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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#201

Post by pfdietz »

coldpie wrote: post #74
toomuchtodo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and batteries are already cheaper than fossil fuels in most markets. Nuclear isn’t competing with renewables, it’s competing against batteries and almost free renewables that charge them. Nuclear is still possibly a great fit for niche locales where renewables aren’t feasible at all. Not a nuclear hater by any means (we need every innovation we can get), just show your math. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…

Are solar + batteries feasible to heat every house in Minnesota with electricity when it's below -20F (-30C) for a week, we have > just show your math. I admit I can't. It's mostly gut-feeling from various science news sources I keep up with (e.g. Ars Technica; Skeptic's Guide to the Universe).

We can look at how solar/wind/storage compete with putative fusion. Fusion is a baseload source, so let's see how they would do to provide "synthetic baseload".

https://model.energy/

Selecting the state of Minnesota, 2011 weather data, and 2030 cost assumptions, this would be about 70 Euro/MWh. The cost optimized solution would involve 222 hours of hydrogen storage, 5 hours of battery storage, 4.2x peak power of solar and 2.4x peak power of wind.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#202

Post by pfdietz »

dahfizz wrote: post #150
toomuchtodo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See you in ten years at the earliest when any nuclear generator you break ground on today generates its first kWh of power (assuming it isn’t wildly late or over budget, as every one built since the 70s has been).

I'm not saying fusion is necessarily the answer. I'm just tired of hearing "solar plus storage is the cheapest option" when the sources always rely on projected costs and a pathetically small amount of storage. We need a major breakthrough in storage tech to make grid-scale storage a reality. Li-ion batteries are never going to cut it. Who knows whether grid scale storage will come along faster than fusion.

We don't need major breakthroughs, we just need to watch technologies proceed down their experience curves.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#203

Post by pfdietz »

gabesullice wrote: post #68
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.

They laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Most skepticism is ratified by subsequent events.

DT fusion doesn't appear to have much to recommend it, since it still requires a thermal cycle like fission or coal, and that keeps its cost high. From an engineering point of view it involves large monolithic plants with very complex and stressed equipment. This seems the opposite of good engineering.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#204

Post by pfdietz »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #141
rapsey wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once again, I am reminding HackerNews that the technology to build a battery capable of storing enough renewable electrical energy for the (world|nation) for even half a day does not exist at any reasonable cost. But it is almost certainly closer to existence than fusion.

Almost certainly not. The US alone generates 4,095 billion kWh yearly. For a half a day, you would need to store 5,600,000,000 kWh. Tesla Megapack can store 3916 kWh fully loaded. This means you would need 1,430,000 Megapacks to power the US for half a day. With Tesla only being capable of producing roughly 40,000,000 kWh of Megapacks annually, it would take 140 years to produce all the batteries. If Tesla created 10…

Almost certainly yes.

Consider pumped thermal energy storage. Use a thermal cycle to generate hot and cold (say, by compressing a gas, probably argon, extracting the heat, then reexpanding, and then storing the resulting "cold"), then reversing that cycle to generate power.

This scales embarrassingly well. It can be made entirely from cheap materials available in essentially infinite supply. No component operates at a temperature above the creep limit of ordinary steel. Round trip efficiency could reasonably be 75%. This requires no technological breakthroughs -- it's 19th century technology.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#205

Post by pfdietz »

coolspot wrote: post #198

Anyone remembers Lockheed Martin container-sized fusion reactors announced couple (edit: 8) years ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458339

They discovered that it actually had a power density 100x lower than what they had said, if it could even work at all. Last I heard the group there was disbanded in 2019.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#206

Post by signatoremo »

dylan604 wrote: post #130
soperj wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what people get out of repeating this on every single fusion article. It's not inventive or insightful, and it doesn't further the discussion in the slightest.

Because it's A) true, B) relevant to keep all of the hype in check. The year of Linux on the desktop is always right around the corner too. Yes, they are tropes, but they were not born out of nothing. Someone has to keep the bloviated PR campaigns checked with reality. Otherwise, some crazy fools might actually start believing that fusion is real and gets duped out of their money. If you can't stand a bit of real cri…

If you want to keep the hype in check, do it with facts like /acidburnNSA did above. Let people debate. You don’t even know what will be announced. Repeating the same joke in every single fusion article is tiresome and has long past its funny expiration date.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#207

Post by throw1234651234 »

jokteur wrote: post #180
throw1234651234 wrote: post #86

Could someone break down the costs of realistic fusion for me like I am 12 please? For example, for fission, my 12 year old understanding is: Stack uranium plates until the reaction is self-sustaining, boil water to spin turbine, if reaction gets too fast, cover it with lead / cool it with water. Circulated water is slightly radioactive. Main costs are keeping reaction container / need power to circulate water coolin…

Realistic fusion (with the best understood technology): build powerful magnets around a donut shaped chamber, which allows to contain a plasma comprised of Deuterium and Tritium (both Hydrogen isotops) which is then heated by externals sources. Reach very high temperatures such that fusion reactions occur frequently. Some of this energy stays inside the plasma, and some of it escapes under the form of neutrons. Captu…

Thank you, "Current estimates put Q at least 30-40 to achieve commercial fusion (again: there is no physical limit to achieve that, only engineering difficulties)" is exactly what I was looking for.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#208

Post by knodi123 »

SuperFine wrote: post #52
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…

>After that, we can see what a practical electricity producing plant looks like I guess we still don't have anything better than boiling water, right?

I'm surprised too. I've looked into this before, and it's absolutely right - just not intuitive to me.

We do have radio-photo-voltaic devices, but they're so inefficient it's laughable. And we have RTG generators, which are only practical in limited situations, and again have a very low efficiency.

So hot water it is!!

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#209

Post by gabesullice »

pfdietz wrote: post #203
gabesullice wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. Most skepticism is ratified by subsequent events. DT fusion doesn't appear to have much to recommend it, since it still requires a thermal cycle like fission or coal, and that keeps its cost high. From an engineering point of view it involves large monolithic plants with very complex and stressed equipment. This seems the opposite of good engineering.

My impression is that the research efforts have been focused on "can we do it?" Then, if the answer is yes, they'll focus on "how do we do it efficiently?" Where efficiency can mean anything from capital efficient, to resource efficient, to energy conversion efficiency. Limiting one's focus on the next blocker in the critical path and not increasing scope beyond it sounds like perfectly good engineering to me.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#210

Post by 0xbadc0de5 »

deelowe wrote: post #200
0xbadc0de5 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the case with nearly every aspect of "proposed" fusion reactors. Just because it's proposed or "not yet tested on a commercial fusion reactor" does not necessarily mean that the mechanism is not well understood.

I think if it were so well understood, ITER wouldn't be testing over 100 different breeder blanket designs. I've seen breeder blanket design described as one of the biggest challenges with fusion today.

I would expect that it is more a matter of selecting the best/optimized design rather than demonstrating the fundamental viability of tritium breeding.
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