The recirculating power for the magnetics should be included (at least for pulsed), as the RTE there tends to drive the design.
Power to magnets (at least those not contributing to heating) are assumed to be included in the house load.
Fusion Power Plant Simulator
31–40 of 135 posts
Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator
#32The recirculating power for the magnetics should be included (at least for pulsed), as the RTE there tends to drive the design.
Power to magnets (at least those not contributing to heating) are assumed to be included in the house load.
For pulsed power, with an optimistic beta of 1, the magnetic field energy is going to be comparable to the heat energy. The house load here seems tied to a static superconducting coil, not a pulsed field.
And can in many cases be much higher than the heat energy (e.g. theta pinch).
Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator
#33Does anyone have a collection of these little simulator systems? I love playing with them.
Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator
#34fantastic PBS Space Time on what the last steps are going to be to finally make fusion possible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAJN1CrJsVE (fusion is -always- just a decade away, perpetually, lol)
> fusion is -always- just a decade away, perpetually Wasn't it perpetually 20 to 50 years away? I'm not an expert on the space. But new computational methods and magnets seem to be genuine steps forward.
IIRC the one of the first times a group put timelines to a fusion reactor they had time vs funding level of something like 20 years/50 years/never, and the funding level that actually materialised was below the 'never' amount and yet it started the 'always 20 years away' joke. Now I think the timeline was probably still optimistic but fusion is also obviously a very expensive thing to develop and while it's gotten a lot of funding it's still at the 'in the background' level.
Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ths is a massive misunderstanding of the technology. First of all, the amount of hydrogen in the reactor is tiny. The magnetic confinement severely limits the density of the plasma. The inner containment vessel is a ultra high vacuum chamber. The 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 fi…
> 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, which is high pressure helium, so it's not going to ignite in any reasonable way.
Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Fusion power plants can't "melt down" Eh, a core-containment failure (in any magnetically-contained system) would involve superheated hydrogen getting friendly with oxygen. That, in turn, would give neutron-impregnated barrier materials a free ride on propellant. It's not strictly a melt down. But it's in the same practical category of failure.
What's the effect of this in a populated area in a certain radius? Compared to nuclear power plants...
Radiologically? Pretty much nothing. The regular industrial safety concerns will matter more.
The plant will have some tritium, and the material in reactor walls will get activated by the neutron flux. Some of the activated materials can disperse in case of a catastrophic explosion (e.g. a couple of large airplanes being flown the reactor building).
But the material of the walls is not volatile, so it'll stay on the site. And tritium is very volatile, so it'll quickly disperse to safe levels. You'll be able to detect them with sensitive equipment, but it won't be dangerous.
Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ths is a massive misunderstanding of the technology. First of all, the amount of hydrogen in the reactor is tiny. The magnetic confinement severely limits the density of the plasma. The inner containment vessel is a ultra high vacuum chamber. The 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 fi…
> 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?
There seems to be a number of different prototypes of blankets, but the average operating temperature seems to be 300-700C. Adding oxygen to some of these designs while that hot may cause metal burning. This said, many of them are ceramic designs and would likely resist combustion.
With all that said, it seems to be way less 'dangerous' material than would be in your average nuclear reactor, making it more of an industrial accident versus a planet contaminating mess.
Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator
#38No 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."
Fusion power plants can't "melt down". The amount of plasma inside the vacuum chamber is just around a gram.
Might not be similar to nuclear meltdown but still enough to need a lot of money to fix
Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator
#39fantastic PBS Space Time on what the last steps are going to be to finally make fusion possible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAJN1CrJsVE (fusion is -always- just a decade away, perpetually, lol)
It's a nice video, but a striking thing about it is that it ends with "I just want my infinite free energy". Where on earth is that supposed to come from?
Fusion is ultimately a fancy way to boil water. The tokamak (or stellarator) heats a given amount of water per second, which after losses to power the plant itself and the losses in the steam turbine, makes some finite amount of MWh to output to the grid. This contraption is as the video says very non-trivial to design and build and so it costs some very non-zero amount of money, and lasts a finite time (walls are damaged)
Big $$$ / finite_amount_of_mwh / life_expectancy = min_cost_per_mwh, if we want to pay this thing off. Very possibly more than existing methods.
I'm extremely on the side of doing scientific research, but I'm baffled by constantly bumping into people who suggest somehow fusion is going to mean infinite free power, or anything even close to that.
So far the tech seems headed towards just being an alternate form of a fission plant -- complex, expensive, slow to build, possibly won't ever make a profit. Likely worse, since fission is a known, mature tech.
Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator
#40No 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."
Fusion power plants can't "melt down". The amount of plasma inside the vacuum chamber is just around a gram.
That's the joke, isn't it?
A fission power plant simulator lets you have fun playing through a meltdown disaster scenario. A fusion power plant simulator is "worse" because it takes away the "fun" of meltdowns. The humor is in reacting to the simulator as if it were a game (some are, but this one isn't).