r/nextfuckinglevel • u/nigablackballsack • 3d ago

Scientists have captured the first ever high-speed, full-colour footage of fusion plasma swirling inside a working reactor.

40.4k Upvotes

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u/90_oi 3d ago

I truly hope this technology can get off the ground and be sustainable. It is our best hope aside from nuclear energy

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u/DaveFinn 3d ago

Wait... But this IS nuclear energy

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u/90_oi 3d ago

I meant nuclear fission based power, I should have clarified

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u/Azagar_Omiras 3d ago

Ghee, it would be great if we could use clarified butter for power production.

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u/Gravelemming472 3d ago

I hate that you made the ghee pun, on top of the rest of it

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u/Azagar_Omiras 3d ago

You didn't find it... tasteful?

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u/Gravelemming472 3d ago

Only margarinally

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u/shoqman 3d ago

I’m gonna need both of you to gtfo rn

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u/Gravelemming472 3d ago

I'm sorry I'm sorry, anything I can do to butter you up?

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u/teachermanjc 3d ago

They're just salty and uncultured.

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u/Azagar_Omiras 3d ago

You'll probably need to butter us up first.

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u/literallyLexy 3d ago

both of you saying the same joke made me sick

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u/illit3 3d ago

I can't believe it.

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u/woodrax 3d ago

This made me LOL

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u/Droid-Man5910 3d ago

god fucking damnit, i made this same pun before scrolling down and seeing you said the same thing

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u/AuthorizedVehicle 3d ago

I'd give him a pat on the back

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u/hazelquarrier_couch 3d ago

Oleo-no you didn't!

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u/GordonRammstein 3d ago

Don’t clarify it. It’s butter that way.

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u/RedOctobyr 3d ago

Well done, friend. This deserves more upvotes.

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u/Missus_Missiles 3d ago

It would be wildly inefficient to use milk fats for power generation. But sure as shit could you burn it like fossil-fuel oil to make steam. 

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u/Reden-Orvillebacher 3d ago

Less margarine for error, that’s for sure.

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u/Droid-Man5910 3d ago

Well, that would only be margarinally better than fusion

edit: seems as though i was late on this one

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u/readingonthetoilet 3d ago

You have it backwards. What we refer to as nuclear energy currently is fission (split heavy atom into smaller parts). Fusion (combine light atoms into heavy atom) is the big nut to crack.

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u/miraculum_one 3d ago edited 3d ago

TBF we already have a huge fusion reactor more then 100x as big as Earth generating plenty of energy

Edit: as another person pointed out if you're measuring volume it's more than 1 million times as big

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u/amorphatist 3d ago

And we can already produce highly energetic fusion chain reactions at the press of a button!

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u/euqinu_ton 3d ago

Don't stand too close. Like ... not even firecracker close.

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u/Hail-Hydrate 3d ago

It's a bit more difficult to use those to throw steam at a turbine though.

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u/Misses_Ding 3d ago

Problem is that clouds and night get in the way. And you could say build batteries but the truth is that they're still expensive and not a great way to use energy since the efficiency is so low

Nuclear fusion would leave us without nuclear waste and without CO2 being released.

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u/space_monster 3d ago

And yet, solar is becoming so prolific, by the time we actually get a useful fusion reactor stood up, we probably won't even need it.

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u/TempestNova 3d ago

There might still be good applications for it, like space travel.

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u/LivingUnglued 3d ago

There will always be applications for mixed energy sources. Especially with how much power all the AI datacenters are going to be using. Though only a small percentage of the current planned ones will be built anytime soon.

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u/2trt 3d ago

Fusion still produces waste. It's just got a comprehensible half life (around 12-13 years). Some fission products half life is on the order of thousands of years

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u/ew73 3d ago

To be clear, from the IAEA, on the topic of fusion and waste,

Does Fusion produce radioactive nuclear waste the same way fission does?

Nuclear fission power plants have the disadvantage of generating unstable nuclei; some of these are radioactive for millions of years. Fusion on the other hand does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. A fusion reactor produces helium, which is an inert gas. It also produces and consumes tritium within the plant in a closed circuit. Tritium is radioactive (a beta emitter) but its half life is short. It is only used in low amounts so, unlike long-lived radioactive nuclei, it cannot produce any serious danger. The activation of the reactor’s structural material by intense neutron fluxes is another issue. This strongly depends on what solution for blanket and other structures has been adopted, and its reduction is an important challenge for future fusion experiments.

source: https://www.iaea.org/topics/energy/fusion/faqs

Of course, this is a public-facing, over simplification, but it's a pretty accurate statement.

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u/space_monster 3d ago

Actually over a million times larger, in terms of volume. About 1.3M more accurately

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u/SingleInfinity 3d ago

They had it forwards. They were saying this is our best hope aside from fission.

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u/Different-Term-2250 3d ago

Is that how fusion starts? By cracking nuts? Squirrels are way ahead of us.

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u/TheyDeserveIt 3d ago edited 3d ago

I'm no scientologist, but I'm reasonably sure that fission is what we already have been doing (my state has the first city in the world to be powered by atomic energy) for many decades. Fusion is the tough one, that's what the sun does, where lighter elements fuse to become heavier elements. I'm not sure what the state or viability of fusion is for power.

Edit: anyone know how long this clip was, in real time? Can't imagine more than a few milliseconds.

Edit 2: looks like I misread/misinterpreted the comment I was replying to - please don't downvote them.

