Science MemesI watched a docu about one fusion startup in the US. They're skipping the boiling water step and converting the energy directly to electricity.
I dont remember the mechanics of how though. But they reportedly are the closest to net positive.
Fun Fact: Since 2006-2007 Uruguay’s power infrastructure has mostly relied on green energy, making up over 90% of their power infrastructure, also making them fully self sustaining power wise
In Canada (2023), renewables make up 66% and nuclear 13% (about 80% together). That's also pretty good.
only 3.4 M people, little industry
yeah some countries have that, like sweden and austria. the reason is because they're very mountaineous areas, so there's a lot of water power to harvest. in germany, which is really flat, that would have been impossible with water alone.
fully self sustaining power wise
Damn, imagine that.
Talk about national security.
Let work the people for electricity
https://www.pavegen.com/blog/kinetic-pavements
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2022/april/wearable-material-generates-electricity/
https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/2020/7158953
People are essentially internal combustion engines that burn food. Trying to capture that energy in ways that increases the load on us just causes us to need more calories. That's counter productive as you could just burn said food itself to get energy, and agriculture is an energy and environmentally intensive industry to begin with.
The original idea was the machines using humans as a connected neural network. I don't think it would change much about the plot of the movies if they're used for energy or brain power, so it's easy to change it for your own head canon at least 🙂
As the other person already said, not totally relevant to the discussion at hand, but I do find that bit of trivia fascinating. The processing power version makes so much more sense logically, but it was put to the wayside by production executives because they thought the average movie-goer wouldn't get it, since computing was still somewhat niche at the time.
We aren't actually talking about the matrix here
On the other hand, clothes that would help me lose weight and charge my phone at the same time sound pretty cool. Just need to install Pokemon Go and I'll be fit in no time.
Don't worry, you'll just eat more to compensate lol
so I get to enjoy more pizza?
Yes.
Now we just need solar boilers.
To boil water.
Driving by the one in California was always a trip. You could see the lines of sunlight being reflected from the mirrors in the air; it was so bright.
turns out we sort of have that. only it does not boil water, but heats the air so liquid hydrocarbons come out of it https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/server/api/core/bitstreams/186f37f3-be00-415e-8bbb-439b66ee2b75/content
I'm pretty sure we have actual solar water heaters too tbh
All it takes is a water pipe painted black zigzagging inside a box which is black inside and has the sun facing side replaced by glass.
You can get hot water from something like that even in Winter.
you can get>200F from a passive solar air heater made of soda cans on a 30F day.
https://www.instructables.com/Aluminum-Can-Solar-Heater/
we do. they are about the size of a solar panel, look similar and are on some roofs of houses in my area. the ones i'm refering to are not for boiling water, just for preheating so need less energy when it goes back into the [ger: heizungskreislauf]. all the ones i know are older then the current PV panel boom. fun fact, there are even concepts (and implentation, but i can't find it) for vacuum glas tubes that have a parabolic mirror around a black painted copper pipe, which should be able to generate ~400 °C "process heat". but they are not wide spread, cause PV is so much cheaper now
china already have a supercritical carbon dioxide system integrated into a functioning powergrid and operating commercially. The system exploits an exotic phase of co2 which expands to fill a volume like gas, but moves frictionlessly through tubes as a liquid. Their are concerns about lifespan because of how caustic the system is, but apparently some new materials are being trialled which negate this.
Heat pumps are the next evolution of the "it's just steam again isn't it?" meme.
This is mainly integrated AFAIK in industrial processes with high amounts of low entropy heat available (i.e. big volumes of not-that-hot liquids), and it allows for electric production from said heat with unprecedented efficiency. Cool shit
Link with description for those who are unaware of this like me
https://cleantechnica.com/2026/01/01/china-built-a-supercritical-co%E2%82%82-generator-that-doesnt-mean-it-will-last/
All energy sources have trade offs.
Solar panels take a lot of space and shadows ecosystems reliant on sun light. Wind turbines kill birds and are noisy. Dams remove water sources from ecosystems and communities reliant on them. Fusion/nuclear/fission pose security risks. Oil/coal power puts CO2 and pollutants into the air.
The last one has global consequences and the first 4 only have local consequences that depend on circumstances.
