When will we FINALLY achieve fusion power?

[@fbh3872]

Mr. Sutter covers the issue in a fascinating video. We don't give up because the stakes for humanity are enormous. So much for superconductors. We need to discover new ways to produce energy.

[@code4chaosmobile]

I vote yes for "Laser science and amplification" video

[@NCfrost82]

Such a strange but attractive style the narrator has. Impressive and informative piece.

[@takealready]

I agree. It's like he's talking to us in a coffee shop and It's so different.

[@peterjones958]

Thank you so much for sharing this very informative video. You have a great way with connecting with your audience that always keeps me totally interested and coming back for more.

[@Skotty64081]

Nuclear and particularly fusion R&D should pretty much never stop, regardless of successes and failures. If you think at, lets say, a galactic scale, any advanced civilization should have a mastery of nuclear. Even if you have great batteries and solar power can power the entire Earth, as a civilization, you will forever be tied to and locked within your own star system if you do not master extracting energy from matter with nuclear technology. At some point you have to evolve towards being able to produce everything you need yourself, like a child growing into an adult. The Sun and Earth are here to provide for us, but only as incubators for an infant civilization that will some day need to grow up and become self sufficient.

[@EricLewandowski-vn7ky]

Wow that was deep.

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

~ 17:00 To get an intuitive sense of the amount, that 1 MJ or so of excess energy is comparable to what it takes to brew a small pot of coffee.

[@Temp0raryName]

The biggest problem with fusion reaction is that its (possibly unachievable) promises distract research and development funding from much more achievable and practical alternatives. Such as liquid fluoride thorium reactors. If we put the same funding and effort into that, as we did into fission, we would have economical break even for near limitless energy, in our lifetimes.

[@nyk2000m]

It's probably the saddest thing I ever heard in a while, when u said fusion were relegated to lower priority.

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

11:00 Come on. That's just specious reasoning. Getting a fission plant to shut down is not usually the problem. Yes, it was at Chernobyl, but in almost all other cases, for example at Fukushima and TMI, shutting down happened in an instant, but the decay heat could not be managed. And with fusion, you aren't totally free of the decay heat problem. A fusion reactor, at least the ones being planned now, will create large amounts of activation products, so when the reactor needs maintenance or decommissioning, there will be radioactive mat'ls to dispose of. They should be much less long--lived than what's in a fission core, but they are certainly not trivial.

[@JohnMcGuire-y4b]

Thank you so much for these fascinating, educational and entertaining videos, I totally love them. And your writing for HOTU is second to none🥇

[@sonkefh]

Absolute awesome Video!!! Great work!!!

[@dipi71]

I've read multiple times that even fusion reactors cannot be considered as »clean«. Especially in Tokamak-type reactors, parts of the apparatus inevitably will get irradiated and become radioactive themselves. Is that true?

[@thorstenkrug144]

Aloha. Well its very shorts on the radioactivuity time scale. You have to weit aprox. 100 years Max. The normal fission atomic waste will be dangerous for millions of years. So you can recycling the fusion waste much easier. And it is way less mass you need to watch after. And fusion reactors will shut down automaticaly if something goes wrong. Lets build some. ❤

[@dipi71]

@@thorstenkrug144 That's good to know. I agree that humanity should invest in fusion research (as well as fission research, I wouldn't want to close that door because of obvious applications in medicine and robotic space flight). Yet, I'm torn: for the money that goes into one research fusion plant, we could build so many solar and wind parks, battery backup included. But thank you for that 100 year number, cheers!

[@thoriummarcell403]

Actually, it's the device waste that is significantly more problematic. Even the devices to install in the first place (just watch the tremendous effort, they keep failing for 50+ years), and much more so to replace after activated. Fusion equipment is much more complex and much more volume also. Fusion has several times lower energy density, and several times shorter wall lifetime and as a direct consequence fusion has much more waste, that is extremely problematic. Spent fission fuel is extremely valuable if processing is allowed and especially if fast-spectrum (near 1 MeV) is also allowed. It's been prohibited (see SNR-300 and Integral Fast Reactor story... These were capable of turning LWR waste to energy and separate the extremely valuable fission products: 16 million USD / ton - eg. platinum, rhodium are more valuable than gold. All sientific studies conclude that DT-tokamak is more problematic, more complex, shorter lifetime, more volume to replace more frequently than fast-spectrum fission. Cleaner fusion is a myth, simply not supported by scientific studies considering equipment wate. It is repeated again and again, but it is a myth based on making fission appear 100 times more dirty and fusion appear 100 times more clean than it actually is (this is perpetrated supported by mass manipulation and "pressure from the top" politics (see the examples, it is very real) and journalists who do not understand the extreme social harm caused.

[@robertgalindo5979]

Great video. I especially like how you focused on scientific break even vs engineering breakeven. I would have like a cut away in the video explaining why the main type of fusion in the sun, proton-proton fusion, is infeasible for power production with its rate reaction being a septillion times less than deuterium-tritium fusion.

