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Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

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Re: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

#131

Post by hueving »

Panoramix wrote: post #116
short_sells_poo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I worded that sentence poorly. Let's assume two scenarios: a) We create a 200 square mile solar field in the Sahara, from which cables run to Europe to supply electricity. To take this plant out, one just cuts the cables. There, you just plunged Europe into darkness. b) We create a 20x 10 square mile solar fields in the Sahara, all dispersed over a very large area. Well, this is an engineering and construction…

"just cut the cables" Not that easy. Furthermore, it's the same for any large power plant of any type. This is a very poor argument against solar. It's also a stretch to imagine that Europe would rely on a single power plant for its sustenance.

The commenter is literally suggesting that it rely on a giant solar deployment.

Re: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

#132

Post by hueving »

jandrese wrote: post #105
Arizhel wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think northern African nations are going to let European nations station troops there and take over a big chunk of their land? That doesn't seem realistic, and seems rather imperialistic actually. Letting the northern African nations provide the security is just plain folly, and also makes Europe completely dependent on these economically backwards and frequently hostile nations.

Why wouldn't an African nation want to charge rent to some European country for vast amounts of land that are otherwise literally worthless[1]? It's not like they're strangers to private company security forces that are basically just extrajudicial mercenaries. History says any company that wants to do this just needs to apply some bribes to the appropriate officials. [1] In the sense that nobody is willing to buy it…

Yes, destabilized countries always act rationally on the global market. /s

Re: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

#133

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

marcgcombi wrote: post #62
Robotbeat wrote: post #26

There's nothing quite like trying to get fusion to work for a while to make you appreciate how awesome fission technology is. If we applied even half the cleverness needed for fusion to making better fission technology, we'd probably be way better off. ...and then there's solar. Why even bother with producing the energy, just capture it with a very thin solid state device! Just need to automate the planting of solar…

Bump to Robotbeat. Fission reactor designs, with many clever advances in safety, have never been tested because of the lack of support from U.S. DoE. Pilot-scale reactors are expensive, but would really help to advance our working knowledge of these new technologies. Overall, nuclear fission has gotten a bad wrap. As for the cost of storage, that was worked out 20-30 years ago via the Yuca Mountain facility. If one o…

But that is kinda how everything goes with nuclear. You can't plan for the "if everything goes right" scenario. Shit happens. Humans are very prone to errors. But nuclear proponents always want to pretend that isn't the case and explain away very real things that have happened as being anomalous- when in reality, errors and mistakes are the way the universe works.

Re: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

#134

Post by lucaspiller »

sfifs wrote: post #111
theptip wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How exactly do you propose to get that electricity from the desert to say Finland? High voltage DC transmission works fine for this problem. All of the engineering challenges have been credibly worked out and priced ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec ). The main problems with this approach are political, in that it requires massive cooperation between many countries over very long time scales (decades). Why i…

The danger is political risk, not necessarily theft or vandalism. Any dependency on territory not under your own societal control can be used to hold you hostage and cannot be depended upon. Forget the solar farm, easiest is to cut power lines. (explosives?)

Europe imports around 30% of its oil and gas from Russia. The pipelines between the east and west were originally setup during Soviet times.

Given how stable that has been it seems unlikely that a small African country, who will be getting a big chunk of cash from Europe, would do anything stupid.

Re: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

#135

Post by WalterBright »

Robotbeat wrote: post #52
short_sells_poo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't ignored the part where you mentioned overprovisioning. Where do you propose to put the excess power during sunny days? Stable baseline sources like nuclear cannot just be shut down or spun up on a moment's notice to accomodate a vast number of solar energy entering or leaving the grid. At the same time, we don't have a capability to store electricity at sufficient scale so we do need the stable baseline to…

This really is not a big technical problem. You simply don't output the power. This is trivial with any kind of decent power-optimizing inverter setup commonly available today. Solar PV isn't spinning a turbine that needs to find a load. If you disconnect a solar panel, it doesn't damage itself, it just sits there. But I'm sure we'd eventually find uses for this extra energy. Like producing ammonia for agriculture.

You can use the excess to create fuel, such as cracking H out of H2O, and then use that to reduce the nighttime problem. I don't think it'll be hard to find a use for excess power.

