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More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

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Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#441

Post by ncmncm »

thrown_22 wrote: post #372
godelski wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't understand why we can't do both. I don't think this has to be framed as a zero sum problem (I think way too many issues are naively framed that way). With reference to the article, the funding levels over the past decade (globally) were roughly $200m/yr. That's really nothing in terms of government money and well within the realm that just the US could sustain such an effort alone. It would be rough…

>Honestly, I don't understand why we can't do both. Because we're been doing neither for 40 years.

And, money is fungible. A dollar spent on X is not spent on Y.

This is not a difficult concept.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#442

Post by ascar »

ncmncm wrote: post #436
toxik wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a myth doesn’t make it a myth. Power companies have been saying exactly this for years: they need PLANNABLE power generation. Building 3x solar or wind plants means 3x volatility.

Building 3x renewables in widely distributed places radically reduces volatility. Wind is always blowing somewhere. Sun is always out somewhere. Storage is transportable.

> Building 3x renewables in widely distributed places radically reduces volatility.

Is that actually true? Serious question. That sounds like a claim that seems so obvious, but won't hold up to the degree you might think in reality. Just one scenario I'm thinking of are giant storms that have clouds spanning multiple countries. And in that storm scenario even wind power shuts down to prevent damage.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#443

Post by ncmncm »

mlsu wrote: post #337
socialdemocrat wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could upvote this a hundred times. It is easy to mock the public for not getting nuclear power and being paranoid. People today have really forgotten how much people got lied to constantly about nuclear power. France which they like to pull out as this amazing nuclear country built all the reactors they hype up by faking safety checks on nuclear reactors. It is just really naive to assume every nuclear plant is…

If you're surprised by the lack of paperwork in fission reactors, just wait till you see (or... not!) the documentation on coal and ng powerplants!

Coal and NG are, like fission, on their way out.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#444

Post by belorn »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #428
formerly_proven wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise this to make it viable. You can't directly compare cost per generating capacity, because nuclear, gas, coal etc. are available according to schedule, while most renewables aren't. Adding storage around renewables to make them schedulable raises costs.

You can however price this in, and I doubt it accounts for 110$/MW. Furthermore, nuclear energy specifically only runs according to schedule. Reducing or raising output is expensive and slow.

For simplicity, lets use the cost of for every $ that a KG of green hydrogen costs, this mean that the cost per MW will be 30x of that. So if green hydrogen cost $1/KG you the cost in term of MW will be $30.

The current cost of green hydrogen is somewhere between $2 -> $12. That is the production cost. The market price for green hydrogen sits around $4-$20, since there are multiple industries that demands hydrogen.

For 110 to break even the hydrogen need to cost $3.5/kg, and in order to really displace natural gas, it is estimated that it need to reach $1/kg.

Now I noticed that those $150/MW is not a range, so I took a look. Projected nuclear LCOE costs for plants built 2020-2025 places nuclear around $27/MW to $147/MW depending on financing and country (source: OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA's) calculation). Russia has the lowest cost and Slovakia or Japan (depending on financing method) has the highest.

So in summery, it can definitively cost more than $110/MW to produce viable green storage solution, especially in northern countries where low duration lithium batteries is not a working solution for long winter periods with low wind production and the sun is only up for a max few hours per day. Nuclear can also be much cheaper depending on where it is built and how it is financed.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#445

Post by rawoke083600 »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

May I ask your views on Thorium reactors ? Is this the next step/direction in fission reactors ?

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#446

Post by ncmncm »

thrown_22 wrote: post #374
downrightmike wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is energy companies and the entrenched family assholes that run them. Three Mile Island was being forced to push ahead and use the crane to move the vessel, even though it WAS damaged and would have likely lead to a meltdown. Engineers knew it wasn't safe and were punished and fired for not using the crane unless it was actually checked and in working order. The public is right to be wary of nuclear when…

And how is it better when those assholes kill tens of thousands with coal every year instead? If we lynched a few of them every time a nuclear reactor blew up we'd have a lot fewer energy related deaths and the market would eventually self correct.

Coal is on its way out.

It is now cheaper to build a new solar farm to replace a coal plant than just to operate the already built coal plant. It is as cheap to build renewables as to operate an already built and paid for nuke.

Renewables cost is still in free fall. In ten years, renewables will be so cheap that overbuilding 10x, 20x, will be cheaper than operating a nuke.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#447

Post by upwardbound »

jmyeet wrote: post #297
indymike wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I swear nuclear fan boys are just as delusional as climate deniers. No, some of us actually have operated a reactor for a living, and have first hand experience with the technology, and most of the issues people like to discuss. In my case, I served in the US Navy in nuclear propulsion. This whole debate seems crazy. Truth is the tech works, and it should be inexpensive compared to burning fossil fuels. Then there…

> In my case, I served in the US Navy in nuclear propulsion. Ah, the US military, famous for building and operating things at low cost. > Truth is the tech works Nuclear propulsion works because it has the US military to secure it but more importantly, a carrier or a submarine benefits from not carrying fuel in a way that has nothing to do with economics. You power a submarine with nuclear simply because there's no o…

I think you're being pretty quick to write off a subject matter expert on a topic that is their own field of expertise.

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#448

Post by Kukumber »

borissk wrote: post #359
Kukumber wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX is not successful as an industry It is a government funded project at this point

Quoted post unavailable.

Wtf, that's not Putin propaganda

You just have to get curious about who their customers are

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-su...

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#449

Post by zigzag312 »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

Is there any progress in design of nuclear fission power plants regarding safety?

Fukushima was build in the 70s, so it might have been a bit outdated (as a layman I have no idea). Was there any significant progress in design of nuclear power plants since then? Can they be shut down more quickly and reliably?

Given enough R&D, could safety of nuclear fission power plants be improved further or is that very unlikely?

Re: More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade

#450

Post by iforgotpassword »

downrightmike wrote: post #253
acidburnNSA wrote: post #153

But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1]) [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors. Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who cares), and c) n…

The problem is energy companies and the entrenched family assholes that run them. Three Mile Island was being forced to push ahead and use the crane to move the vessel, even though it WAS damaged and would have likely lead to a meltdown. Engineers knew it wasn't safe and were punished and fired for not using the crane unless it was actually checked and in working order. The public is right to be wary of nuclear when…

Exactly. People here on HN unsurprisingly approach nuclear with this naive enthusiasm that's operating under the assumption of a spherical cow in vacuum.

In reality the nuclear lobby heavily got politics to relax safety requirements, operators are corrupt and cut costs at every corner, inspections are not performed at all or not thoroughly, and when important decisions are being made, like where to store the waste, it's where politicians in charge find it convenient, and not where scientists and engineers actually recommend. Then you end up with metal containers in a salt mine, rusting away because thirty years ago who could have known the connection between salt and oxidation.

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