Give it to me straight. I am 19 and i'm studying physics, so far my first year went better than expected. I think i should focus all my future academic decisions on nuclear fusion, as i see it as the only serious potential money maker. It was always 20 years away, but do you think we will actually crack this? Is it worth it? I want to make big money, any field of physics seems fit at this stage, i just see the demand for fusion energy being way bigger than anything else.
No comento.
Good old Sabine has you covered.
Actual nuclear engineer here. Fusion is pure delusion and false promises. More advanced fission designs is where the future of the field is.
what is the best path to becoming a nuclear engineer and working on new reactor designs?
Fusion has about 10 more years of venture capital flushing money into harebrained schemes before it undergoes the same consolidation the space launch industry is currently undergoing. Scaling the Lawson Criterion isn't the same as scaling the number of transistors on a chip even though retards keep comparing the progress to Moore's law - on a chip you're only replicating a process that's been accomplished already and occurs at a few eV per electron. We haven't even gotten engineering breakeven and the energy needed per electron is four magnitudes higher than in a transistor.
At the end of the day only a few concepts are actually going to be viable because all fusion devices contain plasma and plasma really wants to expand and cool off. The two companies I think have the best shot:
>Commonwealth Fusion Systems: dumbest and smartest first cut solution you can do, just build a tokamak with modern technology and taking advantage of research since ITER's design
>Zap Energy: Shear flow seems to do a good job of smoothing out the kink instability that normally kills z pinch plasmas and they've been producing neutrons for a while, best "alternative" concept to tokamaks
But even if those companies get engineering breakeven there's no way they're competing against grid electricity in price
>t. PhD graduate from a US school with a good plasma physics program who became a MIC pig instead
>Scaling the Lawson Criterion isn't the same as scaling the number of transistors on a chip even though retards keep comparing the progress to Moore's law
That's why i was skeptical, i feel there would need to be a big breakthrough to make this thing feasable, we already know all sides of fusion and we're just "improving" current desings, which is pretty gay honestly. With fission there was a real aha moment, when that guy was walking down the street and though about plutonium and how it releases neutrons when struck. Seems to me that pretty much everything big has been discovered, many share this feeling, what fields have potential and where is the big money?
Any opinions on ICF in light of the good results from NIF?
based vixra schizo. god bless you anon keep up the good work
>Any opinions on ICF in light of the good results from NIF?
The fact that you see it being touted as a huge accomplishment by US government VIPs (Like our Secretary of Energy who has degrees in French and Political Science but not physics or engineering) should tell you enough. Even the most glowing news articles have to sneak in that the engineering energy gain (the only metric that matters for producing power) was like 1 or 2%
It's probably impossible to build a power plant around secondary-emission x-ray implosion. NIF was literally meant to be an H-bomb research facility but failed at that as well. Spherical implosion in particular is difficult to control because you will end up getting spots of uneven sectional density ( [math] /rho r[/math] ) which will go Rayleigh-Taylor unstable. You don't have this problem in H bombs because the primary bomb's x ray flux is so massive and fast asymmetries don't really matter.
Basically the most viable pure ICF concept I can think of was Teller's (I think?) plan to drop H bombs down shafts of molten salt and harvest the heat energy from each detonation over time
You obviously are not one of those since you don't know the difference between fission and fusion. And most NukEs I know have an undergrad in physics or did a dual major in NukeE/physics
>you don't know the difference between fission and fusion
I pretty obviously do. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-4326/ac62f7
>the fact that nuclear fusion reactors produce low level Class C waste (if they worked) means you must be a nuclear engineer to work on a fusion plant
You are painfully dumb
As a said you still need to be vetted you insufferable undergrad shit.
So every computational physicist that works on plasma control, must also be a certified nuclear engineer?
Every thermal engineer working on the power plant side, must also be a vetted and certified nuclear engineer?
Every fucking janitor in a fusion plant, must also be a vetted and certified nuclear engineer?
It still is prime shitposting hours in New Delhi, you might not be stupid you might just be Indian which explains your need to stand on professional qualification instead of actual knowledge
>He literally said he wanted to design reactors
>Well you probably need to be professionally qualified so people don't die in the process
>I'm a first year undergrad so I know EVERYTHING about the real world.
Here Randeep, here's a picture of me at one of the largest particle accelerator facilities in the world. Fusion will be regulated in the same way as this facility. My "qualification" was taking a 1-hour radiological course on one of the lab computers and getting a certificate.
So which major particle accelerator did you work at again? How much lab experience have you racked up?
Holy SHIT this kid went to CERN.
