Nuclear Engineer reacts to Kurzgesagt 'Fusion Power Explained - Future or Failure'

[azuresentry]

Agree fusion is worth investing in and I think it might actually be 20-30 yrs away this time. That said, I don't think it will play basically any role in decarbonizing the globe due to the lag to widespread development. First generation plants will probably still take forever to build and be massively expensive. It'll take them a while to really build up the know-how, industry to support, and widespread adoption.

[ScottJPowers]

people often talk like fusion is the end all be all of power, short of matter-antimatter power, but, at best, it only produces up to 4 times the amount of power as fission, and while they talk about how much power we could produce because it only needs water, they immediately undermine this by saying you need isotopes of hydrogen that are fairly rare, so not just any water will do.

[Canucklug]

I think the prediction site Metaculus has the average bet on a 100 MW reactor hooked up in 2035. The problem is the mainline tokamaks that can probably get there have engineering challenges that make it hard to imagine it being really cheap. They figure the reactor core vessel will be replaced every year or two. The bigger difficulty is that the magnetic power to hold the plasma strongly enough requires loads of steel to keep it together. CFS is talking about $150 or $250/MWh for a first plant. Which honestly might compare pretty well to offshore wind being more reliable. Basically it seems you need a materials breakthrough to make a cheaper stronger magnet structure

Then you have the engineering optimized designs that don't have much physics track record yet. Helion and Zap seem to have the best chance at doing something really impressive with prices. Zap's trying to match the net fuel gain experiment this year with a far cheaper reactor and Helion is building a prototype one step before commercial size that could produce a small amount of net electricity in 2024. By '27 there should be similar projects online from two tokamak companies and three other unconventional designs. It's really fun to follow even if they all crash and burn in the end

[steltekx]

Since achieving ignition, it’s far more likely that we’ll have a feasible fusion reactor in 20 years than ever before. That breakthrough will likely lead to increased funding. However, having a working fusion reactor is a long ways from having a few terawatts of baseline capacity generated by fusion. Even if we were certain of that timeline and fusion being financially viable, we’re likely 50+ years away from it being our primary energy source. It makes sense to start construction on hundreds of Gen3+ reactors now and aggressively work toward the most promising Gen4 technologies. Fission is the only thing we have that can replace fossil fuels for baseline capacity now and at the needed scale, and we can’t afford to wait

[Acg_productions]

My house melted from a fusion reactor I made in my bedroom

[gonnaenodaethat]

Welp. In the grand skill tree of life, nuclear is a required technology to unlock the next branch so people better start getting over themselves. Progress wait for no one :3

[holysecret]

If there's anything worth investing into as a species, it's our future. 10 billion dollars is probably 10% if not 1% of what we are investing into destroying each other year to year. There could be so much valuable research and improvement and betterment of society achieved if we simply lived peacefully with each other and could spend all that money constructively. Not to mention all the lives lost on both sides of each war that could otherwise become scientists or fill other happy and helpful roles in society. I'm sure there is at least 1 great invention or achievement (like a cure for cancer, a milestone in fusion technology, etc.) that might never be made because that one person died unnecessarily in a war situation, or lost or did not gain access to education due to poverty.

[patrickodriscoll]

So, don't know if you were told, but you are extremely quiet compared to the video, I can't hear anything you're saying without making the rest of the video deafening, also, for whatever reason the subtitles won't pick you up

[NikozStudio]

actually we have made a net postitive energy gain recently

[cho-yvkk]

when did we ever get more output than input are you talking about the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California made a breakthrough that was six decades in the making as an experimental reactor using a bank of 192 high-energy lasers focused on a single point struck a pellet of deuterium and tritium and set off an inertial fusion ignition reaction for the first time.

Did Anyone ACCOUNT For The FULL POWER Of A CITY GRID NEEDED to Power the 192 high-energy lasers Does the EXTRA OUTPUT from the pellet of deuterium and tritium MAKE UP the DIFFERENCE ????

[diablobodyguard]

FBR reactors are made to create more energy that they use

[DarenMiller-qjbu]

As far as expenses goes, the US is just throwing away billions on a whim so that 10B gamble doesn't sound too bad. Lol

[ashardalondragnipurake]

where kindof massively exaggerating the supposed equal in as out
a lot of the systems that needed to be running whernt included in the calculation
and then there is the transition into usable electricity
we are nowhere near getting anywhere close to as much out as in
maybe in a century or so

[pendingchange]

Tip for your vids maybe set the audio a bit louder i can bearly hear you in this vid

[JamesSmith-okit]

So me and my friends from work have a drinking game that every time you say Nuclear we have a drink.... YOU DIDN'T SAY NUCLEAR ENOUGH IN THIS VIDEO !!!! 😡

[Metametheus]

I mean technically chernobyl got turned into a bomb mostly a steam and hydrogen bomb with dirty bomb effects because of the Negative void coefficient and absents of enough water to kill the reaction (and control rods). By technicality any structure not able to restricts its contents from escaping is a bomb, coal boilers can still explode if they're jammed or steam to water ratios aren't maintained properly. While the chances are extremely low that it will happen it still could. While it's impractical with all the safety systems in place, it's still not impossible.