Comment by pfdietz
7 years ago
You're just passive-aggressively rejecting his argument on facile grounds, that this specific popular exposition didn't include the details you demand. It's sad you don't have enough self awareness to see what you're doing here.
If you want more detail of this sort of analysis, look at the Pfirsch & Schmitter paper from 1987 I linked to below. Lidsky also had a paper in the technical literature going into more details, although I don't have that reference. The basic argument as given by Lidsky in TTWF is not difficult to understand though, if you allow yourself to try to understand it.
In any case, the experience since then confirms what he was saying. Why don't you show me a fusion reactor concept with a power density approaching that of a fission reactor? Someone, somewhere must have been able to produce such a schematic if Lidsky's analysis was wrong, yes? Understand Lidsky's point is independent of limits due to plasma physics.
Even if the point of power density is conceded, the work necessary for economic analysis has not been done anywhere I have looked. If you would focus on my points, and not try to project some psychological model on someone you’re having a conversation with (a proper dick move, you won’t make friends that way), then you wouldn’t be pointing at papers talking about power density.
Where is the cost analysis that prices future fusion plants out of reasonability? Where is the cost analysis that takes the hidden cost of CO2 emission into account? What is the societal value of producing an on demand energy source that lasts millions of years, rather than hundreds? The burden is not on me to find these answers, because I did not make cavalier statements that will be discussed 40 years later. Unchecked publications are why I became heated, not the content.
I'm having a hard time feeling charitable toward you when you are missing things that are blindingly obvious.
You are demanding an economic analysis to tell you that a much larger, much more complex piece of equipment, made from more exotic materials, is going to be more expensive than a much smaller, much less complex one? This is screaming passive-aggressive denial. It is very simple to understand that point, if you just allow yourself to think about it.
The CO2 point would be worthwhile if fusion were competing just with fossil fuels. But it fails against fission (for the simple reasons Lidsky explained), and fission now fails against renewables.