It's actually the RHIC
Here's another place I've worked. Tell me Rakesh, you ever get invited to do research at Princeton, at the most preeminent plasma physics lab in the world?
>American
My condolences
>someone to hold the camera
Fucking normies..."muuhuh Im well adjusted for societal cohesion look at me"
>cult of passion
Fucking namefag lol, didn't have anything else to say in this whole thread besides making fun of this idiot
>idiot
Rangdeep I know you're mad but turns out there are people that exist that have some knowledge of scientific fields sometimes
I'd point you to any of my 9 first author publications if I felt like insta-doxxing myself
Ive always been interested in fusion/fission since I was a kid but its not been my field of focus as an adult, so Im just lurking for anything of interest. Since that breakthrough last year its been more on my radar, though I know its all still many years down the road.
Sometimes people with actual merit post here, you should learn how to spot them from the riff raff.
>i see it as the only serious potential money maker.
This is literally the worst metric you could possibly use to choose your academic future.
you sure do seem to like talking about yourself on social media
>I want to make big money
Quit. Stay the fuck out of STEM. Go be an accountant or manage someone's crypto account.
There's plenty of money to be made in STEM. But people like you who are ONLY in it for the money just clog up the system. You quickly realize that the smart guys make less than the managers, so you stop learning how to do physics and start learning to make powerpoints.
So, because of people like you, we end up with a layer of middle management that has 5% technical knowledge and 95% handshaking skills. And to make your new bosses happy, you create unreasonable schedules, cut budgets, basically do anything to stand in the way of progress because your bonus will be higher.
Often when something is stuck in development hell, it's because of people like you who come in expecting a quick buck and slow everything down.
Fuck off, i loved physics since the 7th grade, often it seems like i'm the only one asking the prof questions and trying to actually understand the things i learn. Is it so bad to want to earn a good salary? I'm not going to work my ass off in uni just to make mid money. Optimally i would like to start or run something myself, if i work for a boss no job is going to be fulfilling. You putting me down just tells me you amounted to little, no fulfilled man would put down a kid just starting.
SPARC seems promising. Wait up 2 years and see how it is going. Don`t do it for the money. You wn't be poor nor rich.
Actual advice for OP here:
If you are interested in nuclear fusion research/VC try to get REUs at Michigan State, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, Rochester's Lab for Laser Energetics, and Lawrence Livermore. If you can't get an REU, try to get hired by one of your professors to do research over the summers.
Try to get into the University of Rochester for graduate school, it's a great place for fusion and if you decide you're more interested in other areas of plasma physics or what have you there's plenty of options for you
Thanks, but im from europe
Could get involved in some ELI stuff as an intern. Check
https://www.eli-beams.eu/about/education/intersnhips/
It would be a good way to get your feet wet in ICF stuff and see if you want to pursue that, or look more at MCF. Getting hands on lab experience is great for getting into graduate school if that's what you're interested in, and if you want to go into a private company they'll appreciate someone that has cut their teeth on some experiments.
I mean shit you could do an internship at ITER as well. Lot's of cool opportunities for Europeans in this field. Whatever you decide on pursuing, I wish you luck and happiness, and think about coming to the US for graduate school when the time comes!
You need to be highly qualified and vetted nuclear engineer to work with anything close to nuclear reactors, leave it to the pros.
And btw you're not just wrong because I say so, it's now official :https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/nrc-decision-separates-fusion-energy-regulation-from-nuclear-fission/#:~:text=NRC%20Decision%20Separates%20Fusion%20Energy%20Regulation%20from%20Nuclear%20Fission,-Ensuring%20Regulatory%20Certainty&text=On%20Friday%2C%20April%2014%2C%20the,regulatory%20regime%20as%20particle%20accelerators.
I don't even believe in fusion, as I said
here I take US taxpayer money to figure out more efficient ways to blow up brown children now. But it's obvious you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to any sort of nuclear technology or its regulation, and you should try to stop contributing to the thread until you get a bit more educated
This video explains some things.
Fusion won't be economically viable so you won't make "big money" on it as research is never really lucrative. If you want to make big money on fusion, start a construction company and then get hired to build PROTO, considering your age you might just be in time for that.
>Anon with actual knowledge of a filed appears ITT
>wikipedia-educated pseuds immediately begin attacking him out of envy
>immediately descend into ad hominems, not a single shred of actual scientific discussion or debate
Never fucking change LULZ, lol
>I'm 19 years old I can build reactors without any government oversight and be IRON MAN
It's not worth the effort.
