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China Outspends the US on Fusion in the Race for Energy's Holy Grail (wsj.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the intensifying-race dept.
A high-tech race is under way between the U.S. and China as both countries chase an elusive energy source: fusion. From a report: China is outspending the U.S., completing a massive fusion technology campus and launching a national fusion consortium that includes some of its largest industrial companies. Crews in China work in three shifts, essentially around the clock, to complete fusion projects. And the Asian superpower has 10 times as many Ph.D.s in fusion science and engineering as the U.S. The result is an increasing worry among American officials and scientists that an early U.S. lead is slipping away.

JP Allain, who heads the Energy Department's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, said China is spending around $1.5 billion a year on fusion, nearly twice the U.S. government's fusion budget. What's more, China appears to be following a program similar to the road map that hundreds of U.S. fusion scientists and engineers first published in 2020 in hopes of making commercial fusion energy. Scientists familiar with China's fusion facilities said that if the country continues its current pace of spending and development, it will surpass the U.S. and Europe's magnetic fusion capabilities in three or four years.
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China Outspends the US on Fusion in the Race for Energy's Holy Grail More

China Outspends the US on Fusion in the Race for Energy's Holy Grail

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  • Let them spend the money to figure out how in the actual fuck to make it the slightest big viable, because the US and EU certainly have done their share and failed to do anything but make "breakthroughs" that somehow still fail to create cheap commercial power (the thing we were promised when investing in it). Once China pays for enough of the "breakthroughs" that the whole thing isn't a hideously expensive boondoggle, we can steal the design from them, just like they do with our tech. We can patent it like

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      They will either do it or blow it Fusion as I understand it trying to control what happens in the sun on a huge scale and get it to happen on a small scale without it getting out of control like the current useful fusion energy method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and the reason the US and Europe has been very cautious with its construction.

      Also the USA has a number of private companies working on Fusion is that included in the $750M https://tracxn.com/d/trending-... [tracxn.com]

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Fusion as I understand it trying to control what happens in the sun on a huge scale and get it to happen on a small scale

        You don't understand it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      Update from that list of companies 4 of the top 5 are US based and have ~$4Billion in funding alone. The total on those 40 is $5.4Billion

    • Re: Good. Let them :keep: investing. (Score:4, Informative)

      by getuid() ( 1305889 ) on Thursday July 11, 2024 @01:18AM (#64617641)

      We already know how to.

      After decades, Wendelstein 7X is already working as it should (but it's only a research reactor, not a commercial one). Take-away lesson was that fusion is "here", but the first 1-2 commercial iterations will be more expensive, until.they figure out all the small.optimizations - as it's the case with every research-gone-commercial project.

      They even put a price tag on the first one: $20 bn. Yes, $20 bn and then you have a working fusion reactor that can provide energy to a city.

      Subsequent iterations will be significantly cheaper.

      And 3 months ago a research group published work that just made commercial, industrial-grade superconducting magnets 20x cheaper. (That was the most critical and "unoptimized" component of current fusiom tech.)

      So, Chinese do it right. At this point it's not a gamble anymore, it's business. You pay the (increasingly smaller by every iteration) price, you get the product.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Have they reached their target of demonstrating 30 minutes of plasma yet?

        In any case, if it really was doing to cost only $20bn to produce a working commercial scale fusion reactor, that would be a bargain. For comparison, the UK's new Hinkley Point C fission reaction is costing around $45 billion.

        • I'm not that deep into it (I'm just a physics nerd not into plasma physics, but very interested otherwise).

          Quick google search reveals thay they're at least into several minutes GJ [ipp.mpg.de] at least. Interviews with the people working there that I have in the back of my head resonate along the lines of "we could ramp it up faster / longer, but the wear & tear damage would be too much of a setback for now".

          They're essentially at the "incremental engineering efficiency improvement" phase.

