What are your perspectives on peaceful clean nuclear FUSION projects?  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2018, 12:46:07 pm
content: That is of course a sort of Holy Grail for energy researchers. The way our sun produces energy. Could it happen and be controllable?

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2018, 05:00:52 pm
content: The technical side looks like it is possible, though difficult. However I am not so sure it will be economic. At least with the concepts planed so far it will likely not be cheap energy. The big problem it the long time still needed for development: if everything works out well, they promise something like 50 years (this number was not that different 0 years ago). Even than it would not be an instant breakthrough and than convert everything to fusion - there is a limited supply of tritium and thus an expansion to large scale would take quite some time (e.g. another 50 years).However we need alternative energy source much earlier - so chances are it comes 50 years too late.

author: PartialDischarge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2018, 05:21:51 pm
content: I'd be happy if I could only understand how the sun has been working for so long considering it burns 620 million metric tons of hydrogen each second

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2018, 05:32:53 pm
content: Well, in the distant future it will eventually be used up. By then we hopefully will have developed alternative places to live.

author: filssavi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2018, 05:36:17 pm
content: Quote from: MasterTech on January 22, 2018, 05:21:51 pmIt just has a Big-Ass(tm) fuel tankAlso it doesn’t just fuse Hydrogen into helium it goes all the way up to iron before burning out

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2018, 06:03:17 pm
content: Quote from: filssavi on January 22, 2018, 05:36:17 pmThe Sun will end with helium, IIRC. Heavier stars do more, carbon being the next major step, then everything after goes in fast enough stages that you get a mix, including heavier stuff being made in the core. The heaviest stars (like, 50+ solar masses) go all the way to iron in the core, then explode in a supernova (the core collapsing to a neutron star in the process, or possibly a black hole).Tim

author: timgiles
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2018, 07:12:29 pm
content: Fusion will happen eventually - but it wont ever be clean. Cleaner prehaps, but not clean.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2018, 08:01:13 pm
content: Fusion has been about 10 years out for my entire life. It would be cool to see it happen but I'm not holding my breath.

author: rfeecs
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 22, 2018, 08:22:42 pm
content: It's the technology of the future... and always will be?There are so many projects, ITER among them, but will it ever be economically viable? This guy says no:https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/why-fusion-will-never-happen/

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 08:43:45 pm
content: Quote from: rfeecs on January 22, 2018, 08:22:42 pmThe comparison in the link is flawed, especially with PV: You can't compare watts peak, but you have to take into account that some sources only produce power a short time of the day. For PV this is something like a 10-30% power factor - which increases the costs for the energy produced by a factor of 3 to 10, even more in winter of very unfavorable places. The second point is that with a variable power sources you need storage - with something like PV this can be quite a lot, up to the point of another factor of about 3 in the energy costs. The storage part can be lowered if there is a mixture of sources. Also wind is more favorable, as it often has a better power factor and less seasonal storage needed. Still you can't compare peak power - there is still another factor of maybe 3 to 10 to get average coste with storage / buffering.The cost for the lithium blanket is one big factor - though I am not sure the $180 / kg number for Li-7 would really apply. It still gets expensive.The second big cost factor I imagine in the likely limited lifetime of the container material due to radiation damage. Even new Mo based materials will not last for ever. Replacing the container is kind of tricky: it will be radioactive, at least for the first few years. It's a toroid, with all the superconducting magnets around, so the access it really difficult, it has to be really tight (e.g. welded in place) so that it can hold the high vacuum and it likely has to stand the high temperature (needs to be hot to use the energy) of the Li blanket.

author: KrudyZ
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 09:04:43 pm
content: Tony Seba has something interesting to say about this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3ttqYDwF0&feature=youtu.beHe believes that NOTHING will be able to compete with local solar plus battery storage a few short years from now.This includes any centralized power plants even if they could run for free.The reason is that you can't get away from the cost of power transmission, which he puts at $0.07 per kWh.When (or arguably if) solar on the roof plus storage goes below that other solutions no longer make any sense.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 09:16:27 pm
content: Quote from: Kleinstein on January 26, 2018, 08:43:45 pmOnly for Tokamak designs like ITER, not the other designs that look like they will break even using markedly less complicated facilities.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 09:29:26 pm
content: $0.07 per kWh sounds a bit high for distribution costs. I only pay about $0.08 per kWh so that wouldn't leave much left to pay for the power plants or allow for some profit for the utility.

author: KrudyZ
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 10:59:05 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on January 26, 2018, 09:29:26 pmDo you live next to a power plant?We get charged $0.20 base rate and $0.27 tier 2 rates...