[@johnjakson444]

The best kind of fusion is the one found in large stars, the CNO cycle which is 10,000 times more efficient than the PP cycle, even our own sun gets about 1% of its total energy from a tiny amount of CNO, so a tiny amount of Carbon goes a long way, but it requires even higher temps like 100MK or more. If the human race ever develops CNO fusion, we would be amongst the gods.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

The more i learn about our power grid, the more i realize that modern nuclear energy options are our best option. Small form reactors, LFTRs, Thorium Reactors, molten salt reactors. Utilizing our advanced technology, Improved engineering & material science. Utilizing our greater understanding of safety & well made designs. We have so much more advanced computer technology & robotics that can be used. It feels like even tho tons of advancement has occurred with engineering designs, safety measures, etc. It still doesn't matter to most people. It's like most people are ingrained with a natural negative response when talking about nuclear energy. It's a bummer because i truly believe that our best option for our future is to start utilizing Modern advanced nuclear energy options in our electrical grid. It's just proving to be challenging to get politicians to get on board. It will really allow places to be much more energy independent. Less reliant on fossil fuels. They'll have efficient, stable electrical grids and the rest of the grid could experiment with alternative power sources, power desalination plants, etc. We need to heal from the trauma of our past. See & learn that those things only happened solely from Us not understanding what we were doing when it came to nuclear energy at the time. We didn't have advanced enough technology, material science, engineering, safety measures, understanding of how to go about everything, etc. This source of energy will greatly help the world improve towards the future and lowering emissions. More than anything else could, while also providing a very stable electrical grid system. Currently we have alternative energy options but the majority of our grid is powered off of fossil fuels and emission producing sources of energy. We will be so much better going forward commiting to modern advanced nuclear energy options.

[@johnjakson444]

Most of our understanding of fission power plants was done with sliderules, amazing that as I type this on an 11th gen i7 laptop, I have to wait several sec for each couple of words to show up.There is something very wrong with these damned computers and the software. chrome with only 5 tabs and utterly useless.

[@simonbowen1]

Well done .. a worthwhile insight.

[@sinisamarovic]

27:40 I think you misspoke when you said NIF experiment generated electricity. It generated energy. Or you know something I don't? :D

[@johnjakson444]

a slip of the tongue, no more no less

[@sakismpalatsias4106]

Why don't we use the magnetic confinement as a compressor? Especially if you use a dual phase/flux. Still other challenges that need to overcome but still

[@-yttrium-1187]

Look up Z-pinch. All of these ideas have merit but only time will tell which one takes over, like AC vs DC Before national grid development

[@doubled1043]

"Minor engineering challenge" he says nonchalantly...

[@Rowebot15]

Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave woth a box of scrap!

[@richiehoyt8487]

Half the World is "How do we turn a bomb into a power plant?" The other half is "How do we turn a power plant into a bomb?" Guys, _surely_ it should be possible to work something _out_ here, no?!

[@zanderzephyrlistens]

How the heck did you italics on a KZbin comment 😂

[@richiehoyt8487]

@@zanderzephyrlistens Lemme tell you, it took me _years_ (←HaHa!) to work that out! (Got there mostly by accident in the end!) It's pretty simple to italicize though, when it comes down to it... It's just 'underscore' ( _ ), 'word', and 'underscore' ... Like __THIS,__ so it comes out like _this._ Btw, what I did there with the 'THIS' in Capitals, was to use _two_ underscores either side, for illustrative purposes. (The capitalization was just for effect and is nothing to do with the actual italicization technique). That brings me to an important point - you have to make sure your underscore signs are right 'snug' up against the particular word or words you want to italicize, while making sure there is a space between the word in question, including its attendant underscores, and everything you _don't_ want italicized, or you can wind up with entire paragraphs inadvertently leaning over! In particular be careful with certain punctuation marks, like, off the top of my head, period/full stop (.), exclamation mark (!) and quotation marks (") as these will generally come automatically with an attendant space, since their use in 'natural' writing will usually require the use of a space. I suspect I'm making the whole business sound more complicated than it is, but if you play around with it, you won't be long picking it up. It may interest you to know that you can type in *bold* similarly (use the asterisks, like **so,** ), or cross things out, using the hyphens, like --this.-- This last, you'll probably use more for effect, since it's no particular issue to delete a misspelling or poorly chosen word nowadays, on a screen. Do particularly watch out again for the rule about the gaps here, since it's very easy to find you've written entire paragraphs with a line through them. Before I learned of these 'hacks' (features, really), I would very often find myself -falling foul of this(!)- and blaming it on some buggy glitch in the software! It may be that there are other such knacks available, but if there are, I haven't found them yet... (If anyone else has anything to contribute here, feel free by all means to weigh in!) Finally, a word of warning! Having these techniques is a great way of indicating nuance in your comments, but they can be addictive and are probably best used sparingly! I have to make a conscious effort to *restrain* myself, and I -inspec- expect I _still_ overuse them, (lol! 😁)

[@Dani_1012]

_hello_ -my-

[@squamish4244]

Well, we already have turned power plants into bombs, so...

[@Indrid__Cold]

Inertial confinement is like those bunches of firecrakers that go off sequentially.

[@sakismpalatsias4106]

What have we done with the compression problem. Because I'm assuming we currently use pistons or rotary engines for compression. Which has limitations.

[@NunoPereira.]

Fusion energy it is possible in the future because innovation and unthinkable breakthroughs will continue to happen and a more powerful AI can also contribute with new insights and techniques.

[@huiyinghong3073]

Imagine using all the energy generated by fusion power to mine Bitcoin.

[@johnjakson444]

chatGPT was asked to design a fusion reactor, it's an amusing story about its capabilities, in the end it did generate a very futuristic arty painting of a hybrid fission fusion plant, very beautiful, but no science at all.

[@cammccauley]

Have you looked into Helion at all?

[@0neIntangible]

Seems the most logical and promising plan going forward on this, that I've seen so far...but I'm not a physicist by any means.

[@simonsong1743]

Also General Fusion.

[@VolkerHett]

My bet is on the Stellarator over the Tokamak while not ruling out inertial confinement and I'm more optimistic on the timeframe, i.E. somebody will see economically feasible results in this century. Not me, I'll be 65 this August :D

[@5ty717]

Neither will crack nett energy. Petroleum lobby supports torus/ because Maxwellian equilibrium will never succees. This was realized by leading Russian physicists and the specs were donated by the Russians in 1954 because they are fatally flawed. Look in the sky: millions-billions of fusion reactors. Not one is a torus. Inertial confinement will work.

