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Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

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Re: Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

#291

Post by rybosome »

graycat wrote: post #252
adventured wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to buy airline stocks. If you can put a miniature fusion power plant on an 747 equivalent, airline profit margins will skyrocket. Actually even if you believed there's a chance this Lockheed concept can work, the time to buy airline stocks would be on the back end of this dead bull market that's about to fall off a cliff. And then there's the 20 year wait before it's finally deployed to a commercial airplane.

A fusion powered 747 might be the result, but maybe not! Instead, let's see: With the CFR, we've got dirt cheap electric power. Okay, then we can also use that power to make dirt cheap, very clean water. Then, yup, we can take that water, more of that power, and coal and make jet fuel. And maybe that is what the 747s would continue to use! Maybe!

If we get a working CFR as described, I'd be shocked if the cost of coal extraction and usage remained low enough for this to be a sound idea. In the face of extremely cheap, clean power, I'd sincerely hope that the government would incentivize its use. Coal and oil lobbies might be able to fight this to some extent, but once a safe and economically viable alternative is present, the days of fossil fuel reliance are numbered. This can't happen soon enough.

Re: Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

#292

Post by mpyne »

aqme28 wrote: post #16
etiam wrote: post #9

> U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fusion reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle. sigh To the extent this is true I suspect those "large fusion reactors" are tuned not so much for generating electricity and a great deal for annihilating whatever the carrying missile is pointed at. But never mind fuzzy thinking at Reuters right now. This is amazing…

Looks like they issued the correction > U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fission reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle.

Even the need for regular replacement went away long ago. Our current (old) designs get refueled only once, and new ships don't get refueled at all (the core lasts as long as the hull does). They do all need regular maintenance, but that's true for all U.S. warships.

Re: Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

#293

Post by toomuchtodo »

rayiner wrote: post #289
petercoolz wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, the price of energy goes negative because of government subsidies. For example, a wind plant with a $30/MWH subsidy can afford to run at a price of -$30. Similarly, if you're in California and you ever wondered why your electricity bill is 2x that of any other state, it is because you are the ones footing the bill for those subsidies. Without subsidies, wind and solar are far more inefficient at a $/MWH…

Being able to externalize pollution is a subsidy. Accounting for externalized costs, coal is about parity with wind in terms of cost, though gas is ahead of both.

Agreed, but with the price of oil headed below $80/barrel, shale and other fracking operations that are expensive to operate are now going to operate at a loss (causing some producers to go bankrupt). You're going to see the cost of natgas dip down, and if enough producers go out of business, jump back up to new highs as production will have dropped quite a bit.

Re: Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

#294

Post by brc »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #290
petercoolz wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, the price of energy goes negative because of government subsidies. For example, a wind plant with a $30/MWH subsidy can afford to run at a price of -$30. Similarly, if you're in California and you ever wondered why your electricity bill is 2x that of any other state, it is because you are the ones footing the bill for those subsidies. Without subsidies, wind and solar are far more inefficient at a $/MWH…

Oil, coal, and gas is subsidized to the tune of ~$400 billion a year (2010 numbers), while renewables are around ~$60 billion a year. Renewables have a capital cost, but no fuel cost. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-21/when-it-come... "Meanwhile, a recent report from the U.N. Industrial Development Organization notes that photovoltaic module prices have been falling at a rate of 15 percent to 24 percent…

Those oil, has and coal subsidy numbers are completely bogus if they are generated from the iea numbers. Iea is just a solar/wind lobbying front - and the bulk of the numbers are made from countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran directly subsidising the cost of petrol for their citizens.

It is laughable for anyone to suggest that oil, coal or gas energy is subsidised when these numbers are calculated on wooly figures like access to land, or tax deductibility of research - the same rules that apply to all companies, software companies included.

The simple fact is that oil, gas and coal energy generates a magnitude more tax revenue than it ever gets in irritating or indirect subsidies, while the 'renewables' sector only ever takes subsidies and doesn't return net tax. This is plainly obvious based on the per mw/h cost of these technologies - there is no magic formula involved in selling something below average cost of production an making a profit, no matter how much volume you do.

Re: Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

#295

Post by DennisP »

anigbrowl wrote: post #285
avian wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam turbine plus a conventional generator is vastly more efficient than thermocouples - 30-40% for steam versus I suspect they are also much, much cheaper when you are talking about powers in the hundreds-of-megawatts range. I don't have specific data at hand to back that though. I never heard of any grid-level power generation being done with thermocouples.

