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China's 'artificial sun' hits new milestone with research campus delivered for use, targets 2030 for first electricity output (www.globaltimes.cn)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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[–] -5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Here's a thing about potential: you can only be certain of it after you've solved these "engineering challenges". Does tritium breeding factor, EROEI and material footprint (all mined, transported and processed using fossil fuels) mean a thing to you? These factors are not specific to fusion, but they're the most challenging for fusion reactors of currently known designs.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    You're right, but simultaneously your rhetoric is completely defeatist before we've even identified what can be solved. We won't know the potential until it's solved but you also can't be sure of the cost.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 day ago

    Collapse is called a predicament rather than merely a problem, precisely because it is a tangled complex of problems that has no solution. See https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions for why it is so. Or, rather, don't, since if you get it, all you get is a massive depression for your pains.

    Notice that we're also running out of time, so things feasible in principle are not reachable in the time window still at our disposal. The next 2-3 decades should make that clearer.

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