[@fast_harmonic_psychedelic]

To harness the energy of a star - which is its gravitational collapse - simply find a Uranium or Plutonium atom and wait for it to Split.

[@3D_Printing]

0:56 please use coke tins instead of orange stuff like they did a Three Mile Island

[@Kraflyn]

slash?

[@johnnyz3073]

guitar player

[@Kraflyn]

@@johnnyz3073 :D

[@huiyinghong3073]

@@Kraflyn Imagine using all the energy generated by fusion power to mine Bitcoin.

[@Kraflyn]

@@huiyinghong3073 he point is -- "/" is not a word, he should have used "or" instead :D And I do not support any pyramidal scam :D

[@vinayakinusa]

Fantastic insight into energy from fusion. The Koreans just reached their highest temperature in their Tokamac last week

[@KentoLeoDragon]

Somewhere out in the vastness of the universe, there is a planet with a super advanced race. They have space colonies. They have Dyson swarms. They use black holes as batteries. Somewhere on this world, there is a tiny group of scientists still crying "don't worry, we'll have that nuclear fusion up and running in five years at least!"

[@halilzelenka5813]

We could do fusion power today, with a net gain in energy. We have thermonuclear devices, which derive most of their explosive yield from fusion, that we could detonate in giant water reservoirs to turn that water into steam and then use that steam to drive turbines

[@huiyinghong3073]

@@halilzelenka5813 Imagine using all the energy generated by fusion power to mine Bitcoin.

[@johnjakson444]

@@halilzelenka5813 No you are mistaken, most of the energy from thermonuclear bombs comes from the extremely efficient fissioning of U238 and Pu239 with the help of Lithium Deuteride as part of the neutron amplifer that is the genius of Teller, its called a super bomb because it so efficient at splitting most of the fission fuel. Also the Soviets toyed with the idea too of using nuclear weapons do dig canals and possibly the steam flashing resevoirs, good job they never tried.

[@halilzelenka5813]

@@johnjakson444 more than 97% of the energy from the Tsar bomb came from fusion. I’m not a physicist, but to my limited understanding two-stage devices like the Tsar bomb derive most of their energy from fusion, not fission

[@kayakMike1000]

Sigh... Dyson swarms are silly when you can extract energy from quantum vacuum.

[@Indrid__Cold]

We should put as much effort into fission nuclear power. The problems with fission are emotional, NOT engineering.

[@mysticphantom9870]

War... War never changes..

[@fast_harmonic_psychedelic]

The Strong force holds nuclei together not with Mass or Gravity - but with some other transformation of the energy resulting in the force that holds the bond. The force is doing work and therefore requires Something - it doesnt just hold the nuclear bond and get called the strong force by being nothing and doing its work with nothing. It is doing work and therefore requires energy -- that energy IS the missing energy / mass --- literally the energy of the strong nuclear force is the energy imparted into the nuclei when they are accelerated in order for the fusion to take place. The energy you put into it becomes the force holding them together. Therefore, you don't get it back -- unless you FISSION THEM. And even then there will be a loss. So it only benefits you when NATURE DOES THE FUSION FOR YOU. And that is exactly what Uranium Fission is -- that IS fusion done for you. That energy is only obtained when you break the bond of a nucleus. The energy released during Nuclear Fission IS the energy of the strong nuclear force which has been broken by a neutron. Therefore: You can harness the free energy of fusion -- only when 1. Nature does the work for you and fuses lighter elements into heavier ones, preferrably multiple times to maximize the amount in as few steps as possible. 2. by splitting those heavier nuclei in nuclear fission - releasing the excess energy aka "missing mass" of those fusions. Therefore, Fission of Uranium or Plutonium IS THE MOST EFFICIENT AND ONLY POSSIBLY WAY TO GENERATE FREE ELECTRICITY FROM FUSION. FUSION IS ONLY VALID WHEN THE PHYSICS DOES THE WORK - NOT WHEN YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT BY RECREATING CONDITIONS THAT MORE EXTREME THAN THE SUN. If a reaction requires you to feed it every drop of your entire energy output of a major city - just to obtain .1 MeV or whatever -- that is not a viable form of energy. But if the reaction is readily willing to happen with or without any input, if a reaction only requires a neutron that is readily available just by banging two pieces of metal together --- THAT is a viable form of energy. I'm sorry that everyone has wasted the past 70 years and billions of dollars on this dead end because the physics are so misunderstood because we lack basic mechanical intuition and only rely on mathematical expressions and abstract concepts whiel shy away from actually visualizing anything in mechanical and Materialist terms. This is what spooky action and other such talk gets you.

[@johnjakson444]

Uranium, Plutonium Thorium and others that fission are not made by fusion process in any star, they are made by the R process mostly when two neutron stars collide, some of the iron skin on the neutron stars surface is blasted off into space and the neutron mass of the stars merge into a black hole with some of the neutrons blasted off into space with neutron fluxes dense enough to convert any iron into those heavier element all the way up to the heaviest elements. PBS has an excelent series on KZbin with an australian physicist

[@fast_harmonic_psychedelic]

my point was that they were made during violent kinetic energy events and were fused, it requires much more than only hydrogen fusion but hydrogen fusion and then fusion of helium and so on, and then eventually fusion of iron via neutron star collisions and collapse of super giants. but the fusion itself is not the energy producer, the energy producer in every case is the actual kinetic energy events of gravitational collapse of enormous quantities of mass.. that is the energy that drives fusion -- and that is the same energy which is ultimately released during fission@@johnjakson444

[@fast_harmonic_psychedelic]

the point is to let nature and gravity do the work for you and harvest free energy without having to add much energy yourself. but if you have to recreate the conditions of a star in order to induce fusion where the fusion only releases the energy you put in or less, that is not free energy.@@johnjakson444

[@Mikell-h2c]

Fusion is the Energy of the future and always will be❤

[@chadbarnard3620]

C'mon crew, get it together. I want to see that big magnet spin really fast!

