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Ehldas t1_j6mut8f wrote

Reply to comment by Earthling7228320321 in Major milestone for EU energy: Wind and solar produced more electricity than gas in 2022 by Zomaarwat

>Right now no amount of engineering alone is going to overcome the problem of neutrons rapidly destroying equipment when they start pouring out of the fusion reaction.

Really? You should tell that to the engineers who invented the FLiBe blanket, specifically designed to capture the neutrons "flooding out" and turn them into useful tritium to feed back into the fusion cycle, while also protecting the rest of the fusion reactor vessel.

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Earthling7228320321 t1_j6n17bz wrote

So then why are they still a problem?

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Ehldas t1_j6n3rrg wrote

I didn't say neutrons were a specific problem : you did.

There are plenty of other engineering problems, including long duration high-temperature divertors, tungsten chemistries for wall endurance, new magnet chemistries of higher power and smaller size, computing designs to continue optimising plasma flow control especially at edges, and overall reactor design for ease of construction, maintenance, etc.

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Earthling7228320321 t1_j6n6yss wrote

My point was that we'd solve these problems a lot faster if worked on getting along. But I realize that's just a pipe dream so this whole convo is kinda rooted in pointlessness. I wasn't really arguing about the specifics.

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