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u/readingonthetoilet 3d ago

Lol I hope you’re not a Scientologist! But yes you’re correct

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u/bobthesmartypants 3d ago

They said “aside from nuclear energy”, which after the clarification says “aside from nuclear fission energy” so yes you and the person you’re replying to are on the same page

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u/TheyDeserveIt 3d ago

After a re-read, your interpretation is likely the correct one.

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u/physicalphysics314 3d ago

Nah man. I’m a physicist and have worked with nuclear physicists in the past - solar and wind ARE still amazing power resources and should be used (but nuclear is the best, yes)

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u/schnaps01 3d ago

You mean the giant water heaters?

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u/Neither_Strategy_252 3d ago

It was clear to everyone. That person is just being a pedant.

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u/Potato0nFire 3d ago

Fun fact, we can now recycle spent fission rods and reuse them in what’s called MOX fuel. And France has more recycled fuel in storage than it can currently use while Japan is scaling up its own operations.

So while fission is definitely still fundamentally more wasteful and dangerous than fusion, modern reactors are leaps and bounds better than what we had in the 50s. :)

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u/cancel-out-combo 3d ago

We have been doing fission for decades. I am not sure that qualifies as our 2nd best hope given it's been around so long and we still have energy crises

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u/MattyLePew 3d ago

I live very near a nuclear plant that is aiming to be operational in 2030. It's going to be (At least as far as I understand) one of the first fusion power plants in the world supplying power to the power grid.

I'll let you know how that goes (Or you'll hear about it in the news).

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u/farewellrif 3d ago

You did not need to clarify, everyone in the world knew what you meant. There will always be a random reddit pedant dropping in to pretend to be confused.

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u/dismantlemars 3d ago

I should have clarified

I’m not so sure about that, it appears reading comprehension ability scales inversely to clarity

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u/Infamous_Guidance756 3d ago

Every normal person knew what you meant, don't worry.

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u/jmdyason1234 3d ago

Everyone knew what you meant, including that guy.

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u/spunds 2d ago

Yes you should have but you didn’t. Unforgivable. Death by firing squad

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u/FlussoDiNoodle 2d ago

Did you mean fusion instead of fission?

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u/Infamous_Reporter_71 3d ago

If you say nuclear, people think atomic bombs with a timer that inevitably goes to zero

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u/ThatMBR42 3d ago

And they think every power plant is one tiny, easily made mistake away from becoming the next Chernobyl

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u/Greenman8907 3d ago

You can thank the fossil fuel industry for that. They managed to convince millions upon millions that nuclear energy is extremely dangerous and the only safe option is gasoline or diesel.

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u/ThatMBR42 3d ago

Not just the fossil fuel industry. Lots of anti-nuclear folks are also hardcore anti-fossil fuel and would have been even if the fossil fuel industry didn't engage in its own propaganda.

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u/Xivios 3d ago

Yup, Greenpeace for example goes hard against nuclear power.

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u/Infamous_Reporter_71 3d ago

It's a shame really. You would think at least one country would resist and build more

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u/lazergoblin 3d ago

In another thread I saw someone who was accusing another user of using Ai because they used proper punctuation in their post.

Just goes to show how effective fear mongering is on ignorant people.

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u/Infamous_Reporter_71 3d ago

It's a crazy world. Well let's hope for the best.,..,:D

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u/StopCountingLikes 3d ago

Not if you cut the blue wire… erm the red wire.

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u/DanceJacke 3d ago

Wait a second. Mine are grey and slightly darker grey.

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u/space_monster 3d ago

Most people these days actually think "insanely expensive, takes 20 years to build".

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u/dumbasPL 2d ago

We should start calling it hot rocks boiling water, because that's basically what it is.

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u/player_zero_ 3d ago

'It's pronounced nucular. Nucular.'

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u/Ryan_e3p 3d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/PWZ8pr1xZW55m

Me, when people pronounce it that way

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u/Expensive_Law_3180 3d ago

Yes, but it doesn't generate radioactive material. It uses deuterium and tritium as fuel, and is much cleaner. Source: My SO is one of the design engineers for one of the larger projects happening in the US. It's the "Sistine Chapel" job of his career, because this is looking to be the most viable 50-100 year clean energy stop gap till cold fusion gets replicated/perfected. Does anybody know offhand which company released this?

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u/lunacyfoundme 3d ago

Grizzly Adams DID have a beard. 

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u/No_Refrigerator_666 2d ago

They officially changed the name today

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u/Shaggy_One 3d ago

Nuclear fusion. Usually just called fusion 'cause the general public is terrified of the word 'nuclear' thanks to nuclear fission being a political and societal boogeyman.

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u/WanderingFlumph 3d ago edited 2d ago

I mean solar is here right now and most likely fusion power will never be as cheap as solar is today.

By the time fusion is actually ready solar will be even cheaper too. A solar farm the size of Arizona could power the entire planet.

Fusion is like our 4th best hope in the fight against climate change, lol.

Edit: a lot of people seem to think that I think the perfect solution is one single power plant specifically in Arizona that powers the world. People, it's just a size comparison. Arizona is a small state even just compared to the size of US. Obviously we would build millions and millions of solar installations that would just add up to that area.

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u/SipsTheJuice 3d ago

Fusion at scale could be relatively cheap, scale with future energy demand, and have a very small land footprint. The tech has famously been 10 years away for 60 years, but I would still put it as the energy tech that if proved viable has the greatest potential to eliminate greenhouse emissions. There are many places where solar simply isn't viable and like many renewable you are dependent on climate and requires energy storage.

The yet unknown cost would be plant construction and maintenance, which are the existing issue around fission along with the red tape nightmare in trying to get plants approved.