          This is why the $20 bn isn

      • After decades, Wendelstein 7X is already working as it should (but it's only a research reactor, not a commercial one). Take-away lesson was that fusion is "here", but the first 1-2 commercial iterations will be more expensive, until.they figure out all the small.optimizations - as it's the case with every research-gone-commercial project.

        Pardon me, but if what you are saying is true, why aren't there articles all over the place screaming about this? I guess I get to waste some time researching Wendelstein 7X. You are an utter asshole for making me research this. I am weary of false promises.

    • Let them spend the money to figure out how in the actual fuck to make it the slightest big viable, because the US and EU certainly have done their share and failed to do anything but make "breakthroughs" that somehow still fail to create cheap commercial power (the thing we were promised when investing in it).

      The US did, actually.

  • to save you a google:
    A Community Plan for Fusion Energy and Discovery Plasma Sciences https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.048... [arxiv.org]
    really hard to summarize, here is a dump of the TOC:

    Table of Contents Preface Executive Summary Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Table of Contents Discovery Plasma Science 1 Vision 1 Mission 1 Criteria 4 Programmatic Recommendations 4 Build: 4 Invest in new facilities 4 Upgrade current facilities 6 Co-locate facilities 7 Support: 8 Support steady funding of plasma science 8

  • How about getting close to passing the robot Turing test (I said close, because it's likely to be absolutely impossible to achieve, but then so many people say that about fusion):

    1. From a table on which there are about 20 screws of varying sizes strewn about confidently pick up only the eyeglass frame screw.
    2. Place and screw the picked-up screw into an eyeglass frame
    3. Pick up a single red m&m only from a table that has m&m strewn on it
    4. Pick up a dry rice grain from a table.
    5. From a small bag o

  • When those in power disinvest in science cuz, âHow do magnets work???â(TM) This is the result. Amazing how bad things get when our democratic government stops investing in the things that made us great at one time. All thanks to the charlatans who feel they need to âoeMake America Great Againâ. This has been building up for decades with the âoegovernment badâ ideology, we are finally getting to the end-game and we are now having to ditch democracy to keep up the charade t

    • Since you can't even get your text right, you're hardly a source on which to rely.
  • As far as I'm aware, the past half century of investments in fusion has yet to show a single technological dividend. I fully believe the world will get to it eventually, but the kind of projects that are getting funded aren't really aimed at accelerating that. They're either weapons research or make-work for the type of physicists that security strategists want to keep employed.

    But there's a more fundamental reason for skepticism: Solar energy is already fusion energy, just without the expense of havin

    • As far as I'm aware, the past half century of investments in fusion has yet to show a single technological dividend. I fully believe the world will get to it eventually, but the kind of projects that are getting funded aren't really aimed at accelerating that. They're either weapons research or make-work for the type of physicists that security strategists want to keep employed.

      There have been massive breakthroughs in high current superconductors in recent years driven in part by fusion research.

      But there's a more fundamental reason for skepticism: Solar energy is already fusion energy, just without the expense of having to control the reaction yourself. The inconvenience of only being available part of the day is trivial compared to that.

      This is a massive underselling of the problem. While it is a relatively trivial matter to produce enough solar to collect enough energy there is no economically viable means of storing and distributing it at required scales with current technology.

      • Solar is growing exponentially. Fusion is continuing on the same public-funded path as usual.

        • This is a massive underselling of the problem. While it is a relatively trivial matter to produce enough solar to collect enough energy there is no economically viable means of storing and distributing it at required scales with current technology.

          Solar is growing exponentially. Fusion is continuing on the same public-funded path as usual.

          Not in mature markets it isn't. As we've seen in markets with significant mix of solar this is self-limiting. Adding more solar leads to market saturation diminishing value in the same way oversupply in any market reduces the value of commodities supplied. This necessarily limits further investment as there is no longer an economic justification for capital expenditures.

