<story><title>More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade</title><url>https://www.growthbusiness.co.uk/more-invested-in-nuclear-fusion-in-last-12-months-than-past-decade-2560528/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dignick</author><text>There are several problems with fission (probably fusion too) as I understand it:&lt;p&gt;1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable.&lt;p&gt;2. Construction time - average is 10 years, we don’t have that long to wait.&lt;p&gt;3. Decommissioning is expensive and a long way in the future. Is that cost built into the cost per MW? How can we be sure the money will be protected, and will be enough to cover it?&lt;p&gt;4. Spent fuel. The project you mentioned isn’t complete yet, but even then it’s a huge liability to leave for future generations to manage indefinitely.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, renewables don’t have these problems and are available immediately. We should be building huge factories to produce wind and solar en masse.&lt;p&gt;Source for the figures: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reuters.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reuters.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSK...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>acidburnNSA</author><text>But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1])&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vixra.org&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;1812.0382v1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vixra.org&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;1812.0382v1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don&amp;#x27;t see why we don&amp;#x27;t just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors.&lt;p&gt;Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) not have the same stigma as fission is kind of weird in my mind.&lt;p&gt;For example, there are leaks of tiny amounts of tritium at some fission plants and people lose their minds. Fusion reactors will have many orders of mag more tritium. Will people not lose their minds just the same? Tritium is notoriously hard to contain since it&amp;#x27;s so small. It can permeate through metal like a hot knife through butter.&lt;p&gt;Also, lots of people worry about fission and nuclear weapons proliferation. So does fusion get around this? Not really. In fact it&amp;#x27;s worse. Did you know that the two materials you need to make thermonuclear weapons are tritium and plutonium? Tritium breeding is required by almost all practical fusion power plants (the other reactions are 100s to 1000s of times harder, I don&amp;#x27;t care what x random fusion CEO says, they&amp;#x27;re in it for the sweet billionaire side project money).&lt;p&gt;Plutonium is made by irradiating natural uranium from the dirt with neutrons. Practical fusion reactors have lots of neutrons. Really high energy ones too.&lt;p&gt;Anyway let&amp;#x27;s just do fission you guys. It&amp;#x27;s way easier. It has been working fine since the 1950s. It&amp;#x27;s zero carbon. Waste problem is solved (see Onkalo, and reprocessing). It net saves millions of lives by displacing air pollution. It runs 24&amp;#x2F;7 on a tiny land and material footprint. We have enough uranium and thorium to run the whole world for 4 billion (with a b) years using breeder reactors (demonstrated in 1952 in Idaho). Get the Koreans over here to build some ARP1400s or the Chinese to build some Hualong Ones until we figure out how to project manage again and then call it good.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>formerly_proven</author><text>&amp;gt; 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable.&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t directly compare cost per generating capacity, because nuclear, gas, coal etc. are available according to schedule, while most renewables aren&amp;#x27;t. Adding storage around renewables to make them schedulable raises costs.</text></comment>
<story><title>More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade</title><url>https://www.growthbusiness.co.uk/more-invested-in-nuclear-fusion-in-last-12-months-than-past-decade-2560528/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dignick</author><text>There are several problems with fission (probably fusion too) as I understand it:&lt;p&gt;1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable.&lt;p&gt;2. Construction time - average is 10 years, we don’t have that long to wait.&lt;p&gt;3. Decommissioning is expensive and a long way in the future. Is that cost built into the cost per MW? How can we be sure the money will be protected, and will be enough to cover it?&lt;p&gt;4. Spent fuel. The project you mentioned isn’t complete yet, but even then it’s a huge liability to leave for future generations to manage indefinitely.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, renewables don’t have these problems and are available immediately. We should be building huge factories to produce wind and solar en masse.&lt;p&gt;Source for the figures: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reuters.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reuters.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSK...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>acidburnNSA</author><text>But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1])&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vixra.org&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;1812.0382v1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vixra.org&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;1812.0382v1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don&amp;#x27;t see why we don&amp;#x27;t just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors.&lt;p&gt;Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) not have the same stigma as fission is kind of weird in my mind.&lt;p&gt;For example, there are leaks of tiny amounts of tritium at some fission plants and people lose their minds. Fusion reactors will have many orders of mag more tritium. Will people not lose their minds just the same? Tritium is notoriously hard to contain since it&amp;#x27;s so small. It can permeate through metal like a hot knife through butter.&lt;p&gt;Also, lots of people worry about fission and nuclear weapons proliferation. So does fusion get around this? Not really. In fact it&amp;#x27;s worse. Did you know that the two materials you need to make thermonuclear weapons are tritium and plutonium? Tritium breeding is required by almost all practical fusion power plants (the other reactions are 100s to 1000s of times harder, I don&amp;#x27;t care what x random fusion CEO says, they&amp;#x27;re in it for the sweet billionaire side project money).&lt;p&gt;Plutonium is made by irradiating natural uranium from the dirt with neutrons. Practical fusion reactors have lots of neutrons. Really high energy ones too.&lt;p&gt;Anyway let&amp;#x27;s just do fission you guys. It&amp;#x27;s way easier. It has been working fine since the 1950s. It&amp;#x27;s zero carbon. Waste problem is solved (see Onkalo, and reprocessing). It net saves millions of lives by displacing air pollution. It runs 24&amp;#x2F;7 on a tiny land and material footprint. We have enough uranium and thorium to run the whole world for 4 billion (with a b) years using breeder reactors (demonstrated in 1952 in Idaho). Get the Koreans over here to build some ARP1400s or the Chinese to build some Hualong Ones until we figure out how to project manage again and then call it good.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bratbag</author><text>Cost factor isn&amp;#x27;t as relevant as you think, as this is an apple&amp;#x27;s to oranges comparison.&lt;p&gt;Renewables are too unreliable to act as baseline generation for a country.&lt;p&gt;In the UK last year for example we had very little wind, so we had to ramp up our gas power output to make up for our shortages in renewables. We burned through much of our gas reserves before the Ukraine war started, because of Renewable power unreliability.&lt;p&gt;Fission is the replacement for that baseline role that hydrocarbons currently fill, not the unpredictable-but-clean role that renewables fill.&lt;p&gt;The ideal future has both, with renewables producing as much power as possible and fission running on low capacity and ready to ramp up when renewables fall short.</text></comment>