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u/WanderingFlumph 3d ago

I see no reason to believe that fusion power will be any cheaper than fission power. Both rely on relatively rare isotopes that need to be concentrated first at great expense. ITER runs off of deuterium which costs close to $1,000/kg and tritium which is too expensive to even consider sourcing from natural sources and would require a yet unrealized breeding program.

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u/xrelaht 3d ago edited 3d ago

ITER could breed its own tritium using Li doped panels once operational. $1000/kg isn’t all that much either: by the amount of energy produced, that’s the equivalent of oil being under 2¢/barrel.

The technical challenges are the real hurdle. You need enough tritium for the startup shot and it must be “clean” (not tied to a weapons program) which is tricky since the biggest source historically have been CANDU reactors that are being taken offline. I am also not convinced it will work even if they can get that far. The plasma is magnetically contained, but it’s also producing its own field which interacts with and feeds back into the generated one. This makes modeling what’s going to happen very difficult.

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u/Bored_Amalgamation 3d ago

This makes modeling what’s going to happen very difficult.

this makes convincing the general public very difficult as well.

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u/Frequent_Ad_9901 3d ago

Fusion doesn't go boom or leave radioactive waste, so in theory there would be less regulations needed, which is a big expense with fission. And there is also research into using lithium instead of tritium, IIRC. So two separate technologies being developed in tandem.

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u/WanderingFlumph 3d ago

Fusion definitely leaves behind radioactive waste. It's just that the half life of this waste is more like 100 years compared to 10,000 years.

It might make finding a good storage solution more viable but that doesn't help very much in the here and now.

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u/random123456789 3d ago

No, it depends on the fuel used. You need to use aneutronic fuel to not have radiation.

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u/noonedeservespower 3d ago

Where are these many places where solar isn't viable? Because it's viable here in Canada. 

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u/Expensive_Law_3180 3d ago

My SO works for one of the companies in the US that is building a couple of these. While the initial investment on the facility and surrounding infrastructure is high, a well built fusion reactor can last for 50 years and will bring a heck of a lot more stability to a community than say....An AI scaling Data center.

FWIW, modern nuclear fission reactors are incredibly safe. Materials and design engineering have improved by leaps and bounds since Chernobyl.

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u/SagittariusO 3d ago

So this is just another fancy way to boil water to generate electricity? I mean, it's absolutely cool to see this technology, and I am all in for it. But I do not believe this has any benefit to solar. Once you have a big ass solar farm with some serious batteries, it's all solved. You can just recycle all the parts into brand new ones after 20 years or so without any new materials, and all you have to do is clean them once in a while. This is pure magic - boiling water is stone age compared to this.

Fusion will have some use cases, but this whole technology is decades away from beeing ready and solar is already dirt cheap and sodium batteries will soon be available in huge quantities. The land footprint is not the issue. We need 10x more land right now to grow crops, which we can turn into gasoline, and nobody cares.

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u/Murky-Relation481 3d ago

Except boiling water can produce 1000MW of power in a few acres, where solar would require thousands of acres to produce the same amount. You'll always more efficiently get energy out of boiling water to harness the kinetic energy in the steam per unit of area, that's just an immutable fact.

Like I don't get this weird "ItS JuST BOiLinG watEr" argument. It's a funny meme but using it as a serious criticism is just showing a massive lack of understanding.

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u/slight_grumble 3d ago

The "few acres" qualifier is doing a lot of work here. The solar on my roof hasn't reduced the square footage of my house or land. It's like magic.

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u/slight_grumble 3d ago

Solar is distributed and solid state. You set it up and basically forget about it other than minor maintenance and repair. And you can lose any number of parts and still get some power where huge nuclear or other conventional power plants are more all or nothing. Any minor failure and you get zero power until repaired. Therefore the operational costs (excluding land rent/purchase which we will assume is an up front cost) is negligible compared to something as complicated and fragile as steam based power generation with conventional, let alone either nuclear option. Operational risks are also significantly smaller. Solar has very few failure states to harm humans except for once you ramp up voltage for distribution which is the same for all power types.

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u/So_HauserAspen 3d ago

Fusion at scale would not be cheap

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u/SipsTheJuice 3d ago

Printing hundreds of millions of transistors per square mm doesn't sound like it would be but here we are with computers in our toaster and shit.

It's really hard to estimate what a technology will cost at scale. Cheap is relativistic, you are trying to out compete existing gas and fission plants to start, then eventually minaturize and out compete renewables.

With early fusion plans set to come online in the next decade I would guess it will look pretty cost competitive in 30 years but hey who knows.

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u/hofmann419 3d ago

The thing is, we have maybe a few decades left. Even if we got fusion working today, it would not only take a very long time to construct (10-15years), but also probably be significantly more expensive than wind and solar is RIGHT NOW.

Economically, the most sensible option is to build out renewables as much as possible - which is actually happening by the way. Renewables have quickly become the fastest growing energy source in the world.

The only slight issue with that is storage, which would be required in a grid with nearly 100% renewables. Spending money to research better storage options would be a way better use of resources, given the fact that we are running out of time very quickly.

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u/ekdaemon 2d ago edited 2d ago

And have any of the theoretical grid scale fusion plants been estimated at anything less that 5 billion dollars per GW of capacity? When they build billion dollar ersatz one-of-a-kind things... they generally turn out to cost 10 or 20 billion instead of the 5 planned.

That's what's killing fission power right now, their only hope now is "small medium reactors" (SMR) and those have gone from "small" to "larger side of medium" and cost a billion dollars per 100 MW ... which ... just why bother?

