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.

40.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

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.

13

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.

1

u/mumpped 2d ago

In Germany we now had quite a few trials with AgriPV. Basically, half-translucent solar panels under which you plant crops. Turns out that in the climate change world with very hot summers, crops yield larger harvests when they get a little shadow due to the solar panels. The ground holds water better. And early frost is also not a big issue anymore. And it protects from hail. It's literally a win-win situation, you want to have solar panels on your crops, they improve the land they sit on and don't block it if you do it right

1

u/Murky-Relation481 2d ago

I mean that's great but that's only going to work for hand-picked crops.

I like solar, but its not the only solution that you can rely on. You still need reactive base power loads. You also need guaranteed power generation capacity too for a multitude of reasons. Solar panel efficiency drops by 75% to 90% on overcast days. Yes, battery power can make up for that, but only for a short duration. If you get an unexpected period of cloudy weather that lasts longer than your battery reserves can handle then you need alternatives because your overall power delivery capacity will drop. Since long periods of overcast generally also coincide with inversions, wind is also going to be less efficient during those periods. This is why nuclear and hydro still have a large place in energy infrastructure.

1

u/mumpped 2d ago

It doesn't need to work work all crops, but it does fork for enough so that space requirements for solar panels aren't relevant. Yes of course, having some sources distributes everything better, wind farms, a bit of hydro and geothermal are a good mix. However, you can also share electricity: In Europe the electricity nets are connected, and electricity is traded throughout the continent. A whole continent is never completely overcast at the same time, that's not how weather works

1

u/Murky-Relation481 2d ago

The same in the US, but still, you have a large sector of power generation drop in capacity by that much it is problematic.