Thread by @BambroughKevin

#Fusion energy development: great that it continues to move forward but when you look at the data it seems the current net energy success is based only on the energy that was fed into the laser and the resulting energy that was produced from the reaction ft.com/content/4b6f0f…

At best commercializations is said to be decades away.

At worst we don’t know how much other energy needs to go into the system in order to calculate if it’s truly going to be net energy positive in its full life cycle.

Produced 2.5 megajoules of energy over a couple weeks while consuming 2.1 megajoules of energy in the lasers.

What we don’t know is how much energy goes into first creating a fusion reactor, how long the various parts last and what materials (energy) is required ongoing

Would love to learn more about the entire process as long term it could be an absolute game changer for the world. But it seems that there still are a long of unknowns on a full net energy basis.

Operating a fusion tractor will requires pure deuterium and tritium. I have no idea how difficult it will be to produce a mouth but some knowledgeable people seem to think sourcing/producing enough fuel for commercialization will be another challenge

physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2343…

If anyone knows how much energy goes into full cycle production of fuel pellets and how this effects the net energy calc would love to see it.

One thing to note is that some say that we actually need to have a vast fleet of Candu nuclear reactors to produce tritium that the fusion industry will need.

science.org/content/articl…

Yes eventual fusion reactors will be able to ‘breed’ their own tritium but it’s unclear how long a reactor will have to run before becoming self-sustaining (it has produced enough tritium to feed itself and can continue operating)

Fusion reactors may in fact may eventually be developed to run entirely on spent nuclear fuel and recycle it in the process.

So although promising it should be understood that if anything for the coming decades fusion energy projects may work hand and glove w/ existing nuclear

The reality is that we got a coal problem and it’s not going away with a big push to new nuclear. We also have a

Natgas problem and those that say it’s a transitory fuel are grossly incompetent. We will not be consuming less natural gas or coal with out a massive nuclear ramp

Basic math.. total power consumption. Not just electricity is completely dependant on fossil fuels and we consume more of them every year despite efforts to ramp up wind and solar. That’s the fact.

We are still on the cusp of a full blown energy crisis and it will transpire during the decade long (or more) commodity bull market that we have embarked upon. Forget the noise and stay long resources.