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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#521

Post by sushisource »

fundatus wrote: post #440
peanuty1 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear plants are also very expensive, no?

Yep, and fusion reactors will probably be even more expensive (especially the first ones). Looking at the current prices of renewables, I don't see a market for fusion reactors at all to be honest. After all we already have a giant fusion reactor just 12 light-minutes away from us! We just have to harvest that energy. The direction were already going (mostly market-driven nowadays actually!) is generation from renewa…

This minimizes the main problem with really going full renewables, storage. Fusion is 24/7 output at the same level. Solar and wind are not, which means batteries, and all the problems associated with that.

Fusion could obviate the need for grid-wide storage systems which would be a huge advantage.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#522

Post by trompetenaccoun »

93po wrote: post #218
greybox wrote: post #82

I don't yet understand why this is better than Fission. Surely Fission provides us with unlimited carbon free energy (given enough fissionable material). What will Fusion give us that Fission can't already? Is it safer perhaps?

> I don't yet understand why this is better than Fission Realistically, today, it's only better because of decades of lobbying and propaganda for fear mongering around fission. There is no reason why nuclear energy couldn't be the vast majority producer of all electricity in the world while massively lowering environmental damage and loss of human life. Long term, fusion might be better because it can produce a lot m…

Yes there is reason: The high cost, the unsolved waste issue and the inherent strategic danger such a centralization of power production would pose. You'd only have to hit a few large power plants to take out the electricity of an entire country. When done right, attackers can even create more destruction and chaos by initiating a meltdown.

Since you brought up lobbying, it's fascinating to me how many nuclear power fans the industry has created who are not informed by data and facts but are utterly convinced that nuclear power is the solution to all our energy issues.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#523

Post by floxy »

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #447

Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. "NIF is just a nuclear stewardship program", "it's not actually generating power", "fusion still 30 years away". I think it's very clear, given the past year that NIF has had, that they are very rapidly approaching a point where we have the tech to "solve" inertial fusion. https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/papers-presentations Getting…

>Their most recent article has a ton of great data and next steps:

That device in the photo is great. Looks to be about 16AWG magnet wire. Guessing a 10mm ID of the coil, and about 25mm in length. To get to 26 Tesla, looks like you'd need to push about 33,000 A through that coil. Coil inductance might be about 1uH, and if the test lasts ~1us, then you'd need 33kV to push that 33kA through the coil. 30kV/inch insulation resistance, might not get arcing between the wires in air. Probably running the thing in vacuum? Looks like things check out.

https://www.eeweb.com/tools/magnetic-field-calculator/

>NIF has uncovered some new science

What is the new science? Seems like they are working on making the fuel pellets closer to perfect, which makes sense if you are trying to use the implosion shock wave inside the fuel to be the source of heat and pressure needed for further fusion. I'm imagining that the laser initiates the surface fusion, and then you want that fusion to propagate inward, and need thing perfect, so the fuel doesn't go squirting out the sides (so to speak) stopping the chain reaction.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#524

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #519
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hinkley Point C is a first of its kind project, if you want to be economical you should look to KNGR https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/APR-140 they've built several in Korea and one in Saudi Arabia where the cost was $24.4 billion for 5380 MW. it's cute that you are mentioning onshore wind but that will just never happen, takes up way too much space and most places have a capacity factor of below 20% making your 34500…

Have a look at the availability factors of those 'cheap' Korean nukes, there's a lot of overlap with the capacity factor of offshore wind even including curtailment. Then the running cost differences are enough to pay for the wind farm in about 15 years. Then also look at the $20 billion dollar 'service' contract for the Saudi one that doesn't include any labour or running costs. It suddenly costs about the same as H…

please stop calling them nukes, it makes you sound like Greenpeace crazy person that actually think that a nuclear power plant has anything to do with nuclear weapons that nuke is normally referring to.

could you please provide some evidence that the capacity factor and supply safety is remotely comparable between APR1400 and offshore wind?

What do you think service costs are for offshore/onshore wind and hinkley point? having maintenance and an industry is actually a good thing for the economy.

where do you get your numbers? you sure make many claims without a shred of evidence. and are you seriously suggesting that we continue using natural gas?

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#525

Post by crote »

belorn wrote: post #510
Retric wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see a lot of handwaving such as that very close to 0 statement with nuclear but someone’s got to be on the hook. The rate and cost of failures directly relate to insurance costs. A 1 in 100,000 chance per year to cause a 500 billion dollar accident represents a ~5 million per year insurance cost to offset that risk before considering the risk premium associated with insurance. And that’s on top of the normal risk…

> You see a lot of handwaving such as that very close to 0 statement with nuclear but someone’s got to be on the hook. Yes, and that one is society. It what we do with any risk that is so great that if any company would have to carry it then the company would fold and society would still have to carry it. Hydro power is one prime example. If a dam would break the damage downstream would be too high for any power comp…

Unfortunately your examples have been litigated in practice already, and reality does not agree with you. See for example [0], which is a nice writeup on the liability for dam failure. As it turns out, there are very few cases in which the operator would not be liable. Similarly, Pacific Power has been sued for wildfires in Colorado, and PG&E even plead guilty to manslaughter in the Paradise fire - and had to file for bankruptcy after being faced with a $30bn liability.

