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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

#601

Post by pfdietz »

joak wrote: post #599
pfdietz wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems with DT are low power density due to limits on power/area through the first wall, neutron damage to reactor materials, getting tritium breeding to work, and the need for a large non-nuclear part of the plant (turbine, generator). Helion potentially avoids or ameliorates all of these problems. Unlike with DT, where 80% of the power is in neutrons, a smaller fraction of power is from neutrons here (particu…

Also in Helion machine magnets coils are in aluminum. And because aluminum is (mostly) transparent to neutrons they don't get damaged. This is to be compared with the superconductors of tokamaks. So actually their idea is to put the shield (or the blanket) outside of the reactor, not between the magnets and the plasma. A lot easier to do. There are still many uncertainties, some because they are secretive and others…

I'm not sure about that aluminum argument. Aluminum isn't transparent to neutrons; neutrons will scatter off Al nuclei just fine. Perhaps the metal is more resilient to the resulting damage.

The real thing to worry about in neutron irradiation of coils is damage to insulators, not to conductors. Insulators are very sensitive to radiation damage.

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

#602

Post by Schroedingersat »

neilwilson wrote: post #544
Schroedingersat wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear in the UK has a capacity factor of around 60%. Availability is in the 70-80% range. Yeah it's (usually) planned, but it's a decently long time in which you need those gas plants. Why not just build solar instead and fuel those same gas plants with hydrogen or methane you plucked from the air with your $20-30/MWh unscheduled electricity? Plus, you can get solar and storage as an off the shelf item today as a r…

Solar requires land area. Storage requires land area. Britain isn't that sunny - particularly not in winter. Nuclear has a very small footprint on a crowded island. Plus we have Rolls Royce SMRs who have been building nuclear reactors for a while.

That is the admitted cost of Hinkley C and lower bound on the cost of Sizewell (it will go up, they always do). Sizewell is a rolls royce smr. Matching end user retail cost of solar. Right now. By the time sizewell comes online it'll be a fraction. It's also calculated with a 12.5% capacity factor which is winter in the UK. Add in overnight costs and it's extremely one sided.

You could add as much net capacity as the UK has in nuclear in just above the space used for parking cars.

You could add twice to four times that again just on detached house rooftops.

Even as a commercial installation with no other purpose, a 4km square is hardly an insurmountable barrier.

The initial capital budget of sizewell and hinkley alone could provide 30-80GW of nameplate solar or a rooftop system on every building in the country.

If there are trillions in the pot, by all means go ham with fission, but when low carbon sources are fighting for the scraps left over after subsidizing fossil fuels we have to do the thing that is effective first.

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

#603

Post by Gud »

Such a controversial topic these days. I got one am happy billions are being poured into fusion. Yes, massive investments in fission, solar and wind are required. But one by one the technical obstacles are being overcome for fusion. I say give fusion a chance

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

#604

Post by cinntaile »

thinkcontext wrote: post #532
cinntaile wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still, I do feel that some fusion hype is partially due to people not giving fission enough credit though I wonder if this is more a marketing thing. Fission has a bad rep so people try to evade it by getting funding for fusion or SMRs (I know this is fission too) instead. Which people don't associate with classical nuclear reactor tech. Even though it's probably better to just put that money towards a new AP1000 f…

It's extremely unlikely any more AP1000s will be built in the US. All projects that were in the development pipeline have been cancelled due to the spectacular financial failures that Summer and Vogtle have been. The only way it could happen is if the feds took on construction risk.

That's a fair point, I don't know if there are any other fission reactor candidates that have a better shot at succeeding? Maybe SMRs are the only possible candidates even though the economics ($/kWh) are likely worse, if they can build them on time then at least we're working with a predictable outcome.

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

#605

Post by tim333 »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #76

There's a huge amount of hype in fusion these days. Companies are getting big investments just by saying "we're over unity." None of their investors will recoup any money. Getting above unity is important but it's still a very long way from systemic over unity of the entire lifecycle of the process that turns fusion into electricity on the grid. And that simply won't happen in my lifetime or most of your lifetimes. W…

Helion are planning for systemic returns over unity quite soon really.

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

#606

Post by CTDOCodebases »

feet wrote: post #493
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you saying that only one plant will fail out of the many we need to build and that our only option is to continue using hydrocarbons for energy? I'm tempted to be hopeful and say that nuclear will solve all our problems but seeing how the energy industry got us here in the first place I'm sceptical they have our best interests at heart.

By energy industry do you mean oil and gas? Are they the ones building nuclear plants? Engineering improves over time, considering we seem to have someone who works in the industry in this thread perhaps they can inform us about current failure rates and risks. My assumption is that due to past failures, extra mitigations have been put into place with modern reactors.

> By energy industry do you mean oil and gas? Are they the ones building nuclear plants?

Yes I was referring to oil and gas. While they are not the ones building nuclear power plants as we have seen when a particular part of the energy industry becomes entrenched it has a tendency to use its profits to change the narrative around its downsides.

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

#607

Post by feet »

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #606
feet wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By energy industry do you mean oil and gas? Are they the ones building nuclear plants? Engineering improves over time, considering we seem to have someone who works in the industry in this thread perhaps they can inform us about current failure rates and risks. My assumption is that due to past failures, extra mitigations have been put into place with modern reactors.

> By energy industry do you mean oil and gas? Are they the ones building nuclear plants? Yes I was referring to oil and gas. While they are not the ones building nuclear power plants as we have seen when a particular part of the energy industry becomes entrenched it has a tendency to use its profits to change the narrative around its downsides.

That's purely a problem of capitalism itself rather than any specific industry. If we nationalize power generation we should be able to avoid those problems.

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

#609

Post by ncmncm »

indymike wrote: post #586
ncmncm wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their field involved exactly zero need for economic analysis. Naval reactor "engineering laboratory technicians" (SMAGs) are reputed among submariners as habitual liars. Strange but true.

> Their field involved exactly zero need for economic analysis. This is just dismissing the argument without addressing the assertion that the vast majority of cost in building nuclear is imposed by overly burdensome regulation. > Naval reactor "engineering laboratory technicians" (SMAGs) are reputed among submariners as habitual liars. From personal experience, ELTs were held to the exact same zero tolerance for lie…

I doesn't make up SMAGs' reputation: all I know is what retired "nukes" report. Ask them.

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

#610

Post by nl »

smaudet wrote: post #554
nl wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry. I'm probably more antinuclear than you but a lot of the things you are saying are just ignorant. For example nuclear bombs melting flesh is because of the extreme heat, nothing that is unique to the nuclear process. You'd be a more effective advocate for anti-nuclear viewpoints by learning some stuff first.

Ok, well would you mind linking some good starting materials? And I think you maybe are more ignorant than you care to admit as well: "is that a very appreciable fraction of the energy liberated goes into radiant heat and light" https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/med/med_ch... To me that doesn't sound like "oh man the temperature in the room just went up", more like "oh man I just got a really bad sunb…

> is that a very appreciable fraction of the energy liberated goes into radiant heat and light

That's exactly what I said in my previous comment:

For example nuclear bombs melting flesh is because of the extreme heat, nothing that is unique to the nuclear process.

You see exactly the same "flash burn" characteristics from other very hot weapons eg thermobaric explosives.

The unique thing about nuclear bombs is their scale and the fallout afterwards (both of which are horrific). That "melting flesh" thing is caused by the extreme heat, not by some magic "it's nuclear" thing.

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