<story><title>ITER: World&apos;s largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53573294</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jjoonathan</author><text>Hydro is actually pretty bad in terms of big safety incidents (Banqiao: 171000 dead, Machchu: 5000 dead, South Fork: 2208 dead) and solar&amp;#x2F;wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death&amp;#x2F;watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt. Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip &amp;amp; falls add up even though they&amp;#x27;ll never get an HBO mini-series.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I tend to agree that going forward solar + storage is probably workable. The storage part isn&amp;#x27;t proven yet but I have faith we&amp;#x27;ll figure it out. There are lots of promising options under investigation and the proven fallbacks aren&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; horrendously expensive, all things considered.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just a pity we stopped building nuclear 40 years ago because it was viable all the way back then. Heck, we got to 20% nuclear! Compare to 2% solar today. If we had merely continued building nuclear at the same pace instead of stopping in the 1980s our grid would be 100% low-CO2 &lt;i&gt;today&lt;/i&gt; instead of maybe 30 years from now if we hurry. But that didn&amp;#x27;t happen. We made the super-mature and responsible decision to fill our atmosphere with CO2 instead and now we get to live with that decision. So it goes.</text></item><item><author>andrepd</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m also a fusion power fanboy but&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone&lt;p&gt;This is just not true, there&amp;#x27;s no way you can say this. Solar costs are going down massively. Hydro is dirt cheap already. So renewables can absolutely be part of an energetic transition in the near future, while fusion is at best many decades away. So while I think fusion energy has the potential to transform energy generation, and by extent everything about our life, it&amp;#x27;s wrong to assume renewables aren&amp;#x27;t probably our safest bet in the near future.&lt;p&gt;Also there&amp;#x27;s something amusing about &amp;quot;Here&amp;#x27;s my sure assessment. Anyway I checked the wiki page on fusion power and&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>usui</author><text>I am going to need some help on this one as my knowledge on physics is limited: What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale? I desperately want nuclear fusion to work because nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone. It&amp;#x27;s also 500% more important that nuclear fusion works because most people around the world think that nuclear fission is scary (weaponization concerns even though fission power is different from bomb-making, radioactive waste, reactor meltdowns, etc.), even though it&amp;#x27;s the only realistic method we have today of going carbon-neutral.&lt;p&gt;However, I looked up the article on &amp;quot;fusion power&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Fusion_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Fusion_power&lt;/a&gt;) and it says &amp;quot;but to date, no design has produced more fusion power output than the electrical power input, defeating the purpose.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone help explain what I am missing, or what is not explained well? My common-person impression is if a laboratory experiment cannot even produce desired outcomes, what makes people think that an engineered, faulty-prone system will? The way I see it is that researchers produce the proof-of-concept, and engineering will attempt to reproduce that at scale. Isn&amp;#x27;t this preemptive? Or, from the article, it seems that it is necessary to build this thing in order to get any conclusive research results.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jpdus</author><text>&amp;gt; Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip &amp;amp; falls add up even though they&amp;#x27;ll never get an HBO mini-series.&lt;p&gt;This is a very flawed and short-sighted argument. Averages don&amp;#x27;t matter when you are talking about fat-tailed&amp;#x2F;power law risk distributions.
Nobody would be opposed to PVs on roofs in their neighborhood b&amp;#x2F;c some construction workers fall to death every year - this risk is well calculable.
