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Fusion Power Plant Simulator

fusionenergybase.com

41–50 of 135 posts

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#41
Apologies if I've missed something, but isn't this all just a fantasy? None of the current methods for getting fusion power are even close to being practical -- even the theoretical net output experiments require extensive and sensitive measurement setups just to establish whether or not they are positive energy.

We are not in a place where we expect fusion power to be incrementally achieved by the current systems. We need major breakthroughs that are both impossible to predict and may not even exist outside of stars or thermonuclear devices.

The idea that we'll get massive improvements in Qsci, while maintaining the same basic structure as existing fusion systems, is in the end a bit silly. What would we estimate our confidence to be that when someone invents the Fromboculator, that the Fromboculator will even have a heating system or "vacuum vessel" or a plasma system.

In the end, this looks like it's a steam engine simulator more than anything else, but with some fancy words thrown in.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#42

A good addition would be the sales price per MWh, price for the power plant, and the loan interest rate. Because IMO all that is extremely critical. I fully support the pursuit of fusion as a scientific endeavor, but given that we're probably at least 30 years away from having anything approaching commercial deployment (assuming ITER is built, works, is followed promptly by DEMO, it works, and is followed promptly by…

I think it's impossible to calculate at this stage since there're no fusion power plants which actually produce net power.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#43
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chemical energy that would be released by a reaction between the hydrogen in the reactor amd oxygen from the air would be less than what is released by popping a hydrogen filled balloon with a lighter Thanks for the correction. If you're breeding lithium in the walls, might that be an incendiary concern?

The breeding blanket is entirely contained inside a vacuum vessel, so there isn't any oxygen to react with. Also, the are many blanket designs, but the lithium is never present in its elemental form (precisely because it would be very reactive), but in a stable chemical bond with some neutron multiplier (like lithium-lead alloys or beryllium ceramics). In some design the lithium is even immersed in the coolant itself…

> breeding blanket is entirely contained inside a vacuum vessel, so there isn't any oxygen to react with

When the vessel works. If the vessel breaches, that lithium could ignite. Note a showstopper. But I suppose a risk to be thought about by the engineers (probably not by policymakers).

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#44

For those interested not only in simplified energy balance of a fusion power plant as shown in Fusion Power Plant Simulator, but in more realistic engineering of heat extraction from a tokamak I recommend the following lecture by Dr. Dennis Whyte from MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center. Fusion Reactor First Wall Cooling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHJyoqDO0zw One of the designs uses 3D printed silicon carbide vac…

My favorite video that walks through fusion energy design/sizing/cost equations is also a lecture by Dennis Whyte: https://youtu.be/KkpqA8yG9T4?si=U8xaAAvjdnt6yqr8 It’s a really engaging lecture - I’m normally pretty put off by 100-minute lectures on YouTube but this one was both very easy to follow and perfectly scoped. Can highly recommend it - the learnings from it are timeless fundamentals that really make fusion…

The wildcard for our civilization that I pay a lot of attention to:

will AI help us get through blockers like this?

I'm out of the prediction business but my guess is: absolutely, but iff we don't collapse in some way first.

Wild to be alive as the centuries-long horse race of industrialization between doom, or the stars, approaches its finish line.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#45
post #42

A good addition would be the sales price per MWh, price for the power plant, and the loan interest rate. Because IMO all that is extremely critical. I fully support the pursuit of fusion as a scientific endeavor, but given that we're probably at least 30 years away from having anything approaching commercial deployment (assuming ITER is built, works, is followed promptly by DEMO, it works, and is followed promptly by…

I think it's impossible to calculate at this stage since there're no fusion power plants which actually produce net power.

True, but we've built tokamaks and we're building ITER, which so far has an estimated price of between $45 billion and $65 billion.

Now of course that's a research reactor full of experiments and instrumentation that wouldn't be part of a normal power plant, but given current experience that I think we can expect we won't suddenly knock down the cost to $100M. It's going to be somewhere in the billions. And we have expectations of that DEMO is going to make 750MWe.

We can then plug those estimates into the calculator and basically figure out how cheap and how powerful a fusion reactor has to be for it to make economical sense.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#46

A good addition would be the sales price per MWh, price for the power plant, and the loan interest rate. Because IMO all that is extremely critical. I fully support the pursuit of fusion as a scientific endeavor, but given that we're probably at least 30 years away from having anything approaching commercial deployment (assuming ITER is built, works, is followed promptly by DEMO, it works, and is followed promptly by…

And outputs for how much power would be generated by an equivalent-cost conventional fission or solar facility.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#47

For those interested not only in simplified energy balance of a fusion power plant as shown in Fusion Power Plant Simulator, but in more realistic engineering of heat extraction from a tokamak I recommend the following lecture by Dr. Dennis Whyte from MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center. Fusion Reactor First Wall Cooling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHJyoqDO0zw One of the designs uses 3D printed silicon carbide vac…

It would be quite outstanding if MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center released their core courses on OpenCourseWare. Considering the potential impact of this technology and how much it's needed, humanity doesn't seem to be trying that hard to make it work.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#48

No melt down? This game sucks. On a serious note: I wonder how practical and safe it would be to build fusion pants close to city centers in order to harvest the excess heat for district heating. Would be a boon in e.g. NYC which already has a large district steam system. You can do cooling too, look up "steam absorption chiller."

Don't they already do this for existing types of power plants (gas, coal) that produce waste heat?

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#49

A good addition would be the sales price per MWh, price for the power plant, and the loan interest rate. Because IMO all that is extremely critical. I fully support the pursuit of fusion as a scientific endeavor, but given that we're probably at least 30 years away from having anything approaching commercial deployment (assuming ITER is built, works, is followed promptly by DEMO, it works, and is followed promptly by…

ITER is not our best bet for commercial fusion. ITER was a peace project between the USA and the Soviet Union.

https://www.cfs.energy

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#50
post #49

A good addition would be the sales price per MWh, price for the power plant, and the loan interest rate. Because IMO all that is extremely critical. I fully support the pursuit of fusion as a scientific endeavor, but given that we're probably at least 30 years away from having anything approaching commercial deployment (assuming ITER is built, works, is followed promptly by DEMO, it works, and is followed promptly by…

ITER is not our best bet for commercial fusion. ITER was a peace project between the USA and the Soviet Union. https://www.cfs.energy

ITER is definitely the best bet for a workable fusion concept. There are some unsolved issues left, but its nothing compared to the sci-fi solutions most US startups would require.
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