This is huge: Truck-sized fusion reactor a reality within a decade

[Jislizard]

Anyway, as we all know, if new cheaper energy sources are found the energy company just raises prices to maintain their profits.

?? If they find cheaper sources they can raise profits by charging the same and maintain profits by cutting prices.

Well when solar power was offered I got it installed on my roof and saved a fair amount every bill, in fact for a few years I wasn't paying any bills, even the standing charges. And now I pay a couple of hundred each bill.

So either I use more electricity, it is not as sunny as it used to be, or the electricity company has put all the prices up so they can maintain their profits.

 

[bordsilver]

Anyway, as we all know, if new cheaper energy sources are found the energy company just raises prices to maintain their profits.

?? If they find cheaper sources they can raise profits by charging the same and maintain profits by cutting prices.

Well when solar power was offered I got it installed on my roof and saved a fair amount every bill, in fact for a few years I wasn't paying any bills, even the standing charges. And now I pay a couple of hundred each bill.

So either I use more electricity, it is not as sunny as it used to be, or the electricity company has put all the prices up so they can maintain their profits.

Just to be clearer, transmission and distribution is different to generation. These are essentially fixed assets and people will principally pay a fixed charge to obtain the benefits from being connected to the grid (although currently it is rolled into the variable charge, but as enough people move toward decentralised generation the pricing formulas will change toward having a fixed connection charge). The legacy of these being monopoly SOE assets is still with us and the transition is moving in spits and spurts.

[Also w.r.t. your net solar bill it depends on what's happened to the FiT's in your area. These subsidies were generally completely unsustainable at the levels they were introduced at and the rolling back may be a noticeable part of what you saw in terms of your home bills.]

 

[bordsilver]

Talk of superconducting magnets and containing that heat inside a truck is interesting - especially since heat is the enemy of superconductors. But if they can do it, it would be a real game changer.

Dealing with the radioactive byproducts (which should be far, far less than fission) means I have doubts this will result in decentralised generation.

The byproduct is helium (and a spare neutron rattling around). They start with Deuterium/Tritium, and Fuse it into Helium. As long as you don't need a fission reaction to get it started, there should be no dangerous by-products.

After a bit of digging, it looks like all of the radioactive isotopes of helium decay very fast into stable isotopes so unless the odd lithium isotope isn't also created and the radioactive hydrogen is all used up in the fuel, then potentially, yes, there may not be much of a problem with the waste products.

 

[hawkeye]

It's essentially what stars do. Fuse hydrogen into helium. And they are the biggest and best energy generators that we know of. So it's basically recreating that process on Earth. On the star it happens under intense pressure in the core.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star

It's funny that 2 of the most mooted energy sources of the future, fusion and solar are basically the same type of energy. It's just with one, the fusion reactor is millions of miles away.

 

[Pirocco]

Remember the superconductivity at room temperature from a couple decades ago?
It was huge, it was talked about in every scientific and speculative discussion, and it ceased to be talked about.
I'm sure some got some money before that last phase.
They hyped, they got funds, they spent it, and next hype.

 

[CriticalSilver]

Remember the superconductivity at room temperature from a couple decades ago?
It was huge, it was talked about in every scientific and speculative discussion, and it ceased to be talked about.
I'm sure some got some money before that last phase.
They hyped, they got funds, they spent it, and next hype.

Yeah, but ...

Get excited when you know it is highly probable, but just before everyone else does. In this way you can divest yourself of assets that will be negatively impacted, and invest in areas that will benefit. This is why it's worthwhile thinking about early, even if it doesn't pan out. You'll be ahead of the crowd

You know it makes sense.

 

[Pirocco]

Invest in areas that will benefit?
Heh, the net taxpaying population part already does, whether they like it or not.
Now look at all the fruits of decades government forcing, and the resulting situations.
Each one having been declared as a 'will benefit'.
The benefit did happen though, only that it weren't the ones that thought they would be.

 

[SpacePete]

Remember the superconductivity at room temperature from a couple decades ago?
It was huge, it was talked about in every scientific and speculative discussion, and it ceased to be talked about.
I'm sure some got some money before that last phase.
They hyped, they got funds, they spent it, and next hype.

Maybe you meant cold fusion? Superconductivity has been under continuous research.

If it's not in the mainstream media, it doesn't mean research has stopped. If we can crack the problem of room temperature superconductivity, the economic benefits will be massive.

