Nuclear Power

[JEMC]

Dr.Grass said:

silicon said:

Dr.Grass said:

mai said:
^Yeah, fusion power is the future... BELIEVE! Since... 1960s =)

I remember watching old movie about physicists that captured the moment of romantic attitude towards scientific and technical progress of humanity, it was just around the corner it seemed to the people of that era. 50 years later we still haven't seen ground-breaking results in that field, and that ITER project afaik is expected to be finished somewhere around 2040. Metaphorically speaking the pendulum of technical progress is about to swing the opposite way.

Ummm...Fusion reactors are already possible. They are just a little too expensive to build.

You basically have the fuel floating in a magnetic trap in the form of a high temperature, high pressure plasma. They are able to make fusion energy in this way. There are still a few developments needed for this to be fully practical, all that is needed is big funding. Unfortunately fusion isn't being supported as much at the moment.

Expensive financially or also energetically?

Both. The energy yield is just about positive, but it costs an enormous amount of money.

As far as I know there is only 1 fission nuclear, the ITER project in France, and they are still building the facilities. Acording to Wikipedia, the cost is around € 15 billion and allegedly will produce 500 MW while consuming 50 MW.