Although he breaks fusion power down quite well for the average non-nuclear physicist, the rest of the video is relatively uninformative. He basically says that we need it, and soon (and we don't mind blowing up France in the process). As always, fusion is referred to as "about 30 years away", but what I didn't know and found very interesting is that we have actually created fusion reactions in the past.
JET labs created a fusion reaction in 1997, but it is not explained clearly how this is not capable of providing energy in the form of a power plant. The French fusion reactor ITER that is currently in development is, according to their wikipedia page, is on track to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power from a 50 megawatt input by 2019, but only for a short burst. This seems like a great ratio, but the 500 megawatts of fusion power cannot be directly translated into electricity, and in the case of this experiment will just be dissipated by heating water to steam.
The final step in the process will be to make DEMO, an actual demonstration of fusion power being converted into electricity using the thermal energy produced to turn turbines. DEMO will attempt to produce 2000 megawatts of fusion power continuously, translating into a measly 2-4 megawatts of electric power by the 2030's.
The final step will be to create PROTO, a commercial demonstration of fusion power, by sometime around 2050.
What is most interesting about this is that it seems the process is already underway, the main issues have been ironed out, and all that remains is basically just building it. Unfortunately, he didn't mention anything about this in the speech.
ITER's website has a lot of information on fusion and shows clearly where they are in the building process.
Summary
He is right to say that fusion would be great, but with very little relevant information about when it will be useful and what the current pitfalls are the speech falls flat.
No comments:
Post a Comment