Edit: hey everyone, the point of this comment was not to shit on renewables or to paint them as equal to non renewables. I admit that the arguments I made are not the best. They didn’t come from thorough analysis, but it also wasn’t the point. The point is just that there is a case for fusion/fission too. One doesn’t have to exclude the other. Many renewables are time sensitive and depend on the environment. They are great and absolutely should we invest in it! I just don’t subscribe to the idea that we should shoot down fusion/fission.
Wind turbines kill birds and are noisy.
No they are not, no they do not.
Visit a wind farm. You will find far more dead birds at the base of a glass office building. Last summer I walked through a farm of 16 wind turbines and never saw a dead bird.
Wind turbines kill birds and are noisy.
Technology Connections made a video specifically for you. https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM
The amount of birds that actually get killed by wind turbines has always been dubious at best. And having been next to a wind turbine, they really aren't that noisy.
In the early days of electricity, people complained they got headaches.
I’m not saying they are bad or not preferred. I’m just saying there are cases for fusion/fission sometimes.
yep. it's called "deep space" and "half the way to the ord cloud"
Fields with solar panels (10-40% shadowing) actually have up to 20% more yield here, since summers get too hot for 1 - 2 months. Swiss, not far south.
Also, place them on roofs!
That’s my point. The social benefit of renewables are environmentally and temporally differentiating. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t invest in them! We definitely should, and likely more than we do. But all I’m saying if you were to calculate the environmental and societal long run costs, I believe there must be places and situations where fission/fusion is preferred sometimes.
I believe there must be places and situations where fission/fusion is preferred sometimes.
Heavy industry. Metal casting, metal purification from ore, rockwool insulation, cement, glass works, all use huge energy.
Solar panels providing shade to grazing animals and crops is a mutual win, not the loss you make it out to be. Search for "the trampolining effect"
Thanks for sharing!
Fusion(...) pose security risks
Wait, what kind? Doesn't the reaction just fizzle out and become safely dormant if anything wrong happens?
I’m thinking more in terms of warfare
how so?
The technology to use fusion as a bomb already exists. and has 0 to do with how the reactors work
Yeah about that.
Those are termosolar powerplant, they use the sun to boil water and spin a turbine.
That's what they want you to think. I bet it also powers a secret orbital space laser. I should know, a man with a theoretical degree in physics told me.
That technology is a relic of the past. Solar panels are cheap and efficient now. Just use solar panels.
And much easier to operate and troubleshoot.
Its even more metal they heat salt that heats water to spin the turbine. This keeps the power generation well after sun down.
Although they're falling out of use these days, both because they're not very environmentally friendly on account of being instant bird death-rays, and also because regular solar panels are cheap enough that it's not worth it to make a big thermosolar plant.
Habitat destruction, air pollution, and pesticides are unfathomably worse for birds.
I wonder if it could be worth it to make one of those on other planets/the Moon one day. No birds to worry about there.
Solar panels are still cheaper and easier. Most spaceships and probes rely on them.
Yea, I should have guessed as much.
Not a lot of atmosphere on the moon.
Transmitting heat across distances in effectively a vacuum doesn't work too well.
Just look a the size of the radiators the ISS has to have, and they're not even sending heat anywhere in particular, that's just getting it off station
You're getting thermal radiation and convection confused. The ISS has giant radiators because it's a right pain in the ass to turn heat into thermal radiation, and it cannot rely on convection to cool things like you can here on earth. Turning thermal radiation into heat on the other hand is pretty trivial. Just don't reflect it and it'll turn into heat. These things aren't transporting heat across distances. They are transporting thermal radiation across distances. That works as well in a vacuum -- if not better -- as it does on earth.
If thermal radiation doesn't work in a vacuum, how is the sun heating anything up?
I stand corrected
The mirrors on Earth don't transfer the energy using the air between the mirror and the collector, they just bounce the spicy photons which can travel even better in a vacuum.
Idk, my country just inaugurated a gigantic one of these.
Also, fotovoltaic pannels decay with time and have to be replaced, 15 years I think? Their manufacturing isn't also the greenest thing on earth.
You build one of these, and you can run it for a long long time.
The usual warranty period is 20 years generating 80% of the nameplate generating Watts
They keep generating reasonable amounts of power 50 or 100 years later, though they tend to get overtaken by new technology in 10 to 20 years, and since they pay for themselves in about 4 years in my area they get replaced while still working well
I think we export our obsolete panels to developing nations
15 years I think
This number gets lower every time I see it.