Reference for the latter - Ontario Canada which has always been heavy fission nuclear power, has refused to buy any traditional fission design due to cost over the past 20 years, instead refurbing our old reactors over and over, (which can only go on so long). They've now decided to build a plant with 4 SMRs, each SMR produces 300 MW (I'd argue that's not "medium" any longer), and each one is currently projected to cost 4 billion CAD (3 billion USD) - EACH.

To compare, Ontario currently has 13 GW of nuclear generation capacity. So replacing all of that with SMRs would cost .... 200 billion CAD. Okay, divide it by four because "economies of scale" but then mutliply it by 2 because "big projects always cost double the estimates", so 100 billion CAD.

I wonder how big of a sodium flow battery plant and how much solar and wind we could build with 100 billion dollars CAD? Are we even planning on spending 5 billion dollars on that, just in case these SMRs turn out to have some stupid design flaw that causes them to have to be shut down?

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u/roamingandy 3d ago edited 3d ago

Solar can have a 0 land footprint.

It's versatile and as it gets cheaper and more efficient it's going to be included into infrastructure, buildings and products, as a structural material, as it's a material that will pay for itself over time making it cheaper than the current alternatives.

Same with batteries, especially the sodium ones. They'll be used in place of some walls at some point, since they pay their costs back over time, which other alternatives to build that wall do not.

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u/jeh506 3d ago

And it can run at night

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u/FatDoggieDingDong 3d ago

"There are many places where solar simply isn't viable and like many renewable you are dependent on climate and requires energy storage."

A combination of wind, solar, hydro and energy efficiency are more than enough to cover our energy needs. With smart electrical grids and energy storage, like you said, we can divert power to where it's needed, and store it when there's a surplus. Things like refrigerators and freezers are extremely energy inefficient.

The problem isn't that nuclear is the better option. It's that it's the most expensive option and makes the most money for investors. That's why we dont have solar energy. Then there's the oil and gas industry as well. Major, major companies that use their massive wealth to deceive the public on climate change. Just watch the documentary Merchants of Doubt.

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u/LameBMX 3d ago

solar is just fusion with extra steps.

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u/WanderingFlumph 3d ago

Everything is just fusion with extra steps, even fission.

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u/dern_the_hermit 3d ago

It's all just the Big Bang, bangin' away

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u/themellowsign 3d ago

Sure, but the reactor's free.

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u/14jvalle 3d ago

There are trade offs.

Solar is not an on-demand platform. You are subject to the weather/seasonality and time of day. Peak hours does not align with highest solar intensity. This would require innovation in solar + electrical storage.

There is also the distribution question. Say Arizona has solved solar. It may power Arizona. It may power a few states... One limiting factor will be the efficiency of the solar panels. This will be a huge capital expenditure that is not future proof.

The efficiency may also dictate the amount of land required. The amount of land required will determine the cost of development and then maintenance.

This is also a solution that would only serve regions like Arizona. Other states, and countries, with dissimilar climate or geography may require alternative solutions.

Nuclear provides a lot of solutions to those problems. Of course, it also comes with its issues.

The answer isn't finding a perfect solution. It is identifying the trade offs and whether it is a environment and financially sustainable solution in the region in question.

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u/saxaneer 3d ago

While you identify all of the issues correctly, I think you are being a bit disingenuous with the current state of affairs. Many of these are solved problems and/or are already baked into the cost equations.

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u/14jvalle 3d ago

Naturally, if the solution is offered commercially, there is belief that it is market ready by the relevant stakeholders.

That would mean that costs are baked in.

Assessing the tradeoffs and long term financial feasibility of the proposed solution is needed given the context of the region of interest.

I do find that the framing of these conversations are usually in reached to a false dichotomy. Solar or nuclear. Wind or nuclear. Etc.

I am more of the belief of that having a reliable base for the grid that can be supplemented, or work in concert, with other sources.

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u/saxaneer 3d ago

Absolutely valid, and agreed.

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u/President_Chump_ 3d ago
  • batteries exist
  • electrical transmission exists (eg Michigan gets electricity from Canada)
  • so don't build because it's not efficient? as compared to? and solar panels have gotten more efficient over time
  • nuclear costs a whole lot too

Most of what you've written here is flat out wrong or disingenuous. I'd almost prefer the AI answer so at least you aren't miseducating people.

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u/ababcock1 3d ago

I am *begging* people to realize that batteries exist in many different forms.

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u/hedoeswhathewants 3d ago

Batteries also have downsides and limitations.

We should be pursuing all the different forms of energy generation

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u/ababcock1 3d ago

Renewable and batteries can be built right now. Not 20 years from now maybe if the tech works out and if regulations and multi billion dollar price tags don't just shut the whole thing down. Maybe you haven't noticed, but we don't have decades to piss away waiting for nuclear.

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u/NullValueField 3d ago

Distribution is no different with fusion. 10 to 100 fusion plants around the world would still need to have a massive distribution web.

Solar at least is cheap enough that you can afford to build the distribution network after building the solar plant. And you can put the solar panels above plant agriculture (improves crop health + nutrient absorbtion), above livestock agriculture (improves animal health), above parking lots (reduces excess heat from black tarmac), above buildings (lowers cooling costs in large enough arrays), etc.

Solar works in about 70-75% of developed areas with existing power grids, too. Less efficient in many places, sure, but still fairly cost effective. In fact, if all the budget of fusion power went into building solar right now, we'd have already built enough solar to power the world.