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 01:06:04 am
content: I guess it depends on what one considers to be "near". I'm a little more than 200 miles from the Grande Coulee Dam, a major hydroelectric plant.

author: KrudyZ
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 03:21:27 am
content: Well, I guess you're lucky. Washington State has the lowest electricity cost in the U.S.http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/204.htm

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 03:51:35 am
content: The biggest issue with fusion, is that you dont just need to beat the sun, you need to beat its power output per unit volume by many many many times to stand to make a usable amount of power, like the comparisons between the suns core and a compost pile.equally you need to force things to happen much faster than the current reaction rate, for power production we dont want the chance of any 1 atom fusing with another taking between millions to billions of years, we would prefer within seconds, or minutes.is clean fusion a good thing for humanity if it works: yes,Is it currently hard to get a net positive while still powering the containment feilds: yes

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 05:17:06 am
content: I think "cleanfusion" would necessarily be D-D fusion. Using tritium means that you bombardsomethingwith intense neutron radiation, likely turning it into nuclear waste.D-D fusion is even farther in the future than sustainable D-T fusion.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 05:44:55 am
content: Quote from: cdev on January 22, 2018, 12:46:07 pmIt's possible and it works. It's just not efficient (yet).

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 06:57:08 am
content: Quote from: KrudyZ on January 27, 2018, 03:21:27 amThat may explain why I see so many electric cars on the roads around here. I knew it was cheaper than some parts of the country but I hadn't seen a widespread breakdown.On the other hand we have some of the most expensive gasoline in the nation.

author: Rutherfordium
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 06:21:55 pm
content: I read something before that the waste heat from fusion would warm the world way more than catastrophic climate change, and that it makes it unviable.I don't know where to start with back of the envelope calculations to analyze that idea, though.

author: GreggD
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 07:10:21 pm
content: This long video says it all except how to get 100 million degree C waste helium out of the device.MIT's Pathway to Fusion Energy (IAP 2017) - Zach Hartwig - YouTube

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 08:42:02 pm
content: I don't see how the waste heat would be any more than any other method of electricity generation. If you have a source of heat significantly warmer than ambient, you can extract that energy for useful purposes. Coal and nuclear plants all just produce heat which is turned into electricity.

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 08:52:50 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on January 22, 2018, 12:46:07 pmYes, it is called the big bang. Controllable - yes if you think of it as creating the universe. Who is to say it wasn't a life form's experiment. So maybe someday an earthling will make the next big bang.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 09:51:21 pm
content: I had estimated that by about the 2500s, we'll have to throttle back world fusion production otherwise climate change will occur by sheer force of output power being a sizable fraction of solar output.Orbital sun shades will probably be a thing by then.Tim

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 10:39:58 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on January 27, 2018, 09:51:21 pmHave you compared your estimates with the ones athttps://dothemath.ucsd.edu

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2018, 12:36:50 am
content: Looks like a blog of interest, but did you have an article in particular to recommend?Tim