But (almost) everyone would be opposed to a fission plant or nuclear waste facility next door - and rightfully so.&lt;p&gt;Without enormous direct and indirect subsidies, nuclear (fission) isnt commercially viable anywhere in the world. Heck, you still can&amp;#x27;t insure a fission plant.&lt;p&gt;Yes, in theory fission would have been the best option for carbon-free energy. No, in practice humanity never figured out how to safely and efficiently use this power source and now renewables are a way safer and cheaper bet. You won&amp;#x27;t find any objective economic analysis (that incorporates such indirect subsidies as the implicit state guarantee and realistic building and waste handling&amp;#x2F;storing costs) that can show otherwise.</text></comment>
<story><title>ITER: World&apos;s largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53573294</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jjoonathan</author><text>Hydro is actually pretty bad in terms of big safety incidents (Banqiao: 171000 dead, Machchu: 5000 dead, South Fork: 2208 dead) and solar&amp;#x2F;wind have trouble beating nuclear on metrics like death&amp;#x2F;watt because you need lots of infrastructure per watt. Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip &amp;amp; falls add up even though they&amp;#x27;ll never get an HBO mini-series.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I tend to agree that going forward solar + storage is probably workable. The storage part isn&amp;#x27;t proven yet but I have faith we&amp;#x27;ll figure it out. There are lots of promising options under investigation and the proven fallbacks aren&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; horrendously expensive, all things considered.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just a pity we stopped building nuclear 40 years ago because it was viable all the way back then. Heck, we got to 20% nuclear! Compare to 2% solar today. If we had merely continued building nuclear at the same pace instead of stopping in the 1980s our grid would be 100% low-CO2 &lt;i&gt;today&lt;/i&gt; instead of maybe 30 years from now if we hurry. But that didn&amp;#x27;t happen. We made the super-mature and responsible decision to fill our atmosphere with CO2 instead and now we get to live with that decision. So it goes.</text></item><item><author>andrepd</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m also a fusion power fanboy but&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone&lt;p&gt;This is just not true, there&amp;#x27;s no way you can say this. Solar costs are going down massively. Hydro is dirt cheap already. So renewables can absolutely be part of an energetic transition in the near future, while fusion is at best many decades away. So while I think fusion energy has the potential to transform energy generation, and by extent everything about our life, it&amp;#x27;s wrong to assume renewables aren&amp;#x27;t probably our safest bet in the near future.&lt;p&gt;Also there&amp;#x27;s something amusing about &amp;quot;Here&amp;#x27;s my sure assessment. Anyway I checked the wiki page on fusion power and&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>usui</author><text>I am going to need some help on this one as my knowledge on physics is limited: What makes scientists believe that the solution to nuclear fusion power is only a matter of scale? I desperately want nuclear fusion to work because nuclear power is the only realistic way to solve the looming energy crisis of the 21st century while still maintaining the same standard of living for everyone. It&amp;#x27;s also 500% more important that nuclear fusion works because most people around the world think that nuclear fission is scary (weaponization concerns even though fission power is different from bomb-making, radioactive waste, reactor meltdowns, etc.), even though it&amp;#x27;s the only realistic method we have today of going carbon-neutral.&lt;p&gt;However, I looked up the article on &amp;quot;fusion power&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Fusion_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Fusion_power&lt;/a&gt;) and it says &amp;quot;but to date, no design has produced more fusion power output than the electrical power input, defeating the purpose.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone help explain what I am missing, or what is not explained well? My common-person impression is if a laboratory experiment cannot even produce desired outcomes, what makes people think that an engineered, faulty-prone system will? The way I see it is that researchers produce the proof-of-concept, and engineering will attempt to reproduce that at scale. Isn&amp;#x27;t this preemptive? Or, from the article, it seems that it is necessary to build this thing in order to get any conclusive research results.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dghughes</author><text>Hydroelectric projects also cause an increase in mercury levels specifically methylmercury. You&amp;#x27;d think hydroelectric would be a safe method of generating power with flooding being the only bad effect. An Inuk guy in Labrador I follow on Twitter (@AndersenAngus) is trying to raise awareness about methylmercury due to flooding of land for hydroelectric dams.&lt;p&gt;Here is some info on it via the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.seas.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;human-health-risks-hydroelectric-projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.seas.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;human-health-risks...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Microbes convert naturally occurring mercury in soils into potent methylmercury when land is flooded, such as when dams are built for hydroelectric projects. The methylmercury moves into the water and animals, magnifying as it moves up the food chain. This makes the toxin especially dangerous for indigenous communities living near hydroelectric projects because they tend to have diets rich in local fish, birds and marine mammals such as seals.  &amp;quot;</text></comment>