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Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

fusionenergybase.com

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Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#131

Post by pfdietz »

myrmidon wrote: post #122
cobbzilla wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

conceptually sure; but size-wise they are so different as to warrant valid questions about ROI. Chicago Pile 1 ran for 12 years, ITER started ~12 years ago and plans to run into the 2030s at least. Budget and headcount would likely be vastly different too, I’d welcome any educated guesses. Sometimes quantity has a quality of its own, as they say.

Sure but those are not really equivalent/comparable in scale; just looking at power/size and conceptual distance from commercial viability, the Chicago pile does not even match up to something like SPARC or JET, much less ITER. A more fitting comparison to ITER would be something like Fermi-1 or other prototype designs at almost commercial scale, IMO, and those were multi-year, large projects too (and fission is much…

The X-10 reactor at Argonne went critical less than a year after CP-1, with a power of 500 kW, rising to 4 MW in 1944. The Hanford B reactor, with a power of 250 MW, was in operation less than two years after CP-1 went critical.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#132

Post by worik »

UltraSane wrote: post #123
worik wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bury the actual waste deep underground How deep, to stay put thousands of generations?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

No answer to the problems that:

A) The area is not known to be geologically stable over the extraordinarily long time periods necessary. (Nowhere is....)

B) There is no containment vessel that can last that long

I get tired of the wishful thinking. Being charitable as describing it as that.

In the future, 600 generations from now, when the poisons we lay down now are bubbling up, perhaps people then will have forgotten us. If not, they will not forgive us

And so unnecessary

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#133

Post by worik »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #86
UltraSane wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am so tired of this lie being repeated endlessly. We have a perfectly safe way to handle nuclear "waste": reprocess the dirty fuel and bury the actual waste deep underground like Finland is doing at the Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... And there is still very much a need for zero-carbon DISPATCHABLE electricity of witch nuclear is the ONLY choice.…

hydro is also a 0 carbon dispatchable choice (which is much cheaper)

Geothermal

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#134

Post by worik »

Calwestjobs wrote: post #118
worik wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the flow batteries? (fuel cells) Lithium ion batteries are light with a high energy density, so are great for cars. Flow batteries have a low energy density, but increasing the duration means a bigger tank, and the cost of bigger tanks increases as a function of the cube root (?) of their volume Flow batteries are well over a century old, but I have been reading about improvements over the last two decades.…

flow batteries are "controlled" by US patents. solar + batteries are not limited in bad way by US companies grip on patents. china makes all panels, asia is making all batteries. so US utilities / energy providers can not have harmful grip on PV + batteries. US utilities / energy providers want to have docile customer who only pays every month. they do not want to invest money into grid and have customer not only dem…

I was wondering about the patents. But I think they must be close to expiring

But flow batteries can be made with century old technology, so it cannot be the whole answer.

It is hard to tell the difference of a "confluence of interests" from a "conspiracy". Perhaps it is a distinction without a difference.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#135

Post by UltraSane »

worik wrote: post #132
UltraSane wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

No answer to the problems that: A) The area is not known to be geologically stable over the extraordinarily long time periods necessary. (Nowhere is....) B) There is no containment vessel that can last that long I get tired of the wishful thinking. Being charitable as describing it as that. In the future, 600 generations from now, when the poisons we lay down now are bubbling up, perhaps people then will have forgott…

" the extraordinarily long time periods necessary. (Nowhere is....)"

This is the the lie that I'm really tired of people repeating. Nuclear waste isn't THAT dangerous and doesn't have to be kept perfectly isolated for THAT long.

"In the future, 600 generations from now, when the poisons we lay down now are bubbling up,"

You should really be more worried about the 36 billion tons of CO2 we are spewing into the atmosphere every year instead of a TINY amount of nuclear waste many thousands of years in the future.

You are like someone with a malignant tumor worrying about the risks of radiation therapy.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#136

Post by pfdietz »

pfdietz wrote: post #131
myrmidon wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but those are not really equivalent/comparable in scale; just looking at power/size and conceptual distance from commercial viability, the Chicago pile does not even match up to something like SPARC or JET, much less ITER. A more fitting comparison to ITER would be something like Fermi-1 or other prototype designs at almost commercial scale, IMO, and those were multi-year, large projects too (and fission is much…

The X-10 reactor at Argonne went critical less than a year after CP-1, with a power of 500 kW, rising to 4 MW in 1944. The Hanford B reactor, with a power of 250 MW, was in operation less than two years after CP-1 went critical.

Correction: the X-10 reactor was at Oak Ridge, not Argonne.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#137

Post by ashoeafoot »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #15

I heard that NIF was never intended to be a power plant, not even a prototype of one. It's primarily a nuclear weapon research program. For a power plant you would need much more efficient lasers, you would need a much larger gain in the capsules, you would need lasers that can do many shots per second, some automated reloading system for the capsules, and you would need a heat to electricity conversion system around…

Its a fusion & fission scientist storage facility .

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#138

Post by worik »

UltraSane wrote: post #135
worik wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No answer to the problems that: A) The area is not known to be geologically stable over the extraordinarily long time periods necessary. (Nowhere is....) B) There is no containment vessel that can last that long I get tired of the wishful thinking. Being charitable as describing it as that. In the future, 600 generations from now, when the poisons we lay down now are bubbling up, perhaps people then will have forgott…

" the extraordinarily long time periods necessary. (Nowhere is....)" This is the the lie that I'm really tired of people repeating. Nuclear waste isn't THAT dangerous and doesn't have to be kept perfectly isolated for THAT long. "In the future, 600 generations from now, when the poisons we lay down now are bubbling up," You should really be more worried about the 36 billion tons of CO2 we are spewing into the atmosph…

The vast majority of nuclear waste needs to be stored only hundreds of years.

But there is still plenty that needs to be stored for hundreds of millennium

There is no answer to that, and no amount of arguing by analogy, argumentum ad hominem nor wishful thinking can make that go away

It is a very good thing we do not need nuclear power

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#139

Post by UltraSane »

worik wrote: post #138
UltraSane wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" the extraordinarily long time periods necessary. (Nowhere is....)" This is the the lie that I'm really tired of people repeating. Nuclear waste isn't THAT dangerous and doesn't have to be kept perfectly isolated for THAT long. "In the future, 600 generations from now, when the poisons we lay down now are bubbling up," You should really be more worried about the 36 billion tons of CO2 we are spewing into the atmosph…

The vast majority of nuclear waste needs to be stored only hundreds of years. But there is still plenty that needs to be stored for hundreds of millennium There is no answer to that, and no amount of arguing by analogy, argumentum ad hominem nor wishful thinking can make that go away It is a very good thing we do not need nuclear power

"But there is still plenty that needs to be stored for hundreds of millennium"

Stop repeating this lie.

We absolutely need Nuclear. It is the only way to eliminate CO2 emissions from electricity production completely.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#140

Post by pfdietz »

DennisP wrote: post #121
bbatha wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything fusion reactor design needs similar gains in some part of the stack outside of the fusion parts to make it a viable power source: tokamaks need magnets to be orders of magnitude better, the lining for the reactors needs to last for much longer, the whole steam conversion mess, etc.

Commercial REBCO tape is an entirely sufficient superconductor for tokamaks. At this point the limiting factor for the magnetic field is the structural strength of the reactor. Tokamak output scales with the square of size and the fourth power of magnetic field strength, and using REBCO, the CFS ARC design should get practical power output from a reactor much smaller than ITER.

Much smaller than ITER, but ITER is so huge a reactor could be much smaller and still be too big to be practical.
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