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Thread: Why nuclear fusion is gaining steam

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    Why nuclear fusion is gaining steam

    Why nuclear fusion is gaining steam


    This will be a game-changer when it happens.

    Back when I studied geology in grad school, the long-term future of energy had a single name: nuclear fusion. It was the 1970s. The physicists I studied with predicted that tapping this clean new source of electric power by forcing two nuclei of hydrogen to combine and release massive amounts of energy, might be 50 years off.

    Four decades later, after I’d left my career of research and writing in the energy industry and begun a second career as an author and a professor, I found myself making this same forecast with my own students and readers. In what had become an ironic cliché, fusion, it seemed, would forever haunt a distant horizon.


    That seems to be changing, finally.


    Thanks to advances in physics research, materials science and supercomputing, scientists are building and testing multiple fusion reactor designs. About a dozen fusion startups with innovative ideas have the private investment they need to see what they can achieve. Still, it’s too early to break out the champagne, and not only for technical reasons.
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    It remains 50 years away.
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

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    The article has it closer to 20 years away.
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    For too long they have been promising us Nuclear Fusion Revolution. Will it ever work? We do not know.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    The article has it closer to 20 years away.
    In 1980s it was an exciting prospect.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    The article has it closer to 20 years away.
    Even so, it is still 50 years away. And it always will be until suddenly, someone has an insight that resolves the hard problems.
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


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    MIT is working with a private company and they have some of that insight. They hope to have a demonstration plant that produces 200 MW of electricity within 15 years. A small "pilot" plant within 5 years. They have learned a lot from others failures since the eighties and we have better technology and scientific knowledge now.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Don View Post
    MIT is working with a private company and they have some of that insight. They hope to have a demonstration plant that produces 200 MW of electricity within 15 years. A small "pilot" plant within 5 years. They have learned a lot from others failures since the eighties and we have better technology and scientific knowledge now.
    This makes me smile. Get back to us in 2023. Let's see what actually happened after the five years are up.

    Hopes are cool. But they are neither science nor engineering.
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MisterVeritis View Post
    This makes me smile. Get back to us in 2023. Let's see what actually happened after the five years are up.

    Hopes are cool. But they are neither science nor engineering.
    How many failures did Edison have in creating a viable light bulb? Over 1000.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    How many failures did Edison have in creating a viable light bulb? Over 1000.
    Edison claimed he had no failures. He found ten thousand ways that did not work. An incandescent light bulb, I grant you, is far more complicated than commercially viable (room temperature) fusion. Isn't it?
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

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