The planet of the humans equivalent. A no fusion future

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
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Richard Hull
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The planet of the humans equivalent. A no fusion future

Post by Richard Hull »

I have found that nice petite Indian lady again, telling us of all the issues with Power producing fusion. Effectively killing the green fusion future for all the reasons and a couple of more that I have not harped on over the years. This is more "hard sayins' " done far better than I can or have done. It is, for me, a fabulous poo-poo on the green fusion dream as The Planet of the Humans film is for the greenies on resource hungry, limited life span, crumbling renewables trying to power additional billions of people into the future. Check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrUWoywZRt8

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: The planet of the humans equivalent. A no fusion future

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Agreed; her overall talk is outstanding and summorizes the main issues with ITER and to a lesser extent, fusion in general (via magnetic fusion.) While the stellarator approch cannot suffer from containment failure I still agree it too would be far too expensive to succeed as a power plant. Further, I agree with her conclusion that one should view fusion reserach as an advanced science project not as a possible power source. In that regards the stellarator program should continue (reserach only) but not ITER. ITER is an utter waste as designed and as being executed - a rat hole that for some insane reason, Prinction is following as well as MIT (but at less cost). The tokamak approch is a complete dead end if one wants to do fusion that might be affordable.
Last edited by Dennis P Brown on Fri Jan 22, 2021 5:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Maciek Szymanski
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Re: The planet of the humans equivalent. A no fusion future

Post by Maciek Szymanski »

I’m a born skeptic so looking back into fusion research leads me to many doubts. But I don’t agree with economic arguments against fusion. Magnetic fields, plasma confinement and radiation are real things that can be researched and tamed. Economy and money are only in human heads. They work, because so many people believe in them like a religion. But in fact we don’t need the money nor power companies. We need energy. If we have left the decisions for economists and CEOs then we would never have fission plants or renewables. Their answer would be “burn more coal and oil - it will give us more profit!”
So despite my doubts I prefer to cross my fingers for scientists doing fusion research than for power companies CEOs spending money into greenwash campaigns instead of real progress.
“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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