First, manufacturers typically guarantee their panels for 25 to 30 years.
Second, while we can extrapolate from existing data and perform accelerated aging tests, we're actually not completely sure how long PV panels last in the real world because the oldest ones from 1987 are still going.
Lies! Well the thermal plant is also fine but photovoltaics are really, really good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
fotovoltaic pannels decay with time and have to be replaced, 15 years I think?
much longer: https://www.slashgear.com/1989112/solar-panel-lifespan-longer-new-study/
Better solar power extractor.
If you think about it coal fired power plants are also solar powered 🤔
Only that sun fell on plants millions of years ago. We really don't want that million year old carbon dioxide in the atmosphere alongside the recent stuff
Very true, the conclusion I'm drawing is that solar power is actively harming the environment and causing climate change. No new solar!
True, just that an intermediate step(of many steps) is to continually destroy the atmosphere.
It's not like we need it to breath anyways. We'll just pay corporations for oxygen masks and "Atmo-tanks" to breath. We have commodify everything because Capitalism requires it.
C'mon Cohegan, give dees peepul aihhhhhh
Fine to think of it, it's also renewable!
AFAIR you can't get new coal/oil because in the meantime there are fungi in the ground that would process the dead plants/alge/whatever was pressed to make the hydrocarbons. but i can't find the source of that info, so grain of salt
Most coal comes from the carbonipherous period, a period in which plants evolved wood but ~~microbes~~ funghi (shutout to Lyrl's below comment) still hadn't evolved wood-eating.
You can get new coal in marshes because I think the process to eat wood requires oxygen, and flooded areas don't allow for wood to decompose totally. That's why they can pull out wooden ships from 500 years ago from the bottom of the ocean in relatively good condition!
That it took 400 million years for one fungus to evolve wood eating is wild to me. And no other microbe has ever evolved that ability: my understanding is all wood decay fungal species today evolved from one shared ancester.
You're likely right, my background is physics, I'll quote you on the comment above!
Stupid science and its "biology" ane "evolutionary timelines" always trying to ruin my fun...
Are you referring to lignen developing before there was a bilogical process to break it down?
The sun heats the planet unevenly, this causes wind. Wind is solar
do you not know how those work?
the sun shines on the side angled upwards and heats it up. everybody knows hot air rises, so this raises the blade, creating the spinning motion.
it's basic, really. third grade stuff.
I really love how it's almost that simple.
the sun shines on the ~~side angled upwards~~ planet and heats it up. everybody knows hot air rises, ~~so this raises~~ creating winds that drive the blade, creating the spinning motion.
Omg every body knows wind is created when god sighs at the collective sin of the world.
Some people so dumb.
Ahkshually, those tend to boils salt...which is later used to boil water.
Why do I have an overwhelming urge to climb that
You played too many Ubisoft games.
You know if you're a moth, you can just fly up there.
No brother!
BRotHeR i cRaVe foR tHe ForBiDDen liGhT
Are you perhaps living in a place where it snows or something
Sam McGee just wants to do free climbing
Um...no.
Sam McGee just wants to be warm
Yeah that was the joke
It is pretty funny that as advanced as our technology gets, we're still basically just at the higher end of the "steam engine" phase.
Its actually more like if a steam engine and a waterwheel had a baby, a turbine
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.
The days the steam engine are numbered.
Not really. Unless there are some breakthroughs in technology that significantly lower capex & opex for grid scale energy storage, they'll be sticking around for a long time.
There is an asterisk on the 1TW number, and that asterisk is capacity factor. In practice it means that depending on the time of year and location, the effective output of your solar panel will be between 0-40% of label capacity .
In my country for instance, you can expect 0-2% output from a panel in the winter time, which also happens to coincide with the peak demands (heating). Luckily, our politicians had some foresight in the 70s & 80s and built lots of hydro and nuclear power, which has been the backbone of our grid ever since (despite attempts to dismantle it).
you can expect 0-2% output from a panel in the winter time
I can confirm this. My family is off-grid and there have been extended periods the last two winters when it has simply been too dark for too long to depend on the solar without installing 50x more panels.
Also, the problem with having larger battery capacity to span these periods is that if they don't get fully recharged or cycled properly the batteries get damaged and eventually die. We learnt that the hard way.
Solar is the undisputed champion for 80-90% of the year but needs to be complemented with something else for the remainder, if you want uninterrupted on-demand electricity.