That is in line with general impression. I just find it really weird that after all the high-tech nuclear stuff is working the next stage is an old-fashioned water boiler like on a steam engine of hundreds of years ago. (Well, obviously these turbines are not old-fashioned or simple boilers, but you know what I mean.) It just baffles me that we don't have a way of efficiently generating electrical current directly fr…

The reason we'll need turbines for the first generation of fusion reactors is that most of their energy is released as neutrons. Some more advanced fuels release most of their energy as fast-moving charged particles, which would let us generate electricity more directly.

Re: Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

#296

Post by gh02t »

noir_lord wrote: post #278
gh02t wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very safe bet. Well, probably not a math error as they are quite a fine institution, but what he says is probably the case. The challenges of fusion power are largely fundamental nitty gritty engineering issues. We know fairly well how to design most of a fusion reactor; in a lot of ways they are conceptually easier than fission reactors. The two main hurdles are the materials problems and how to keep the reac…

> The challenges of fusion power are largely fundamental nitty gritty engineering issues. I'm not saying they've done it and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof but this is the place that made a Mach 3.5 jet with wings that leaked out of titanium in the 60's . Nitty-gritty engineering is something they are fairly good at.

Indeed, believe me I hope I'm wrong and that fusion power really is around the corner. It's just that, according to the article, they aren't even at the prototype phase yet. That's where the real problems for fusion reactors arise. I'm sure that they've done something interesting, but my (semi-expert, I'm a nuclear engineering PhD, but not in fusion technology) opinion, this doesn't look like The Big Discovery.

Re: Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

#297

Post by rayiner »

brc wrote: post #294
toomuchtodo wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oil, coal, and gas is subsidized to the tune of ~$400 billion a year (2010 numbers), while renewables are around ~$60 billion a year. Renewables have a capital cost, but no fuel cost. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-21/when-it-come... "Meanwhile, a recent report from the U.N. Industrial Development Organization notes that photovoltaic module prices have been falling at a rate of 15 percent to 24 percent…

Those oil, has and coal subsidy numbers are completely bogus if they are generated from the iea numbers. Iea is just a solar/wind lobbying front - and the bulk of the numbers are made from countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran directly subsidising the cost of petrol for their citizens. It is laughable for anyone to suggest that oil, coal or gas energy is subsidised when these numbers are calculated on wooly figures li…

A Harvard study a few years ago found the externalized cost of coal to be about $350 billion per year in the U.S. alone: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/16/usa-coal-study-idU....

You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to bring government subsidies for renewable into the discussion, you also have to consider the externalized cost of legalized pollution. The only defensible calculation is to look at cost per kilowatt hour excluding government subsidies and including externalized costs. That's the true economic cost of the energy source.

And coal is miserable on that front. I wouldn't be surprised if coal use is a net loss to the economy (i.e. the value of the energy generated by coal is less than the environmental cost of coal use).

Re: Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

#298

Post by logicallee »

nabla9 wrote: post #164

I'm not seeing any top physicists working in this program (McGuire is not one). I would be willing to bet 1000 EUR that their math and modeling does not add up, or they have skipped some details. Problem with fusion research like this is that the closer you get self sustainment or energy generation, the harder it gets and problems pile up. This project looks like many other similar projects that have gone bust. They…

>I'm not seeing any top physicists working in this program (McGuire is not one).

McGuire is a top physicist - he is currently working on a compact fusion reactor at Skunk Works, which came out with the SR-71 Blackbird among other innovations.

Oh, did you mean, ones who had already succeeded in their top projects? Well, how do you think they got to succeed - by not doing it?

Re: Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

#299

Post by aortega »

oldmanjay wrote: post #288
aortega wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really are Dr. Kirtley let me say you have one of the most, if not the most important job in earth right now. Fusion energy has the potential to stop wars and re-start the space revolution. I wish you the best.

I'm all about the space revolution, but the only way to stop wars is to have one so big there is no one left to wage them. In a way, fusion does have that potential, but I suspect you were going for something more positive.

Of course it will not stop all wars, but it will stop most oil-related wars. You still will have resource-related wars like cultivable land, and fresh water but with the space-revolution soon humanity will have plenty of land and water too.

Re: Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details

#300

Post by Crito »

aortega wrote: post #243
tonyplee wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much dangerous are the neutrons from such device? Similar to radiation, worst? Time sell any oil company stocks, mutual fund holding?

>How much dangerous are the neutrons from such device? Similar to radiation, worst? Neutrons are radiation. Also It's the worst kind of radiation because unlike X-rays or Gamma, neutrons make other things radioactive.

> "neutrons make other things radioactive."

Source for this claim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation

Neutrons are radiation, but not electromagnetic radiation. I'm guessing that nitpicking this is why you were downvoted? Dunno.

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