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Thread: Nuclear Fusion
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2018-03-16, 11:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
It is on the coast, so offshore wind sounds like the first option once ground space becomes an issue.
Except that nuclear was dying while coal was king. It is more a progression.
Coal killed nuclear.
Natural gas is killing coal.
Wind and solar are replacing a lot of natural gas.
When talking about power generation, there are two things to remember. You need both baseline and peak power. Coal and nuclear are mostly good for producing baseline power (nukes simply aren't turned off, and coal typically takes to long to cycle on and off). Natural gas is good for either (thus making the argument that you need "baseline specific power plants" moot. You just need efficiency and if the new "cycleable" plants are more efficient than the old baselines, your "cycleable" plants are the new baseline).
Wind and solar aren't particularly well suited for either, but since gas can turn off reasonably fast they can displace gas (but not nuclear or coal). Solar does have the fact that it is typically available when peak power is needed (at least where air conditioning is needed on sunny summer days). This makes gas the "new baseline":the old baseline simply provided a certain level 24/7. The new baseline provides a maximum amount of power and throttles down as wind and solar become available.
I still maintain that solar and wind may well replace natural gas before building a fusion plant [for large scale power generation] is physically possible. This would require either some sort of battery as the "new baseline" or planetary* sized grids (presumably DC. But then again solar and wind make DC-based grids make a lot more sense.)
I've seen plenty of "portable" fission designs (hot pebbles and the like). Whatever became of them? At least they wouldn't have quite the problems listed in the Markowitz article. But they never seem to happen.
* I'm pretty sure this is science fiction, but haven't looked into the physics. On the other hand, while superconducters have current limits, I don't think they are limited by voltage.
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2018-03-16, 11:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: Nuclear Fusion
They do? It's a spinning thing. Wouldn't that lend itself to AC much easier than to DC? Just transmit the spin to a magnet and presto! AC electricity.
This is addressing me, but I think I've been quite clear that I don't expect the Skunk Works reactor to come to anything, merely that before we call it dead we at least give them the period they requested. So, am I to take it that this is agreeing with me? Or are you declaring that because every previous attempt failed, we should automatically declare every future attempt must also necessarily fail?
Grey WolfLast edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2018-03-16 at 11:55 AM.
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2018-03-16, 12:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
A lot of solar enthusiasts like to talk about the possibilities of on-site, local solar installations - shingling houses with solar panel roofing (or possibly just installing a solar panel in the side yard, the way you used to see those huge old antenna dishes back before satellite communications could be run off a 5-inch dish mounted under the gutters), replacing some portion of the windows or doing roof installations of solar on tall buildings, etc. Solar electric doesn't have to mean large acreage farms of solar panels to contribute something to the equation, those are just a lot easier to integrate into the existing grid models as a sort of power plant.
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2018-03-16, 12:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Because the article as a whole overly discounts the effects of a hostile/ambivalent regulator and public aversion to nuclear power. Terrapower, Bill Gates energy company, has the financial backing and willingness to build new nuclear facilities. Yet, it's first Gen IV reactors are going to be built in China simply because of how hard it is to get anything done in the US and the Western world in general.
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2018-03-16, 12:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Wumpus is talking fission, not fusion. I first read about pebble bed reactors in Physics for Future Presidents by Richard A. Muller. They're supposed to be smaller, cheaper, and safer than the standard fission reactor, but yeah, I haven't heard of any going into operation. Haven't looked for them, to be honest. Anyone else hear about them?
Last edited by Lord Torath; 2018-03-16 at 12:42 PM.
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2018-03-16, 12:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Germans built and stopped a 15 MW pilot plant. China licensed the technology and is building a 200 MW test reactor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTR-10. According to wiki, they installed the pressure vessel head in 2017.
Last edited by Thomas Cardew; 2018-03-16 at 12:44 PM.
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2018-03-16, 12:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: Nuclear Fusion
[citation needed]. Best I can find suggests he's managed to secure about $1.6 Billion. A nuclear power plant starts at $6 Billion, and more often than not costs soar mid-construction. It also takes forever to build, during which you see exactly 0 ROI, which when you are asked to invest such massive amounts, is hard to justify. And after all that, it is barely competitive with other power plants, so even if you see some returns, they aren't impressive. None of this reality can be blamed on regulations (other than regulations ensuring that expensive pipe dreams have a minimum viability before breaking ground, that is).