          You can to a degree offset with storage to buffer supply yet this also has its own set of diminishing returns. Technology required to s

          • It's only the marginal value that diminishes, not the total. So the result is that investment actually scales in order to maintain the same margins, it doesn't retreat. Solar fields are getting bigger and bigger, and the individual solar unit product is getting cheaper and cheaper.

            Storage is actually quite trivial as technology (I could write several paragraphs consisting of nothing but the existing methods), it's just a matter of how long it takes to go from near-zero infrastructure to worldwide.

            • It's only the marginal value that diminishes, not the total. So the result is that investment actually scales in order to maintain the same margins, it doesn't retreat. Solar fields are getting bigger and bigger, and the individual solar unit product is getting cheaper and cheaper.

              Nobody is talking about "retreating". Self-limiting does not mean retreating. It is already happening with the rooftop market drying up in the US. Nobody is going to invest in new capacity if it doesn't yield sufficient value to pay for itself. They will take their dollars and go invest in something else.

              Cost of solar panels by themselves is today almost irrelevant in terms of overall capital and maintenance costs.

              Storage is actually quite trivial as technology (I could write several paragraphs consisting of nothing but the existing methods), it's just a matter of how long it takes to go from near-zero infrastructure to worldwide.

              It doesn't matter how complex or trivial technology is or what is "possible". It only mat

              • "It is already happening with the rooftop market drying up in the US."

                Not the case. The value of rooftop solar is profound and continually gaining, especially in areas where grids have become less reliable or more expensive (or both). While it's true that the "empire is striking back" in some areas with bullshit fees and HOA restrictions, that just shows what a threat it's become.

                "Cost of solar panels by themselves is today almost irrelevant in terms of overall capital and maintenance costs."

                Exactly. U

    • You are completely out of the loop.
      We made great progress especially in the recent years.

      Perhaps you should read a bit about it.

      • Nothing I said in any way contradicts "made great progress." I said I'm not aware of any technological dividends from it. If you know otherwise, talk about it instead of just claiming you have special knowledge while failing to offer any of it.

        • Erm?
          What?
          We can now do sustained plasma for minutes.

          Half an hour even.

          Are you daft?

          Just go the damn ITER web site. Why do I have to do your leg work?

          • "We can now do sustained plasma for minutes."/

            Which has produced technological dividends such as...?

            Just go the damn ITER web site. Why do I have to do your leg work?"

            Pfft. Just another childish troll bot, demanding others disprove their unsupportive claims.

            • The troll is you.
              As you are out of date since roughly 50 years.

              No idea why people argue with school knowledge that is decades old instead of looking on what is going on.

              https://www.iter.org/ [iter.org]

              The Chinese claim, they can hold sustained plasma fusion for 30 minutes or more.

              Idiot ? Up to you if you are an Idiot or a Troll.

              • It's your claim. Either you get the info for it or shut up. It's not incumbent on other people disprove you.

  • Many /. comments in articles about fusion like to say fusion is always 50 years away, so why should anyone worry if China like to throw more money into the sinkhole, right? *shrug*

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mmell ( 832646 )

      I hope it's always fifty years off, because we still haven't figured out what to do with the radioactive waste products.

      What, you thought that reactor vessel and containment structure could withstand years/decades of exposure to a continuous fusion reaction and not be irradiated? That's why the reactor lifespan has to be predetermined and inflexible - neutron fatigue in materials is a bitch. Not to mention the ionizing stuff/broad spectrum E/M radiation, miscellaneous high-energy baryons and fermions, .

      • Re:It's always 50 years away, right? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Thursday July 11, 2024 @01:32AM (#64617647) Homepage Journal

        I hope it's always fifty years off, because we still haven't figured out what to do with the radioactive waste products.

        That's a political problem. One that China is relatively unlikely to suffer from. Technologically, there's lots of potential solutions.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          They said that about nuclear fission too. The reality is if/when we get fusion working, waste management will be an afterthought, something for the next generation to deal with.