[@ashleyobrien4937]

c'mon man, this isn't star gate you know...

[@Indrid__Cold]

The dark horse is Artificial Narrow Intelligence. It could rev up the speed of experimental simulation and discovery.

[@matteogiberti3297]

Within 50 years... that's what says the sign on the wall that was there 30 years ago and that will be still there then...

[@huiyinghong3073]

Imagine using all the energy generated by fusion power to mine Bitcoin.

[@richardhall5489]

Have you experienced this paradigm in your life? Was there something you thought would never happen but eventually did that you are grateful for?

[@paulwilson6511]

The incredibly intense Neutron radiation is rarely mentioned.

[@Bunker278]

In a way, solar _is_ fusion power. If we could harness even a tiny fraction of the solar energy that isn't hitting our planet at any given moment, we wouldn't need to bother with fusion. Problem is getting stuff into space to do the job is hard.

[@johnjakson444]

NASA can do it small scale because it has no other choice and it uses the most expensive multilayer cells to work, but on planet wide scale, the engineering and economics falls apart.

[@HaukeLaging]

Neither fusion reactors nor fusion bombs recreate the conditions in the sun. For the simple reasons that (a) fusion reactions in the center of the sun are really rare (the power output per volume is ridiculously low) and (b) nothing on Earth could withstand these conditions. In both cases the temperature is much higher than in the core of the sun. Fusion reactors work with very low pressures (compared to Earth's athmosphere, not just compared to the sun).

[@iivin4233]

Aren't there a lot of other scientists and engineers on youtube saying fission power is much less dangerous than portrayed here? Anyway, I would like to see that laser science video.

[@ernststravoblofeld]

I keep expecting someone to call it. Finally prove that fusion can't be sustained on a smaller scale than a star.

[@m.c.4674]

Mass or rather more accurately stated matter , is not energy , and cannot produce energy. It can have energy , transfer energy, but it cannot become energy. Whatever that even means. Potential energy = mgh , clearly it's not gravity that cause atoms to combine , but the "strong force" , therefore potential energy= mFh . This is to say nuclear fusion is potential energy. How to achieve nuclear fusion net energy gain , when energy used is extremely high it is very difficult to reabsorb the energy used to compress the atoms. So I agree with this point. So I think what if instead of laser light and magnets field why don't we use matter (mechanical compression), like a hydraulic press. Then I realize the hydraulic press itself will compress before the atoms fuse . Well why use atoms , technically you can combine molecules, fundamental it's the same thing. Maybe for reaction that would take a large amount of activation energy, mechanical compress maybe a more efficient way to trigger a reaction. Nuclear fission is similar to a fire , the fuel which is usually a large molecule reacts with oxygen to produce a smaller molecules, if carbon base fuel it produces CO2 . Notice no mass is lost but energy is released. That is because the energy that breaks the carbon to carbon bonds , is less that the energy released when oxygen reacted with carbon.

[@huiyinghong3073]

Imagine using all the energy generated by fusion power to mine Bitcoin.

[@johnjakson444]

Or we could just stick with 1000K fission in the form of Molten Salt Reactors which we have known about for 50 years, failing that, regular old PWRs or BWRs.

[@russellneitzke4972]

Can we use the free pressure of the mariana trench to turn a turbine?

[@cubeflinger]

Sounds plausible but ultimately difficult to pull off to me

[@marianconstantindumitriu6062]

I mean, it might be a grand development, but I'd be so complicated, modern investors wouldn't want to build it. They don't want to build fission plants, and those are much simpler.

[@rayoflight62]

When will we FINALLY achieve fusion power? When we will finally understand the nature of gravity, which is more than the "simple" principle of equivalence...

[@SunShine-xc6dh]

Its just hydrogen he says a highly flammable element. How does iter achieve engineering breakthrough if it doesn't compete the process of making electricity? Are they only taking heat in to power it?

[@johnjakson444]

loads of electricity in, very little heat out, that is not going to change until they have been through several more ever bigger generations or one of the nimbler designs with better magnets shows results.

[@sonatine21]

Well, I was exactly like that as a baby, staying put, looking at the sky. Tho later I found out I was autistic.

[@johnfarris6152]

If we had space elevators there'd be no reason to have power plants at all on Earth but I think they'd still be a reason to make fusion. 👍

[@timg6125]

Seems like blowing up little pellets of fuel with lasers isn't going to lead to practical, economical electricity generation. It's like a tiny little H-bomb.

[@huiyinghong3073]

Imagine using all the energy generated by fusion power to mine Bitcoin.

[@extropian314]

In an elevator, aren't we much more like magnetic confinement than inertial, since we're not moving much but "repelled" from each other? xD

[@RaymondFritz-lm1ko]

I’d like to talk to you about fusion nuclear.

[@magicsinglez]

Maybe scientists will one day be able to harness nuclear power

[@jasonsmith373]

In the meantime, while we're working on fusion we need to utilize modern fission plants to try and take a bite out of climate change, in my opinion.

[@johnjakson444]

absolutely, either conventional PWRs, BWRs or better MSRs, anything is better than fossil power, esp when fossil power is needed to cover the variability of renewables.

[@TeethToothman]

Tokamak!!!

