocarbons into useful energy than the very best ICEs.
 
King of Terror said:
You guys all make it sound like Fusion Power is never going to be possible/viable...
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Don't feel so down, practical fusion power is only 8 minutes away!
Well technically 8 light-minutes away. Gravitational confinement doesn't scale down well, but it works well for the sun.

Sandy River DL said:
Gimmick. Or rather, hydrogen is a gimmick. Fuel cells are actually an excellent replacement for internal combustion engines and the like in roles batteries don't do it, as they are twice as efficient in converting hydrocarbons into useful energy than the very best ICEs.
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Have they fixed the issues with carbon building up on the catalysts for the types of fuel cells that work at car-scales? It's been quite a few years since I was caught up with fuel cell research.

But yes, screw hydrogen. Hydrogen embrittlement is miserable. I don't want to make researching it essential to our transport sector.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
A method of energy storage and on the go retrieval, not of generation. They compete with lithium-ion batteries and all the other newer battery types coming down the pike, not with nuclear or renewables or even natural gas.
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I know.

I was just asking because I heard about them.

Sandy River DL said:
Gimmick. Or rather, hydrogen is a gimmick. Fuel cells are actually an excellent replacement for internal combustion engines and the like in roles batteries don't do it, as they are twice as efficient in converting hydrocarbons into useful energy than the very best ICEs.
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Why is Hydrogen Fuel Cells a gimmick?

What's wrong with them?

Also, how close are we to Fuel Cells becoming viable enough to replace ICE's and conventional batteries?

I think I heard about a car design a few years back that could actually run on water really well and they were in the process of getting factories for them up and running before those greedy, scum sucking oil companies bought the patent and shut the entire thing down.

Will it be better for the environment and help with Fossil Fuel shortages?

And for that matter, how much time do we have left before we're truly in danger of running out of Fossil Fuels?
 
King of Terror said:
Why is Hydrogen Fuel Cells a gimmick?

What's wrong with them?
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Hydrogen is a gimmick for the simple reason that it's a terrible fuel for anthing other than a rocket. It requires either very high pressures or extreme cold to keep liquid, it seeps into metal and makes it brittle, has poor energy density, and has to be manufactured. Fuel cells are great though. Much more efficient at power generation the ICEs.
 
King of Terror said:
I think I heard about a car design a few years back that could actually run on water really well and they were in the process of getting factories for them up and running before those greedy, scum sucking oil companies bought the patent and shut the entire thing down.
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You can't run a car directly on water without using something incredibly nasty as an oxidizer, like chlorine trifluoride. Anyone who claims they invented a car that runs on nothing but water is a scammer or and idiot, that's just how thermodynamics works.

You can electrolyze water to hydrogen & oxygen and use the hydrogen as fuel, but if you put the electrolysis unit in the car you've just created a horribly inefficient electric vehicle.
 
Sandy River DL said:
Hydrogen is a gimmick for the simple reason that it's a terrible fuel for anthing other than a rocket. It requires either very high pressures or extreme cold to keep liquid, it seeps into metal and makes it brittle, has poor energy density, and has to be manufactured. Fuel cells are great though. Much more efficient at power generation the ICEs.
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Well then, what kind of fuel cells would be used then?

PhoenixMercurous said:
You can't run a car directly on water without using something incredibly nasty as an oxidizer, like chlorine trifluoride. Anyone who claims they invented a car that runs on nothing but water is a scammer or and idiot, that's just how thermodynamics works.

You can electrolyze water to hydrogen & oxygen and use the hydrogen as fuel, but if you put the electrolysis unit in the car you've just created a horribly inefficient electric vehicle.
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I don't know the details.

Anyway, you guys didn't answer my other questions.

King of Terror said:
Also, how close are we to Fuel Cells becoming viable enough to replace ICE's and conventional batteries?
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King of Terror said:
Will it be better for the environment and help with Fossil Fuel shortages?

And for that matter, how much time do we have left before we're truly in danger of running out of Fossil Fuels?
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Cloak&Dagger said:
Effectively never at this point. Electric engines are here and not going away, so there's a price wall for fossil fuels that will creep downward until fossil fuels are banned.
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AFAIK, batteries aren't anywhere near energy dense enough to replace petroleum-based fuels in long distance aviation. From what I've heard, the few battery-powered propeller planes out there have a maximum flight time of an hour or two, so for safety reasons they can't make flights longer than about 30 minutes. That's a long ways away from making transatlantic flights.

I suspect batteries aren't currently cost-effective for cargo ships either, but I haven't looked into it.

Edit: And that's just looking at transportation, not considering electrical generation.
 
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PhoenixMercurous said:
AFAIK, batteries aren't anywhere near energy dense enough to replace petroleum-based fuels in long distance aviation. From what I've heard, the few battery-powered propeller planes out there have a maximum flight time of an hour or two, so for safety reasons they can't make flights longer than about 30 minutes. That's a long ways away from making transatlantic flights.

I suspect batteries aren't currently cost-effective for cargo ships either, but I haven't looked into it.

Edit: And that's just looking at transportation, not considering electrical generation.
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Those are annoyances, not serious problems. A far cry from the 'electric engines and batteries basically don't exist' of 20 years ago. We could switch to biofuels for aircraft and nuclear cargo ships very quickly if needed.
 
