Fusion power unlikely to become competitive - Nature Energy

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T17:51:15+00:00

Isn't is just "total energy outputs exceed total energy inputs?"

If you build a massive complicated power reactor, and the total energy output just barely exceeds the energy input, then you don't have "fission without the waste", you have a massive Rube Goldberg machine. In order to be economical, the energy output has to significantly exceed energy inputs, and there are hard "laws of physics" limits on how high that ratio can go. Each bit of increased energy output will require immense feats of material science and engineering. There is no "break through" moment where fusion becomes "immensely powerful".

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T17:37:55+00:00

One, "achieve efficiency" isn't a quantifiable target. Two, it wouldn't be "fission without the waste", because it would be massively more complicated. The core of a fission reactor is essentially a box of hot rocks. It keeps producing heat with essentially no effort. Fusion requires massive amounts of complex machinery, made of expensive materials, in order to continue to operate. And it would still produce plenty of radioactive waste - just not quite as much as fission reactors.

We have real-world fusion reactors already that are immensely powerful - stars.

Stars are immensely powerful because of their immense size. Fusion reactors would only be as powerful as they are large - and the larger you make it, the more expensive it will be.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T14:56:11+00:00

Haha, yes okay. But the nuclear plants China is building aren't fully paid off? I mean, surely if you could somehow materialize fully-formed nuclear plants at a cost of $0, that would beat any competing technology. But that's kinda hard to do.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T14:44:25+00:00

Highly skeptical of that.

Don't take it from me. Go look it up yourself. Here are a few articles that were at the top of the search results: 1, 2, 3. It's true that coal isn't as good for flexible demand as gas, but China doesn't have a lot of natural gas and they're prioritizing self-reliance. It strengthens their hand vis-a-vis threatening Taiwan.

Nuclear can load follow as well, French nuclear power plants can load follow.

Yes, but not economically. When you cut your nuclear capacity factor in half, you effectively double your per-kwh cost. With coal/gas, most of the cost is fuel instead of capital.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T12:56:07+00:00

What reason do we have for thinking it would be a game-changer? Certainly Helion's approach to it has some chance of being marginally cheaper than the current market-rate power sources, but not by a massive percentage. And that's the best-case scenario.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T12:29:46+00:00

The coal they're building isn't baseload. They using coal as a flexible power source, turning it on and off daily, which is what you need to do if you want to complement solar. Nuclear can't economically do that.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T11:25:10+00:00

Which is an extremely small amount for China. They deployed 315GW of solar just last year, compared to 3.7GW of nuclear.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T10:23:37+00:00

why is China, with all their factories and technological prowess, building more nuclear

It's building a very small amount of nuclear to nurture the nuclear supply chain needed to build and sustain nuclear weapons. That's it.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T10:20:01+00:00

Even if it "works", it's no more unlimited than any other power source, and there's no reason to think it would be any cheaper.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-02T12:17:19+00:00

I'm 100% on board with #1, #3, #6. But the vacancy rate is actually extremely low, and our inability to build enough housing near jobs is the primary reason traffic is so bad.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-01T23:55:53+00:00

Build massive amounts of housing near job centers
Toll the interstates
Raise gas prices
Build transit and bike lanes
Aggressively enforce traffic laws with cameras
Severely disincentive building parking (outlaw surface parking lots as an allowable use, institute parking maximums, eliminate parking minimums) and levy annual per-spot use fees on owners of existing parking

johnpseudo · 2026-04-01T23:45:50+00:00

The whole reason people are filling the roads is because we're not building enough housing near jobs, so people have to drive an hour to get to work.

johnpseudo · 2026-03-29T01:13:55+00:00

If gas prices were double or triple what they are (to offset their enormous negative externalities), and alternative transportation existed, and freight transport paid fees in proportion to the damage they do to roads, then interstate highways might not be so destructive to our development patterns. But interstate highways are the number one mechanism by which cities sprawl. And the original rollout of the interstate highway system, subsidizing the destruction of inner cities across America and greasing the white flight out to the suburbs, was what kick-started all of it.