EDIT: I looked up this HTR-10. It seems it is, in fact, a bit more expensive than a old fashioned nuclear power plant ("PWR 600"):
"For the case of pure electricity generation, although the capital cost of HTR is higher than that of PWR, the difference is less than 20%"
Grey WolfLast edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2018-03-16 at 12:58 PM.
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2018-03-16, 04:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2007
Re: Nuclear Fusion
While spinning is good for producing AC, it will almost always produce AC at a frequency at some ratio of the rate the generator is spinning (I suppose that if you really wanted to, you could manage to have a generator on a motor with a difference built in, in practice you will much more likely see a generator (probably producing AC, just not 60Hz or specific voltages) feeding a power supply system that converts AC to DC and back to AC. Expect at least 80% efficiency, but not much more than 90% in each conversion.
I'm not claiming that every attempt will fail (although nearly all such research turns out to be a dead end), just that I was pretty sure we had at least proof of concepts for fission (that didn't have all the issues with the Markowitz article) and they don't seem to go anywhere. Of course, they don't have the pizzaz of fusion. You might get enough investments throwing the fusion word around. Although why Lockheed Martin would need investment to build a "Mr. Fusion" is beyond me.
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2018-03-16, 09:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
Re: Nuclear Fusion
You probably need to take into account the variance of those values. E.g. days are shortest in the winter but demand is highest. The system has to be able to hold up even in the case of a cloudy winter week. So I'd guess that in practice we're talking 50% coverage or more even with reasonable storage.
Last edited by NichG; 2018-03-16 at 09:51 PM.
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2018-03-17, 05:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
I think we can all agree that the ITER project is a massive white elephant at this point. I'm not sure sure it's technically impossible for reactor designs to become cost-competitive with wind or solar- I feel like thorium reactors could potentially be a lot more compact, for example- but it certainly makes an argument for diversifying research in the area.
On the plus side, having market forces working in renewables' favour by now is a pretty good problem to have.Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2018-03-17, 08:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2010
Re: Nuclear Fusion
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2018-03-17, 08:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2014
Re: Nuclear Fusion
I won't claim to be an expert in this field, so maybe you have a better idea of whether useful research results have (or will likely) come out of the project. But it seems to me that if fundamental research is your goal, you'd split money across various smaller projects instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, particularly given that the reactor won't even be functional for nearly another decade. There are likely to be significant breakthroughs in material or plasma physics between then and now.
Worse, the long delays, cost overruns and parcelling out of jurisdictional contracts reminds me of nothing so much as the F-35 fighter or the Big Dig- more to do with political back-scratching than sound engineering or logistic schedule concerns. Now, sure, the private sector isn't exactly immune to cost overruns, and any excuse for international cooperation might be worth preserving these days, but the operation smells like a governmental boondoggle to me.Give directly to the extreme poor.
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2018-03-18, 12:16 AM (ISO 8601)
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2018-03-18, 10:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: Nuclear Fusion
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2018-03-18, 10:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2010
Re: Nuclear Fusion
If that load balancing happens over hundreds or thousands of miles, losses due to transmission pile up. A quick estimate tells me that the losses for transmitting power from New York to Los Angeles might be between 15% and 35%.
In any case, being able to balance any given local chunk of the grid over a certain size allows better response to disasters and can improve efficiency. I'd certainly feel better if my national power grid had a baseload provided by hydroelectric and nuclear stations, so that no inhabited point of the nation was more than, say 450 km of power line away from one of those types of station.
Also, renewables have different cycles of availability and peak power. Every connected component of every nation has times when there is no sunlight. Sunlight and wind vary with the seasons. Wind power production varies in a complex way with time of day, time of year, and with a chaotic component on top of that.
Large organizations and bureaucracies have to answer to many people. If even in the absence of a disaster, equipment failure, or unusual power draw, you can't guarantee that every person can draw their normal load from the grid at all times, then the system is a failure. Full stop.
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2018-03-18, 06:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2007
Re: Nuclear Fusion
I would normally assume that transmitting power from New York to Los Angles would be either spectacularly rare, or that power production would simply follow the sun and happen at set times. Either way, it seems more efficient than any storage I've ever heard or (unless you are already assuming a superconducting cable: the cost of keeping that cool might blow your mind).
