Comment on Open Thread June 2010, Part 3

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:24:31 GMT

It seem very doubtful that we'll have practical fusion power any time soon or necessarily ever. The technical hurdles are immense. Note that any form of fusion plant will almost certainly be using deuterium-tritium fusion. That means you need tritium sources. This also means that the internal structure will undergo constant low-level neutron bombardment which seriously reduces the lifespan of basic parts such as the electromagnets used. If we look at he form of proposed fusion that has had the most work and has the best chance of success, tokamaks, then we get to a number of other serious problems such as plasma leaks. Other forms of magnetic containment have also not solved the plasma leak problem. Forms of reactors that don't use magnetic containment suffer from other similarly serious problems. For example, the runner up to magnetic containment is laser confinement but no one hasa good way to actually get energy out of laser confinement.

That said, I think that there are enough other potential sources of energy (nuclear fission, solar (and space based solar especially), wind, and tidal to name a few) that this won't be an issue.

Discuss