Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fusion Power Plant Simulator

fusionenergybase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 135 posts

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#81

Post by hunterpayne »

aaroninsf wrote: post #44
nerdsniper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite video that walks through fusion energy design/sizing/cost equations is also a lecture by Dennis Whyte: https://youtu.be/KkpqA8yG9T4?si=U8xaAAvjdnt6yqr8 It’s a really engaging lecture - I’m normally pretty put off by 100-minute lectures on YouTube but this one was both very easy to follow and perfectly scoped. Can highly recommend it - the learnings from it are timeless fundamentals that really make fusion…

The wildcard for our civilization that I pay a lot of attention to: will AI help us get through blockers like this? I'm out of the prediction business but my guess is: absolutely, but iff we don't collapse in some way first. Wild to be alive as the centuries-long horse race of industrialization between doom, or the stars, approaches its finish line.

This is the science fiction fan's version of hopes and prayers.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#82

Post by jiggawatts »

nerdsniper wrote: post #20
leonidasrup wrote: post #5

For those interested not only in simplified energy balance of a fusion power plant as shown in Fusion Power Plant Simulator, but in more realistic engineering of heat extraction from a tokamak I recommend the following lecture by Dr. Dennis Whyte from MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center. Fusion Reactor First Wall Cooling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHJyoqDO0zw One of the designs uses 3D printed silicon carbide vac…

My favorite video that walks through fusion energy design/sizing/cost equations is also a lecture by Dennis Whyte: https://youtu.be/KkpqA8yG9T4?si=U8xaAAvjdnt6yqr8 It’s a really engaging lecture - I’m normally pretty put off by 100-minute lectures on YouTube but this one was both very easy to follow and perfectly scoped. Can highly recommend it - the learnings from it are timeless fundamentals that really make fusion…

Some Sci Fi authors have made the point that the first interstellar space ship is likely to be greeted at their destination star by human immigration control officers boggling at their long superseded sublight ship.

This is also one of the reasons ITER is such as bad project. It's so big, slow, and had to be planned so far ahead that it "locked in" older superconducting tape technology that has been superseded.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#84

Post by hunterpayne »

MisterTea wrote: post #66
ExpertAdvisor01 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already exists in many countries. They transport it through pipelines . E.g. Temelín Nuclear Power Plant, Paks Nuclear Power Plant And many more

My question is more about the safety of locating one smack in the middle of a city. There is radiation to shield but no radioactive fuel waste. HOWEVER, worn reactor parts that need to be replaced will be piping hot when measured with a Geiger counter. So is it safe to build and operate in the middle of e.g. NYC? And further, if they are safe, what is the public's perception of fusion? Do people hear "nuclear fusion"…

"My question is more about the safety of locating one smack in the middle of a city. "

We don't put any other type of powerplant in a city, so why would we do it for fusion? That being said, fusion won't happen in our lifetimes and even when we do get it, we probably will never really use it. Fission is just better in almost every way. It makes 5x the power per amount of fuel, it makes far less neutrons, and the temperature generated is far more usable. Oh, and fusion absolutely makes radioactive waste and a fusion failure makes a meltdown (which doesn't have to be a failure case for fission) look like a Sunday picnic.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#85

Post by hunterpayne »

DennisP wrote: post #72
MisterTea wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question is more about the safety of locating one smack in the middle of a city. There is radiation to shield but no radioactive fuel waste. HOWEVER, worn reactor parts that need to be replaced will be piping hot when measured with a Geiger counter. So is it safe to build and operate in the middle of e.g. NYC? And further, if they are safe, what is the public's perception of fusion? Do people hear "nuclear fusion"…

Judging by the comments I see most places, the general public's perception of fusion is "magical scifi tech that will never happen."

That's because it almost certainly is. Don't hate on the messengers.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#86

Post by hunterpayne »

gmueckl wrote: post #25
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

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…

You are ignoring that the plasma would ignite the O2 in the air. You are also ignoring what happens when several hundred MW of energy (at about 1,000,000C) under pressure is released instantly. Anytime you have a powerplant with enough energy to be economically viable, releasing that energy at once will be a problem. Even FF PPs can explode quite violently.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#87

Post by jiggawatts »

DennisP wrote: post #74
andrewla wrote: post #41

Apologies if I've missed something, but isn't this all just a fantasy? None of the current methods for getting fusion power are even close to being practical -- even the theoretical net output experiments require extensive and sensitive measurement setups just to establish whether or not they are positive energy. We are not in a place where we expect fusion power to be incrementally achieved by the current systems. W…

That wildly overstates how far off we are. To take the most conservative example, tokamaks have very well-known scaling laws and based on those, CFS is generally expected to exceed breakeven with SPARC and get to practical power levels with ARC, over the next several years.

> over the next several years.

More like decades. The earliest time any planned fusion reactor will make net electrical output -- but not yet an economically useful amount -- is the mid 2030s, a decade from now.

Commercially relevant amounts of electrical generation is uncertain, but most plans start around 2045 and then would take decades to replace fossil fuel plants at scale.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#88

Post by laurencerowe »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #79
dale_glass wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's far easier solutions to that than fusion. For example, HVDC. Interconnect and buy power from somebody with more sun. Or just overbuild solar by a lot. It's cheap, so chances are having too much of it still works out economically.

> For example, HVDC. Interconnect and buy power from somebody with more sun. Who is Japan interconnecting with, or any other country that doesn't trust its neighbors? What is Canada supposed to do when it's ~6000 km from the equator and might not want to rely on the US for electricity regardless? > Or just overbuild solar by a lot. It's cheap, so chances are having too much of it still works out economically. Solar i…

> What is Canada supposed to do when it's ~6000 km from the equator and might not want to rely on the US for electricity regardless?

Most Canadians live quite far south. Toronto is on the same latitude as France’s Mediterranean coast and they of course have plentiful hydropower. Solar is surprisingly useful even in more northerly places like the UK or Denmark since it is anti-correlated with wind power.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#89

Post by hunterpayne »

derriz wrote: post #61

When people get excited about fusion as a source of energy, I’m always reminded of Henry Ford’s famous quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” although apparently he probably never said that. Fusion is that faster horse - promising a cheaper to operate firebox which when attached to a stream engine attached to an alternator can produce electricity. This approach to generat…

"I just can’t see any circumstances under which steam engines are “coming back” and becoming competitive for electricity no matter how cheap the firebox fuel is."

Industrial grade steam is still widely used and that probably won't ever change except to move from steam to supercritical CO2 and then only for power production. Most steam is used to do other things that are critically important to modern society. The biggest one is to make fertilizer without which we can't feed most of the planet. Your understanding of how industry works is fundamentally flawed.

Re: Fusion Power Plant Simulator

#90

Post by hunterpayne »

ck2 wrote: post #18
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

the PBS Space Time episode suggests to me the housing walls might be the biggest problem it consumes itself or makes molecules that are destructive to the walls or insanely toxic so can never risk leaks whatever solution they come up with I suspect it will require a lot of constant maintenance on the first generation

Then they are wrong. The biggest problem is efficiently gathering energy from the fusion reaction. Right now, we can only get a tiny fraction (less than 1%) of the energy out. If that can't be raised to 50% or so, fusion will never happen.
Post reply on HN