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2018, 02:19:38 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on January 28, 2018, 12:36:50 amHis blog articleshttps://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/andhttps://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/are well known for highlighting the point at which energy consumption growth would incinerate us all. There are a couple of interesting articles by the same guy about the events which lead him to write these blogs.https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/is one. They describe how some chance discussions with an economist lead him realise that most economists have no sense that physics sets actual physical limits on growth, apart from resource exhaustion. There are a couple of hilarious critiques of his blogs, where the writer completely misses their point.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2018, 02:37:41 pm
content: There is this group in Sydney, Australia..http://sydney.edu.au/science/physics/research/fusion/overview.shtmlI've periodically heard of their work over the years.There are actually a number of small scale research projects (around the world) which have had varying degrees of success. (but still not achieved net gains in energy as far as I know)Some of the technologies they have worked with and the stories of these various adventures are pretty interesting though.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2018, 07:19:33 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on January 27, 2018, 09:51:21 pmThey'll then demand a gazillion in subsidies to put up giant fans to cool the planet. (Wait a mo, they could just hook up those ancient wind turbines that are still littering the hillsides as motors..)Seriously, a common misconception is that fusion is incredibly hard, and only happens in massive machines. Fusion is ridiculously easy to do. It can be achieved with table top apparatus. Look up the Farnsworth fusor as an example.The problem isn't achieving fusion, it's getting more energy out than you put in. Part of the problem is that hydrogen has a very low density, and that means the frequency of collisions in a plasma is relatively low. Add to that, the positive charge means the protons repel each other strongly, and will likely just ricochet off if the collision isn't exactly inline. Thus a lot of energy is wasted firing atoms at each other to no good effect.Compare that with fission using neutrons, which have no charge and so are not repelled from a uranium nucleus. You can see why fusion is harder!To get a decent return -as in sufficient productive collisions- you need to compress the fuel before heating it. The sun overcomes this by way of compressing its fuel with massive gravity, a weapon does so by using the energy from plutonium fission. Neither of these is very practical for a powerplant.An interesting idea is the Polywell, which uses a pulsed magnetic field to compress a plasma, in an arrangement not unlike the Farnsworth electrostatic fusor. One advantage is that this is a relatively small and inexpensive machine (say a 1m sphere) so definitely worth a try.Then again there are the 'cold fusion' experiments which tantalisingly suggest that there may be easier ways to achieve the compression, by constraining hydrogen atoms inside the crystal lattice of metals.In terms of fuels, tritium (along with deuterium) is the easiest to fuse, but has the disadvantages of being rare and costly, and of giving off very energetic neutron radiation which would likely damage the apparatus. Deuterium alone is somewhat harder to fuse, but inexpensive and plentiful. It also gives off neutrons, although not of such high energy.The near-ideal reaction would be between hydrogen and boron, which gives off little or no hard radiation, but needs a lot of energy to make it work. Far more than current machines can apply.The cost aspect also bears comparison with present efforts at wind and solar deployment. ITER will probably cost somewhere around $30 billion. The current annual wind and solar spend is between $300 billion and $500 billion a year, depending who you ask. So, it wouldn't need all that much scaling-back of renewables expenditure to pay for ITER right now, instead of having to wait a good few years to have the full funding.Presently, wind and solar supply around 4% of global electricity. When you extrapolate that $500billion pa to how much it would cost to go 100% wind and solar, you see that fusion research is actually a very, very cheap option by comparison.In view of the potential benefits of success, I think it's crazy not to allocate adequate funds to fusion research.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2018, 10:50:59 pm
content: QuoteI got a few square meters of peaceful nuclear fusion energy collecting devices on my south oriented roof.For me it's the thermal fluid filled kind, not the electron-moving counterpart.Works very well, very reliable since the time when it finally got hooked up right.And it's quite low cost also, as a bonus.Concerning actual research, I think Iter is mostly a joke.There are many many problems that should have been foreseen, and for which there is no practical solution, so that were just ignored, like the plasma contamination from erosion of the walls, or the disruptions caused by instabilities.In short : "Ehm, sir, there is no existing material that can be used for the fist layer of the wall." "OK, we'll figure that out later, let's build it first."So it got into a pointless expensive long term experiment.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2018, 06:47:52 am
content: QuoteYeah, except there is a catch :- 300-500 billion in renewables brings about 250GW of new power capacity to the grid.- 30 billion ITER brings exactly 0W of power capacity. Guaranteed.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2018, 08:12:30 am
content: 300-500 billion in renewables brings about 250GW of NAMEPLATE capacity to the grid.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2018, 10:27:36 am
content: I went to see JET being built at Culham was I was a teenager, there were vague promises of "maybe viable in 30 years", but of course they added the classic fusion caveat "we've been saying that for 30 years".I think that nuclear fusion as a practical commercial power source will never happen. It's not as "clean" and "cheap" as billed, and not really "unlimited" either except in a purely theoretical sense. it might be useful for niche applications such as military or space where cost is less of a concern.Even if technical issues can be overcome, economies of scale mean that only very large plants are economically viable, then there are all the risks associated with construction and uncertain future returns which deters private enterprise sinking $20+ billion into a commercial plant. It doesn't really matter if the fuel cost is very cheap, if the capital cost is huge. Expensive maintenance such as replacing liners will kill it, it needs to run 24/365 to recoup cost.I predict that a few countries will build a prototype fusion reactor with a lot of government subsidy to get national bragging rights, but they will not be taken up by private enterprise.The alternative designs to tokamak are interesting, but mostly still at a "benchtop" level, and there is little sign these can be scaled up to commercial plants.I think the paradigm of large centralised plants may be on the way out anyway. Those economies of scale worked well in the coal era (which we didn't really leave yet). Modern distributed power generation can be as efficient, and is more flexible and attractive to investors.I think the future of technological civilisation lies with learning how to effectively harness distributed low density energy sources such as wind, solar, and not with capital intensive "grand projects".

