If True, Cristina Can Kiss Vaca Muerta Goodbye

[camberiu]

Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor, has just announced that they achieved a technical breakthrough that will allow the manufacturing of commercially viable fusion reactors within 10 years.
I usually take any claims about fusion reactors with a HUGE bucket of salt, but let's just say that Lockheed Martin has earned lots of credibility over the years.

Without getting too technical, fusion reactors are a way to produce virtually unlimited energy without waste or pollution. Having a fusion reactor is literally having your own portable star, as a source of energy. It would be something as transformational to human society as the discovery of fire, agriculture or writing. It would make oil, solar, wind and nuclear energy sources completely obsolete and unnecessary.
Before steam and combustion engines, 99% of the population of the world lived their entire lives without ever going further than 10km from the place they were born. Today, we find it trivial to hop on a plane and travel thousands of miles in a few hours and become a "permatourists" on another continent, or bring in fresh fruits from the other side of the planet. The amount of energy unleashed by fusion reactors would dwarf the energy we get from fossil fuels by many orders of magnitude. We can't even begin to imagine the things that would become possible with a commercial fusion reactor. 



Lockheed Claims Breakthrough on Fusion Energy

 

[Hybrid Ambassador]

Whmmm, Uranium or Thorium as base fuel used?

 

[camberiu]

Nope. Apparently not. You just need a short burst of high energy to initiate the fusion reaction, and after that the process would be entirely self sustaining, so would not need uranium, plutonium or thorium as a base fuel at all.

 

[Ries]

It doesnt say how much they will cost, but it says they will be used in Nuclear Subs- which go for $2 Billion apiece and up.

They might have working models in ten years, but its going to be a lot longer than that before they get cheap enough to compete with raping the landscape and digging up coal and fracking.

 

[camberiu]

"[background=rgb(252, 252, 252)]It doesnt say how much they will cost, but it says they will be used in Nuclear Subs- which go for $2 Billion apiece and up."

Yes, 2 billion a pop because you need complex cooling, high pressure vessels and so forth. Lockheed is claiming that their fusion reactions would be much smaller and simpler than the fission reactor, which would also mean cheaper. Also remember that there is no uranium to mine, enrich and dispose off afterwards. All you have is hydrogen turning into helium. [/background]

 

[EdRooney]

What's the over/under on Mme Kirchner still being alive in ten years? Or on the planet not having been fracked to oblivion by that point?

 

[camberiu]

Fracking in general, and vaca muerta in particular, are becoming less attractive by the minute as oil prices tank. It does take a lot of money and resources to extract oil from shale, so high oil prices is essential to make those investments viable. Combine that with the possibility that Lockheed's Skunkworks has been able to pull a rabbit out of a hat here (would not be the first time) and a multi-billion dollar investment on vaca muerta becomes even less likely.

 

[ghost]

The US went oil independent last July . Right now the Saudis are tanking oil prices in order to make fraking unprofitable. It is unlikely to work because they can't hold prices down long enough to out last the big player. I'm with you Camberiu...LM has a pretty good track record on these matters and an announcement like that takes major balls as they will be examined with microscopes.

 

[Ries]

Oh, I dont doubt that this is a technology that is coming- I just think that it will be a while before its cost competitive with fossil fuels. These will be very complicated, and very expensive devices, and the rollout will be for military, space, and extreme environments- antarctica, for example.

Remember,we have fuel cell technology right now- but its not cost competitive for most situations.

 

[johnw100]

"produce virtually unlimited energy without waste or pollution."

I think most of my Argentine neighbours already think they have this here , going by how they leave their outside lights and aircons on 24/7.