[@AquarianSoulTimeTraveler]

Ultimately Fusion will never be anything more than a glorified battery it takes more energy to make the fusion process which builds then the fission process that tears apart... just because of this logical fact it makes Fusion nothing more than a glorified battery...

[@johnjakson444]

Thats a terrible insult to every battery ever made, even those disposable alkaline batteries have a much better energy output to embedded energy input need to make them.

[@AquarianSoulTimeTraveler]

@@johnjakson444 lol ctfu! 😂💯👆👆👆💚💜

[@suyashjha679]

First comment ??

[@558vulcanxh]

Either it can't be done, or we're not clever enough to ask the right questions. Perhaps AI in time maybe will solve this for us 😊

[@garyplewa9277]

Commercial fusion power is never goning to happen. So far all fusion research has done is provide a good living for scientists and researchers, but the physical difficulties of "miniturizing the sun" are insurmountable. "Break even" in a laboratory never mentions the power taken from the grid, but rather touts the "input power" to the experiment. When you consider the overhead, lifetime and reliability required for a commercial powerplant AND make it price competative, our best best for climate change is modern 4th and 5th generation fission plants. There are designs using molten salt fuel which are "walk away" safe, where excess heat causes the reaction to slow down and where thermal fuse plugs drain the liquid fuel into a cooled, geometrically shaped vessle that is non-critical, thus stopping the reaction.

[@johnjakson444]

Some in the MSR community have claimed that a 1GWe MSR could cost as little as only $1B, while conventional PWRs cost $5B that need 100 times as much concrete and steel. MSRs don't need any containment vessel so they must be an order of magnitude cheaper to build and should be factory built anyways. Can't wait to see the 1st MSR built NOT in China here in the west.

[@cheesypotat0es]

Live show with cheese at the end please

[@ChinnuWoW]

Bocconcini is the best

[@stevewaterhouse3025]

as soon as as big petrol companies can find a way to poach the technology

[@johnjakson444]

It has been suggested that the canadian tar sands could be processed with nuclear heat from Molten Salt Reators, thermal only, no electricty needed. Currently tar sands have to be cooked with nat gas making it esp CO2 intensive. I'd rather the tar sands were left alone and the MSR was used directly for its energy output to the grid. We could even use the high temp MSRS to split water thermally and use atmosperic CO2 to make syn fuels, at least the C would be in a loop and we would have transport fuels.

[@thoriummarcell403]