My family is off-grid and there have been extended periods the last two winters when it has simply been too dark for too long to depend on the solar without installing 50x more panels
laughs in ultrahigh-voltage power lines connecting deserts to populated areas
Seriously, China is already implementing this technology, we just need a few socialist revolutions and we can go full solarpunk
What part did you miss about "off grid"?
Well, if you want energy access, don't live in an off-grid house in a region of the planet without sunlight for 3 months a year
0 and 40 depending on location? We get 6Wh per W installed per day annual average here. We couldn't get that is 40% was the max. We get 1 to 3Wh/Wi/d in winter and 6 to 12Wh/Wi/d in summer
At midday on a cold sunny spring day we'll get 105% the nameplate power
Wh/Wi/day is Watt hours per Watt installed per day
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.
I still think nuclear (probably fission rather than fusion) has a place, at least in terms of materials and land usage. It's just obscenely efficient in terms of energy per resource investment. Solar generation requires square miles of space and hundreds of tons of materials to match the output of a single reactor.
Solar doesn't need to use that space exclusively. You can put solar on every roof, over every parking lot, and all grazing land. You can even put it over farmland in winter and tilt the panels out of the way during summer when there's enough energy anyway. Or use semi-translucent panels over crops that don't like blazing sunlight anyway.
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 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.
Huh, I didn't realize the numbers worked out that well.
I think there's still a raw-materials issue, though. Extraction and transport for that much solar is doable but still a big disadvantage.
You really need to watch this video. It explains it all. It's long, but it's incredibly well researched and presented.
https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM
Raw materials are not an issue.
There are a multitude of possible downsides with nuclear and with the greater number of reactors around the world comes the greater risk of something going catastrophically wrong for large amounts of people.
Solar has none of that downside, unless you include the sun devouring us in 6 billion years time...
The key difference on the materials is that you can use the materials endlessly with solar. With fossil fuels or even with fission, you have to constantly burn fuel. Sure, the actual fuel rods used in a reactor has a small volume. But those are made from enriched uranium, made from uranium oxide, made from uranium ore. The volume of waste generated is far larger than just the volume of the reactor core itself. But with solar? You only ever have to extract the materials once. Sure, the panels degrade over time. But after they degrade beyond usefulness, the material is still there. It's like a lead-acid battery. They wear out after awhile, but they can be recycled. You eventually reach a point where you no longer have to mine any new materials to make new panels, or you only mine new materials as you want your electricity supply to grow. With any fuel-based power source, including fission, you have to keep extracting those fuels forever.
And don't ignore the huge material requirement to build a reactor. You have to build a giant concrete dome around the damn things. Those domes are one of the few structures on Earth actually designed to survive a 9/11-style terrorist attack. They're built to resist the impact of large jet aircraft. Plus the vast labyrinth of piping, heat exchangers, turbines, etc. All of this is of immense material cost. All-in, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the mass of a GW of nuclear power plant is a lot more than the mass of a GW of solar plant. Nuclear power plants are hulking leviathans.
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
The future is one of vast energy abundance
Wow. Isn't it amazing that the majority of human history operated under renewable energy?
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.
Just as a side note that gas power plants capture two types of energy, both the expansion of the burned gas and the heat. This is why they're now more popular for new builds than oil.
But I don't WANT to boil water, I want ELECTRICITY. Like, future electricity!
Nooooo! I want different electricity. Not calculator electricity.
I want REAL electricity!
I remember when this was explained to me and my little mind was blown. Your comment reminded me of that moment. Thank you.
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
Turns out heat engines are like... pretty good at turning arbitrary energy sources into useful work! Who knew!
Solar panels are all nice and stuft, but what about some boiled water?
Boil water? What am I, a chemist?
A cook?
Pasta bitches!!
Harrumph
All that yet microwaves still leave my burrito frozen in the center.
Gotta lower the power setting and increase the cook time. One minute at 100%? No! One and a half minutes at 80%!
also, offset from the center of the microwave on the spinny plate. centered will only get you a portion of the waveform, moving the food around through a larger cross-section of the waveform = more thoroughly cooked stuff.
Still don't understand how this could possibly generate energy.
It basically doesn't work out.
Theoretically you could have 2500 square meters of solar arrays above the weather beaming the power down to a dish with only a 500 square meter footprint.