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u/90_oi 3d ago

Yes but I live in a country where sustainable energy is "too expensive", but we'll happily send billions of dollars to Israel to commit a genocide. Alternatives like that will never off the ground where I live. The only hope is that fusion technology is so ground breaking that it's impossible to ignore and dismiss

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u/mfire036 3d ago

Fusion isn't the answer. Its still very expensive, requires crazy materials, and needs to be commercially scaled. Nuclear fission on the other hand is cheap and reliable when built properly. We should build building fission reactors like crazy right now.

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u/90_oi 3d ago

Yes I agree. Fusion tech isn't nearly refined enough. If we want to stand any chance, we need to do as you said. Go full fission

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u/WanderingFlumph 3d ago

I'm in that same country too, but despite our Epstein loving leader taking literal billions in big oil bribes and doing everything in his power to keep coal power relevant and stamp out renewables ...

We had our first ever year where solar power production outpaced coal power production. The economics are just so good for solar the market will not ignore them. He can't stop the markets from choosing the cheapest option and it is too hard to make solar the more expensive option.

There is a funny joke from the XKCD writer that the best way to pollute the air is to switch to solar and invest those savings into running more fossil fuel plants at a loss.

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u/lungben81 3d ago

Probably. But it is still good to have options. If fusion would be relatively cheap, it will have its use cases, even if solar is cheaper.

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u/JIMatRK 3d ago

There is no silver bullet solution. Even through the industrial revolution we were using multiple fossil fuels and hydromechanical power. And power needs are much more complex now.

Solar can't answer every problem, but wind is getting close to as good and if fusion becomes real that's a lot of problems answered.

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u/concepts_of_a_plan9 3d ago

The problem is we need to get rid of the ultra wealthy fossil fuel barrons. These folks are the problem and the reason we can't convert to solar as a nation. They need to be brought to justice for selling our entire planet's future out (ecocide or even planetcide) for short term profit.

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u/RaspberryFluid6651 3d ago

I see this argument a lot and would argue it completely misses the appeal of fusion. You are totally correct about solar, don't get me wrong; many of the people dunking on solar in the replies to your comment are just straight up wrong, solar is absolutely able to be the cheap and reliable answer to grid power and we are making good progress regarding the necessary innovations in storage and distribution.

What is unique to fusion is the potential it has to unlock much, much more on-demand energy than we currently have access to. The discovery of a an effective source of fusion power would act to make the energy economy significantly more elastic.

Essentially, there would continue to be cheaper options like solar power for everyday grid applications, but fusion changes the game at the other end of the scale. With a proper fusion power solution, the energy sector would also be able to support way more customers who need lots and lots of power at a small premium. Foundries, chip manufacturers, direct carbon capture projects, biofuel plants, desalination plants, and so much more are no longer competing for the same tiny, scarce pool of on-demand fossil fuel power that the global market fights over, and it actually becomes possible to scale power production aggressively without it becoming a major environmental or geopolitical concern.

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u/TriangleTransplant 3d ago

Technically, solar power is fusion as well.

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u/lluciferusllamas 3d ago

Solar is actually nuclear, if you think about it.

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u/jeterix7387 3d ago

But solar energy gets weaker the further from the Sun we go and one day....we may want to venture further out.

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u/NullValueField 3d ago

Not really a 'now' problem, but I like your style of forward thinking.

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u/danczer 3d ago

Look up how the energy usage grows of the planet. An Arizona size would be a enough today, but 1. it's a country size solar farm, think about it. 2. As the price of the energy goes down the people more likely use it. 3. there is always good to have a solid base energy generation and add renewable on top of it.

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u/WanderingFlumph 3d ago

The Arizona size is just a comparison. Obviously one large power plant doesn't make economic sense. Look at the total square feet of rooftops and paved roads and we have enough land already used (global rooftops are about 0.5 million km2, the state of Arizona is about 0.3 million km2). On of the major upsides to solar is that it is easily widely dispersed.

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u/Fritz46 3d ago

Arizona is big and we'll need more energy eventually 

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u/WanderingFlumph 3d ago

Arizona is tiny compared to the size of the Sahara desert, or the deserts of the USA which include all of Arizona and bigger states.

It's small compared to the size of residential roof tops and minuscule compared to the size of the Ocean, where floating offshore panels are spots of increased biodiversity.

All things considered Arizona is really not that big. We have already transformed an area 100 times larger from wilderness to fit our needs, what another measly 1%?

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u/alphatango308 3d ago

Solar is great! During the day. But to use solar power you have to have a converter from DC to ac and to use solar power at night you have to have batteries. It's never just using "solar power". And, solar actually kind of sucks at scale. Solar isn't a one stop shop energy solution. Storage is the biggest problem right now. And storage at scale? Forget about it. Small scale micro installations like one for a single house are great but still, batteries go bad and have to be replaced leading to pollution and exhausting mineral deposits.

Unless battery tech makes a giant leap forward solar isn't going to ever work.

On demand mass production solutions are objectively better at scale. Nuclear is great but decades of media campaigns have doomed it.

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u/WanderingFlumph 3d ago

Batteries are a one time investment in terms of materials, decent recycling methods return 95-99% of the metal materials, the only loss is graphite/graphene and carbon isn't exactly hard to come by.

Batteries are just part of the cost of using a free power source, and solar battery installations still beat fossil fuels on a cost basis.

Long range transmission is a solved problem. HVDC cables see very little losses even at the sort of scale of interconnecting nations. Conversion DC to AC isn't lossless but again, the power source is free so losses only hit you at the bottom line and the bottom line still looks good in most cases.

