This Fusion Reactor Will Make Electricity by 2024?

[AV1611VET]

It will be 2024 in June.

AD 2024, I might add.

 

[eclipsenow]

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100 million degrees C. Myeh...The Bill Gates' of the world will need a lot more energy than that to run their AI computers to further enslave the greater populous.

Not necessarily - just 20,000 acres of solar panels which can be out in the desert, floating on fresh water reserves (which also keeps the solar panels cool and more efficient) and of course on brownfields and rooftops - according to physicist Casey Handmer.

AI data centers. $300b, 10% growth. While it is uncertain exactly how much compute we need to saturate demand, current LLM capabilities already require significantly more electricity to scale than can be provided by the grid or even newly built gas or nuclear power plants, primarily due to supply chain constraints on steam turbines. The next generation of gigawatt-scale data centers will have to be powered, therefore, by solar and batteries, which are on their own precipitous cost decline and explosive growth curve (shown below). Even at current prices, the cost of a GW-scale solar plant and a big enough battery for 99.9% up time is ~5% of the cost of the GPUs and racking hardware. The only siting constraint is land – about 20,000 acres or 31 square miles.​

 

[eclipsenow]

It how much to make soilent green?

Oh this one is fantastic! It's like when Elon Musk launched his prototype Cybertruck during the year the original Blade Runner movie (from 1981) was set in - 2019? Of course the cybertruck is triangular in shape like the cop cars in that Cyberpunk classic.

It's not quite the same, but I sort of became more aware of Precision Fermentation maybe a few years before 2022 - but REALLY became aware of one of the main brands in 2022. It sounds a lot like a portmanteau of Soylent Green - Solein!

It's my favourite tech after renewable energy.

PRECISION FERMENTATION could replace most animal grazing and even some crops. It’s “electric food” that uses electricity to split water and feed hydrogen to bacteria (with a few minerals.) At 22% efficiency and going up - solar panels are much more efficient at catching sunlight than photosynthesis in plants (only 6%). Of course - we still need the solar panels and wind turbines to power all this - but even if you assume it is ONLY solar panels (at 22% efficiency) it's still 10 times more land efficient than our most efficient protein plants - soy beans. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2015025118

But here's the real magic. Solar panels do not have to be on arable land like soybeans do! They can be scattered across rooftops, floating on water reservoirs, industrial brownfields, even some deserts (cleared of biodiversity concerns of course!)

Once you realise that PF divorces the solar collection area from arable land, everything changes. We currently graze livestock across 30% of the non-ice land on earth – and use about 4% to grow soy beans for livestock – so that’s 34% to feeding livestock, not people. Feed vs. Food: How Farming Animals Fuels Hunger

(By comparison – all the rice and wheat and corn and fruit and vegetables and herbs and spices we grow for flavour and food and texture and medicine are on just 8% of the land.) So – 34% of the land on earth? Just suppose that a combination of seaweed farms and PF can cook up all the fake beef and chicken and bacon analogues we want – and maybe some veggie and desert alternatives as well. What if we regrew all the forests historically logged for grazing? That’s at least 30% of the land on earth – which would (through some quite conservative back of the envelope math I did years ago) regrow 3 TRILLION trees which would return us to preindustrial carbon levels!

The world fed, habitats restored, and the climate stabilised. All because we got bold enough to domesticate microbes and use our own solar panels instead of photosynthesis. Talk about Decoupling from nature!

 

[HARK!]

Not necessarily

I'm still wondering why the DOE is funding a project to power Microsoft. What do I get?

 

[eclipsenow]

What are you referring to and why is it relevant?

 

[Bob Crowley]

The Roadster comes with a built in "Mr. Fusion" and doesn't need roads.

It vaporises and then reassembles itself at the destination?

 

[Hans Blaster]

I'm still wondering why the DOE is funding a project to power Microsoft. What do I get?

The Department of Energy is funding a company developing a novel energy technology. That company has (apparently) entered into its first contract with (apparently) Microsoft for pilot production. If a government agency is going to fund a commercial company to develop something, eventually (and hopefully) that company will start to get contracts to purchase their product or service and lead to an end of development funding.

 

[HARK!]

The Department of Energy is funding a company developing a novel energy technology. That company has (apparently) entered into its first contract with (apparently) Microsoft for pilot production. If a government agency is going to fund a commercial company to develop something, eventually (and hopefully) that company will start to get contracts to purchase their product or service and lead to an end of development funding.

