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More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

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Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#451

Post by ascar »

cycomanic wrote: post #416
bratbag wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost factor isn't as relevant as you think, as this is an apple's to oranges comparison. Renewables are too unreliable to act as baseline generation for a country. In the UK last year for example we had very little wind, so we had to ramp up our gas power output to make up for our shortages in renewables. We burned through much of our gas reserves before the Ukraine war started, because of Renewable power unreliabili…

Just repeating the baseline myth does not make it true. Nuclear does not compete with gas it competes with coal and renewables. It is often technically difficult but more importantly economically prohibitive to run nuclear as on demand sources. So for both renewables and nuclear you need some sort of storage or peakers. Moreover nuclear is not the beacon of reliability, Frances nuclear plants were running to only 60%…

> So for both renewables and nuclear you need some sort of storage or peakers.

One thing I don't understand here is the problem with overproduction. If we actually have excess electricity (as in not needed as electricity later) can't we dynamically use that for active carbon capturing? The efficiency of that process isn't even that important then as the main goal is to remove carbon from the atmosphere with carbon free energy.

Having carbon free overproduction sounds like a good thing to me. It's the occasional underproduction that's hard to handle.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#452

Post by ncmncm »

JohnBooty wrote: post #291
acidburnNSA wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The excitement in fusion indicates a total failure of fission people to effectively explain what they are capable of.

Yeah. The opposition and scaremongering from the fossil fuel industry and scaremongering science-deniers has been utterly effective. No surprise there. What's dismaying and frankly shocking is the utter failure of the nuclear industry to mount even a feeble defense in the public eye.

You can repeat this forever, but you will be wrong forever.

The people you credit with nixing nukes do not have that much influence. What did in nukes was nukes themselves. They cost too much, always have, and the constant drumbeat of violated regulations, slipshod construction, and lax operation all together make everyone eager for alternatives.

And here come renewables, totally safe, work at any scale, cheap and getting cheaper. No one will miss nukes, their always-dodgy cost accounting, their burden on public funding, or their promoters' constant dishonesty.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#453

Post by depressedpanda »

adrianN wrote: post #392
manmal wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the sun is not always shining (and half the year not at the right angle), and wind is not always blowing. Unless a country has access to always-on sources (like sea currents), energy must be stored or things must be burned. Storage is hard and energy intensive to build, and many countries would need a few months worth of storage to never bother about burning stuff again. And that’s _a lot_, you wo…

Storage is certainly not harder to build than nuclear power plants. Power-to-Gas is technologically quite straightforward. The research that's currently happening is just to make it cheaper until we have enough renewables for grid-scale storage to make sense. The really hard part of becoming carbon neutral is the sectors other than electricity, e.g. heating and transportation, but nuclear power won't help you there.

Why do you think fission can't help with heating? Heat is one of the by-products of running a reactor.

E.g.: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-power-could-heat-your-h...

https://www.powermag.com/district-heating-supply-from-nuclea...

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#454

Post by Matumio »

freeflight wrote: post #322
MaxDPS wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine the excess energy goes out into space. They key difference between nuclear and fossil fuels is the emissions each generates. Fossil fuels burn into greenhouse gasses which trap in heat. If we switch to nuclear, those greenhouse gasses won't accumulate as much.

The near-perfect vacuum of space actually makes it quite bad at absorbing heat, that's why anything we put up there, like space stations and satellites need huge radiators to keep everything cool enough to actually operate. While thermal pollution in Earths atmosphere is a very real and relevant issue with energy generation and all kinds of other human activities; A whole bunch of French fission nuclear reactors are…

Oxygen Not Included is a good game, but it probably doesn't have a single mechanic that makes physical sense. For example, it allows you to destroy carbon dioxide (preservation of mass?) by turning water into polluted water. And polluted water emits oxygen.

