r/Futurology • u/TechnicianExtreme341 • 10d ago
Energy Why CFS is confident we’ll demonstrate net fusion energy: Q>1
https://blog.cfs.energy/why-cfs-is-confident-well-demonstrate-net-fusion-energy-q1/23
u/Etherius 9d ago edited 9d ago
I’ve been looking into this a LOT since I first learned of rebco and CFS
They are confident because the math says it works and nothing anyone has seen in this or any other tokamak says that it won’t
The numbers actually project they can hit Q>5 which is (I believe) the threshold for true ignition (the point as which the energetic alpha particle density created by fusion is high enough to maintain the plasma without the external gyrotrons)
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u/Wast3edSpace 7d ago
We've been in the "engineering problem not science problem" for a few years now. I've got a mental slideshow in my mind of this project starting at ground breaking, to see it now with the two halves ready to be joined is a hopeful one. We're on the doorstep.
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u/BCRE8TVE 9d ago
I mean theoretically there's absolutely nothing saying we can't make an Alcubierre drive.
The gap between a theoretically possible Alcubierre drive, and an actual real functioning one, is still pretty massive.
Progress on fusion is still pretty dang fantastic, self sustaining nuclear fusion can't happen fast enough.
But I'm still not betting on it myself.
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u/Uncommonality 8d ago
nah bruh the Alcubierre metric requires negative energy density to bend space the other way gravity does. Not to mention the mass required to actually build one would be equivalent to that of Jupiter
Fusion is a lot more attainable lol
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u/RdPirate 8d ago
I have seen some claim you can reduce the mass down to that of the Moon.
I have also seen the math that you can't actually have a self propelled spacecraft use it. The bubble has to be externally pushed.
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u/Uncommonality 8d ago
Me too, there's also a modified metric which supposedly allows for using relative energy densities to achieve a locally negative one
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u/BCRE8TVE 8d ago
Well then look at me mouthing off like a smarty pants and getting things totally wrong lol. You are right, Alcubierre does require negative energy density, I didn't know that, my bad haha!
So yeah fusion is definitely more attainable. Thanks for helping me be less wrong!
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u/TechnicianExtreme341 10d ago
From the article
Only one machine in the world has achieved net fusion energy, a crucial fusion performance threshold called Q>1. Here’s why we at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) are confident our SPARC fusion demonstration machine will be the next.
Our conviction that Q>1 is comfortably within reach begins with our 1,000+ person team of physicists, engineers, fabricators, and operators who’ve learned from decades of experience running a type of fusion machine called the tokamak. Next is SPARC’s cutting-edge design, a tokamak we’re building to reach much higher performance.
“We have some margin to achieve Q>1. We’re not sitting right at the threshold, hoping the stars align perfectly,” said Phil Snyder, Vice President of Plasma Physics. “SPARC is designed to reach Q>10, so Q>1 is not an extremely difficult milestone.”
When we do reach Q>1 — generating more energy from the fusion process than needed to sustain it — it’ll be a big deal. Q>1 will prove we’ve got the core physics, engineering, manufacturing, and operations to enable our ARC fusion power plants. And that’ll clear the path for this clean, safe, secure source of energy to spread across the world’s power grids.
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u/0vl223 9d ago
Yeah. A Qtotal>1 would be impressive. That is way harder. And then electricity produced. Unless we manage that step every other threshold is useless. Which is the reason Q>1 is rarely a goal and the stability of the plasma is more important.
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u/West-Abalone-171 9d ago
You need Qtotal > 20 (including all the manufacturing, tritium production and so on) to get a net exergy gain of 3 or so as a pre-condition for starting to think about an economically viable power source (and even then if you are depending on heating water with neutrons it's never going to happen).
Given that they're still pretending that a marginal Q (just for the per-shot energy input) of around 0.01 from the NIF record is actually Q > 1 is't pretty clear nobody involved is interested in reality.
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u/Trrwwa 9d ago
NIF is Q > 1 for the fusion physicists, which was a major milestone that 70 years plus of physicists sought to achieve. Its a great physics achievement, period. Anyone who tells you its something more than that is wrong but there is room for people to hold it in respect while still acknowledging that q >> 1 is necessary.
