Is fusion power a meme?

Someone should tell the sun to cut out its meme-ing if it is.

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>>60054074
A giant meme.

>>60054074
it's the holy grail and the answer to all of mankind' s energy problems, yet no one seems to be willing to invest more money in it. See >>60054382: consortium of like 35 countries, tens of trillions of GDP in total, and only ~$1bn is spent on ITER's yearly budget.

>>60054074
it actually works.
didn't they switch this big donut in germany and didn't go boom??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-fbBRAxJNk
seems like a good start, wonder why is elon not investing in this
really makes me go hnnnggg

>>60054074
sorry wrong vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_kPM1J-F0Q

skip to 3:50 to see it in action

It's pointless. Solar is just too cheap at this point. Even if they manage to build this thing in 30 years time it won't be profitable enough to bother with because of cheap ass solar panels.

>>60055518
You can obtain fusion in you basement you dingus, literal high school kids build that shit in their bedrooms. What you need is energy positive fusion and no, the Germans didn't do that. It's a start though.

>>60055518
>>60055572
There are a bunch of fusion projects all around the world but they all have very conservative schedules and peanuts for funding.
>why is elon not investing in this
I think it's because fusion research is really expensive, even 500 million dollars wouldn't be that much

It's the meme I wish everyone fell for. I love solar in that it gives everyone the chance to run power from their own home, but it needs to be a little more efficient and cheap for it to be great. Fusion is the answer to everything, but it's forever 20 years away. Maybe Germany will BTFO the ITER before it even goes online.
On the meantime, fission is pretty good. LFTRmemes are not even needed.

>>60055628
And it's a good thing human energy needs are now at their maximum and will never ever increase anymore!

Oh wait.

>>60055788
More panels. You need more power, you put more panels.

>>60054424
this is how the free market works

Didn't Lockheed Martin already make a fusion reactor that can fit in the back of a pickup?

>>60054074
>US annual military spending >600 billion

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>>60055934
How do you acquire the materials and manufacture panels?
>with power
And panels don't last forever, so you'll need to replace those as well
Diminishing returns anon.

>>60054074
Someone is going to figure it out and then every nation is going to scramble at the last second to catch up.

I hope it's best korea so that the USA gets woke the fuck up.

>>60056204
Panels aren't the source of the energy, moron. The sun is. At scale, one panel produces more than the energy required to manufacture it.

I think anyway, idrk.

>>60056279
>Panels aren't the source of the energy, moron
I never said it was. But you bring up a good point; Solar panels are worthless by themselves outside of direct sunlight.
>one panel produces more than the energy required to manufacture it.
Yeah, that's kind of a given. But by how much?

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tfw polywell funding is nonexistent

http://fire.pppl.gov/FPA14_IECM_EMC2_Park.pdf

>>60055628
>It's pointless. Solar is just too cheap at this point. Even if they manage to build this thing in 30 years time it won't be profitable enough to bother with because of cheap ass solar panels.
Do you like talking from your ass? Because we are harnessing a really small fraction of solar power right now, a single fusion reactor on its own, would provide enough power to take out every single solar panel in a major city. Also, fusion reactors can work at nighttime and during storms and cloudy days...

>>60058045
>a single fusion reactor on its own, would provide enough power
yes, this unproven technology that doesn't work yet will be able to do exactly what you say
also, it will be really cheap right?

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>>60054074
Fusion power is just a me-

>>60057480
That looks pretty cool

>>60055628
Well, if it's that cheap, why don't you own a solar farm to power your house?

Nuclear is the only non-meme power source.

>>60058116
Not that Anon but what he's projecting is based on physics, not technical limitations. What's unproven is our ability to make power plants. Fusion itself is pretty well understood though.

As for cost, development and construction will be astronomically expensive. The fuel on the other hand is cheap as chips. We already have facilities which isolate it.