Those companies can and should be held responsible for the damages they cause. You can't just privatize all the profits and leave all the losses to the government! If you want to do something so dangerous nobody is willing or even able to insure you, you should not be allowed to do it.

[0]: https://damsafety.org/sites/default/files/files/Legal%20Liab...

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#526

Post by Schroedingersat »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #504
Retric wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see a lot of handwaving such as that very close to 0 statement with nuclear but someone’s got to be on the hook. The rate and cost of failures directly relate to insurance costs. A 1 in 100,000 chance per year to cause a 500 billion dollar accident represents a ~5 million per year insurance cost to offset that risk before considering the risk premium associated with insurance. And that’s on top of the normal risk…

that's simply still not true. the last three plants built in Europe (England, France and Finland) has been very expensive because they've all been first of its kind and there hasn't really been built anything else. but if you take a look at what's happening elsewhere in the world KHNP for example has their standardized APR1400 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/APR-1400 reactor that seems to be very affordable Poland ju…

Someone suggesting the organization which made these predictions about solar https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOoa6xYXIAQKUnv?format=jpg&name=... and is headed by an ex OPEC employee might be making bad cost projections when real prices of real projects in 2022 have a median far lower than their projection from 2020?

Must be a conspiracy theorist.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#527

Post by jeffparsons »

inanutshellus wrote: post #300
jeffparsons wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy. What could be done about that aside from expecting people to just... be better? I think the shape of these forums induces those kinds of comments, even if the community and moderators make a real effort to uphold higher standards. And I think if I encountered the same people in a different kind of forum then I might have a higher…

Your conversation with your neighbor has no meta-conversation going on. Online discussions "between two people" merely mimic a conversation so the audience (of potentially thousands+ of people) can learn and be swayed. Online conversations are inherently broadcast so the stakes are too high to acquiesce or make concessions for whomever's willing to actually take the bait and engage on "important" topics.

That's a good point. I guess I hadn't really thought about how performative discussions on public forums are. Maybe embracing that more deliberately somehow could produce a worthwhile difference?

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#528

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #520
smeagull wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of the land required is non-trivial.

Onshore wind can overlap with pasture land. Offshore wind pays into the public purse now via the leases and still costs about half what subsidised nuclear does. It's still a very young industry.

seriously.. bring some evidence. onshore wind is just not going to happen it just has too many problems. and offshore wind is more expensive, less reliable and takes roughly the same time to build as nuclear. Denmark is currently planning to build a 3Gw energy island that will cost a whopping 40bn dollars and is planed to be finished in 2033. insane if you ask me

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#529

Post by Schroedingersat »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #524
Schroedingersat wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a look at the availability factors of those 'cheap' Korean nukes, there's a lot of overlap with the capacity factor of offshore wind even including curtailment. Then the running cost differences are enough to pay for the wind farm in about 15 years. Then also look at the $20 billion dollar 'service' contract for the Saudi one that doesn't include any labour or running costs. It suddenly costs about the same as H…

please stop calling them nukes, it makes you sound like Greenpeace crazy person that actually think that a nuclear power plant has anything to do with nuclear weapons that nuke is normally referring to. could you please provide some evidence that the capacity factor and supply safety is remotely comparable between APR1400 and offshore wind? What do you think service costs are for offshore/onshore wind and hinkley poi…

Nuke is a word that applies to a reactor, a bomb, and someone who works on a reactor equally. Stop with the pearl clutching.

https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/ThreeYrsEnergyAva...

Cheap reactors are unreliable reactors.

> What do you think service costs are for offshore/onshore wind and hinkley point? having maintenance and an industry is actually a good thing for the economy.

Stop with the broken window fallacy. If subsidizing jobs is important, open a battery or PV plant with the tax money instead.

> and are you seriously suggesting that we continue using natural gas?

Using gas 2-20% of the time with a mean of around 8% produces fewer emissions than opening new uranium mines and only needs to happen whilst the storage industry matures. Your plan entails burning more gas whilst the reactors, mines, and enrichment are built out over decades, then it also entails burning more gas at the end for outages unless you overprovision and build seasonal storage and long distance transmission.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#530

Post by willis936 »

danbruc wrote: post #178
est31 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://www.ft.com/content/4b6f0fab-66ef-4e33-adec-cfc345589... > The fusion reaction at the US government facility produced about 2.5 megajoules of energy, which was about 120 per cent of the 2.1 megajoules of energy in the lasers, the people with knowledge of the results said, adding that the data was still being analysed. They probably upgraded the rig since the Wikipedia article was written, so most likely t…

If this is assumption is true, they only produced 0.6 % of the energy they spent. Another question would then be, how relevant this is, i.e. could the UV light be produced much more efficiently than the experiment does? Maybe some constraints forces them to use a very inefficient process? In that case it might be reasonable to use the UV laser power as the reference for the gain.

I think the more interesting question is "how does this scale with more laser power?"

Even if the lasers are 1% efficient does it matter if 100 GJ of electrical power results in 100 TJ of fusion heat? I'm not saying this is at all how it scales, but it is the logic behind pursuing an ICF power plant. The fuel gets ignited and heats itself.

Also, for fun, 100 TJ is 24 kT TNT equivalent: slightly more than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Trying to capture this energy released instantaneously would be a fun engineering challenge.

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