Scientists in California make a significant step in what could one day be an important solution to the global climate crisis, driven primarily by burning fossil fuels.
Since everyone else gave a joke answer I’ll take a stab in the dark and say the upper limits would be the availability of hydrogen and physical limitations in transforming heat output into electricity. The hydrogen is the most common element but 96% of it is currently produced from fossil fuels. After that, it would be how well you can scale up turbines to efficiently convert heat to electricity.
If you have fusion energy, creating H2 from water via electrolysis is a joke. You can do it at home. It only requires a lot of energy. But with energy from fusion it will become super easy, barely an inconvenient
In the news, 5.000 years later : “Scientists warned that our mass extraction of hydrogen may produce global salinization, but no one wants to reduce its energy consumption.”
You know how the sun radiates an incredible amount of power through millions and millions of tonnes of material undergoing nuclear fusion every minute, and the sun is expected to last for millions of years?
It’s near limitless in the sense that the fuel for it will not run out. … But to be honest, the ‘unlimited energy’ thing is mostly marketing hype. If we were worried about fuel running out, then solar would be the obvious go-to. That’s even less likely to run out than fusion power, and it has the advantage that we can already build it. And fusion, like solar and everything else, still requires land and resources to build the power plants. There are hopes that fusion power plants might be be more space efficient or something, but that obviously isn’t the case currently. Currently the situation is that people have been working on this for generations and the big breakthrough is that we can now momentarily break-even with power on a small scale with state of the art equipment. So I think it’s a bit too soon to claim it will have any advantages over solar. Right now it is not viable at all, and any future advantages are just speculation.
That said, fusion power is technology worth pursuing. It’s not complete garbage green-washing (unlike “carbon capture and storage”, which really is complete garbage), but the idea that fusion it’s some holy-grail of unlimited power is … well … basically just good marketing to keep the research funds flowing.
“Near limitless energy”. …
OK what are the limits? Preferably absurd answers please…
They boiled 10 kettles of water with this energy.
Ultimately, if everything is optimized, its probably only limited by the number of kettles available.
Limitless only for the same visit. 1 customer per reaction.
No repeat visits or sharing allowed!
Since everyone else gave a joke answer I’ll take a stab in the dark and say the upper limits would be the availability of hydrogen and physical limitations in transforming heat output into electricity. The hydrogen is the most common element but 96% of it is currently produced from fossil fuels. After that, it would be how well you can scale up turbines to efficiently convert heat to electricity.
If you have fusion energy, creating H2 from water via electrolysis is a joke. You can do it at home. It only requires a lot of energy. But with energy from fusion it will become super easy, barely an inconvenient
Well. Assuming the cost of splitting water is lower than the energy produced from the same amount of hydrogen.
It is muuuuuuuuuuch lower. The actual energy is incomparable, like an ant vs superman level of energy.
The energy in practice it’ll be extracted from H2 has to be much higher for the process to have a practical use
In the news, 5.000 years later : “Scientists warned that our mass extraction of hydrogen may produce global salinization, but no one wants to reduce its energy consumption.”
Electrolysis has up to 70% efficiency and needs sulfuric acid. The superheated thing has about 90% efficiency.
One limit less.
You would have enough power to play a game of Civ II to completion.
You know how the sun radiates an incredible amount of power through millions and millions of tonnes of material undergoing nuclear fusion every minute, and the sun is expected to last for millions of years?
Well, not that much. But it’s still a lot!
2 energies and no more
The limits are only your imagination.
The flamingo population must remain constant for ignition to function.
It’s near limitless in the sense that the fuel for it will not run out. … But to be honest, the ‘unlimited energy’ thing is mostly marketing hype. If we were worried about fuel running out, then solar would be the obvious go-to. That’s even less likely to run out than fusion power, and it has the advantage that we can already build it. And fusion, like solar and everything else, still requires land and resources to build the power plants. There are hopes that fusion power plants might be be more space efficient or something, but that obviously isn’t the case currently. Currently the situation is that people have been working on this for generations and the big breakthrough is that we can now momentarily break-even with power on a small scale with state of the art equipment. So I think it’s a bit too soon to claim it will have any advantages over solar. Right now it is not viable at all, and any future advantages are just speculation.
That said, fusion power is technology worth pursuing. It’s not complete garbage green-washing (unlike “carbon capture and storage”, which really is complete garbage), but the idea that fusion it’s some holy-grail of unlimited power is … well … basically just good marketing to keep the research funds flowing.
Only on Tuesdays between the times of 04:04 and 04:27 UTC
Ah, my childhood ISP is still luring around.