          The bigger issue when it comes to funding is that we have a climate crisis and need solutions now, not decades down the line.

          • China is building nuclear power, fission, left and right currently.

            And yes, waste management is an "afterthought" in most cases, because it is a problem that is really easy to push off. The materials are actually very dense, so it doesn't take that much space to store them, the engineering for doing it is pretty straight forward, and we have all the technology already. The problem actually gets easier over time even.

            If we could build nuclear plants in a year or three like the Chinese, well, then nuclear w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cpurdy ( 4838085 )

        we still haven't figured out what to do with the radioactive waste products

        Are you talking about helium? We can definitely use that! Or are you talking about the reactor itself?

        From: https://www.iaea.org/topics/en... [iaea.org]

        Does Fusion produce radioactive nuclear waste the same way fission does?

        Nuclear fission power plants have the disadvantage of generating unstable nuclei; some of these are radioactive for millions of years. Fusion on the other hand does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste.

      • The plan is either to have neutron free fusion by switching to different fuels or capture most neutrons with lithium to breed tritium.
        Of course parts will always eat neutrons and get radioactive. But that won't be unmanageable as it is not highly radioactive like fission products.
        In the long run we need neutron free fusion - or you have have to throw away most of the reactor every ten years.

      • I hope it's always fifty years off, because we still haven't figured out what to do with the radioactive waste products.

        But we have figured out what to do with the radioactive waste products. In the case of China they dump the waste into the sea and blame it on the Japanese. For the rest of the world the waste is contained in concrete casks for display in museums. After being allowed to decay for 300 years the contents of the casks are considered safe for reprocessing into new fuel. After reprocessing there will be products useful for fuel an others considered useful for medical and industrial processes.

        Or we can have wa

    • We've actually made a lot of advancements in recent years.

      But remember a story that makes a lot of sense. It's basically this: There's a difference between information/data and knowledge. Knowledge is information that is ready to be used, that is understood by humans. For something like fusion, or even just fission, it's a wide spread of knowledge required to advance it - and at the funding levels they were giving, it was just barely keeping the lights on, knowledge wise. As in, experts on the topic we

  • Commercial fusion has missed the boat. The most optimistic calculations puts it far behind solar. Solar disadvantage is that it is not a base load power generation. However, coupling it with fuel cells using hydrogen/something-else can work. According to US dept of energy, a system with 15 day backup would be commercially possible by 2050, at which point, it can supply 90% electricity to 90% consumers. Fusion on the other hand, on the most optimistic basis is not possible before 2070. Solar is ramping up. C

  • Meanwhile most of the meaningful breakthroughs in the West are happening courtesy of private equity.

  • (Rather than spending all that money ourselves... :) ).

    • I came to say this, China just can't win in our eyes. If they're not spending money on technology they're stealing it. Well here they are spending the money and doing the research that we're always crying about them not doing. Be glad They're doing their own research and try to steal it later if you really want to.

  • "it will surpass the U.S. and Europe's magnetic fusion capabilities in three or four years" Sorry to break it to you, they already did. But who cares, if they have it up and running, it is just good for everybody. And at the moment it is better they have it up and running 'commercially' as soon as possible as they still have a lot of coal based powerstations.
  • They want to build it, by hook or crook. I don't really admire it, but I acknowledge it. There's a phrase...put your money where your mouth is. Seven Spirals is kind of right, but who knows, by the time they actually make it viable they might give it away. For the love of humanity maybe. Too much? Better than the mini car full of drunk trombone playing clowns blaring march of the gladiators that the USA is these days.

    • They won't "give it away".
      But they will build plants all over the planet, just like they build harbours, bridges, roads, railroads all over the planet.

  • I imagine a billion dollars gets you a lot more research than a billion dollars in the US. Plus you can assume that any Chinese ex-pats in the US will also be willing to share any information they may find with their ancestral land

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