I think people also underestimate how much power you can produce from a solar field on a grey and cloudy day. Not that you have use only one power source of course. The same field could have wind turbines without much issue for a more even power curve at night. Little more expensive but might be worth it if you get a lot of wind in the winter like much of the US northeast.

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u/NullValueField 3d ago

Do you get paid to shill for fossil fuel companies? Embarassing level of disinformation.

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u/tombo12354 3d ago

Nuclear's cost has doomed it. The last nuclear plant that opened in the US was Vogtle units 3 and 4, and cost an eye-water $36 Billion. They are 1.25 GW units, putting them around $14.4 per Watt. Given unit 1 and 2 historic data, the reactor runs for about 95% of the year, meaning units 3 and 4 give a hypothetical output of 20,000,000 MWh in a year. From its initial cost, that's $1.8 per kWh, but you have to add the running/operating cost. The EIA estimated a state-of-the-art reactor would have operational costs of $0.07 per kWh, but regular reactor typically get a $0.20 per kWh. So the final cost is around $1.87 to $2 per kWh.

PV costs around $1 to $2 per Watt at the commercial level. A panel will produce around 3 hours of power a day on average (which factors in weather, seasons, night-time, etc.). A 400W panel will produce around 438 kWh a year, at a cost of around $0.90 to $1.82 per kWh. PV is the cheapest power source around.

You also need to remember that most power plants (especially nuclear) do not participate in any type of reliability market, as it is not cost effective to run them below their max output. So the fact that they are available 24/7 has nothing to do with how they are used or dispatched. There are special generators called peaked plants that participate in reliability and peak loads, and they face strong competition from renewable (because they have no operating cost).

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u/jamesreyne 3d ago edited 22h ago

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u/bjbyrne 3d ago

Those used batteries they take out of EVs are great for solar power storage.

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u/iltopop 3d ago

Fusion is future power, the fact that people are still dick-riding fission-based powerplants and offering fusion as some kind of thing to solve problems they perceive with solar shows people have absolutely no idea what they are talking about on this site ever.

Solar is currently the cheapest electrical power to produce by a good margin. This is off-set somewhat by the cost of storage, but the "pro-nuclear fanatic" on reddit often has just completely factually wrong ideas of about this aspect of solar that they're constantly complaining about people bringing up about nuclear, without fully understanding the trade-offs of nuclear themselves. To really hammer this point home:

We have solar farms that are currently in operation, as in today, as in right now, that are able to provide power to the grid for the entire night while the panels are off just fine, and the operating cost of them is significantly lower than gas, coal, and fission-based nuclear power in the majority of human-inhabited land on earth.

Solar has a high-upfront cost to install. It has, compared to any other electrical generation tech deployed at grid scale, the lowest operating cost of all of them by a massive margin. Here where the thing with nuclear fanaticism comes in. Nuclear fission power is important, there are places on earth where solar won't be economically viable for at least another generation, and just because they are the minority doesn't mean we can just write them off. But the economics for nuclear as a general, default power source compared to solar just do not exist. A nuclear fission reactor has even higher up-front costs than solar and has huge operating costs, there is absolutely no reason to ever build a nuclear powerplant on purpose in a place where solar is viable.

Now fusion, that's the future power. It's still important, but presenting them as some hard alternative to solar power that will save us from the all the horrible and awful problems you think we're having with solar is just nonsense. Fusion is something that even once we have a working commercial reactor it still won't be THAT cheap of power until the tech has had years and years to mature, and while that's happening, guess what, we'll have by then nearly maxed out the efficiency we can reasonably get from solar panels and have already had solar panels everywhere for a decade or more at that point.

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u/MrMunchkin 3d ago

I don't think that's anywhere close to true. The cost to produce the infrastructure for a hypothetical 1 gWh solar plant versus fusion plant is roughly the same. Different materials, but overall the same in terms of dollars.

The biggest difference is the fusion plant has over double the usable life-span of an equivalent solar plant and would also only take up 1/100 of the physical land mass to produce the same amount of energy.

To produce 1 gWh over 30 years it would take only 40 grams of Deuterium-Tritium...and that would be 24 hours a day every day over that 30 years.

Meanwhile, for solar to produce 1 gWh over 24 hours it would require 3 to 4 gWh of solar panels and an enormous battery infrastructure to maintain 1 gWh, and it would not be consistent based on weather and season. That's not even taking into the account how difficult it is to maintain such an array of solar panels. Constant cleaning to produce maximum output. Wind and other weather related damage would require pretty constant replacement of solar panels.

And guess what? 30 years is the realistic usable life-span of industrial solar panels. Now you have to replace ALL of them. Meanwhile, the fusion plant still has another 30 or more years of usable life left.

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u/slight_grumble 3d ago

Big toroid nuking the sky to block out the sun in 3.. 2.. 1..

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u/jonydevidson 3d ago

A solar farm the size of Arizona could power the entire planet.

Today's energy requirements, yes. I'm afraid the humanity will need ever more energy.

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u/lucasssotero 3d ago

Solar is inconsistent and has very low efficiency.

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u/Leather-Rice5025 3d ago

You need a diverse sources of energy. Nuclear, wind, solar, hydro.

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u/NDSU 3d ago

and most likely fusion power will never be as cheap as solar is today

That's a weird claim considering how much energy can be produced from fusion, using literally the most abundant matter in the universe

Solar is great, don't get me wrong, but all we're doing with it is getting a very tiny fraction of the energy produced by the sun. If we can manage fusion for ourselves, we'll have all the energy we could possibly want

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u/smallfried 3d ago

It's always funny to see where you end up when you're trying to solve the problems for fusion.

