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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

#171

Post by [deleted] »

rtx wrote: post #160
scriptkiddy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like someone who has never visited a desert. As a Southern California native, I am intimately familiar with the Mojave, Anza Borrego, and Sonora deserts. I will tell you that these deserts are far from "crappy land that nothing can grow on" as you put it. The North American deserts are areas of huge ecological and geological diversity. They are also some of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring landscapes that…

Thanks for writing this. I am not sure from where this solar lobby sprung up suddenly. If people are so eco conscious, that they support solar. I am not sure how they are ok with have huge parcels of land be covered with panels. We are not even talking about pollution from storage technologies.

[deleted]

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

#172

Post by brokenmachine »

antisthenes wrote: post #75
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…

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…

> it's also going to require even more expensive gear to cut multiple inch thick conductors.

I agree with most of what you've said, but cutting a few inch thick conductors doesn't seem all that hard. I think a single stick of dynamite would do it pretty easily. Two for good measure. This would still be an act of war of course.

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

#173

Post by ianai »

antisthenes wrote: post #75
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…

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…

I also think the location thing may be addressed in later solar technology. i.e. For our currently tech the sun really needs to be out. But as far as I remember, there's still a good amount of energy available on cloudy days (assuming it's not pitch black). As solar technology progresses so too will the locations it can be installed increase.

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

#174

Post by WalterBright »

Retric wrote: post #142
WalterBright wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Electric prices have never been fixed at scale. It's really only small scale consumers that get a fixed but often higher rate. See Enron for example. Changing when energy is cheap does not break the model.

My electric rates have been fixed rates 24/7 for decades.

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

#175

Post by foxylad »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #63
labcomputer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, you need to plaster a vast area in the desert with solar plants, which brings along all sorts of concentrated security risks This sentence seems to be at odds with itself. How does needing a large area concentrate security risks? If anything it seems to disperse them. Unlike a coal or nuclear plant, you can't just walk up to a critical part of a solar farm and blow it up. Any part that you damage is re…

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…

> ...one just cuts the cables

Isn't this a problem with any centralised electrical power source? In fact I've always thought that terrorists could cause far more disruption by taking out a couple of transmission line towers than blowing people up. And it would only take a decent sized spanner in many cases.

The only solution to this (and to the massive resistive losses over power lines) is localising power production. And that's where solar, wind, small-scale hydro and local battery storage look very effective.

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

#176

Post by badosu »

rtx wrote: post #158
kpil wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah! I was going to write water pump reservoirs or at some price point electrolysis + fuel cells, but making cheap water in the daytime is also good.

We already have a solution to all our energy needs. Funny to see people come up with outlandish suggestions. I am not sure what I am missing. Because logic points to only one direction.

Well... Outlandish is to think that replacing a huge amount of infrastructure of a type to another is as simple as your sentence makes it look like.

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

#177

Post by adventured »

antisthenes wrote: post #75
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…

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…

> I'm surprised to see this kind of simplistic reductionist thinking on HN.

The thinking is in fact correct. The parent should have used a better, more serious, and guaranteed inevitable scenario: war. Bomb the concentrated infrastructure and take down all of Europe's power supply. It wouldn't take very high precision and it wouldn't take a vast number of hits: it would require a few, clumsy hits, which would be nearly impossible to stop.

The present system, which tends to be far more distributed than not (to take down all the power in Europe today, you need to hit a lot of spread out targets), is vastly superior to extreme concentration.

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

#178

Post by vinceguidry »

logfromblammo wrote: post #140
Robotbeat wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a horrible solution. Water is even less portable than energy, even the driest desert can't afford to import water. You're trading a highly liquid but hard to transport commodity for a highly illiquid and hard to transport commodity.

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

#179

Post by candiodari »

gregmac wrote: post #100
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…

> "Just cut the cables" isn't trivial. Well, how many towers do you have to knock down using explosives before the lines fail?

Just 1.

The feet of the towers are simply accessible, so there's nothing stopping people from even just using a metal file. It wouldn't be safe, but you'd get the job done.

Or just plow a truck into their feet. You only really need to bend one of the feet and the wind will do the rest.

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

#180

Post by Retric »

WalterBright wrote: post #174
Retric wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric prices have never been fixed at scale. It's really only small scale consumers that get a fixed but often higher rate. See Enron for example. Changing when energy is cheap does not break the model.

My electric rates have been fixed rates 24/7 for decades.

Are you using KW, MW, or GW of power?

So yea, residential customers get a fixed rate but that's because there is no point in demand based pricing. They simply charge you enough that it makes little difference what time of day you use slightly more power. In the future the same is likely to be true.

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