[yholio]

Yup, a major breakthrough in this glacial field is doubling the energy output in 25 yeas.

So by the time captain Picard is born, we might have a very expensive and massive fusion reactor that will generate the same kind of energy we can generate today with very expensive and massive fission reactors.

Really now, this is pure garbage and does not solve the major problems in the field nor do most of the myriad startups trying to cash in on speculative seed funds.

[ClumsyPilot]

"with very expensive and massive fission reactors"

The laws if physics don't owe us a free lunch. Light, safe and cheap powersource does not exist

Fossil fuels aren't a power source, they wre a power store - that power was collected and millions of years ago.

Also 100% productivity on 25 years is quite good - what did combustion engines improve in that time, 5%?

[onychomys]

The 1997 F-150 made 220bhp and got 18mpg [0], while the 2022 F-150 makes 400bhp and 19mpg [1], so fusion is doing way better than that!

(...i think i chose comparable trim levels to do that comparison, there are a stunning number of choices there!)

[0] https://www.cars.com/research/ford-f_150-1997/specs/103719/ [1] https://www.edmunds.com/ford/f-150/2022/features-specs/

[brandall10]

Mileage figures have little to do w/ max power. That mileage figure is roughly using the same actual power, which is a relative sip of fuel.

The main difference would be in testing EPA methodology which which would be a bit more stringent/realistic to world use. On top of that, there likely is more rolling resistance at lower speed due to larger tires and heavier weight, offset somewhat by lower C/D at speed.

Basically it's hard to extrapolate ICE efficiency gains... they're there are sure, but probably in the single or low double digits.

[winrid]

The newer F150 also weighs more. Also, if it didn't have to make twice the power, it would probably get 40mpg today.

ICE engines have advanced a lot in 20 years, especially in terms of cost per HP/MPG.

[hedora]

I don't understand why they can't just build a basic pickup truck any more.

We had an old pre-fuel injected pickup. It had a bigger bed than the current truck, and seated six instead of five. It got 33% more miles to the gallon. The new one's transmission likes to overheat, even when not towing.

Seriously, wtf?

[winrid]

Safety, mostly.

I have a 2015 Colorado with a 6 speed manual, long bed, 4.10 read end, and the 2.5L 200Hp four cylinder. Probably as basic as you can get, and nobody buys them, because for like 2k more you can get a v6 and fancy electronics.

Tows 4k lb trailer fairly fine...

[nomel]

The real question would be, what's the fuel consumption for a given, sustained, bhp, for both? The mpg numbers are often pretty unrealistic. [-1]

[-1] https://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/heres-why-real-world-mp...

[throwaway894345]

I mean, if you don't invest in the speculative, how do you expect things to advance? Failure at any particular venture isn't a bad outcome.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we put the massive amounts of money we have put into nuclear fusion and fission into bone simple solar panel purchases. I wonder if anyone has done the math.

There’s a fully functioning fusion reactor 91 million miles from us that sends a lot of energy our way.

[jiggawatts]

The levelized cost of large scale solar power is about 7 cents per kilowatt-hour.

ITER alone will cost $21B minimum and won’t make power. DEMO will conservatively cost about the same, but let’s be generous and round up the total “fusion research cost” to just $30B.

That would buy about 1.5e18 joules, or around the same amount of energy as the electrical generation of the United States… for a month.

So, a drop in the bucket compared to what we use globally…

Even if you use much bigger numbers for fusion research and assume further solar power cost improvements, fusion might still be worth it.

However, it’ll only be worthwhile if the total cost the production fusion plants is not too high. If they end up costing $10B each then the whole thing will be a dead end economically.

[yholio]

Nothing about the current tokamak based designs suggests they will be any cheaper to build for a given power rating than existing fission designs:

- They need large, highly advanced cryocooled superconducting magnets in very close proximity to a hundred million degree plasma. This only makes economic sense in massive, and expensive plants.

- They are a very strong source of fast neutrons useful to transmute cheap depleted uranium into plutonium, so carry massive proliferation risks, need close regulatory scrutiny and will require mounts of paperwork to operate, thus exceptionally inflexible to improvements and rapid iteration. Just like the current fission crop.

- Aneutronic fusion is a currently a purely theoretical concept, in the last 70 years nobody has been able to contain even the much cooler D-T plasma for economically viable durations and temperatures.

- The structure of the reactor becomes radiologically active and cleanup operations must be considered. Highly penetrating neutron radiation means some radiation will escape regardless of containment, requiring a radiological exclusion zone. No Mr. Fusion in your car, sorry.

- They operate and must breed sensitive nuclear materials - Tritium, a well known component of boosted thermonuclear weapons. The limited efficiency of tritium production from lithium-6 might require obtaining some from fission reactors to top up the fuel cycle and keep fusion reactors operating.

So when you draw the line, a life time of magnetic containment research has produced a speculative design that even if it were to work, which it doesn't, would be, in the best case scenario, comparable to existing fission designs that are being phased out for cost and risk issues.

A PhD money pit with zero chance of ever building anything useful.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Thank you!