Back on earth, thermal radiation is sending massive amounts of heat into space. Additional heat we put into the atmosphere will not stay for long enough to matter, compared to certain gases that block thermal radiation.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#455

Post by 7952 »

rmbyrro wrote: post #439
dignick wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several problems with fission (probably fusion too) as I understand it: 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable. 2. Construction time - average is 10 years, we don’t have that long to wait. 3. Decommissioning is expensive and a long way in the future. Is that cost built into the cost per MW? How can we…

> Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable. Doesn't make it cheaper, only hides the cost. Subsidies are many times perversive. Prices are communicating something. When Gov messes with it, people and organizations tend to make bad decisions for themselves, society, environment or everything.

The UK government system is more nuanced than that. The operator bids for a strike price and communicate something with the bid they offer. That price is then locked in. We will never pay less than that, but we will never pay more either. In successive rounds the strike price is lower. They are setting the price up front to give stability. And that makes sense when most of the cost is upfront. Otherwise renewable prices would just track oil prices.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#456

Post by ncmncm »

malloryerik wrote: post #262
acidburnNSA wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The excitement in fusion indicates a total failure of fission people to effectively explain what they are capable of.

Maybe the current glow on fusion could actually brighten fission's prospects? At least that thought came to me while reading your original comment because fusion presents an opportunity to update the entire "nuclear" category in people's minds. Like when a child (or even an adult) says they don't like vegetables and it's pointed out to them that in fact they do like the vegetable called lettuce, so their statement ne…

People making choices on power are not, in fact, children.

Fission costs too much. Fusion would cost way more. Promoters of both have lied to the public continuously from day one. We have heard enough.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#457

Post by willis936 »

samhain wrote: post #121
toveja wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say the (recent) past was grim, but rather that the technology to build an _affordable_ commercial device had not yet been developed yet. We designed and built ITER at such a large size and cost (€20 billion) since high temperature superconducting magnets were not yet available. In the meantime, all of the experimental devices (JET, AUG, EAST, DIII-D, etc.,) have been gathering evidence on how to operate I…

Have you heard of MITs SPARC reactor? It’s way more interesting than ITER. It is 3x smaller, with Q greater than 10 (compared to ITERs ~10). It’s also slated to be finished -before- ITER.

3x smaller major radius. 42x smaller plasma volume.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#458

Post by fredestine »

legulere wrote: post #429
formerly_proven wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable. You can't directly compare cost per generating capacity, because nuclear, gas, coal etc. are available according to schedule, while most renewables aren't. Adding storage around renewables to make them schedulable raises costs.

Scheduling also raises costs though. Costs don’t go down much for nuclear power plants if you let them run at reduced output. Nuclear also isn’t as reliable as it seems as it can be seen in France. Renewables even have the advantage that they produce electricity mostly when it’s needed. Photovoltaics during the day and wind during winter when heating is most needed.

macron removed investment and focus on nuclear in his last mandate before realising that being woke made france broke (luckily not like germany broke - you know like in a way that when there is no sun or wind they need to call Putin to send some energy) now he reverted his thinking because money and energy is more important than beliefs when you needs them. just like usa or germany reactivated coal and biden is selling fracked gas to europe at gold price.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#459

Post by ncmncm »

rawoke083600 wrote: post #445
acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

May I ask your views on Thorium reactors ? Is this the next step/direction in fission reactors ?

Thorium costs more.

There are nice vids on YouTube that explain how thorium is no fix for what ails nukes.

Ultimately, nukes just cost too much to build and operate. They are uncompetitive. Now that we have radically cheaper alternatives, we have no desire to engage with the deceitful, slipshod, heavily subsidized builders and operators of nukes, anymore. Never again.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#460

Post by cinntaile »

ascar wrote: post #442
ncmncm wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building 3x renewables in widely distributed places radically reduces volatility. Wind is always blowing somewhere. Sun is always out somewhere. Storage is transportable.

> Building 3x renewables in widely distributed places radically reduces volatility. Is that actually true? Serious question. That sounds like a claim that seems so obvious, but won't hold up to the degree you might think in reality. Just one scenario I'm thinking of are giant storms that have clouds spanning multiple countries. And in that storm scenario even wind power shuts down to prevent damage.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.12.318 has tried to analyze this for the EU. I'm not convinced that daily data provides the necessary granularity though, but more detailed data for the mentioned time span probably doesn't exist. I would try to find some more articles and check if there is a consensus.
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