{"id":59033,"date":"2021-08-18T07:46:33","date_gmt":"2021-08-18T12:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59033"},"modified":"2021-08-18T07:46:33","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T12:46:33","slug":"the-only-thing-worse-than-an-energy-collapse-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59033","title":{"rendered":"The only thing worse than an energy collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The only thing worse than an energy collapse<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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We\u00a0learned recently<\/a>\u00a0that one of the last coal power stations in the UK is bidding to become the first commercial nuclear fusion plant on Earth.\u00a0 The news should be taken with a large pinch of salt\u2026 nuclear fusion has been 25 years in the future since before I was born and it will likely still be 25 years in the future the day after I die.\u00a0 Nevertheless, nuclear fusion reactions have been generated; albeit for just a few seconds and at a massive energy cost.\u00a0 And the physicists and engineers working on the multinational (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor)\u00a0ITER project<\/a>\u00a0in the south of France have something of a spring in their step just now; claiming that:<\/p>\n

\u201cITER will be the first fusion device to produce net energy. ITER will be the first fusion device to maintain fusion for long periods of time. And ITER will be the first fusion device to test the integrated technologies, materials, and physics regimes necessary for the commercial production of fusion-based electricity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It is worth noting that ITER is an experiment rather than a working power plant.\u00a0 \u00a0And just as well; because even its proponents point to an energy return on investment (EROI) of just 10:1 \u2013 about half of the return from a wind turbine.\u00a0 Even this may be a slight of hand, according to Steven Krivit at\u00a0New Energy Times<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cWidespread false and exaggerated claims made by leaders in the fusion community have caused many people and institutions to convey the incorrect claims to a wide cross-section of the general public. Below, I\u2019ve listed four of\u00a0several hundred examples<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0I\u2019ve located. Each of these statements, through no fault of the authors, is fundamentally wrong:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The only thing worse than an energy collapse We\u00a0learned recently\u00a0that one of the last coal power stations in the UK is bidding to become the first commercial nuclear fusion plant on Earth.\u00a0 The news should be taken with a large pinch of salt\u2026 nuclear fusion has been 25 years in the future since before I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[31147,31631,5931,10992,31360],"class_list":["post-59033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-consciousness-of-sheep","tag-energy-collapse","tag-iter","tag-nuclear-fusion","tag-tim-watkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59034,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59033\/revisions\/59034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}