Deceptive video (as usual for fusion, especially related to total waste volume including equipment waste). The NIF produced 0 electricity. Remote powerplants produced 400 MJ electricity from appr. 1300 MJ chemical energy (conversion and transportation losses). NIF lasers produced 1.9 MJ light(pulse) from 400 MJ electricity and +1.3 MJ fusion energy was achieved (starting from 1300 MJ chemical energy. They deceptively advertised this as 2MJ => 3.15 MJ carefully hiding the real details from the press... You can dig it up yourself.). Million USD experiment, repeatable appr 1..2 times a day, destroying the pellet and holder, yielding 0 electricity and no hope for conversion or practical energy production or anything useful other than tuning weapon-related computer models. The ITER / DEMO could be made to work at least for a few minutes, perhaps only a few 100 more billions of EUR and 3..4 decades... at worst it would need to be scaled up so the volume / surface ratio grows. Only to find out that it produces more total waste (equipment waste) and not enough fuel even if 6-Li from all Li and the worlds Be production is diverted. Continuous operation for years is not on the horizon. But even if that is miraculously solved: The problem is that considering the total waste, including the equipment waste as well, it CERTAINLY produces more waste than fast-neutron fission (and even slow-neutron fission). The spent fuel is extremely valuable with fission, and relatively easy to handle (was solved before 1985 but the maffia killed the SNR-300 in Germany before it could start to run, and the Integral Fast Reactor in USA just before it was completed in 1994 after awarding lead scientist for environmental, economy, safety-excellence. 93% of spent fuel can be reused to produce energy (6 million kWh of electricity / kg) in fast-spectrum reactor (all TRU, 238-U and 235-U) or the U + Pu in a small percentage (upto about 4% spent-fuel U-Pu MOX + 96% 233-U made from Th) together with 233-U in slow-neutron breeder. (Shippingport LWBR was running for some time on 233-U and proved that even light-water reactor can be used if not wasting neutrons on stupid moron-boron). The value of fission products is 16000000 USD /ton (eg. contains some metals more valuable than gold, eg. platinum, rhodium). Most of fuel fission products are stable after a few years. If reprocessing is allowed, the total amount of fission products waste can be stored in a volume equivalent to appr 20 m cube (2..4% of 95000 ton appr. 0.32 kg/person total spent fuel => 2000..3800 ton depending on how much is utilized of the 5% FP. Appr. ~0.013 kg / person, 90+ % of it to be stored for 600 years... DID YOU KNOW THAT is the dangerous fission product waste to be stored - unstorable, right?) That is not 1 powerplant, but the previous 60 years of nuclear energy industry of the USA. Certainly, there is some part that should be vitrified and stored in some deep-geo-storage, eg. granite-mines (occupying less than 1% of the granite mined; Less than 1 kg / person / lifetime even if almost all fossil fuel is substituted), eg. I think 129-I falls into that long-term storage category. 137-Cs and 90-Sr have 30 year halflife, can be used for several industrial applications, and less radioactivity than the original ore after 17..20 halflives, 500..600 years). The problem of "spent fuel storage" is a political problem, after the IFR Integral Fast Reactor that processes and utilizes most of LWR waste was killed as a symbol to investors in a demonstrative way. "cancelled, pressure from the top" (maffia activity; very clear after Clinton's words: "it's a symbol".). The TRU part that "must be stored for hundreds of thousands of years" is precious fuel in fast-spectrum reactors (Pu and Am and other TRU fissions in fast neutron spectrum, while they often absorb neutrons and "grow" in slow-spectrum, accumulating, much less than 1 kg / person / lifetime total). Nuclear fission industry is the only industry where waste is more valuable than the input material, and which can actually store it's toxic waste. (Coal stores Pb and Hg in the environment, 100 times more than fission, released to environment, and infinite half-life... These remain toxic forever; Solar + battery is manufactured mostly from coal-power, and EROI need more energy to produce the battery+renewables and even more waste than coal in the end, including CO2 - Germany realizes most CO2 emissions in China, but even domestically, Germany emits 6 times more CO2 emission / GWyear than France which uses fission ). Yes, the deception is that big. The fission device waste is appr. 30 times more than the fission product waste, and 1.2 times more than the total spent-fuel-waste if reprocessing is prohibited (that should not be, really). DT-fusion produces 14.06 MeV neutrons that is extremely detrimental to devices lifetime, and device waste per GWyear is expected to be 10..50 times more than total fission waste if we are optimistic (possibly 100..200 times more if equipment lifetime is much shorter or power production utilization factor is much less than 50%, which is almost certain in the next 40 years). Verify yourself. Just ASK for an official SCIENTIFIC study about the volume and handling of total DT-tokamak fusion related waste, including the equipment waste so it can be compared with fission waste. THEY HAVE NO SCIENTIFIC STUDY showing DT-tokamak fusion related total waste! Only arm-waving, journalist blabla. Fusion producing less waste than fission is a widely spread MYTH. Real scientific studies showed that even if energy-production is not required, DT fusion has no advantage (See Hand Bethe 1979 and LASL/LANL 1980 studies about the fission-fusion hybrid where the DT-fusion neutrons were planned to be used to breed Pu, not T, but the fusion technology is the same. T-breeding is actually more problematic, and more dangerous in case something goes wrong: no surprise ITER only has a very small T-breeding proof-of-concept blanket-part). 0.010 kg / year / person Li is mined. That is 0.0007 kg / year / person 6-Li that would be the fuel of T-breeding (Sufficient for appr. 5000 kWh / person / year, not even enough for electricity; way insufficient to support industrial heat, H2, fertilizer, syntethic fuels, etc... - all required to significantly reduce fossil fuel usage). Needless to say: "it does NOT run on seawater". Since not enough neutrons to breed T, fission is a must. If U or Pu fission is used, the fusion is totally unnecessary. Just adds complexity, 10x more equipment waste, extreme problems to run continuously and maintain operation. Be could be used to help breeding. However, the 240 ton of 1 year production would be enough for 1 DEMO-category fusion plant. Thousands would be needed. Not enough consumables to replace 1/2 of fossil fuels, and extreme amount of waste and problems. Clean energy equals fast-spectrum fission for the time being. Most likely there will be other options in the long run. Fusion would make sense if it could be made small (SMR-size or even smaller), not even on the horizon. Perhaps some ENA or Rydberg-atom related energy production will be feasible. So far politics have killed the good paths and paying demo-"science" projects that is known to not be feasible. The last correct scientific conclusion about DT-fusion was from LANL: "The investment of time and money required to commercialize the hybrid cycle could only be justified by a real or perceived advantage of the hybrid over the classical FBR. Our analysis leads us to conclude that no such advantage exists." It is even worse if positive energy balance from DT-fusion is required. Anyone objecting: show the scientific study of the volume and handling of total DT-tokamak fusion related waste, including the equipment waste. Fusion with virtually no waste is a dangerous myth. Especially together with the "unhandlable amount of fission waste", another deceptive myth by deceptive videos like this one: without realistic quantities and correct comparison.

[@janap128]

Protium hot Fusion will never happen. There is no research into protium hot fusion happening now. The research going on now is tritium/deuterium hot fusion.

[@richardhall5489]

Never? Seriously.. never?

[@johnjakson444]

The only practical alternative to DT is just DD fusion but it trades one set of problems for another set of problems and at much higher temps too. Some would even argue for aneutronic fusion too with PB11 as the fuel to avoid those neutrons in the fusion and even higher temps. Improbable Matter and Daniel Jassby have much more credibility in this matter both have spent their entire careers in the search for energy from fusion.

[@StaticBlaster]

Not in our lifetime nor our grandchildren lifetimes. We are a long way off from achieving fusion and harnessing enough of it to power our electrical grid.

[@eugenecbell]

Why? A hunch? 😊

[@StaticBlaster]

​@@eugenecbell Because that little fusion experiment they conducted a few years ago was insignificant. It was nothing more than a mere science fair project. When considering all the external power sources for the lasers and machinery, all that added up far exceeds the fusion output power. There's just no frickin way fusion will be possible to power homes within several generations' lifetimes.

[@shinymike4301]

Only 50 more years !!

[@StaticBlaster]

More like 500 years, at least.

[@fast_harmonic_psychedelic]

I would argue that there IS a law of physics and logical reason why fusion is not a source of free energy. The reason is this: It requires MORE work to initiate and sustain fusion than the energy it generates. At best - it generates the same amount of energy as the amount of energy required to facilitate it. That is not free energy. All energy sources are energy that is provided from nature in a form where nature does the work for you. Fossil Fuels readily combust. Wind blows. Water flows. Atoms decay. Atoms do not Fuse on EARTH. Atoms ONLY FUSE IN STARS UNDER MASSIVE GRAVITATIONAL PRESSURE. THERE IS NO FREE FUSION.