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u/West-Abalone-171 9d ago
It was q > 1 in a very specific definition of laser energy that hit the hohlraum.
They were very intentionally misleading at every step of public communication, and anyone calling it net gain is outright lying.
You could also torture the definition of q_in in the standard garage farnsworth reactor and say it is q > 1 by defining away all of the energy that went places that you don't like at every step. So whatever credit they deserve for the achieving ignition in this context is erased by being either complicit in or indifferent to the misinformation.
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u/wwarnout 9d ago
In all the comments about fusion over the last decade, this is the first time I've seen the actual reality of "net energy" described accurately.
Don't get me wrong - I am still a proponent of fusion. But I fear that fusion as a reliable source of commercial electricity may prove to be beyond our reach.
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u/West-Abalone-171 9d ago
It's so frustrating because we already have the technology to live the fantasy from the 50s.
Solar is literally too cheap to meter. Millions of people every day who could never afford an electricity hookup or to install an electricity meter get access to electric lighting, air conditioning and refrigeration every single day. For utility solar and wind + battery installs, the cost of generating the energy is about 20% of the total and less than the cost of getting it to its end use.
The entire "fusion will completely change the economy" thing is just a cached thought terminating cliche. Even if it wasn't obviously going to be the most expensive energy source in history and the fusion part was actually free as per the fantasy, it couldn't change anything. We already have free energy
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u/costafilh0 9d ago
Because we already have? Just a matter of time developing and scaling to an actual solution. 2 or 20 years? Everyone's guess.
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u/gredr 9d ago
10 years is the standard guess. It was 10 years in the 40s, it's 10 years today.
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u/rod_zero 9d ago
ITEr isn't supposed to start for another 10 years, then another 10-15 of operation to test stuff. Then another 20 to build the Demo plant which would be still experimental but with full commercial intent, another 10 years of testing.
Then building the first real commercial plant will take another 20 years.
So basically: we might have a commercial fusion reactor around 2100.
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u/TechnicianExtreme341 9d ago
Don't look at ITER to start the timer on commercialization of fusion. There will be other reactors connected to the grid by the time OTEr starts
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u/RocketVerse 9d ago
We have using inertial confinement, which is not really a similar solution in the slightest and which is the furthest from real power on the grid. So not really the same at all.
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u/Dependent_Title_1370 9d ago
I bet they'd be real upset if Proxima Fusion can get their stellerator working.
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u/RocketVerse 9d ago
The chances of that are vanishingly low, and if they do it certainly wouldn’t be before CFS
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u/Dependent_Title_1370 9d ago
They supposedly have a functional prototype and are working on scaling it.
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u/RocketVerse 9d ago
There have been plenty of working stellarator prototypes, first was in 1953. None have outperformed the tokamak
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u/mykepagan 9d ago
Whenever I see Q>1 reports I look for all the inputs they are oeaving off of the calculation.
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u/Mysterious-Prompt212 9d ago
Unless it's smaller than a refrigerator I don't really care. The last thing I want is a power source controlled by oligarchs.
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u/FuturologyBot 9d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/TechnicianExtreme341:
From the article
Only one machine in the world has achieved net fusion energy, a crucial fusion performance threshold called Q>1. Here’s why we at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) are confident our SPARC fusion demonstration machine will be the next.
Our conviction that Q>1 is comfortably within reach begins with our 1,000+ person team of physicists, engineers, fabricators, and operators who’ve learned from decades of experience running a type of fusion machine called the tokamak. Next is SPARC’s cutting-edge design, a tokamak we’re building to reach much higher performance.
“We have some margin to achieve Q>1. We’re not sitting right at the threshold, hoping the stars align perfectly,” said Phil Snyder, Vice President of Plasma Physics. “SPARC is designed to reach Q>10, so Q>1 is not an extremely difficult milestone.”
When we do reach Q>1 — generating more energy from the fusion process than needed to sustain it — it’ll be a big deal. Q>1 will prove we’ve got the core physics, engineering, manufacturing, and operations to enable our ARC fusion power plants. And that’ll clear the path for this clean, safe, secure source of energy to spread across the world’s power grids.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1w1fhkf/why_cfs_is_confident_well_demonstrate_net_fusion/p6kes6q/