>>60056004
they're still working on it, apparently. I don't know why Elon Musk doesn't invest in this shit so it gets built faster

Right now it is

>>60056004
>tfw got an offer to join their compact fusion R&D team
>tfw they rescinded the offer a few weeks later via voicemail

>>60058625
Bummer. CFR was the absolute only scenario I'd apply to a DoD contractor.

>>60055628
>cheap chink solar panels mean solar is the future!!!!

Funny, the chinks who make those pieces of crap are still building dozens of coal plants a year. Solar is just a bad meme. Maybe it will power your water heater in the future, but don't expect anything more.

>>60056023
The VAST majority of that is on personnel cost. If those people weren't in the military they would be working for the government in some other way or living off of welfare. Plus, it's only 5% of GDP. Shit like social security dwarfs it while providing absolutely zero benefit.

>>60058495
Uranium will be deleted in 2040

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>>60058495
Thorium nuclear power plants are our best bet to avoid chaos in the next century, once they are abundant and other energy problems are solved we can move onto researching fusion power

>>60059443
Thorium decays too slowly and is a meme on par with Tesla's death ray.
Uranium under high pressure and temperature is the way to go here.

>>60058899
Sir power is taking off at a staggering rate. It's getting to the point in some countries like Spain where they have levied a ridiculously high tax on all solar panels bought and sold in the country. They call it the sun tax and Spaniards fucking hate it.

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>>60059473
>Calls somebody "Sir" just like a phone scammer
Confirmed Poo In Loo Shill. 0.05 cents has been deposited into your account, courtesy of Vivint Solar.
Delete.

>>60058045
>Also, fusion reactors can work at nighttime and during storms and cloudy days...
Solar and wind pair up nicely together. Winds tend to be stronger when the sun isn't shining brightly (cloudly, rainy, night). When the two are used together you only need a way to store excess energy for high demand and the occasional time when generation is low and then you could run on 100% renewables in theory.

Even if you had to fall back to natural gas or even coal you wouldn't be running the plant constantly and the load would be significantly reduced.

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>>60054074
No, you're the meme.

Pic related probably has the capability to produce slightly more energy than breakeven. The only thing we'd have to do to test this would be to put sufficient deuterium tritium fuel into it.

We haven't done this because putting tritium into it might make the machine radioactive for a bit interfering with the secret nuclear stockpile experiments it does.

While we could do this experiment fucking today, WITH A MACHINE THAT IS ALREADY BUILT, this is unlikely to happen for a while.

Partly because ARPA-E, the agency that is funding this work, has been targeted by a certain prominent political figure for dissolution.

Oh yeah and ARPA-E funds other fusion work that actually has a chance of being practical unlike ITER. Too bad it probably won't exist by this time next year

>>60059429
Uranium from seawater motherfucker

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>>60054074

What is this garbage?

How can you predict and correlate nuclear physics breakthroughs with money spent?

>>60059860
Well science tends to progress a heck of a lot slower if no one does experiments

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>>60054074

Just wait for lockheed to will it into existence with the power of hookers and blow

>>60060048
Lockheed's effort is not serious, the design they are using has been tried before without success.

>>60060032
tell me where cancer research at the moment

>>60056023
Its half

>>60054424
nuclear is. shame the green party ant its fear mongering hypocrites crept into the democratic party. should have gassed them when we had the chance

>>60059429
>hurr what are breeder reactors

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>>60054074
Who knows. I'm still wondering whether ITER will be finished in our lifetime.

The Sun is a fusion reactor, try telling it it's just a meme

Anyone thought about scaling up pepsi and mentos trick to a huge scale and use it as a power plant?

>>60059739
I'm no expert but that sounds like bullshit because winds are caused by pressure differentials which are caused by areas of different temperatures which are caused by... the sun.

>>60059761
*groans audibly

I dream of working at NIF. tfw masters in electrical engineering will never have the exotic world saving cool jobs

>>60061171
tru

world wide anti fission sentiment is
DISGUSTING

>>60058045
Fission is cheaper than solar per kwh