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Comment by neuronic | Hacker News Reader

Fusion has the same advantages as fission but the disadvantages are reduced to a minuscule amount.

CO2-neutral, stable energy generation independent of weather, season, time... with amounts large and stable enough to be independent of storage solution.

Wind and solar need to be regulated because intensity varies. They are location dependent (German North produces a lot of wind, but there's no feasible way to bring it to the South...)

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> German North produces a lot of wind, but there's no feasible way to bring it to the South...

Technically feasible or politically feasible? There's a lot of NIMBYism around building new high-capacity power transmission lines in Germany (e.g., Suedlink, Südostlink).

The biggest disadvantage of fission is its cost and complexity. Fusion makes these primary problems much worse.

No, its the irrational level of fear.

No, it's the entirely rational fear of losing billions of dollars on bad investments.

I disagree. The biggest (technical) disadvantage of fission is the creation and use of radioactive materials.

Fusion solves this problem in large part because it uses and produces significantly less radioactive materials... materials that wouldn’t count as a security concern.

Fusion reactors turn themselves into radioactive waste. Neutron radiation is inherent to nuclear fusion and when previously stable non-radioactive substances are subjected to neutron radiation, they may absorb some of those neutrons and become radioactive. (This is called neutron activation.) Some materials are less prone to this than others and that would be considered during the construction of a production fusion reactor, but even so components of the reactor would likely become so radioactive that the only way to perform maintenance on the reactor would be robotics. And when the reactor eventually needs to be decommissioned, it needs to be treated accordingly.

I wasn't aware of these issues. Did some searching and found this article that covers them (and others) in detail: https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-the...

This talk from the MIT fusion lab lays out some approaches they have for solving problems in current fusion reactor design, in particular dealing with the radiation problem in a cost-effective manner. https://youtu.be/KkpqA8yG9T4

The ARC reactor is still unacceptably large and expensive. Its volumetric power density is still a factor of 40 worse than a PWR primary reactor vessel.

> And when the reactor eventually needs to be decommissioned, it needs to be treated accordingly.

by that time putting it on a Starship, and sending it to the Sun might become a feasible option.

No, that's clearly wrong.

Make fission 10x cleaner or 10x safer and people still wouldn't build them.

Make existing reactors 10x cheaper, but no safer or cleaner, and they'd be selling like hotcakes.

Ahem. Storytime!

This has recently been upgraded to about four times capacity.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbekreuzung_2 (sorry for tze german, didn't find any english wiki, this are the largest masts in Europe, they have to be, otherwise the large freight ships won't make it into the harbour of Hamburg)

[2] https://eqos-energie.com/_press/eqos-energie-erneuert-leiter... (Press release from the executing contractor.)

[3] https://www.tennet.eu/de/news/news/tennet-startet-umbeseilun... [4]https://www.tennet.eu/de/news/news/tennet-vervierfacht-die-s... (Press release from the begin and end of upgrade project.)

Assorted videos and press releases from a few years before, directly related to the preparation of surrounding infrastructure, their upgrading, and moving heavy transformers around:

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU2OUtETD7I (8 Minutes, for rail nerds only, crossing a bridge in town during normal operations with modern diesel-hydraulic switcher loco, bridge making funky sounds because of weight.)

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7eWzeMxPTo (2m:47s, corporate PR of production site of transformer.)

[7] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Drachenfels&t=ffab&iax=images&ia=i... (Transported by ship from below the Drachenfels near Bonn at the Rhine into the North Sea, and then back on land.)

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88PLBOKZ8-0 (4m:32s, loading onto ship, boring, for transport nerds only, added for completeness.)

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vw6h64uzNY (8m:56s, offloading of transformer from ship and moving to substation.) [10] https://baumann-move.com/transformator-uw-heide-west/ (Same, press release of moving company.)

[11] https://www.powertransformernews.com/2019/04/30/abb-transfor... (Another one, same general area.)

[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKjYD6CCgLo (43m:45s, another one, from ship to another substation, for transport nerds only, FF)

[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCpEw7wRgN4 (Removal of 'old' transformer from substation for shipping and reuse in another substation for the grid of Norderstedt & Hamburg, for transport nerds only, FF)

[14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnvY77LYSKQ (5m:6s, same one, by rail, trough the core of small town northern Germany with cobblestones and Russian 'Taiga Drum/Stalin´s last revenge', for rail nerds, because [15]!)

[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M62_locomotive

[16] https://baumann-move.com/transport-von-zwei-416-t-schweren-t... (Another press release from moving company.)

For being 'unfeasible' that was a lot of action, i think. And this goes on and on, not only in the locations i focused on.

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