Re: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

#136

Post by WalterBright »

opo wrote: post #103
Retric wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term Baseload power is not a goal, it's a Problem with some types of power not being flexible. In that context, soar is closer to Baseload power than peaking power plants. Yes, it currently better matches demand than Baseload power, but as you ramp it up the supply / demand miss mach will simply shift around the day. Turning on some peaking power plants at night vs the day is not a significant issue. Further, the…

You are handwaving away huge issues here. As Bill Gates said in the same interview I quoted from before: >"...It’s kind of ironic: Germany, by installing so much rooftop solar, has it that both their coal plants and their rooftop solar are available in the summer, and the price of power during the day actually goes negative—they pay people to take it. Then at night the only source is the coal, and because the energy…

Nobody ever mentions varying the price of electricity to reduce demand when the sun isn't shining. We need to get past the assumption that electricity prices should be fixed.

This won't solve the baseload problem, but it will reduce it.

Re: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

#137

Post by Zarathust »

jerf wrote: post #32
leephillips wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the author note that? "Tritium has a half life of 12.3 years which means it will be dangerous for at least 120 years, since the hazardous life for a radionuclide is ten to twenty times longer than its half-life"¹ If you come in contact with it during that time you will get cancer. [1] https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/factsheets/tritiumba...

If tritium is released in its atomic form, it is only a hyper-local threat, both geographically and temporally. I wasn't able to confirm this with a quick Google, but I imagine tritium will just want to go up, up, up as fast as it can, where it will never bother anybody again. (It's heavier than hydrogen but still lighter per-atom than helium, which has the same behavior). It doesn't have the problem fission fuels ha…

Tritium binds with oxygen and forms tritiated water. It then contaminates the food chain and cause cancer. This is a current concern for populations living around nuclear power plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritiated_water

Re: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

#138

Post by sgift »

mikeash wrote: post #129
Robotbeat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is always some impact. There's a disease in our energy discussions where if something has ANY effect or can be measured at all, it is considered a big no-no. We lack a sense of proportion. Radiation is SUPER easy to measure even tiny amounts, for instance, since you can look for the signature of a certain decay tree, so people hear that you can measure radiation from Fukushima and lose their minds. Likewise, pe…

An example of this which always gets me with nuclear power is the waste problem. The fact that the waste remains dangerous for tens of thousands of years is always held up as a huge problem, completely ignoring the vast quantities of extremely poisonous chemical waste produced by other industries which lasts forever . "This waste is dangerous." "OK, guess we'd better be careful with it." "This waste is dangerous for…

> "This waste is dangerous for the next 10,000 years." "Holy shit! We need to build a high-tech underground fortress to contain it!"

Time is a major risk factor. Look where we were 10,000 years ago. There is relevant chance that 10,000 years in the future no one will easily understand the danger of radiation anymore, so we have to prepare for that possibility.

Re: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

#139

Post by semi-extrinsic »

mseebach wrote: post #89
antisthenes wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised to see this kind of simplistic reductionist thinking on HN. "Just cut the cables" isn't trivial. Have you ever seen a high voltage tower? Not only are they not accessible without professional gear, it's also going to require even more expensive gear to cut multiple inch thick conductors. In all likelihood he power to Europe will be transmitted via multiple undersea cables, the effort of disrupting which…

> the effort of disrupting which would be unavailable to all but state agents It's a good thing then that there is a long history of all state agents in northern Africa maintaining friendly and stable relations with European governments. (Yes, said Europeans also carry a great deal of responsibility for this situation, but that doesn't make the situation any more tractable).

Almost like the natural gas pipelines that come into Europe from our best buddy Vlad.

Re: Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

#140

Post by logfromblammo »

Robotbeat wrote: post #52
short_sells_poo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't ignored the part where you mentioned overprovisioning. Where do you propose to put the excess power during sunny days? Stable baseline sources like nuclear cannot just be shut down or spun up on a moment's notice to accomodate a vast number of solar energy entering or leaving the grid. At the same time, we don't have a capability to store electricity at sufficient scale so we do need the stable baseline to…

This really is not a big technical problem. You simply don't output the power. This is trivial with any kind of decent power-optimizing inverter setup commonly available today. Solar PV isn't spinning a turbine that needs to find a load. If you disconnect a solar panel, it doesn't damage itself, it just sits there. But I'm sure we'd eventually find uses for this extra energy. Like producing ammonia for agriculture.

Desalination of seawater seems a safe bet for excess solar power.
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