But you'd still have to deal with weather with some kind of a storage solution. And 2500 square meters of area in space seems more expensive to claim than just 500 square meters of area on land, in pretty much any scenario.
the power plant is in space and beams energy to the dish.
That is the wrong sort of receiving antenna for more than milliwatts of energy beamed from space
Right, but like... whatever you're doing in space is going to be more cost effective to do on earth. Not to mention the insane amount of energy lost to the atmosphere
Unless you really need to optimise for land use. An arbitrarily large solar array in space could transmit to a fairly small collector in the surface.
As for losing power to atmospheric attenuation, high frequency microwaves will pass right through most everything that would scatter visible light. Clouds, dust, etc wouldn't really impede it.
I won't say it's not a silly idea, because it is. It's fun to think about though.
You could also have a constellation of satellites with area greater than the surface of the earth. It's not that silly of an idea.
Energy loss for wireless energy transmission is actually surprisingly low. Here is an example of 80% efficiency over 1 kilometer: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1123672
Energy loss for wireless energy transition is actually surprisingly low.
...
musk wants datacenters in space. which makes sense, 24/7 sunlight and no transmission of power is grand; but I do wonder about the shielding and moving the data back and forth.
It's nonsense, for cooling reasons alone
yeah had a whole convo with a neighbor about how much cooling tech the ISS depends on.
at least it won't need separate water/ammonia loop setup like the ISS. radiators are pretty figured out. I just can't see how they make it economical with all the launch and space logistics - and don't get me wrong spacex can deliver to orbit - but can they make it profitable?
also, where's the grunt for this supposed AI cloud gonna come from? what chips can survive for 1000s of hours of compute in that environment? and from what he's said (24/7 sunlight) are they thinking lagrange points or what? also xmit/receive of massive amounts of data would need to be crucial to making it work and we got none of that infrastructure....
all leads me to think his ketamine is showing.
Big solar panel
yeah but imagine you can put the plant and all the pollution on an asteroid or something.
ACKSHUALLY we're going to put special solar panels inside the reactor.
It is artificial sun basically, so...
And then use the solar panels to power a water boiler.
Yeah, I want a pot of tea
D’oh!!!
Harness the power of the sun, but indoors!
I think thats the plan right? Steam turbines i mean...
Yes, because electricity is just things spinning, and steam is the easiest way to make things spin.
Fusion reactors might be more resource efficient
Can someone explain the solar panels bit at the bottom? Is it because the creator of the meme is advocating that as a cooler method of energy, given that it doesn't use boiling water, or is it because the fusion reactor can utilise solar panels to convert the energy to electricity?
My the actual intention of this joke, was to point out, that even if fusion will make again use of boiling water, we already have more "suffisticated" methods to generate electricity (like e.g. solar cells via the photovoltaic effect), that make not use of the great equalizer make wheel spin fast.
But based on many comments here (and yours is not one of them), this failed.
Because the Sun is a giant fusion reactor.
Oh okay. The reactor will still use steam boiling though
That's the setup for the joke
check out helion. they are trying to make small, modular reactors that are cheaper to build and maintain, so they can be deployed easier than fission reactors and the couple of fusion designs that already exist. iirc they have the actual fusion part working and are now working on actually getting the energy out of it. real engineering has some good videos about them on nebula and YouTube.
Super cool, thanks for the share. It will be interesting to see what sort of efficiency they get from the inductive energy transfer.
Hopefully they’re not just another Theranos.
Helion has had "a working power-producing system in five years!" since 2017.
sigh
Yes, Jimmy; you are.
How are solar panels made? Doesn't it involve mining? Is it renewable?
I can really recommend this video by Technology Connections which answers your questions very well. It is long but entertaining and educational. The last 30 minutes is basically a rant about politics and I love every second of it.
It’s massively impractical. You’re never gonna believe it.
These things require silicon (good luck finding sand!), but they’re mostly glass and aluminum (ridiculously rare substances that we can’t use willy-nilly on stuff that only lasts for 25 years, and then how are we gonna recycle that? we have no idea how to recycle glass and aluminum!), and then to make it scalable you’re gonna want some safe battery technology like sodium-ion (but where are we gonna find a bunch of salt on this blue planet?)
they're becoming pretty recyclable as far as i understand.
They are mostly glass and silica I think. The thing that generates electricity is basically a reverse LED. They are also highly recyclable, as the video linked in the other comment explains.