[@fast_harmonic_psychedelic]

Fusion is an energy-consuming reaction, not energy-producing. The real product of fusion is the fused atoms and neutrons. Hydrogen Deuterium + Tritium Fusion is used in Thermonuclear weapons because the byproduct is free energetic neutrons. One of the reasons it is used is because it shields the second stage plutonium material from destruction by absorbing thermal radiation from the first stage fission reactions instead of allowing that radiation to expand and turn into shockwaves and blowing out the perimeter and such -- and for releasing neutrons directly towards the material that has yet to undergo fission and exponentially accelerate the rate of fission through it without generating significant heat and radiation that would destroy the second stage fission reactions. Instead it is the neutrons released by the deuterium and tritium allegedy durign their fusion but also release neutrons upon absorbing this radiation even without necessarily undergoing fusion - although fusion is ideal for it because it releases 2 instead on one neutron and the neutrons released are more kinetic than the one would be without the fusion. But the radiation and heat "created" by fusion is not the point - in fact it would defeat the purpose entirely. Fusion is there because it does NOT release heat and light significantly - rather - fusion ABSORBS heat and light and outputs NEUTRONS and HELIUM. This gives the fission neutrons to accelerate the fission reaction more efficiently and reach a high level of completion before the material is vaporized by the blast. In hydrogen bombs, with fusion ongoing, the material in the second stage is protected while the neutrons accelerate the fission. If fusion were a source of energy rather than neutrons and larger nuclei, this would not be the case. If physicists believe there is "missing mass" in helium-4 and that it is lighter than the sum of its parts, they may be mistaken or dishonest. Perhaps the missing mass can be explained by other means than assuming that protons or neutrons during fusion "converted into energy." What exactly converted into energy? How do you define energy - photons? What turned into photons? What if those photons were merely bystanders caught in the process? Is the energy then just the kinetic energy transferred to nearby particles upon collision? If particles are accelerated using energy, the excess energy must be conserved, not coming from the fusion itself but from the initial acceleration of the atoms. The actual atoms fuse to create a heavier atom and some neutrons in the debris, possibly interacting with a passing photon and turning it into a gamma ray. However, the amount of matter remains the same throughout the process. The motion used to fuse the atoms is the energy obtained after fusion, which does not benefit us for energy production since the purpose of energy production is to obtain energy without requiring additional work. In fission, a massive amount of energy is obtained for free with just one neutron, while in fusion, only helium and neutrons are produced. If it turns out that the motion and matter obtained from fusion are less than the energy input, and therefore must be conserved via photons as speculated, this may not be the only explanation. It could be that the energy input into fusion is stored in the nuclear bonds themselves and can only be accessed through the fission of a much heavier nucleus. The energy obtained from Plutonium and Uranium fission is the energy that was initially put into lighter nuclei during fusion in the cores of stars and supernovae. Fission represents the energy of fusion, the missing mass of fusion. Fusion does not immediately provide this energy; it is released after billions of years and multiple fusion reactions of heavier and heavier nuclei. Only when reaching Plutonium or Uranium can one harness the free energy of fusion (Which is only free when nature has done the work FOR YOU -- in the cores of Stars and Supernova billions of years ago -- NOT when you have to initiate fusion yourself - that isn't Free, it's either A loss, or its a Zero, it is not a gain -- unless your goal is to make more helium or obtain free neutrons, but i don't think thats what you want is it?). In Fission, the initiator of fission is not 100 billion degress, it does not ask for you to generate conditions found in the center of the sun. It does not ask you to accelerate hydrogen to the speed of light. All it needs is a neutron - one neutron to start the chain reaction that splits these nuclei which are in the final analysis the results of multiple fusions creating that heavy atom billions of years ago -- only now it is releasing the energy that caused that fusion to happen - the extremely violent and kinetic event of the gravitational collapse of stars -- which is then handed over to you during Nuclear FISSION.. Therefore, if seeking fusion energy, one should look no further than nuclear fission, as it represents the energy of fusion from billions of years ago - fusion that was done FOR you - without requiring any work or input -- its energy is available to you via FISSION.

[@johnjakson444]

Or as Teller put it, its a super bomb, the eff of conventional atom bombs is low because it is limited to fissioning only a fracton of the U235 or Pu239 fuel. In the super bomb, the Deuterium Tritim from the Lithium Deuteride acts as an amazing neutron amplifier that can fission a large amount of U238 and Pu239 in the sausage structure. Only a small percentage of the destructive energy is released from the so called fusion reaction. Also the energy from fission largely comes about from the creation of heavy elements well beyond iron when 2 neutron stars merge with the iron surface blown away forced to absorb many neutrons in the R process, and even then the 2 stars that formed those neutron stars possibly in a binary pair would have been CNO burning large stars so nothing like our Sun. Any astrophysicist would know all this stuff already. On a side note, I'd be damned interested to know if anyone has dreamed of a fusion reactor based on CNO since it is 10000 times more productive than the PP cycle, it would put humanity amongst the gods if that worked.

[@RahulYadav-nk6wp]

It will take 2 millenium atleast to make it highly efficient. It will 100 generations to come at this level. It's not gonna happen in 50 years.

[@DAVID-io9nj]

Never is a likely answer. More likely is a very long time.

[@Zbezt]

You can once all 7billion people on the planet are capable of dividing by zero

[@TheUltimatePositionOfPower]

Ummm yes please to the laser video

[@huiyinghong3073]

Imagine using all the energy generated by fusion power to mine Bitcoin.