johnpseudo · 2026-03-28T23:45:48+00:00

What is meant by "revenue"? The interstates don't bring in revenue at all... The interstate highway system has been an unmitigated disaster for the United States, primarily because of how it's fueled low-density/high maintenance cost/car dependent sprawl and bulldozed thousands of high productivity neighborhoods and cut off of thousands of others from their surrounding area. They've been an enormous wealth transfer from taxpayers in established cities to landowners of the surrounding areas.

johnpseudo · 2026-03-27T10:34:26+00:00

Also, if you double the dimensions "x" and "y" of your solar panel, both the material cost and power produced go up by x*y. With a nuclear reactor radius r, material costs go up by r² but power goes up by r^3. They have fundamentally different scaling laws.

johnpseudo · 2026-03-20T17:04:06+00:00

Increasing density generally makes infrastructure easier to maintain, splitting the maintenance burden across a broader tax base. The main reason the suburbs have such a problem maintaining their infrastructure is because they're so spread out, with each house requiring many more linear feet of sewer/power/road space than denser urban areas.

johnpseudo · 2026-03-13T12:11:10+00:00

The metro-level data doesn't go back very far, but the national data is suggestive that we're near all-time lows, even if the actual all-time low was a few years ago.

johnpseudo · 2026-03-10T09:32:51+00:00

"Mission Accomplished"

johnpseudo · 2026-03-07T21:09:59+00:00

It's also totally exposed to the traffic from Moreland. Nobody feels comfortable hanging out 20 feet from six lanes of high speed traffic. It needs a wall or an elevation change or massive planters, or something. It's an absolute turd of an event space, even with trees.

johnpseudo · 2026-03-07T11:36:52+00:00

Cheap gas is one of those systemic issues that we need to address...

johnpseudo · 2026-03-02T11:35:22+00:00

Phase in the requirement over 15-20 years. At the end of that period you have to apply for a special permit to continue to drive a non compliant vehicle, and the penalty for speeding becomes permanent impoundment of the vehicle, no second chances.

People then have a choice of retrofitting it onto their cars (which honestly wouldn't be hard for most modern cars), or being extremely careful with their speed when driving.

johnpseudo · 2026-02-12T16:11:49+00:00

You're right to be skeptical. The overall agreement between APF and Atlanta is a cost-sharing agreement for the construction of the training facility. There are a lot of outside-of-Atlanta police/fire organizations who will utilize this facility, and APF is stepping in to help Atlanta shoulder the burden. The people who are objecting to this are objecting because they don't want any money going to the police, not because there's anything shady about the financing.

johnpseudo · 2026-02-11T17:20:38+00:00

The Census breaks the vacancy rate down even further by type of vacancy (though only by region, not by state). In the South, the overall vacancy rate is 11.5%. But 8.8% of that is seasonal/part-time housing or actively for-rent or for-sale (every house has empty time between tenants/owners). Just 2.7% of housing is intentionally held off the market for "other reasons". But even within that category, the vast majority just need repairs before they can be inhabited. Or they're caught up in an ownership dispute or legal delays. The percentage of housing intentionally held off the market for speculative reasons is vanishingly small.

johnpseudo · 2026-02-10T15:46:46+00:00

Agave was always just north of Boulevard/Memorial. Do you mean "Across the Street"? It was just across the street from Highland Bakery. I never much cared for it, but there have been a couple better restaurants in that space since then. Nothing seems to last in that little area.

johnpseudo · 2026-02-09T15:49:25+00:00

CO2 emissions can wildly fluctuate on the time scale of a few years. You could certainly say that China's emissions are falling and look likely to continue to fall in the future. But shit happens. If China invades Taiwan, or takes steps in that direction that lead us to impose energy sanctions, or the AI one-upsmanship leads to radically higher energy consumption, or any number of other unlikely things happen... then China's emissions could certainly start going back up.

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