5 replies to this topic

[Reno]

Success at the new experimental fussion facitiy in california. What was thought to be one of the main hurdles in fussion has been proven to be benign.

source

Experimental NIF facility

[niner]

What will this new energy source cost in dollars per kilowatt hour? I'll go out on a limb and say that it will be a shitload, to use the technical term. It's a brilliant achievement and all, but to what end?

[Reno]

What will this new energy source cost in dollars per kilowatt hour? I'll go out on a limb and say that it will be a shitload, to use the technical term. It's a brilliant achievement and all, but to what end?

Yes yes niner, at first being a brand new experimental technology it will be expensive. In the United States alone, electricity accounts for $210 billion in annual sales. The Iter reactor being built in France will cost about € 10 billion. It has the potential to provide by itself a sixth of the energy requirements of the US. Once the cost of R&D are realized in the construction of the first prototype you'll see fusion reactors pop up all over the place. Clean cheap energy thanks to water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

[niner]

What will this new energy source cost in dollars per kilowatt hour? I'll go out on a limb and say that it will be a shitload, to use the technical term. It's a brilliant achievement and all, but to what end?

Yes yes niner, at first being a brand new experimental technology it will be expensive. In the United States alone, electricity accounts for $210 billion in annual sales. The Iter reactor being built in France will cost about € 10 billion. It has the potential to provide by itself a sixth of the energy requirements of the US. Once the cost of R&D are realized in the construction of the first prototype you'll see fusion reactors pop up all over the place. Clean cheap energy thanks to water.

I don't see where the figure of 1/6 the energy requirements of the US comes from. It's designed to generate 500MW for up to 1000 seconds. That's not even one large power plant, even if they could get it to run constantly. They aren't even going to convert it to electricity, since this is essentially an experimental tool, so any energy that is generated will be discarded. For a device with this level of sophistication, the capital costs of a power plant will be insane. Even if the fuel is free, which it will certainly not be, the cost of the produced power, taking capital and operational costs into account will kill fusion in the marketplace. Even taking into account that if it were mass produced, it would be a lot cheaper, it is still more complicated by far than any of the alternatives, and will have huge capital and operational costs. I just can't see it competing with the available alternatives.

[Reno]

Your right, I'm wrong, I was citing an old article statistic which was wrong. That doesn't change the fact that deuterium is cheap, abundant, and easy to obtain, there is no nuclear waste which needs to be disposed of, and once the cost in R&D is realized the price of a proven design will fall considerably.

The yearly power usage for the us is right at 15.8TW as of 06 ~ 43GWs a day.



http://en.wikipedia....#Primary_energy
http://www-arch.iter...vidCampbell.pdf

For a device with this level of sophistication, the capital costs of a power plant will be insane.

Define insane. ITER is around $16bn, but thats for the experimental facility. Most of the cost is being split among several nations. Besides, here in the US we're pissing more money than that off on Iraq.

Once upon a time nuclear fission was experimental and complicated. When the blueprints for a proven reactor are finished you'll see them pop up everywhere like weeds. Who wants to generate waste that needs to be stuffed away in a salt dome for 250,000 years when you can build a clean safe reactor that does the same for less.

Edited by bobscrachy, 29 January 2010 - 06:07 PM.

[niner]

The yearly power usage for the us is right at 15.8TW as of 06 ~ 43GWs a day.

That's the total average power of all kinds, including heating and motive power, for the entire world. The US had an installed electrical generating capacity of 1084 GW in 2008. Power is an instantaneous measure, so that means that on average the world is using 15.8TW at any given moment.

For a device with this level of sophistication, the capital costs of a power plant will be insane.

Define insane. ITER is around $16bn, but thats for the experimental facility. Most of the cost is being split among several nations. Besides, here in the US we're pissing more money than that off on Iraq.

Once upon a time nuclear fission was experimental and complicated. When the blueprints for a proven reactor are finished you'll see them pop up everywhere like weeds. Who wants to generate waste that needs to be stuffed away in a salt dome for 250,000 years when you can build a clean safe reactor that does the same for less.

I would define insane as an order of magnitude higher, per delivered GW, than the most economical non-carbon producing competitor. I don't think they will pop up anywhere unless a government underwrites the cost. The reason I think they will be expensive is because they involve lots of very high power lasers, huge vacuum facilities, and require the ability to withstand a huge neutron flux for years on end. That adds up to a lot of money.