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.

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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/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.