251–260 of 438 posts
Every mass-media article on fusion seems obliged to use "the fuel comes from water" line. I wonder if a "just says in mice" style harassment campaign would get journalists to stop saying this.
Question from a layman: how will the energy from a fusion reactor be extracted and converted into electrical energy? As far as I understand, the plasma inside a tokamak is isolated from the surroundings by the use of very powerful magnets. I assume in a reactor that is supposed to generate electricity there would be some interface between the plasma and some kind of heat exchanger that would generate steam and turn g…
This is what I remember from memory, I would need to fact check that.
And I hope the marketers pretending they'll have a commercial plant by 2025 are ashamed.
This is exciting. Magnetic field strength is a key component for enabling magnetic confinement fusion. This is because energy gain and power density scales to the 3rd and 4th power with magnetic field strength but only ~linearly with reactor size. See following equations for more details: https://youtu.be/xJ2h3vbOag4?t=306 So, why is this particular announcement exciting? There are 3 factors: 1. This is a high temper…
The new superconductors that allow these larger magnets are also very recent, not in discovery but in actual mass production. So they don't have as much experience with using these as with the classical superconductors. So I hope there is still quite some quick improvement there on the table.
Fusion is on my plate too. I've got a design that I really need to test, an I've finally got the funds to begin construction. My method uses much lower magnetic fields that could be provided by permanent magnets, but should allow containment times on the order of weeks for small quantities of D-D fuel. I have more information at http://www.DDproFusion.com
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, really, how? Fusion power plants still need land, buildings, generators, switchyards, wire, own power consumption, environmental impact reports, planning permits, regulations, inspections, and all the rest. And they need exotic materials and weird engineering in their construction. Really: how does fusion get us to ~1% (correction: ~5%) of current power prices? I've never seen a convincing explanation. Usually…
That’s about the same infrastructure than a nuclear fission reactor. And nuclear electricity is already pretty cheap. I don’t know how it costs in US, but in France, fully charging a Model 3 costs about ~5€ at night. That’s not 10x cheaper than gas but that’s a lot cheaper.
Fission is not cheap if you build a new nuclear plant, not in the Western world. That's why almost no nuclear plants are being build. Making a safe plant is just really, really complicated.
Second, this specific argument can be used to see why fusion is a pipe dream. The primary competitor to fusion is fission. And the fuel costs of fission are pretty low, as you just said. So fusion will not be competitive unless you can built them around the same price as fission plants.
Someone else in this thread talked about S curves. Well, those kind of S curves happen for tech that gets produced in larger quantities, where it is economical to spend engineering resources making the production of the tech cheaper.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, really, how? Fusion power plants still need land, buildings, generators, switchyards, wire, own power consumption, environmental impact reports, planning permits, regulations, inspections, and all the rest. And they need exotic materials and weird engineering in their construction. Really: how does fusion get us to ~1% (correction: ~5%) of current power prices? I've never seen a convincing explanation. Usually…
One of the big problems with existing power plants is that you have to build them near where people are. So then land is expensive and you get a bunch of regulations because people are worried about what's happening in their back yard. If you could hypothetically build a fusion plant that would generate several times more power than existing fission reactors at a similar construction cost, you would have so much powe…
Question from a layman: how will the energy from a fusion reactor be extracted and converted into electrical energy? As far as I understand, the plasma inside a tokamak is isolated from the surroundings by the use of very powerful magnets. I assume in a reactor that is supposed to generate electricity there would be some interface between the plasma and some kind of heat exchanger that would generate steam and turn g…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But are they surmountable AND cheaper than existing nuclear or other energy sources? DT fusion solves the two biggest arguments that are always raised by nuclear energy opponents: storage of nuclear waste (it doesn't produce high-level waste) and safety (it's not perfect but it can't explode). I wouldn't call it a "meh", even if it comes off as much more expensive than fission.
> I wouldn't call it a "meh", even if it comes off as much more expensive than fission. It's not competing with fission, though. It's competing with renewables + storage + load shifting + efficiency. Compared to those, it might indeed be "meh".
Renewables are key to having a sustainable energy economy. Fusion power is what will let us do the drastic things to recover from climate disaster that is already here.