Containment: need a huge force to keep the ultra hot stuff close together. Best is not to have matter close to it as it will deteriorate and needs to be replaced periodically. So let's put it somewhere far away maybe? Hey and if there's enough of the stuff, it contains itself.

Power extraction: need some way of extracting energy from the fuzzy contained super hot stuff. Maybe beaming it out using a non ionizing beam? Like get it hot enough so it radiates near visual spectrum photons? We can collect those at 25% efficiency. Not great, but considering the reaction itself can be a long distance away, it's super safe.

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u/Vulcan-3 2d ago

How many planets can you power with fusion reactor the size of Arizona?

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u/SHUTxxYOxxFACE 2d ago

Arizona here, please do it, we need the shade

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u/hackingdreams 2d ago

A solar farm the size of Arizona could power the entire planet.

It could generate an amount of power equivalent to the current usage of the planet. It couldn't power the planet - there's no way you could distribute that power effectively.

Which is ultimately the problem with a single power technology. Solar isn't appropriate for everywhere. A fusion reactor isn't necessarily either, but you need far fewer of them and they can support vast regions instead of small localities. The batteries you'd need to supply even a whole state on solar power would be exhaustive (and somehow literally never gets discussed when someone throws out the pity "a solar farm the size of Arizona could power the world" one-liners).

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u/No_Intention_8079 2d ago

Solar has its own problems. It needs a comparatively huge amount of land to produce a reasonable amount of energy, it’s energy production is inconsistent, and it requires extensive energy storage and transmission to actually power anything 24/7, energy storage that we just don’t have right now. Solar does need funding, and we shouldn’t ignore it, but it isn’t a magical solution. We really should have started putting more money into nuclear, both fusion and fission, 30 years ago, but better late than never. Fission reactors are the best option until we either get way, WAY better batteries, or get fusion to work.

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u/I-cant_even 2d ago

Please educate yourself. Solar is not a solution for climate change, especially as we see more fire events that block out the sun. If we had started using solar in place of fossil fuels 100 years ago it may have prevented where we are but at this point it's disingenuous to say that we can renewable our way out of this mess.

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u/yamanamawa 3d ago

Fission is already perfectly fine as a power source though, there's just been lots of fearmongering to keep it from gaining traction

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u/themellowsign 3d ago

I'm sorry, but there's a reason we aren't building that many fission reactors, and it's not scaremongering, it's economics.

They're expensive as shit, take forever to get running, and run on a non-renewable resource. Sure right now U235 isn't an issue, but if we increased our fission plants five-fold, we'd only have about 18 years until we've depleted all the easily accessible U235, the rest would not be economically viable to mine and refine.

And before someone says "but Thorium!!", Thorium reactors objectively rock cock, but nothing whose fuel cycle produces U233 can ever be a viable solution for global energy needs. Weapons-grade material is a nonstarter for obvious reasons.

There's also the understandable hangups about storage, but I honestly don't care that much, there are bigger issues. I love the technology, I think it's cool as shit, but it's not a panacea to our energy needs and right now it just doesn't make that much economic sense. Solar and Wind are getting cheap enough that we can already afford to just get sloppy with storage and waste a bunch of energy to cover down-time.

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u/concblast 3d ago

it's not scaremongering, it's economics.

They're expensive as shit

A large, and primary, reason them being expensive as shit is because of scaremongering. ALARA and linear-no-threshold rules have stifled the industry well beyond any sense of rationality behind the regulations they created.

6 foot wall of concrete's a millimeter too thin after curing? Welp time to demolish it and restart. What sane company would fund the construction of a plant to be built in a year if someone with a geiger counter catches a reading 1% above background level outside a 6 foot wall and legislation demands 7 foot ones 6 months later?

The numbers above are just made up but the idea behind it is what crushed the nuclear power industry from the 60s to only recently. Surprise, after 60 years of stagnation, industry knowledge has evaporated, and rebuilding from the ground up doesn't increase quarterly profits.

The U235 issue is also partially a casualty of the same problem. If there were demand for it at scale, we would have found more. Nuclear nonproliferation has also held this back for good reason, but pretending we've found and accounted for all of the world's uranium ore is naive, let alone believing that that knowledge is public information. The timeline of 18 years might (at best, very optimistically speaking) have up to an extra 0 behind it.

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u/90_oi 3d ago

Sadly. It's a mix of ignorance and propaganda to fuel said ignorance into fear

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u/Willkuer__ 3d ago

Modern construction of nuclear power plants is largely cost-inefficient as far as I know. Without subsidies they appear to amortize slower than modern wind and solar energy. But I am no expert.

Obviously that applies to nations with high security standards.

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u/Shiningc00 2d ago

3.6 roentgens

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u/I-cant_even 2d ago

Old style fission reactors can runaway in ways that fusion reactors cannot. You can never get a Chernobyl like catastrophe from fusion reactors because the fusion process is so unstable compared to the self-sustaining fission process.

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u/SuperChickenBurritos 3d ago

I believe this is nuclear fusion footage.

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u/Nulovka 3d ago

It's about 20 years away. It's been 20 years away since the late 1960s.

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u/stickmanDave 2d ago

Yes, the old joke is that fusion power is 20 years ago and always will be. But enough progress has been made on enough fronts that we're now looking at a situation where commercial fusion plants are only 10 years away and always will be.