We already have times when "every person can't draw arbitrary amounts of power from the grid". We call it "summer". I remember my parents putting in a device that turned off the AC at points during peak use in return for a lower rate during the 1980s. Long before the "smart gird". Not sure how it worked, probably cut in when voltage was less than 115VAC (from a 120VAC nominal).
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2018-03-18, 08:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Just looked up information about long distance power transmission. The longest, or at least one of the longest now, goes across a big chunk of China, bringing hydro power 2000km to Shanghai. That's an ultra-high voltage DC link, running at 800kV. Transmission losses are less than 7%, which seems pretty good. OTOH cost is listed as US$440 million, which is not cheap at all. That's still only a tenth of the half way around the world link you'd need to supply solar power to where it is the middle of the night, but it is impressive.
Last edited by Excession; 2018-03-18 at 08:15 PM.
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2018-03-19, 10:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2018-03-19, 11:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: Nuclear Fusion
I find it hard to accept an argument predicated on "but it would be so inefficient" over a 15% loss when in the next breadth the alternative suggested is nuclear power, whose losses due to inefficiency are somewhere between 65% and 73% depending on the model.
Also, as has been pointed out, such losses would only happen occasionally, rather than constantly.
Yes, and they happen to coincide pretty well with our own cycles of peak power, solar especially. Not to mention we can store energy, in various ways (not just chemically), and we are poised to improve that area of technology enormously in the next few years.
Indeed, which is why I don't feel that centralizing energy generation is a good idea. A distributed system is far more flexible and far more reliable than a single point of failure. Even if it occasionally would require long-distance transfer at a bit of inefficiency.
Heck, even those consume less power once the humans stop opening it to grab stuff from inside.
Grey WolfLast edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2018-03-19 at 11:12 AM.
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2018-03-19, 12:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
It seems like you're comparing apples and marmots just because the same name is used for both. Yes, "inefficiency" applies to both. Let's use an example.
All farming has some inherent inefficiency, but it doesn't matter to the end consumer except insofar as it effects the price they purchase the product for. Different ways of storing and using the product affect me as a consumer much more than the inefficiencies on the farming side as long as the price and quality of the produce creates a good value.
Imagine a situation where, say, bananas had a 65% efficiency, where 35% of the crop was lost or discarded before reaching the supermarket. Also imagine that avocado had a 90% efficiency. Now imagine that I said that I often buy banana instead of avocado because I can turn extra bananas into dehydrated banana chips, whereas avocado doesn't dehydrate properly due to its high fat content, so banana is more efficient for me to buy medium to large quantities of. If you responded that it was hard to accept my position because the inefficiency of banana farming is much higher than that of avocado farming, I wouldn't be able to take your rebuttal seriously.
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2018-03-19, 12:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: Nuclear Fusion
Inefficiency applies to both because it is the same thing: energy lost in a process. I don't care whether the process is electricity transmission or electricity generation. But then, I don't care about the inefficiency at all - this was your argument, and I fail to find it any more persuasive with fruit than I did with the actual issue at hand. If you have an actual argument why baseload generation is required and therefore a smart grid of renewables is physically or at least practically unworkable, by all means present it. But I find this rending of garments over a minor efficiency loss unimpressive.
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2018-03-19, 02:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Once air conditioning reached the United States there was a huge migration from places that had large amounts of snow in the winter to places that were suddenly tolerable thanks to air conditioning. Until you've stepped out into the night in Phoenix, Arizona you really can't image the wall of heat that rises up from the pavement and hits you in the face. Trust me, there are plenty of places the air conditioners run all night, at only somewhat less power than in the blazing sunlight.
As lights are converted from incandescent to compact fluorescent to LED, the difference in daylight draw will go wildly down (to approximate the difference needed for AC between night and day). And for things like TVs and Consoles, they nearly draw as much power unused than used (consumers hate to wait for them to boot up).
The answer is of course ground based heat pumps (wrap them around your basement before refilling). Unfortunately, I don't think places like Arizona and Texas use basements, and if you tried it Florida you would have an instant (high bacteria) indoor pool.
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2018-03-19, 02:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: Nuclear Fusion
I'm sorry, but I don't trust you, because this makes no sense to me. Please present evidence of this. What I have found disagrees with you, certainly, with clear peaks and valleys matching day and night.
