Why fusion, over everything else?

[u/Sun_In_A_Bottle]

$15.2 billion in private investment over the past 5 years!

For an industry that is projected to need 1 million workers by 2040, how is the global private workforce roughly ONLY 4,000?!

[u/3z3ki3l]

Why only 4,000 workers? Because it doesn’t work yet.

As for why fusion? Because the entire global economy is speculative, and the options everyone’s betting on are:

A) The candle burns to the bottom of the wick, and our planet along with it, or

B) fusion.

Seriously, that’s why. We can stretch our level of production for a few more centuries if we’re careful (and remain lucky with our collective nuclear armaments), but we won’t be able to reverse any of the damage we’ve done to our planet without fusion.

Whereas with fusion then astroid mining becomes more profitable than earthside digging, automation becomes increasingly reasonable in almost all industries, and we can actually reach escape velocity as a society.

Edit/also: As for why $15B in the last five years? Because we’re close. (We think.) And because the first people to do it basically own the future. Not that it would remain truly proprietary, but a few years head start puts the organization that does it in a position of unimaginable wealth and power.

[u/Numerous-Match-1713 → u/3z3ki3l]

"we won’t be able to reverse any of the damage we’ve done to our planet without fusion."

We can do everything with fission that we could do with fusion.

[u/Numerous-Match-1713 → u/[deleted]]

To begin with, miniaturized mobile fusion is still ways of.

For stationary use, critical or not, high neutron flux makes every fusion plant a weapons factory, and thus heavy regulation is required. So "no reason to really secure it" is not reality, I am afraid.

It is relatively easy to build enough fission to cover all our energy needs, engineering wise, without inventing anything new. Fuel is plentiful for future generations. Reprocessing needs to be solved, but its mostly politics.

[u/Numerous-Match-1713 → u/[deleted]]

Well, you can then write a letter to IAEA telling high neutron flux is not a weapons risk, as they must be wrong? I mean sure you can state which exact prior fission reaction generates lets say 239?

Selling is challenging yes, but it is simply our only realistic hope, and that will be obvious at some stage.

[u/Numerous-Match-1713 → u/[deleted]]

I am not talking about dirty bomb here.

You understand the issue and risk of high neutron flux? Irradiate some depleted uranium in it, what comes out, any guesses? Hint, some weapons grade stuff, and without side nasties of doing it with fission.

In this regard fusion is superior weapons factory.

This is why "no reason to really secure it" is simply fallacy.

[u/Numerous-Match-1713 → u/[deleted]]

Fusion does not suck, the fallacy is it is somehow not nuclear power and thus not requiring regulation, when it very much is.

And controlling uranium does not help, when there is enough depleted tailings laying around already to produce millions of bombs. I mean acquiring depleted anyone can do easy.

But thing is, we already have fission and it works. Better use it or we're doomed.

[u/ItsAConspiracy → u/Numerous-Match-1713]

I'm a fan of fission as well, but in the US we already have a regulatory regime for fusion and it's much easier than the one for fission. Fusion is regulated like particle accelerators and medical devices.

This makes sense because good fission reactors are very safe and bad ones can cause major disasters, but bad fusion reactors just don't work at all.

(And fwiw, depleted uranium means they've taken out most of the U235, which is the part you need for bombs.)

[u/Numerous-Match-1713 → u/ItsAConspiracy]

"And fwiw, depleted uranium means they've taken out most of the U235, which is the part you need for bombs."

Riddle me this, when talking about depleted uranium and high neutron flux, which key bomb material is being talked about?

Hint: Nagasagi and Trinity, not Hiroshima. Also most of the deployed arsenal of every country out there.

btw, in addition to 239 there is also 233 and bunch of other untested ones, its not like 235 is only material possible.

[u/Chrontius → u/[deleted]]

Choom, you're using the word "critical" WAY wrong. Criticality is the point at which a reactor can be considered "on", not when it blows up.

I think you're reaching for "melt down" or something like that, but it's pretty hard to melt down when you have a whole-ass ocean for a heat sink, and some form of emergency cooling powered by decay heat should probably be feasible with a few smart engineers thrown at the problem.