[@rogerfroud300]

A better question might be just 'will we EVER achieve ECONOMIC fusion power?' The issue isn't about whether it's even possible, is whether it has a hope of competing against other technologies? Molten Salt Reactors are a much better bet, they achieve pretty much the same goals but has already been shown to be possible. The problem is several magnitudes easier to Engineer than Fusion. Let's be honest. If the Oak Ridge MSR experiment was known in academic circles, we wouldn't have wasted all this money trying to do the hard problem when the easy problem was there to be solved. Sadly, the sunk cost is so great that they can't admit it's been a waste of time and switch track to the obvious alternative solution.

[@johnjakson444]

Indeed I would hazard a guess that MSRs will always be 100s of times cheaper to build and much safer, less problematic than any fusion plant. Once those fusion plants are up and running, the green peace people are going to start complaining about the Tritium supply chain, the contaminated steel vessels and those other issues the fusion pundits don't want to talk about, but thats a hyperthetical since they will never work. But what does an engineer know, a machine thats built to run at 1000K or a machine thats built to run at 100M K. Um which is easier, if only the population at large was educated. From the above astrophysicist its obvious that physics is simply too big of a subject for physicist to be knowledgeable across the board, so many mistakes.

[@GlxyEntertainment]

AI may speed it up a lot.

[@sandrocavali9810]

Fusion is easy. Just give me some gravity.

[@fglatzel]

They have been trying this for over 3 decades now and it works. Yes, it works - for a whopping 0.03 seconds. What an achievement, indeed.

[@zoezulma594]

When will we FINALLY achieve fusion power? That already happened on November 1, 1952, when fusion power was achieved in a test of a thermonuclear bomb. It even produced electricity in the form of lightning discharges near the fireball. The better question is "When will fusion power plants FINALLY be used to economically produce electricity?" The date for that would be the 12th of Never. With trillions in funding for ITER and similar hopeless projects that date might be moved up to the 10th of Never.

[@kayakMike1000]

Ten Canadian pesos says we figured this out 20 years ago, but having limited amounts of power is a terrible idea.

[@garethanderson4084]

30 years.... 😂✌️

[@istvansipos9940]

physics problem are bad news. Engineering problems only take time (and money and effort)

[@Keith136ful]

Wow. Sounds like we have at least another 10 iterations of fusion power being available 20 years in the future.

[@Edison73100]

2 cool

[@ManuelGarcia-ww7gj]

When will FINALLY achieve fusion power? Until we learn to build gravity generators, never. Fusion reactions in ordinary gravity are NOT self-sustaining, otherwise known as "chain reactions." All of the reactions we use today ARE chain reactions. We have been struggling to make electromagnetism do the job that gravity does in the stars, but I do not believe that will ever happen. The research will continue because too many politically well connected academics are making their living from the research, but I do not see a way for any of their approaches to ever work. So, with no means of generating intense gravitational fields, fusion is not in our future. We would be far better off spending money on cleaner and safer fission plants, probably plants built around the use of thorium as an initial feedstock.

[@limabravo6065]

If Peak Oil ever becomes a reality then we'll see fusion make some breakthroughs

[@TeethToothman]

🌚🥓🌚

[@matanglawinX]

Fusion Energy. Great idea. Not gonna happen. Physicists know it won't happen because they know it can't be scaled down successfully. But, research must continue because that's where their money comes from.

[@jamieoglethorpe]

I'm really annoyed by documentaries like this. They imply that enormously expensive government-level research projects are the only game in town. ITER's plan is conservative and inflexible, following the decisions made in the beginning. It uses conventional superconducting magnets to confine the plasma. Now, we have high-temperature superconductors operating at liquid nitrogen temperatures. Commercial fusion projects are making incredible progress. In short, the ITER project remains stuck in the past with 1990s science and technology. The private projects are trying everything. New technologies, such as high-temperature superconductors and AI, are available to control the plasma. If they succeed, we will have commercial break-even before ITER generates its first plasma.

[@johnjakson444]

The russians that started the tokamaks back in the 50s and 60s (I read about it in the 70s) would have had almost no computers save slide rulers to do their calculations

[@Unifrog_]

The claim that dealing with nuclear waste is an unsolved problem is simply false, at least for the united states, look into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. Its good for storing thousands of years worth of nuclear waste for hundreds of millions of years.

[@TurkishKS]

Don't worry. We're only 30 years away.

[@infiniteworfare5089]

we dont need fusion energy. we need fossil fuels so that humans go extinct by 2150 and that you wont have to worry about being reincarnated as a factory farmed chicken that is suffering physiologically from the lack of natural selection.

[@palfers1]

Use AI

[@doubled1043]

So. Impossible. Gotcha...

[@rectorkirk1158]

Oh its probably already here. But the rich will lose power if us peasants have cheap energy.

[@shaundudley4576]

China will deliver in short order

[@johnjakson444]

China has recently reported on a class of giant shipping containers to be powered by LFTR or MSR tech given to them by the US DOE, its good news if true but very sad for the US.

[@patricksullivan3919]

Never

[@limabravo6065]

If fission reactors were just runaway reactions they wouldnt be used. The initial mining is not anymore dangerous than any other mining. And fusion reactors produce waste and dangerous radiation, so tell people the truth. A fusion reactor will produce neutrons and those neutrons are what transmutate elements and its even what some reactor designs are going to use to produce tritium aka radioactive hydrogen, in situ to produce their own fuel. Fusion reactors arent the super safe super clean sources of energy that people think they are. Yes i want fusion power but i want those communicating how it works to be HONEST. Coal power plants emmit far more radioactive emmisions in their smoke than any nuclear fission power plant in operation today so forget carbon theyve killed more people than any nuclear melt down, or weapons since we started burning coal by the ton for electricity either from respiratory disease or straight up cancer. And lawrence Livermore did not hit break even no matter what mental gymnastics you use

[@huiyinghong3073]

Imagine using all the energy generated by fusion power to mine Bitcoin.