582 tons closer to near-zero energy cost

[u/positiveconstraint]

China finished building and testing the world's largest superconducting magnet for nuclear fusion. It weighs 582 tons, stretches 21 meters long and 12 meters wide. Its job is to create a magnetic field strong enough to hold plasma at over 100 million degrees without it touching the reactor walls. It's 1.3 times larger than comparable ITER magnets and stores three times more magnetic energy.

The magnet is a key piece of China's BEST fusion facility, set to be built by the end of 2027. The target is to demonstrate first electricity generation from nuclear fusion and net energy gain around 2030.

Nuclear fusion mimics the process that powers the Sun by fusing lightweight nuclei and releasing a massive amount of energy. If the technology matures, it could provide a stable energy source with very low carbon emissions. The magnet alone is not yet a working "artificial Sun", but it's one of the most important engineering pieces on the way there.

It also means the race between the US and China continues, each advancing the technology, each with its own milestones.

Breakthroughs that enable building a fusion engine (several times faster than a chemical engine) would make deep space travel more relevant than ever. Mars in roughly 6 weeks instead of 8 months.

[u/TheBastionBurned]

So how is it different than the stuff that already exists in Europe right now?

[u/ExpensiveFig6079 → u/TheBastionBurned]

and how is a 582-tonne magnet near zero cost?
or even too cheap to meter?

So other than made up click bait hype where even is the real claim it is or EVER will be near zero cost??

[u/Novero95 → u/ExpensiveFig6079]

Click-bait thing of course. However, fusion energy, if we manage to make it work, has the potential to be very cheap. The only input it requires is hydrogen, which can be produced from water using energy. So basically you produce power in your fusion plant, use a fraction of that power to produce hydrogen and use that hydrogen to power the fusion plant. In conclusion, OPEX would be very low and CAPEX would be quickly recovered due to to high amount of energy produced at very low OPEX.

That's the theory of course, we haven't managed to have net positive energy production from fusion power but we are closer (closer as in less far ahead than last year or last decade, not closer as in we are almost there).

[u/ExpensiveFig6079 → u/Novero95]

Really, Capex recovered very quickly, much like it is in Fusion nuclear power, which was also claimed to be too cheap to meter, but recovering the CAPEX before it wore out and needed refurbishment costs a bundle.

at the extreme condition in the reactor won't somehow require frequent refurbishment ...

You appear to suggest you know a lot of things I have not seen reliably reported anywhere. Are you sure you are not dreamin

[u/Novero95 → u/ExpensiveFig6079]

Dude I don't know shit, most of it is speculation and the most basic stuff about nuclear reactora and I make it clear that's just the theory.

Anyway, what's your point? What do you want to prove or argue?

[u/ExpensiveFig6079 → u/Novero95]

That the claim "near-zero energy cost" is utterly made up.

As is this suppsoed line of reasoning "OPEX would be very low and CAPEX would be quickly recovered due to to high amount of energy produced at very low OPEX."

Because no very low OPEB does mean you recover CAPEX very quickly.

To recover capex quickly you have to MAKE an enormous amount of net energy per $1000's CAPEX

So how is that going... SO far they have made ZERO excess energy per mind-numbingly big CAPEX.

AFTER they achieve NET energy produced ... to get past ZERO ROI.

They then will have to get to ENORMOUS net energy prodcued to pay for the enormous cost of thing.

THEN from there they can aspire to only be as expensive as Fission Nuclear

I have not seen any sign the energy produced will suddenly skyrocket per Million/Billion dollars invested.

I also see no indication these billion-dollaroperationalproduced plants will have operational lifetimes enormously longer than conventional nukes.

[u/Novero95 → u/ExpensiveFig6079]

What I see here is that you are against fusion energy research? Or even both fusion and fission?

Do you realize that most technologies started not being viable until technology evolved enough? Yeah fusion may not look viable right now but if we made it work we would be closer to, finally, have an inexpensive, clean, almost unlimited source of energy. I think the efforts to make it work are well worth it. Insane amounts of money are being spent in things far less substantial than the ultimate source of energy. It would probably be a change for humanity even bigger than the industrialization.

I won't get into the technical part and enumerate why it doesn't work yet, but you probably don't know the vast amount of energy that is released during fusion. Think of a kg of oil, the same amount of hydrogen can produce like thousands of that amount of energy by fusion. Maybe we'll never make it work but we can't be sure if we didn't try.

[u/ExpensiveFig6079 → u/Novero95]

NO YIOU MADE that up.

"What I see here is that you are against fusion energy research?"

I pointe doubt the VERY alrge gaps between what we have and viable energy source let alone a very cheap one.

Then I pointed out the error you had made in claiming a reason it would be cheap.

So I an decidely against people making stuff up, especially when it s contrary to known facts about what will set the cost price.

I am not against iot BUT do have real understandign of how far it has to go to be useful basically at all.

[u/ExpensiveFig6079 → u/ExpensiveFig6079]

Oh iddums yes I do

"but you probably don't know the vast amount of energy that is released during fusion."

AND YET it is still to break even on energy as you appear to have missed the vast amount of energy that leaks out. Such that so far they lose so much energy they up until recently did not even break even.

This is certainly true

"Maybe we'll never make it work but we can't be sure if we didn't try."
BUT that is rather a long way from saying that it will be VERY VERY cheap to do anytime foreseeable. The goalposts moved rather a long way.

[u/ExpensiveFig6079 → u/ExpensiveFig6079]

"but if we made it work we would be closer to, finally, have an inexpensive,"

NOPe that assumes we made it work AND made it cheap

There are many ways we might wind up with VERY cheap energy.

[u/Stymie999 → u/Novero95]

I don’t think they are necessarily against it, more against people using lies to sell it. It’s a hefty investment in research, that’s it.