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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#61

Post by 0xbadc0de5 »

mgoetzke wrote: post #38

While I appreciate all the effort in nuclear fusion and do think we should continue to invest a little of each years global R&D budget, it seems these reactors (e.g ITER and this one) still require tritium which is rather hard to come by efficiently. Which means normal nuclear reactors will be needed to make it and minimising any economic viability of the dependent fusion rector for a long long time.

I believe the tritium issue is addressed through the inclusion of lithium in the reactor's inner blanket [1]. Something about the neutron interaction with the lithium results in some non-trivial production of tritium which is then freed into the reactor. tl;dr - they've thought of that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeding_blanket

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#62

Post by megaman821 »

rapsey wrote: post #51

Even if fusion ends up producing more power than consuming in the real world, it still has to compete on cost. People too enthusiastic about fusion tend to ignore that it might not actually be a cost effective source of power. Solar panels are cheap and batteries are easier to build and there are lots of ways of making them.

I agree. There is no breakthrough on the horizon that is going to make a fusion plant have the complexity closer to a natural gas plant than a nuclear fission plant. Therefore the costs will remain high.

It could still be a useful technology, especially in space. I could see a moon or mars base powered by fusion.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#63

Post by BeefWellington »

rapsey wrote: post #51

Even if fusion ends up producing more power than consuming in the real world, it still has to compete on cost. People too enthusiastic about fusion tend to ignore that it might not actually be a cost effective source of power. Solar panels are cheap and batteries are easier to build and there are lots of ways of making them.

Solar panels are cheap and batteries are easier to build because they're already taking advantage of economies of scale and aren't in the R&D phase still.

The viability of fusion has been centered for a long time around getting more power out than you put in and once that marker is met it's viewed as the last giant hurdle in the way. There's still plenty more R&D that needs to be done before it can easily / readily scale though.

It's where nuclear was in the 60s basically. Even if it only ever gets to be comparable to nuclear in terms of costing but with none of the hazardous byproduct, it will come out ahead. When you consider the environmental factors involved in battery production it is pretty clear that fusion at least has the potential to be the cleanest sources of energy. Whether it ultimately gets there is another question.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#64

Post by IMTDb »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #50

Well... if Nuclear Fusion becomes actually possible in a cost-effective manner, so much for the need to roll out solar and wind-based electricity, which looks very much like a 1st-generation modern green energy technology in retrospect. I'm not complaining. If we do crack the code on Nuclear Fusion, if I was the government, my next step would be to figure out how to build so many reactors that electricity costs go to…

> even the most diehard gas-car fans won't be able to resist

They just won't have a choice; if we can provide a real alternative, we can just forbid gas car altogether. Just like we banned CFC to save the ozone when better alternatives were developed.

The main issue is that our electricity grids and production facilities aren't ready yet to sustain a mass shift to electric, so we need to ease in the transition. But the moment they are, there is no reason to delay any further.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#65

Post by HillRat »

FuckButtons wrote: post #47
petermcneeley wrote: post #40

What is "zero-carbon" in this context? No graphite control rods?

A fusion rector does not have control rods. It has a magnetic containment field around a plasma which is, something like 10x hotter than the sun. if you put a control rod in there it would instantly vaporize.

At the risk of being pedantic, if this is the LLNL NIF, then it's ICF, not MCF, though putting a graphite rod at the heart of a laser-driven thermonuclear event probably looks about the same either way.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#67

Post by acidburnNSA »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #55
acidburnNSA wrote: post #49

After a few more major breakthroughs we'll be where fission was in 1942 after Fermi made the first man made neutron chain reaction. After that, we can see what a practical electricity producing plant looks like, and see how much people actually care about small amounts of tritium radiation. At the moment fuel costs in fission are like 5-10% of total costs for a fission fleet. In fusion it could be lower, but that wil…

Since you seem to be an expert in that field, what is your perspective on fission for the short term? Are smrs really viable ?

I'm not super excited about current SMR projects either, sadly. The economies of scale that they explicitly turn away from are very real. The economies of mass production that they rely on can't be achieved unless a lot of people are willing to buy the first N for high cost. But who will buy after the first few boondoggle a bit?

I am excited about standardized large light-water reactors at the moment, like the US/Japanese ABWR or Korean's APR-1400 designs. I wish there was more hype around them rather than SMRs and advanced reactors.

My favorite idea in nuclear to rapidly deeply decarbonize is to use a shipyard to mass-product large floating reactors. This gives you economies of scale and economies of mass production. Amazingly, this was seriously attempted in the 1970 and 80s in Jacksonville, Fl on Blount Island, where Offshore Power Systems installed the world's largest gantry crane and got an honest-to-goodness manufacturing license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build 8 of these. [1]

Sadly, my concern above with SMRs happened to OPS and they couldn't break through. Such a good idea though.

[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/offshore-nuclear-plants.html

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#68

Post by gabesullice »

rapsey wrote: post #51

Even if fusion ends up producing more power than consuming in the real world, it still has to compete on cost. People too enthusiastic about fusion tend to ignore that it might not actually be a cost effective source of power. Solar panels are cheap and batteries are easier to build and there are lots of ways of making them.

Pessimists were saying solar panels and batteries were too expensive too, not so long ago. If we discover fusion power to be viable in our lifetime, it will be a breathtaking accomplishment to witness. It's a fork in the timeline with repercussions that will reverberate for millenia, across trillions of human lives.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#69

Post by rapsey »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #60
rapsey wrote: post #51

Even if fusion ends up producing more power than consuming in the real world, it still has to compete on cost. People too enthusiastic about fusion tend to ignore that it might not actually be a cost effective source of power. Solar panels are cheap and batteries are easier to build and there are lots of ways of making them.

> Solar panels are cheap and batteries are easier to build and there are lots of ways of making them. Right now they are, but they often rely on materials from politically unstable regions (particularly Africa), or potential political rivals (China). Also, many solar panels require polysilicon from China, which is almost certainly produced with forced labor. https://www.csis.org/analysis/dark-spot-solar-energy-indust…

Mechanical, flow, heat, compressed air, pumped hydro are all types of batteries. All capable of storing MW to GW of power. It is not all lithium and cobalt.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#70

Post by drak0n1c »

petermcneeley wrote: post #40

What is "zero-carbon" in this context? No graphite control rods?

It’s unnecessary greenwashing hyperbole. Of course there will still be carbon emissions from the production of the reactor parts and the sourcing of fuel ingredients. The potential benefits of working fusion are far greater than carbon worries, and the media sells it short with narrow-minded labeling.
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