You're right, when you're BTFO by actual codified nuclear policy you don't really have any recourse
And I still don't know why you're strawmanning me wanting to do fusion myself, I've said multiple times ITT that it's not never going to be economical within our lifetimes. Again, I guess you just can't argue using facts and logic
>19
Step aside, gramps. Fusion is a young mans game.
Lmfao....3 years!
Well, they gotta be real.
Zoomers wont know unless they dripp.
That's a fusor any idiot can make one (no offence to iron man obviously)
>offence
Holy fuck Indian confirmed lol
If you're going to keep insulting me do it by replying directly to my posts instead of being a passive aggressive little bitch like every punjabi shit-brown homosexual from your subcontinent
I'm actually English and fyi even LLW is regulated
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/254393/Low_level_waste_policy.pdf
Right, a Punjabi that has English citizenship
And no no, we're not talking about regulation of low level waste, we're talking about needing to be a "highly vetted" nuclear engineer as you would need to in a fission plant, when in the US the new NRC delineation places fusion plants at the same level as particle accelerator facilities under Part 30.
Again, to your New Delhi Technical Institute-educated brain, maybe an hour of radiological training online is "highly vetted," but at least talking about the US (with the rest of the world to follow), you do not need any formal education in nuclear engineering to work in any hypothetical fusion power plants.
He said design you illiterate homosexual.
Right design work is part of the work typically done at these fusion power plants right now
Tell me Rakesh, what part of designing a central solenoid stack involves nuclear engineering? Or how about designing klystrons that operate at the correct frequency for microwave heating? Any nuclear physics involved in those?
Maybe you think designing a nuclear fusion reactor can be done by one person, which explains why iron man comes to mind you don't actually know anything about nuclear fusion except comic books and wikipedia.
Holy fuck it's great when pseuds like you get exposed it reminds me there's literally nothing to be gotten from LULZ if you're already an actual scientists or engineer
You are just arguing semantics, also fyi you will probably be working on my breakthrough from now onwards.
Why'd you delete the post the first time, Sundar?
Also please talk more about this breakthrough, I'm interested.
>designing parts of a nuclear fusion reactor doesn't count as designing a nuclear fusion reactor, it's just semantics
Lol
this channel seems pretty good https://www.youtube.com/@ImprobableMatter
tl:dw probably not happening any time soon.
>semantics
No Gundeep, you just couldn't tell an electron cyclotron antenna from a thomson scattering port, and yet you're here trying to give people career advice.
>Also fyi you will probably working on my breakthrough from now on.
You're the CTO of the prime contractor I work for now, and have a new way to kill thousands of your relatives at once? I'm excited!
Can you design and build entire fusion reactor at 19 that produces LLW without regulation or people from a government agency overseeing it? even if you do produce something applicable to reactor design (as I did) it will need to be verified and tested by the relevant authorities before it is applied. You are simply deluded if you think fusion is going to be a common as the petrol engine.
Who are you even arguing against?
>without regulation or people from a government agency overseeing it?
Don't think anyone said that, just that Part 30 of the NRC in the USA regulates fusion plants at a much lower level than fission plants
>even if you do produce something applicable to reactor design (as I did) it will need to be verified and tested by the relevant authorities before it is applied
Mmmm no one disagreed with this, just with the fact that you need to be "a vetted nuclear engineer professional" to work in a nuclear fusion plant
> You are simply deluded if you think fusion is going to be a common as the petrol engine.
And nobody said this either
Are you just arguing with ghosts now because you're that butthurt? You have to invent arguments because that's the only way you can still feel like you're right, and not a streetshitter with a wikipedia education?
>petrol
You are so fucking brown it's funny, and I'm a muttmerican saying that
I said design multiple times. You are at the very best a technician.
>You are at the very best a technician.
Which makes me more qualified than you because you're still studying in your New Delhi Tech night course for data certification.
As I already said, you can design parts for a fusion plant without any need for "vetting" at all. I know your English is very weak because you just immigrated, but designing parts is part of designing. Use all 90 of those IQ points Vishnu blessed you with.
I could do this all day, but I need to go back to my WFH job of getting paid over $200k a year to design missiles to blow up you and 50 of your paki cousins, but hopefully you've already exposed yourself as such an idiot my work here is done.
Next time, leave it to the professionals 😉
Nice larp kid.
>Reminder: LULZ is for discussing topics pertaining to science and mathematics, not for helping you with your homework or helping you figure out your career path.
There will always be demand for those who are good with fission. Plus nuclear fission/ fusion are cool as fuck. Its like literal magic