we could solve the worlds energy problems today but they’d never be applied simply because oil exists. its literally why the US just attacked venezuela. They could have built another reactor or windmills or whatever the fuck else they feel they need if energy was the reason. but energy has nothing to do with energy and all to do with being a natural monopoly that’s making a small group of people quite wealthy.
They’re not solving the world’s problems not because oil exists, but because big powerful private oil companies exist who lobby the government and publish propaganda to manipulate the public. And big oil companies exist because of capitalism. But at this point, you start spewing all the anti communism propaganda you’ve been fed since your birth.
Yes but those are not fusion. Fusion is the ‘holy-grail’ of energy technology. It is a long term goal that we must work towards. It’s a problem of science.
For now renewables are the cheapest, quickest, and best method we have. They should be receiving all the money wasted on those 3 methods you’ve mentioned above. That’s a problem of politics.
We easily have the means to achieve both, we are hamstrung by shortsighted corporate interests and yes this applies to China as well.
I gotta be honest, as amazing as the promise of limitless fusion energy is, I’m really not optimistic that it’ll be a major or even an important technology for the energy sector, at least for the next 200 or so years.
The thing is, we already have fission power and we’re struggling to use it right now. The biggest hurdle for fission is the upfront costs of building a plant, the time needed to build a plant (construction can take up to a decade), and ongoing costs. While nuclear power is probably one of man’s greatest achievements, it’s also generally pretty expensive. And fusion has almost all the same strengths and drawbacks, but bigger. I do believe we will achieve sustainable fusion, probably soon. But I’m certain that while it will “work”, it will also prove to be the most expensive form of power generation with the largest upfront costs that the world has ever seen. And I don’t expect those prices to come down for a very long time.
Personally, I think anyone who expects fusion to be some kind of miracle technology is kidding themselves. And if people really want a miracle technology in the energy sector, keep your eyes geothermal, that’s the only tech I see that has any potential to become cheap, limitless, and constant.
I do think fusion will have good applications, but it will likely remain niche for a while. I definitely look forward to seeing spacecraft propelled by ion drives and powered by fusion, it would be amazing to be able to get to Jupiter and back on one tank of (xenon) gas.
Fission has the “long (1+ centuries) term storage solution of the byproducts” problem (output is dirty and long lasting). Fusion has no such big problem (output is dirty and short lasting).
I like hyperboles so here: If everyone did fission in their backyard, we’d have a big and long lasting problem. If everyone did fusion in their backyard, we’d have a medium and short lasting problem.
This is true, the waste issue is different with these two technologies, but I don’t think it’s all that significant in either case.
Fission produces some awful waste, but what I like to point out is just how little it produces. My favorite example is nuclear submarines. Nuke subs have to come to port every so often for food, equipment, supplies, etc, but not because they’re low on fuel. They don’t carry a lot, about 500kg (half ton) and that lasts them a very long time. So how often do they need to be refueled? Once, most subs are refueled just once in their ~30 year lifetime. Some subs will be decommissioned before ever refuelling, using just one set of uranium fuel rods for their whole life.
Edit: I wanted to visualize how much 500kg is, and I know uranium is heavy but I really didn’t have any idea what a half ton would look like. Turns out, it’s about 26 liters, 1 cubic foot. (Though, ideally your uranium wouldn’t be measured in either of those units, you really don’t want liters of liquid uranium, and that’s exactly where a solid cube is headed too…)
Given the tiny volume of waste produced over such a long time… We can figure out the storage. Even if the solution is costly, there’s really not much to store, this is very manageable.
So yeah, I’m not saying waste isn’t an issue for nuclear power, it is. But I think it’s not the biggest drawback, it seems like the overall cost is still the bigger problem in operating a plant.
My problem is that waste being unborn next generation’s problem. Who are we to demand them to keep guarding our shit? With fusion, the waste is the alive-generation’s problem.
You could say that of any infrastructure. Bridges are expenses, ongoing maintenance for them is a burden our children will have to bear. But I expect they’ll be willing to do it.
The fact is, most of what we do affects the next generation, we just don’t think about it, or can’t quantify it. The only difference with nuclear is that we can quantify it.
It doesn’t matter if the people with the war machines are the ones who control the grids,lines,pipes,etc.
The ‘holy grail’ will most likely result in further top down dominance. As god king tyrants demonstrate their continued uselessness to humanity by creating more powerful and destructive weapons and hoarding the infinite power supply for their own.
Passenger vehicles and homes and most businesses could be covered by solar and wind, but oil will still be used for quite a while for cargo shipping and commercial trucks and things like tires. We could use a lot less, but oil is going to hang around for quite a while. Passenger vehicles account for about 25% of oil used.
With US being the leading oil producer and stealing all of Venezuela’s’s oil, we’re positioning ourselves to control the world’s supply …… as the world yawns and continues moving to the future of tech that we helped develop then threw away
oil, coal and nuclear are clearly not winning.
we could solve the worlds energy problems today but they’d never be applied simply because oil exists. its literally why the US just attacked venezuela. They could have built another reactor or windmills or whatever the fuck else they feel they need if energy was the reason. but energy has nothing to do with energy and all to do with being a natural monopoly that’s making a small group of people quite wealthy.