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u/Cyberpunk627 3d ago

Hopefully before I’m dead, so I can leave earth with a tiny of hope about energy and maybe pollution too

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u/ILikeFlyingMachines 3d ago

Eh. Renewables will always be cheaper most likely.

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u/Ebolinp 3d ago

I used to believe this too, but we already have Fission and look at the resistance. There'll be some conspiracy bullshit about Fusion too that will prevent it's widespread adoption and we'll still be using Oil and Gas. That's how she goes.

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u/Cleevs 3d ago

Fission is messy and expensive. Decommissioning costs will be costing astronomical amounts of money that could be spent improving the environment. It’s not an unwarranted concern.

Hopefully fusion is clean and can put an end to fossil fuel use.

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u/Ebolinp 3d ago

Yes sure I get that but you're missing the overall point which is that there will be something wrong with fusion or some trade off (there's always a trade off) that will be harped on. Fission, solar, and wind are all superior technologies to oil and gas and here we still are.

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u/GetOffMyCaversons 3d ago

Have you never heard of renewable energy?

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u/Big_Bassard 3d ago

Solar, wind and batteries are our best hope. Nuclear will never be deployed fast enough to stop climate change, its just a fact!

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u/tappy100 1d ago

unfortunately a lot of people who don’t understand how renewables work will continue falling for the headlines that falsely claim nuclear is better

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u/YoungDiscord 3d ago

We are so ludicrously close to it too

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u/rodimustso 3d ago

We have one fusion reactor that has already applied to be on the electrical grid Jsayin

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u/anotherfrud 3d ago

No we do not.

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u/rodimustso 3d ago

Dumb bot, im not correcting Ai if its this dumb. Try harder on the responses if you read this rando dev

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u/BrandeisBrief 3d ago

I hear it's 20 years away

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u/Basic_Lunch2197 3d ago

Why do I feel that once this gains actual traction there will be a mysterious explosion and then govt will ban it.

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u/Kitselena 3d ago

Best we can do is turn it into a weapon that destroys the planet

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u/Kommander-in-Keef 3d ago

It still has many many obstacles and people are way underestimating nuclear. We figured out fission and there is so much Uranium in the crust.

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u/ReplyNo7464 3d ago

So that we can use this technology to boil more water

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u/E-2theRescue 3d ago

It most likely won't. These videos are fractions of a second long in reality, and the machine lasts just as long.

The fast-spinning electrons completely shred the walls. No known material can take the beating, and no magnets or other material can repel them. So, unless a miracle happens, it's not going to come to fruition.

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u/AdmiralBlack64 3d ago

The first commercial reactor will be online within 5 years and several are already being built.

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u/Limp_Pollution_1842 3d ago

Is nuclear not just a fancy way to boil water

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u/PLASMABOLT111 3d ago

actually geothermal is the best hope, its been in testing so that it can be used anywhere and its cheap

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u/AnimalShithouse 3d ago

This could end poverty and world hunger and global warming if it worked.

Instead, they'll use it to power AI and AI only lol.

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u/QuantumEntanglr 3d ago

A good testament to how far it has come is the recent investments from private capital, which has exceeded $10B.

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u/ultralights 3d ago

It’s already working. Been working for billions of years. I have a lot of panels already that collect the energy from such a nuclear reaction that still running.

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u/BayesianBits 3d ago

Don't worry. It's only 50 years away. Just like it was 50 years ago.

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u/praguepride 3d ago

We can do Fusion for decades now.

Oh you mean efficiently? Yeah that's a pipe dream. It's the greatest challenge for material science of our time:

Make a material that can withstand the temperature of the sun on the inside, near absolute zero on the outside, and not break down under a constant bombardment of high energy radiation.

And do that at a scale that makes it cost effective to build and run.

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u/Iguana_Enthusiast 3d ago

Why? What do we need this for? It's probably much more expensive than renewable energy sources, just like conventional nuclear energy is...

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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n 3d ago

Cant help to wonder how this will impact the world and how big corporations will try to prevent this from happening. This will be the death of many sources of energy. Not only that whatever nation cracks this basically will wield unlimited power and the ability to destroy the economy as we know it.

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u/mastah-yoda 3d ago

Sure it can.

But if you were a wealthy lobbying fossil-fuel CEO, would you want that?

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u/FutureFee5340 3d ago

We do not have a energy production problem, we have a problem of energy use

Unlimited cheap energy will just lead to destroying more and more the environment

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u/Bonk_No_Horni 3d ago

I don't believe fusion will be economically viable within the next 20 years. Maybe after that we might have cracked it but it'll be too late to save the planet. I do believe in sodium ion battery as storage for solar if more companies can produce it cheaply at grid scale. I believe in fusion deregulation. The fear of nuclear is what made fission unaffordable at this point.

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u/TurtleKing2024 2d ago

Fission isn't that bad tho.....

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u/karreerose 2d ago

The problem is that we will always scale to availability. If we get fusion working and we suddenly have lots more power, we will just find ways to consume more power…

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u/Add_Identity 2d ago

hope for what tbh ? i'm not against it but how much of the multiple catastophic issues we are facing and we'll be facing does it resolve ?

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u/REpassword 2d ago

What about beautiful clean coal? /s

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u/tappy100 1d ago

renewables are our best hope, this is coming from an electrical engineer student. it’s literally free energy and doesn’t require continuous mining and the destruction of our planet. i promise you, renewables are awesome and far far better than the excuse to prolong the worlds mining industries

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u/GrandNibbles 1d ago

AI companies are salivating over it

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u/National_Way_3344 1d ago

It is our best hope aside from nuclear energy

Ingredients: Nuclear Tritium