Nuclear Fusion: the long road from dream to reality | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear Fusion: the long road from dream to reality

paristechreview.com

22 pointst_fatus16 comments

I kind of wish that ITER and NIF would go away. In my opinion they are money pits with little clear path to practical energy generation.

There are many credible, practical, small fusion research projects poised to leapfrog the international megaprojects that are being grievously starved of funding and mind-share by those big lumps. http://www.industrytap.com/us-fusion-funding-call-change/267...

Whatever happened to that shipping box thing the military was evaluating a few years ago that was going to revolutionize everything?

Hmm, not sure. EMC2's Polywell (my favorite underdog) project had Navy funding for quite some time, since it would fit handily onto a submarine. The only other boxy generator that I recall was the Bloom box fuel cell. http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/ will have a very reasonably sized final product too if their work pans out. Same goes for Lockheed's compact fusion - they're one to watch since they have big money ready and waiting if their experimentation yields progress.

You're probably referring to the Energy Catalyzer, by Andrea Rossi. He's a scam, I spent some time researching him several years ago.

This is also relevant and fascinating: "A Star in a Bottle – The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor" (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/03/a-star-in-a-bot...). The HN discussion is good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8307584.

"the fossil reserves (oil, coal and natural gas) are being depleted, while the cost to extract and exploit them is increasing"

Fossil fuel depletion aka peak oil is a fantasy that's been heard for decades.

The costs of extraction are not increasing. Why do you think the fracking business took off - the costs to get to these previously untappable sources dropped.

If oil prices fall, fracking is too costly to be economical.

http://static.cdn-seekingalpha.com/uploads/2014/10/695520_14...

Although low oil price seem to be stopping new wells, it looks like the existing can be profitable down to $40 (as told to me by the folks in western ND). I posted a link a while back showing the breakdown.

The industry expects a large number of fracking companies to go bust if oil stays under 60$. Traditional wells are generally profitable at 1/3 that price. Worse, fracking has a lot of up-front cost in oil exploration and wells are there not useful nearly as long so expect US production to fall quickly over the next few years.

The good news is at ~100-150$ it’s profitable to directly manufacture oil, but the price needs to stay there for years before companies will do the kind of investments needed to meet current demand.

PS: Oddly enough, on average extracting oil and turning it into gasoline is already a net negative in terms of energy due to all the extraction, transportation, and refining costs.

Can you point to your sourcing, I am doing a bit of comparison and I am seeing a bit of oddity in the reporting.

Which bit?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102094881 has some numbers on regional break even prices.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/08/energy-bankruptcy-... oil bankruptcy filings also http://www.cnbc.com/id/102318531 "$68 a barrel is not economical for a lot of these shale oil wells. http://www.cnbc.com/id/102222911

Manufacturing oil: The new fuel is initially expected to cost around $3 to $6 per gallon, according to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory ... “We've demonstrated the feasibility, we want to improve the process efficiency," explained Willauer. http://www.ibtimes.com/goodbye-oil-us-navy-cracks-new-renewa...

The CNBC article jive with what I've seen $40 - $70 / $80 is the break even price for shale in ND & Texas (although one section in ND is listed at $36 from other sources). I keep seeing quotes like the second one ($70 in most cases) that quote the top of range. I'm still collecting a bit of research, but it looks like the majority of wells are closer to the bottom than the top.

Do you not see the irony in what you just said?

That's misleading. The cost to extract by fracking dropped pretty much because fracking was invented. In fact Fracking is a pretty expensive way to extract oil; so expensive that the recent falls in the oil price have made it uneconomical to develop new wells and has caused severe financial difficulty in the US fracking industry.

The peak oil fuss was certainly premature, we'll be extracting oil for many decades to come, but it is still a finite resource and new sources of production, including fracking, are proving more and more expensive to develop.

IMO, bigger risk is the climate change momentum put into motion from extraction of fossil fuels at economically feasible levels. Economic pressure was adding to motivation to address global climate change - but the collapse of oil prices eases that, leaving scientific forecasts alone...

Do you think that fossil fuel depletion as a concept is a fantasy, or just the idea that it will be noticeable anytime soon (e.g. this century)? If the former, is that because you don't believe we are using fossil fuels faster than they are naturally deposited?

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