For example, August 222, 2014:

The first metamaterial superconductor: One step closer to futuristic physics-defying contraptions

In the realms of electronics, magnetism, and quantum mechanics, superconductivity has an almost mythical status. Some materials, when cooled to a critical temperature, electrical resistance instantly drops to zero and magnetic fields are completely ejected (see video below). Superconducting magnets are already used in MRI machines and particle accelerators like CERN's LHC, and are being considered for advanced maglev trains. Zero electrical resistance means that a current can flow around a superconducting coil indefinitely (at least 100,000 years) without any applied voltage a feature that could completely revolutionize power distribution, power storage, electric motors, computers, and more.

...As we've covered before, metamaterials are human-made materials that have alien, not-seen-in-nature properties. The most common example is negative refraction: In nature, every known material has a positive refractive index (it always bends light a certain way) while metamaterials can bend light in the opposite direction. These materials have led to some interesting applications, such as invisibility cloaks. Now, researchers at Towson University, the University of Maryland, and the Naval Research Laboratory have done the same thing with superconductors: They've tweaked a compound in the lab, metamaterial-style, to raise its critical temperature. This empirical, deliberate approach is very different from usual superconductor research, which is mostly bested on educated guesswork. [arXiv:1408.0704 "Experimental demonstration of superconducting critical temperature increase in electromagnetic metamaterials"]

In theory, this is a very big step towards creating one of the most powerful, valuable, and elusive materials in the world: a room-temperature superconductor. While superconductors are already used extensively in science and medicine, the fact that they need to be kept at cryogenic (below -150C) temperatures makes them very expensive and unwieldy. A lot of work is being done into so-called "high-temperature superconductivity," but the best anyone has managed is a critical temperature of -140C HgBa2Ca2Cu3Ox (HBCCO) in case you were wondering.

...If we can eventually master superconductors and there's every reason to believe that we can then we can expect many facets of life to change very rapidly. Superconducting power lines could save billions of dollars in transmission losses or allow for the building of world-spanning super grids. We could replace every transport system with cheap, super-fast maglev trains. It might even allow for cloaking devices and I assure you, that's just the beginning!

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...er-to-futuristic-physics-defying-contraptions

 

[SpacePete]

Remember the superconductivity at room temperature from a couple decades ago?
It was huge, it was talked about in every scientific and speculative discussion, and it ceased to be talked about.
I'm sure some got some money before that last phase.
They hyped, they got funds, they spent it, and next hype.

Yeah, but ...

Get excited when you know it is highly probable, but just before everyone else does. In this way you can divest yourself of assets that will be negatively impacted, and invest in areas that will benefit. This is why it's worthwhile thinking about early, even if it doesn't pan out. You'll be ahead of the crowd

You know it makes sense.

Two words: Venture Capital

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 

[SpacePete]

Invest in areas that will benefit?
Heh, the net taxpaying population part already does, whether they like it or not.
Now look at all the fruits of decades government forcing, and the resulting situations.
Each one having been declared as a 'will benefit'.
The benefit did happen though, only that it weren't the ones that thought they would be.

If you're talking about the role of government funding in scientific and technological development, then the TRILLIONS of dollars of economic benefit over the last several decades has greatly benefited us all.

The Seeds That Federal Money Can Plant

...Government support plays a vital role in incubating new ideas that are harvested by the private sector, sometimes many years later, creating companies and jobs. A report published this year by the National Research Council, a government advisory group, looked at eight computing technologies, including digital communications, databases, computer architectures and artificial intelligence, tracing government-financed research to commercialization. It calculated the portion of revenue at 30 well-known corporations that could be traced back to the seed research backed by government agencies. The total was nearly $500 billion a year.

"If you take any major information technology company today, from Google to Intel to Qualcomm to Apple to Microsoft and beyond, you can trace the core technologies to the rich synergy between federally funded universities and industry research and development," says Peter Lee, a corporate vice president of Microsoft Research. Dr. Lee headed the National Research Council committee that produced the report, titled "Continuing Innovation in Information Technology."

...A linchpin of innovation policy, according to Mr. Atkinson, is collaboration between government and industry. As a prime example, he points to Germany and its network of 60 Fraunhofer Institutes, financed 70 percent by business and 30 percent by federal and state government. The institutes, he says, perform applied research intended to translate promising technologies, from polymer research to nanotechnology, into products. These tech-transfer clusters, Mr. Atkinson says, are an important reason for the strength of Germany's manufacturing sector, even though wages for its factory workers are 40 percent higher than those for American workers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/t...e-for-a-government-hand-in-research.html?_r=0

 

[BiGs]

They had a running molten salt thorium reactor back in the 50's that was an aircraft mounted prototype. It was going to be put onto a plane for propulsion. They canned it over uranium because of the secondary weapon capabilities. Been on the shelf ever since but is getting known again in last decade mostly thanks to people like Kirk Sorensen. Look it up.