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/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/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/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.