That doesn't answer my question; but I think that it's called Fascism.

 

[Ophiolite]

That doesn't answer my question; but I think that it's called Fascism.

Supporting the development of new technology that can be of benefit to the public, government and commercial companies is Facism? How so?

 

[Hans Blaster]

That doesn't answer my question;

Yes it does, at least as best I can without seeing some details on the contract, etc.

but I think that it's called Fascism.

No it is not.

 

[HARK!]

Yes it does

No it doesn't. The question is easily discerned by the curly punctuation mark at the end of the sentence.

No matter., It was a rhetorical question. I already knew that I got Fascism.

No it is not.

Scholars also noted that big business developed an increasingly close partnership with the Italian Fascist and German Nazi governments after they took power. Business leaders supported the government's political and military goals. In exchange, the government pursued economic policies that maximized the profits of its business allies.[8]

Economics of fascism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Hans Blaster]

No it doesn't. The question is easily discerned by the curly punctuation mark at the end of the sentence.

No matter., It was a rhetorical question. I already knew that I got Fascism.


Scholars also noted that big business developed an increasingly close partnership with the Italian Fascist and German Nazi governments after they took power. Business leaders supported the government's political and military goals. In exchange, the government pursued economic policies that maximized the profits of its business allies.[8]

Economics of fascism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Good grief. "State capitalism" is *NOT* fascism. I thought this was a project you were enthusiastic about and now you are labeling it as 'fascism". What gives?

 

[eclipsenow]

No it doesn't. The question is easily discerned by the curly punctuation mark at the end of the sentence.

No matter., It was a rhetorical question. I already knew that I got Fascism.

So governments sponsoring private corporations to work on a project ALWAYS means Fascism!?

Then you must be for governments just outright nationalising the company they want to do a thing - and run it themselves.
Welcome comrade! Join the struggle to overthrow this capitalist swine and give the means of production to the people.

 

[eclipsenow]

For ages I was sceptical about renewables. I fell in with the peak oil guys around 2004 - and while they ask some ROCKIN questions - their answers are often skewed. Their questions about cost to Overbuild etc were all relevant back then, but now? 20 years later? All those old assumptions are just wrong and proved wrong by peer reviewed research. In other words - EROEI, cost to Overbuild to firm the grid, energy transmission on new HVDC at only 1.6% loss per 1000 km (that's 16% from the equator to the Poles!) - all are looking great.

And then there was a new contender!

Based on fusion tech - but not fusion. Turning fusion into a crazy way to do geothermal - cheaply - anywhere!
If this thing works AS CHEAP as advertised - it could be a game changer.

 

[driewerf]

It will be 2024 in June.

I think you missed the pun.
I was also replying to:

Fingers crossed... but not holding my breath.

 

[driewerf]

That doesn't answer my question; but I think that it's called Fascism.

And if it isn't fascism, it's woke, liberalism, DEI, CRT, marxism, communism, or just a Biden disaster.

 

[AV1611VET]

Anyone so literally minded as I, missed her calling as a creationist.

Those called to be a creationist get their calling from a source outside of your science textbooks.

Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

It takes FAITH to be a creationist, not science.

Do you think for one minute I'm a creationist because I see evidence that the universe was created ex nihilo?

That is, the kind of evidence that can be quantified and reproduced in a laboratory?

 

[HARK!]

I would ask that we all try to stay on topic.

As far as creationism goes, that would be the creation of energy.

 

[HARK!]

So governments sponsoring private corporations to work on a project ALWAYS means Fascism!?

Then you must be for governments just outright nationalising the company they want to do a thing - and run it themselves.
Welcome comrade! Join the struggle to overthrow this capitalist swine and give the means of production to the people.

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Sorry comrade, I'm opposed to Authoritarianism in general, when it intrudes on personal liberty.

 

[HARK!]

Biden disaster

Actually, I think that we would have to give Obama credit for this one.

Funding​

Helion Energy received $7 million in funding from NASA, the United States Department of Energy and the Department of Defense,[31] followed by $1.5 million from the private sector in August 2014,

Helion Energy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

However, unlike some of the Democrats who are participating in this thread, I have not jumped to the conclusion that this project will be a failure.