Fusion Energy Breakthroughs: Are We Close to Unlimited Clean Power?

[u/Economy-Title4694]

For decades, nuclear fusion, the same process that powers the Sun, has been seen as the holy grail of clean energy. Recent breakthroughs claim we’re closer than ever, but is fusion finally ready to power the world?

With companies like ITER, Commonwealth Fusion, and Helion Energy racing to commercialize fusion, could we see fusion power in our lifetime, or is it always "30 years away"? What do you think?

[u/Kinexity]

Fusion will be too late and in mainstream power market it will probably face marginalization in a similar manner to fission today. Reneweables are laughably cheap and are only getting cheaper (big fusion reactor in the sky is quite an effective power source). Grid scale batteries are similarly about to start falling in price. Fusion is way more complicated technologically which puts it at a serious disadvantage in terms of scalling. It will find it's niche where it will be dominant (space, military, remote power if it becomes compact enough) but in mainstream it would be surprising if it will make a large dent in the energy market.

ITER is not a company but a research project.

[u/red75prime → u/Kinexity]

Grid scale batteries are similarly about to start falling in price

it would be surprising if it will make a large dent in the energy market.

A power source that can charge your batteries day and night, windy or calm, drought or not... Why, I think it can significantly cut energy storage requirements that would need to be reserved for long tail scenarios.

[u/Terrible-Sir742 → u/red75prime]

All depends on the price. Even on cloudy days you can deal with it with extra capacity.

[u/Crizznik → u/Terrible-Sir742]

The problem with "extra capacity" right now is that we don't have the battery technology that would allow this to work without having to replace the batteries every year or so. The current charge cycles in battery technology are just not sufficient for large scale storage without it being massively expensive and wasteful in materials. We're already having trouble keeping sources of lithium reliable, if we were to install massive lithium ion batteries around renewables, we'd be in so much worse trouble.

[u/Terrible-Sir742 → u/Crizznik]

It all depends on the price, other technologies exist like hot salt batteries,mechanical kinetic batteries, new generation of solid state batteries, pressurised air batteries etc. If we have a scenario where daytime electricity prices are negative and night time prices are high, it creates incentives for batteries to exist to shift demand.

[u/red75prime → u/Terrible-Sir742]

Capital cost, operational cost of fusion reactors. Capital and operational costs of interconnects for load balancing intermittent sources across continents. Capital and operational costs of short- and long-term storage. Economic sustainability considerations (so that power plant/storage operators wouldn't go bankrupt). Optimal balance of solar/wind/storage/nuclear/fusion in term of required storage. The same in terms of expected reliability. And so on and so forth.

It's not as simple as "just overprovision and all be fine"

"Just overprovisioning" in Europe requires fully interconnected smart grip capable of transferring insane amounts of energy and tapping into 33% of the total renewable energy potential of the subcontinent. Storage lowers that to 17%.

Still. 1/6th of the total renewable energy potential.

The numbers are from "The critical role of electricity storage for a clean and renewable European economy"

[u/Terrible-Sir742 → u/red75prime]

It all depends on the price, you seem to have selective reading.

[u/celaconacr → u/red75prime]

Depends on price a lot. A good mix of solar, wind and hydro helps reduce the storage requirements as does over provisioning generation, large geographic energy grids and vehicle to grid technology.

Good grid storage for long term is also potentially coming such as the iron air batteries from form energy.

I'm just not sure there will be a place for it at least not on earth.

[u/DeuxYeuxPrintaniers → u/Kinexity]

80% of our energy comes from fossil fuel and only nuclear produces enough energy to replace that 80% before we run out of oil.

All renewable scale worse than nuclear.

[u/Crizznik → u/Kinexity]

Current renewables will never be reliable enough to power a grid, not unless we have that breakthrough in energy storage we've been trying to do for as long as we've been trying to get fusion to work. Hydro is reliable, but it ties up an extremely valuable resource (water) and is highly limited by geography (good luck getting a hydro plant to work where there aren't any large flows of water). So, either way we're going to need a major breakthrough technologically, and it's hard to say if we're closer to power storage or fusion. What we need is more fission, but fear keeps that at bay.

Edit: also, you do know that fusion would just be cleaner, more renewable, less hazardous waste fission, right? They're mechanically identical as far as they will generate heat, which will heat water to a vapor, which will be released at high pressure to turn a turbine and generate electricity. Saying fusion won't even make a dent in the market is like saying fission couldn't make a dent in the market.

[u/Kinexity → u/Crizznik]

There is no need for "breakthrough energy storage" - it just needs to be cheap and made from somewhat common materials. Sodium or iron-air batteries have a potential to provide exactly that.

[u/grundar → u/Crizznik]

Current renewables will never be reliable enough to power a grid

Research has indicated otherwise for almost a decade now:

"Meeting 99.97% of total annual electricity demand with a mix of 25% solar–75% wind or 75% solar–25% wind with 12 hours of storage requires 2x or 2.2x generation, respectively"

Note that 99.97% was chosen for the paper because that's the industry standard reliability, and building an HVDC grid backbone would more than pay for itself even with the US grid's current generation sources.

Note also that that is with 12h of storage, which at current prices would cost less than either the wind or solar component of the system.

[u/xxAkirhaxx → u/Kinexity]

Would be pretty nice for powering crazy large data/computing centers though. I'm not sure how it would be regulated, but it would be real nice for humanity to have a big computer running off fusion for all to use than how we currently do it. That said, who would own it? How would the computing power be distributed? How would it get paid for? Way tougher questions than fusion.

[u/divat10 → u/xxAkirhaxx]

I am guessing that the people that are building the datacenters today could afford a fusion plant if it was commercially proven before.

They are already on their way with fission plants today.