Waar hebben we polders voor? Trek anders nog een paar polders uit het water. Ik snap dat er infrastructuur nodig is, maar je zou zeggen dat er rondom Lelystad infra en ruimte zat is

Restating my Graviton research. I'm looking under the couch first.

I don't take any news about fusion seriously when they include the words, "aRtiFiCiAl StAr."

The Times of India is a rag that literally accepts bribes for positive coverage; sensationalist garbage is their bread and butter. But it's worse than that this time: this story is over two years out-of-date.

The KSTAR Research Center at the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) announced on the 20th that during the '2023 KSTAR Plasma Campaign' conducted from December of last year to February of this year, it achieved a 48-second operation of ultra-high-temperature plasma at an ion temperature of 100 million degrees and a record 102-second operation in high-confinement mode (H-mode).

This happened back in 2024. Here's a paper.

Fair, I was unaware of the water issue going on there. It sounds like this crisis isn't resolving any time soon...

Some reasons I'm skeptical it's a good idea in this particular case:

allow shareholder-owned utilities to charge customers for up to $20 million in nuclear research expenses

For one, they want me to pay for it as a utility customer with increased rates, and I'll have to pay for it even if it goes ridiculously over budget as large construction projects often do. Nuclear plants use a lot of water, bad things will happen if they don't get it, and Colorado is already having big climate-driven water problems and disputes over who has the rights to water usage. The effectiveness and affordability of solar is rapidly growing, so where's the analysis of whether nuclear will even still be a more cost efficient solution by the time a plant finishes construction, and why don't we build out solar and battery? Why can't we just do more of this? Nuclear plants rely on competent government oversight to avoid disasters, and while that's possible in theory the current state of things makes me worry about whether that will happen.

Eco advocates should all be for nuclear power, which is one of the cleanest forms around...

As of 2023 there are over 90 fusion reactors in operation around the world. None of these as far as I know, besides the NIF, are net energy positive. In the most cynical view "the Fusion Industry" could be a worldwide operation of setting up and operating net energy loss power plants. In the more pragmatic view, they named the organization for what it will be someday as opposed to what it is as of today.

An industry is some group of organizations that produce something. Not pretending to have the most notoriously difficult to invent tech working in 15 years

From the article: which is delivering the Step project, said the aim is to get the reactor operating early in the 2040s. “It’s quite an aggressive programme,” he said. “We need to show that we can achieve genuine ‘wall socket’ energy — which has not been done before.”

That end state sounds like an industry to me.

What is your definition of "industry" that you are disagreeing that this won't be?

It's not an "industry".

Reads to me as more funding for fusion research and building the facilities needed for it. A thing the UK has been doing for decades.

They're throwing billions at tech that doesn't exist?

Do you really want to debate nuclear power here? That said, there’s an undeniable shift in public opinion—just look at Merz, the recent polls in Japan, and even Von der Leyen’s stance.

I disagree. I think the conflict in Ukraine conclusively shows that every nuclear power plant is a titanic strategic liability in a real war.

This is the way to go. There is a learning curve when building nuclear power reactors as well. But gow could suppliers from smaller countries pull off a similar feat without becoming dependent on Chinese or Russian suppliers?

It doesn't say if they are going to build new reactors or just use outdated tech. Aren't there thorium and liquid salt reactors now?

No no no. Its lead into gold we want. They built the wrong reactor!

I mean there there are multiple confounding factors here, right?

The cost of labor has increased since the 1970s, the cost of materials have increased since the 1970s, and the requirements for making sure that the nuclear plants that we build are as safe as possible have increased since the 1970s.

So, having a cost per watt increase in the last 55 years makes perfect sense, right?

Fun fact: Chernobyl has four reactors, and the other three remained operational for years after unit 4's meltdown in 1986. Unit 2 was shut down in 1991, unit 1 was shut down in 1996, and unit 3 was shut down in 2000.

Unit 2 was due to "complications resulting from a turbine fire" according to Wikipedia, but there's no particular reason, other than lack of political will, that units 1 and 3 couldn't have still been running today.

I'm curious about how they choose the locations to build these plants. Does putting six of these in close proximity to one another, as seen in the satellite image of China, create a risk of a single meltdown threatening all six? I would have to assume, no, because these are all very smart people, but what measures do they use to ensure that the entire site isn't jeopardized by one bad reactor?