Solar power? We have it already!
I don’t have any useful speculation to contribute, but here’s a classic chart showing various funding levels towards that goal:
Coming from a slashdot thread from 2012 where some fusion researchers did an AMA type thing:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fusion-researchers-answer-your-questions
Here’s also a recent HN thread about achieving more energy than we put in:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971377
The crucial bit is this
Their total power draw from the grid was 300 megajoules and they got back about 3 megajoules, so don’t start celebrating yet
The critical ELI5 message that should have been presented is that they used a laser to create some tiny amount of fusion. But we have been able to do that for a while now. The important thing is that they were then able to use the heat and pressure of the laser generated fusion to create even more fusion. A tiny amount of fusion creates even more fusion, a positive feedback loop. The secondary fusion is still small, but it is more than the tiny amount of laser generated fusion. The gain is greater than one. That’s the important message. And for the future, the important takeaway is that the next step is to take the tiny amount of laser fusion to create a small amount of fusion, and that small amount of fusion to create a medium amount of fusion. And eventually scale it up enough that you have a large amount of fusion, but controlled, and not a gigantic amount of fusion that you have in thermonuclear weapons, or the ginormous fusion of the sun.
So it’s still really encouraging, but just a warning that headlines don’t capture the full picture. Bonus fun fact from that thread:
Theoretical models of the Sun’s interior indicate a maximum power density, or energy production, of approximately 276.5 watts per cubic metre at the center of the core, which is about the same power density inside a compost pile.
stares at the sun
“I’m right here.”
93M miles away.
If they’d put as much money on it as they’re throwing away on LLMs, yesterday.
We’re very close. I think it was only a few years ago that we first got more energy back than we put in. That’s a big milestone.
At the risk of getting roughed up in the replies…
I think AI will be the missing key. The ability to micromanage millions of inputs at once and respond with control corrections in microseconds can push this over the top. I’ve read of some progress on this front already.
I don’t think it’ll be LLMs (which is what a lot of people jump to when you mention “AI”), they have much higher latencies than microseconds. It will be AI of some sort, but probably won’t be considered AI due to the AI effect:
The AI effect is the discounting of the behavior of an artificial intelligence program as not “real” intelligence.
The author Pamela McCorduck writes: “It’s part of the history of the field of artificial intelligence that every time somebody figured out how to make a computer do something—play good checkers, solve simple but relatively informal problems—there was a chorus of critics to say, ‘that’s not thinking’.”
Researcher Rodney Brooks stated: “Every time we figure out a piece of it, it stops being magical; we say, ‘Oh, that’s just a computation.’”
LLMs might be useful for researchers diving down a particular research/experiment rabbit hole.
Machine Learning in this case instead of LLMs. Fields like microbiology have been seeing waves of discoveries with the latest ML approaches.
Is there a difference between a neural net and ml?
Neural nets aren’t the only way to do ML. They are, however, by far the most popular.
ML includes other models like random forest in addition to neural nets.
Fusion has the exact same issue as every other “heat steam to drive a turbine” power plant:
Cooling.
There’s no way around it and you can calculate it.
Power output in W * (100 - efficiency %) / 100 = Heat output
That heat needs to go somewhere. Sure you can use it to heat homes in winter.
But in summer, even along major rivers, power plants already need to throttle down in order to not kill all water life downstream and turn the river into smelly sludge. In summer there’s no demand for heat, there is more demand for electricity, there’s less water in the river, and that water is already warmer.Fusion power is no solution for this.
Solar and wind power are. They don’t need to be cooled. And the technology already exists, and is cheaper than fossil fuels or nuclear TODAY. All we need to do is scale them up.There are fusion plants that directly extract usable power using magnetic fields. It’s not just a complicated steam power.
Oh yeah? What happens when we run out of wind?
Just wait until the wind wars start. The US will over-build windmills, blocking all wind to Canada. That’ll be the end of peace.
We’ve been just 10 years away from fusion going on 50 years now.
I’d always heard 30, but regardless, the unspoken part of that projection was the assumption that we adequately funded fusion research. That didn’t happen, hence why we’re 50 years into the 30 year project with nothing to show for it.
2 thoughts.
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Might be never.
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I’m not convinced it would be a good thing if we did. Natural systems find homeostasis that keep the system balanced. Human intelligence have systematically removed these natural barriers (tool use, agriculture, division of labour, metalurgy, medicine, industrial revolution, fossil fuels, green revolution, chemistry, computers etc…) as such, we blew past all semblance of sustainability. Each time we lifted a barrier that was a limiting factor, our population and environmental footprint grew exponentially.
Now we are in a state of severe ecological overshoot. We have crossed 7 of 9 planetary boundaries. and our crisis is that we are converting our planet into something that can’t sustain us.
If we figure out cold fusion, there is a better than not chance we will just lift one more barrier that will allow us to further destroy all the rest.
I’m not against fusion energy if possible, I’m just not convinced it won’t be another nail in our coffin. I don’t see humanity’s maturity growing to accomodate our current technology to alter our likely fate, and near limitless energy solves humanity’s problems like carfentanyl solved the heroin addicts problems.
The flaw in this thinking is that massive destruction and extinction is one of the ways natural systems maintain themselves.
The earth has never been in homeostasis, 99.9% of species are extinct, and the planet is a lot more likely to survive than humans are.
our conduct is perfectly natural and playing out a lot faster than most natural systems that take millions of years to extinct a species sometimes
Apologies for poetic license in the name of brevity.
The problem with your thinking is that you thought I used the term homeostasis as if it meant unchanging, rather than the dynamic rebalancing that keeps a system viable. The system being the ecosphere.
the planet is a lot more likely to survive than humans are.
My point exactly. The planet is a rock. The ecosphere is a complex system that is in deep, deep trouble. It’s only a problem if you value humanity and the flora and fauna that nurtured us into existance. It seems you don’t.
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Probably never, but that’ll be an unpopular opinion in these parts. We should continue to invest in it, but we shouldn’t count on it ever being successful.
I suspect it’s impossible with our current level of technology and understanding.
About 6 weeks after the last person in this thread dies
No
Progress is being made, but understanding it is beyond my ability. I can confidently say not anytime soon though.
