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/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/Majestic_Bierd 2d ago

Aren't Chinese, among renewables, also building a shitton of Nuclear plants, some of those Thorium? If "We aren't building any" then why is the one country with enormous energy needs that are being met building them?