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2018, 05:04:11 am
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on January 29, 2018, 10:27:36 amI agree. Collections of 500ft tall turbines dominating the landscape everywhere, are the worst example of corporate megalomania.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2018, 07:12:17 pm
content: Bullshit. They are beautiful, cheap, decentralized, sustainable and environmentally friendly energy sources.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2018, 10:04:42 pm
content: I do like the look of wind turbines, I would be happy to live where a field of turbines was the view. Huge, graceful kinetic art that also happens to generate useful energy.

author: fcb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2018, 01:01:42 pm
content: Fusion is deep future stuff. Perhaps 100+ years. But will be really useful for exploring the galaxy. ITER is optimistically at least 20 years away from useful results, and then it's going to take another 20+ to build something vaguely commercial - and I doubt there will be the commercial imperative to do so.I think the vast majority of power needs on earth will be met with wind/tidal and solar - this is starting to happen already.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2018, 07:50:56 pm
content: Volcanic eruptions happen every few decades or so and and sometimes very seriously reduce the amount of sunshine hitting Earth, changing the Earth's "albedo" - Ash in the upper atmosphere reduces rainfall and wind and has been known to cause spectacular crop failures.So its not good to rely completely on power sources that depend on the sun, wind, or rainfall (hydroelectricity) as they may go away when you need them the most.Benjamin Franklin (one of the founders of the US) wrote about this.Of course, "disaster capitalism" is all the rage now.It would be good to have a "Plan B" but we have no "Planet B" just planet Earth.

author: John Heath
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2018, 01:17:20 pm
content: Quote from: f4eru on January 28, 2018, 10:50:59 pmA nuclear fusion energy collector of the fluid type not electron ? You mean hot tin roof with some copper tubing but I see marketing potential in your way of phrasing it. I would buy one just to say I use fusion energy collectors to heat my house. With this in mind a big problem with alternative energy sources is marketing with a healthy interest in making a profit. Without profit there is no oil to grease the wheels of capitalism. This was not lost on someone in China marketing solar heat tubes. It is a fluorescent type glass tube under vacuum with a copper black sheet with copper tube filled with freon or other heat pump type fluid. The advantage is heat by boiling and condensing is pumped by the copper tube to a concentrated point at the top of the tube where it can be harvested. There is little loss of heat to convection as the glass tubes are vacuum. The cleverness of the idea is in the after market. How long are thin glass vacuum tubes going to last on a house roof with kids playing baseball and annual gutter cleaning. The after market heat pump glass tubes have a much higher profit margin. A replacement O2 sensor for a Mazda at 300 dollars in an example of the importance of after market sales. In short energy with a lower carbon foot print needs to be a business that makes a profit for it to be effective or perhaps realistic is a better word. Everything else is just talk if it does not make a profit.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2018, 03:20:25 am
content: Quote from: f4eru on January 28, 2018, 10:50:59 pmI prefer the kind that processes blockchains. Because everyone knows blockchains are the future!You can't buy that off the shelf yet, but they're pretty easy to assemble out of commonly available parts. What I liked the best about the one I have is how fast it paid for itself and the "feel good" factor I get from owning it.The main drawback? My environmentalist friend Allie Moore is now really jealous of me.