Nuclear is different from oil and coal.
They’re not solving the world’s problems not because oil exists, but because big powerful private oil companies exist who lobby the government and publish propaganda to manipulate the public. And big oil companies exist because of capitalism. But at this point, you start spewing all the anti communism propaganda you’ve been fed since your birth.
Yes but those are not fusion. Fusion is the ‘holy-grail’ of energy technology. It is a long term goal that we must work towards. It’s a problem of science.
For now renewables are the cheapest, quickest, and best method we have. They should be receiving all the money wasted on those 3 methods you’ve mentioned above. That’s a problem of politics.
We easily have the means to achieve both, we are hamstrung by shortsighted corporate interests and yes this applies to China as well.
I gotta be honest, as amazing as the promise of limitless fusion energy is, I’m really not optimistic that it’ll be a major or even an important technology for the energy sector, at least for the next 200 or so years.
The thing is, we already have fission power and we’re struggling to use it right now. The biggest hurdle for fission is the upfront costs of building a plant, the time needed to build a plant (construction can take up to a decade), and ongoing costs. While nuclear power is probably one of man’s greatest achievements, it’s also generally pretty expensive. And fusion has almost all the same strengths and drawbacks, but bigger. I do believe we will achieve sustainable fusion, probably soon. But I’m certain that while it will “work”, it will also prove to be the most expensive form of power generation with the largest upfront costs that the world has ever seen. And I don’t expect those prices to come down for a very long time.
Personally, I think anyone who expects fusion to be some kind of miracle technology is kidding themselves. And if people really want a miracle technology in the energy sector, keep your eyes geothermal, that’s the only tech I see that has any potential to become cheap, limitless, and constant.
I do think fusion will have good applications, but it will likely remain niche for a while. I definitely look forward to seeing spacecraft propelled by ion drives and powered by fusion, it would be amazing to be able to get to Jupiter and back on one tank of (xenon) gas.
Fission has the “long (1+ centuries) term storage solution of the byproducts” problem (output is dirty and long lasting). Fusion has no such big problem (output is dirty and short lasting).
I like hyperboles so here: If everyone did fission in their backyard, we’d have a big and long lasting problem. If everyone did fusion in their backyard, we’d have a medium and short lasting problem.
This is true, the waste issue is different with these two technologies, but I don’t think it’s all that significant in either case.
Fission produces some awful waste, but what I like to point out is just how little it produces. My favorite example is nuclear submarines. Nuke subs have to come to port every so often for food, equipment, supplies, etc, but not because they’re low on fuel. They don’t carry a lot, about 500kg (half ton) and that lasts them a very long time. So how often do they need to be refueled? Once, most subs are refueled just once in their ~30 year lifetime. Some subs will be decommissioned before ever refuelling, using just one set of uranium fuel rods for their whole life.
Edit: I wanted to visualize how much 500kg is, and I know uranium is heavy but I really didn’t have any idea what a half ton would look like. Turns out, it’s about 26 liters, 1 cubic foot. (Though, ideally your uranium wouldn’t be measured in either of those units, you really don’t want liters of liquid uranium, and that’s exactly where a solid cube is headed too…)
Given the tiny volume of waste produced over such a long time… We can figure out the storage. Even if the solution is costly, there’s really not much to store, this is very manageable.
So yeah, I’m not saying waste isn’t an issue for nuclear power, it is. But I think it’s not the biggest drawback, it seems like the overall cost is still the bigger problem in operating a plant.
My problem is that waste being unborn next generation’s problem. Who are we to demand them to keep guarding our shit? With fusion, the waste is the alive-generation’s problem.
You could say that of any infrastructure. Bridges are expenses, ongoing maintenance for them is a burden our children will have to bear. But I expect they’ll be willing to do it.
The fact is, most of what we do affects the next generation, we just don’t think about it, or can’t quantify it. The only difference with nuclear is that we can quantify it.
It doesn’t matter if the people with the war machines are the ones who control the grids,lines,pipes,etc.
The ‘holy grail’ will most likely result in further top down dominance. As god king tyrants demonstrate their continued uselessness to humanity by creating more powerful and destructive weapons and hoarding the infinite power supply for their own.
Why you attacking nuclear? It’s an amazing technology
God, I wonder if we could fund a next gen fission plant with what we already spent on Venezuela
Passenger vehicles and homes and most businesses could be covered by solar and wind, but oil will still be used for quite a while for cargo shipping and commercial trucks and things like tires. We could use a lot less, but oil is going to hang around for quite a while. Passenger vehicles account for about 25% of oil used.
With US being the leading oil producer and stealing all of Venezuela’s’s oil, we’re positioning ourselves to control the world’s supply …… as the world yawns and continues moving to the future of tech that we helped develop then threw away
the US is more likely to invade and destroy any country that make fusion viable than to let it compete on the energy market.
Not that easy, considering the major candidates to succeed is China and the EU.