King of Terror said:
Anyway, you guys didn't answer my other questions.
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The problem is, just directly answering the question you asked isn't helpful. Asking:
King of Terror said:
I think I heard about a car design a few years back that could actually run on water really well and they were in the process of getting factories for them up and running before those greedy, scum sucking oil companies bought the patent and shut the entire thing down.

Will it be better for the environment and help with Fossil Fuel shortages?
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is fundamentally fairly similar to "hey guys, I heard about this awesome miracle cure Mr Snake-Oil is selling, with crystal vibrations and homeopathy and quantum! Would it be better for patients than our current drugs with all their side effects? Could it help with antibiotic resistance?"

A simple "no, it wouldn't help" doesn't really get across the rather more important aspect of the whole thing, which is that this is a very old and well-known scam, going back to the 80s at least. It is very definitely a fraud. It wouldn't be better for the environment, and it can't help with fossil fuel shortages, because it doesn't exist.
 
NotInventedHere said:
The problem is, just directly answering the question you asked isn't helpful. Asking:
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????

That's.... not what I was asking?

King of Terror said:
Also, how close are we to Fuel Cells becoming viable enough to replace ICE's and conventional batteries?
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King of Terror said:
Will it be better for the environment and help with Fossil Fuel shortages?

And for that matter, how much time do we have left before we're truly in danger of running out of Fossil Fuels?
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I literally listed the questions I was talking about here.

There was nothing about the car thing.

@Cloak&Dagger answered the one about how long we've got until we run out of Fossil Fuels, but not the ones about Fuel Cells.
 
King of Terror said:
@Cloak&Dagger answered the one about how long we've got until we run out of Fossil Fuels, but not the ones about Fuel Cells.
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Fuel cells are inherently less efficient than batteries because you need to take electricity, create hydrogen with it, transport the hydrogen, then fuel up and turn that hydrogen into electricity.

With batteries the same electricity goes directly into your battery and the battery turns into electricity. There's no creation or transport steps.

This is on top of Hydrogen being a huge pain in the ass.

So there's no clear point or goal where hydrogen fuel cells become viable because they're directly competing with battery and fossil fuels so unless hydrogen gets massive lead in tech nobody is going to bother with hydrogen infrastructure.
 
King of Terror said:
No, @Cloak&Dagger

I thought you said there were other types of Fuel Cells that were much better than Hydrogen ones?

That's what I was talking about when I asked those questions.
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Fuel cells can, with the right catalysts, run on just about any liquid or gas fuel. Like gas turbines, but 70-85% efficient generation of electricity. More, if it's a cogenerating system in a power plant. There's issues with carbon rich fuels coating the catalysts with unreacted carbon, but things like methane and hexane run pretty well.
 
Sandy River DL said:
Fuel cells can, with the right catalysts, run on just about any liquid or gas fuel. Like gas turbines, but 70-85% efficient generation of electricity. More, if it's a cogenerating system in a power plant. There's issues with carbon rich fuels coating the catalysts with unreacted carbon, but things like methane and hexane run pretty well.
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So, it wouldn't actually help with our Fossil Fuel problem or replace conventional batteries then?

What about Solid Oxidide Fuel Cells?
 
King of Terror said:
No, @Cloak&Dagger

I thought you said there were other types of Fuel Cells that were much better than Hydrogen ones?

That's what I was talking about when I asked those questions.
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???

I mentioned biofuels, but that was it. Biofuels are fine and function already. Brazil uses biofuel as standard.

They're inefficient compared to oil and have the obvious drawback of using farmland, but if there was a need for a limited use of fuel, like aircraft, it would be fine long term.

It can also be useful in the short term by displacing gas which it can be mixed with.
 
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Some of the seriously proposed solutions for the energy density questions while remaining carbon neutral, is creation of green ammonia.

Ammonia is less energy dense than stuff like LNG, which is already half as energy dense as diesel.
But is it still vastly superior to the energy density of electric batteries, or pure hydrogen. Meaning it is actually viable for things like global maritime shipping for example. Or car engines, theoretically (not sure anyone has made a pure ammonia car engine yet), with reduced operational ranges/larger capacity tanks.
I know there are larger marine engines that can run on pure ammonia already.

More than that, Ammonia is a liquid at atmospheric pressure and a measly -33C. You don't need hundreds of atmospheres of pressure or cryogenic temperatures to store it, and it doesn't suffer from hydrogen embrittlement - standard commercial steels can hold it essentially indefinately.

Ammonia also contains no carbon, being just NH3. So when it burns, no carbon emissions.

The question is, where to get sufficient quantities of ammonia. The answer: Synthetic production from hydrogen, produced by excess electricity - from fusion or renewables or whatnot - and nitrogen which is plentiful in the atmosphere. The Haber-Bosch process which turns hydrogen and nitrogen to ammonia is well known - it predates world war I - and we already manufacture about 200 million tons of it annually (mainly for fertilizer industry).
The problem is expanding that capacity, and making all steps of it carbon neutral. So production of green hydrogen would be an intermediate step.

Basically, the global zero carbon transition has many many smart people working on it, and it is of great commercial interest since the playing field is so new: companies are scrambling to develop the tools and technologies because markets shares of nothing less than the global energy transition are up for grabs.
 
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