Comment on If God had wanted us to have nearly unlimited clean energy, He would have placed a fusion reactor into the sky.

Archangel1313@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• drzoidberg@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I explained this to my oldest when he learned about the steam engine and how cool it was. When I told him it was the peak in power he was like “but we have nuclear and gas” and I told him that nuclear power is basically just a super charged steam engine, and nuclear rods boil water better than coal or gasoline, but it’s basically a steam engine. I went over how gasoline in cars was basically the same, but instead of steam, it used tiny explosions. We watched a few how it’s made type videos.

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  • tomiant@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    But I don’t WANT to boil water, I want ELECTRICITY. Like, future electricity!

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    • mxeff@feddit.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Image

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  • Dojan@pawb.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I remember when this was explained to me and my little mind was blown. Your comment reminded me of that moment. Thank you.

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• WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  We’re honestly almost past that at this point. Solar is devouring the world. Total global electricity production capacity is about 10 TW. China is currently producing 1 TW of panels annually. And the panels are still getting better and the prices are still dropping. We will quickly reach the point where the vast majority of global electricity production is solar, and everything else is a rounding error.

  There just isn’t going to be any reason to build fusion plants. Maybe in the distant future colonies in the outer solar system and beyond will use them. But for anything inward of Mars, solar is the way to go. Solar+batteries is already, in 2026, the cheapest form of baseload power available. Material limitations are not a problem with modern battery chemistries. Daily swings in power demand will be solved by batteries. And we simply won’t have to worry about seasonal power swings. We’ll build enough solar panels to meet all our winter needs. We’ll build enough to power our cities during the coldest, cloudiest months. And then the rest of they year we’ll have super-abundant dirt cheap power.

  The future is one of vast energy abundance. We’re going to find all sorts of ways to use energy that we’ve never even dreamed of before - mostly to take advantage of the abundance of dirt cheap energy we’ll have during all but the coldest months.

  The days the steam engine are numbered. With the exception of remote polar outposts, everything’s going solar. It’s simply the cheapest most abundant form of energy we’ve ever discovered. Nothing can match it.

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  • mech@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    I just hope the timeline you describe can outpace the timeline racing towards neo-feudalism, world war 3, global pandemics and heat waves triggering a new migration period.

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  • arrow74@lemmy.zip ⁨43⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    While I agree that this is all technological possible, I just have a sinking feeling capitalism will find a way to ruin this. Probably involving the profit incentives for power companies

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  • call_me_xale@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I still think nuclear (probably fission rather than fusion) has a place, at least in terms of land usage. It’s just obscenely efficient in terms of energy per resource investment. It requires many square miles and hundreds of tons of materials to match the output of a single reactor.

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    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The US can provide for far more than its total electricity usage, with just the land area we currently use to grow corn for ethanol. You can put solar panels on parking lots, over roads, on train tracks, on rooftops, etc. You can even use the same land for both solar panels and growing certain crops. It’s called pagrivol[(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics). And that’s before you even get into panels in deserts, floating on water, etc.

      There simply isn’t a shortage of land for solar. Unless you’re talking about tiny city-states, there just is no shortage of land needed for electric purposes. Land usage just isn’t a significant factor. Yes, land footprint is an advantage nuclear has, but it’s an advantage that really doesn’t matter much in the real world.

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      • call_me_xale@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Huh, I didn’t realize the numbers worked out that well.

        I think there’s still a raw-materials issue. Extraction and transport for that much solar is doable but still a big disadvantage.

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  • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The future is one of vast energy abundance

    Wow. Isn’t it amazing that the majority of human history operated under renewable energy?

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• Abundance114@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Turns out there is a method of fusion power that doesn’t boil water. It generates massive electromagnetic fields that creates electricity.

  direct energy conversion in a magnetic confinement setup, specifically leveraging a field-reversed configuration

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• call_me_xale@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Turns out heat engines are like… pretty good at turning arbitrary energy sources into useful work.

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