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submitted 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) by Dot@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

nuclear power produces long-lived radioactive waste, which needs to be stored securely. Nuclear fuels, such as the element uranium (which needs to be mined), are finite, so the technology is not considered renewable. Renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind power suffer from “intermittency”, meaning they do not consistently produce energy at all hours of the day.

fusion technologies have yet to produce sustained net energy output (more energy than is put in to run the reactor), let alone produce energy at the scale required to meet the growing demands of AI. Fusion will require many more technological developments before it can fulfil its promise of delivering power to the grid.

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[-] grue@lemmy.world 35 points 14 hours ago

Tech bosses think nuclear fusion is the solution

No they don't; this is literally the first thing I've ever read claiming that. Tech bosses are perfect happy to power AI with nuclear fission and don't give the slightest fuck about the waste.

(As well they shouldn't, TBH, since it really ought to get reprocessed anyway. But that doesn't excuse them for wanting to waste the power on bullshit.)

[-] mwguy@infosec.pub 3 points 4 hours ago

Also nuclear fusion has essentially zero waste.

[-] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

That turns out to not be true, at least not with the tokamak reactors most groups are pursuing.

You see, at some point you need a shield around the reactor to actually absorb all the high energy particles released, and turn that energy into heat. That's the whole point of the reactor, to generate heat and run a turbine. You absorb those high energy particles with a "blanket", that's just what they call the shield around the reactor.

Here's the issue, absorbing all those high energy particles necessarily results in transmuting the material absorbing them. That blanket becomes brittle and eventually needs to be replaced. Not coincidentally, that blanket is also now radioactive, because you've bombarded it with protons and neutrons and it's now partially made up of unstable, radioactive elements.

So while fission reactors have radioactive fuel rods to dispose of, fusion reactors will have radioactive blankets to dispose of. Who knows if this is an improvement.

[-] crapwittyname@lemm.ee 4 points 2 hours ago

Who knows if this is an improvement.

The Max Planck Institute for Physics knows and spoiler, yes. Yes it is.

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 4 hours ago

If it ends up working though it's not a waste of power is it? And if it doesn't work then, oh well.

Big tech companies do a lot of cramp, but this one I actually don't really mind. You never know we might actually get the Star Trek utopia we've always wanted from this, it's unlikely but it's not impossible.

this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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