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2018-03-19, 02:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
I think you are vastly underestimating the difference in daytime draw vs nighttime. To go to your Arizona example, I chose a random week from last July, and according to the Energy Information Administration, daytime peak demand in Arizona hit about 6-7 GWHrs and nighttime demand went down to 3.5 GWhrs. You are also forgetting that people aren't cooking, cleaning, or doing laundry during the middle of the night, and this all adds up. Additionally, most businesses aren't running at night which is a huge power-draw.
Edit: Ninja'd by Grey Wolf, using the same website, even.Last edited by monomer; 2018-03-19 at 02:40 PM.
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2018-03-19, 03:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
How much do you think those numbers will change when everyone has an electric car, and colder places switch to electric heat pumps rather than fossil fuel boilers for winter heating? People won't be happy if their car doesn't charge overnight because it wasn't windy.
From that website, the peak demand in winter is at 07:00 and 19:00. I'm not sure what the sunlight hours are there, but where I am you'd be getting nothing much from solar at 07:00, and nothing at all at 19:00.Last edited by Excession; 2018-03-19 at 03:31 PM.
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2018-03-19, 05:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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2018-03-19, 06:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Michigan's winter is cold, dreary, and rather lacking in sunlight. We use no small amount of power keeping ourselves alive over the winter.
Why would you think solar is a good idea here?My latest homebrew: Majokko base class and Spellcaster Dilettante feats for D&D 3.5 and Races as Classes for PTU.
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2018-03-20, 07:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
Solar in Michigan in isolation? Terrible idea. I don't think that is what's being proposed.
I'm a layman, but if I'm reading correctly the concept is NOT that MI would make do with solar/wind power all by its lonesome. The concept is that , when it is winter night in Michigan, it is summer day in Sydney. So solar and wind farms in Australia (say) could send their surplus to Michigan during the winter months.
The major technical issue (aside from others which I will address in a moment) is transmission efficiency; too much electricity is lost between Sydney and Michigan to make this economically feasible at this time.
If we develop the kind of superconductors needed for fusion, that could also create far more efficient transmission media, which would in turn make a global society powered by wind/power possible.
The issue with Nuclear power (fission, not fusion, which is still at least a decade out) is that locating one close by is less efficient in the production stage than wind/solar is. So in the long run it's better to have a globally distributed power network then it is to build expensive (and potentially dangerous) nuclear plants locally.
The major flaw I see in the scheme is not technical, but political: Offshoring your power sources means your national government cannot guarantee your supply of electricity in time of war or economic embargo. As an American, as I think of the nations half a world away I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with having my energy grid dependent on them -- and I'll wager their people feel the same way about us.
So in the event of war, economic embargo, or other trouble I can see nations wanting to have their own domestic ability to generate as much power as they need to run their essential defense and economic systems. That means coal and oil plants in the short term, and nuclear/fusion in the long run.
ETA: Since the sun is a naturally occurring fusion reactor I suppose all solar power IS nuclear power, technically
Respectfully,
Brian P.Last edited by pendell; 2018-03-20 at 07:33 AM.
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2018-03-20, 09:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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- Canadia
Re: Nuclear Fusion
Yes, there is a one-size-fits all solution for everybody in the world and that's what we're advocating. Or maybe every place is unique and requires a thoughtful, rational plan to meet renewable energy goals. Relying on one single energy source is asking for trouble, which is why a balanced energy mix is requires. For northern climates, maybe that involves huge wind farms off the coast, in the great lakes, or in other windy areas.
For example, in 2016, Michigan had 1,611 MW of installed capacity from wind power. This produced 4,695 GWhr of electricity over the course of the year, which averages out to a production of 536 MW, which is a capacity factor of 0.33, which isn't great. I believe the rule of thumb is that Wind Farm capacity factors aim for about 0.4. That said, capacity factor was above 0.4 for all of the winter months, even hitting a pretty surprising 0.53 in December. So with an over-installed energy mix, wind takes most of the load in the winter, while in the slower summer months with long days, solar takes up the slack. Then you have backups for extended lulls.
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2018-03-20, 09:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Nuclear Fusion
First off, I'm all for renewable energy and I'm pretty optimistic about our ability to get it to work if we really try.
That said... Baseload is a real thing. Especially in industry you have e.g. huge smelters running 24/7 and those eat up loads of power. Certain aspects of traffic need power around the clock and you cannot just shut them down.
I'm in no way saying you can't balance power around but for this you need a grid and that on a global scale just is right now hardly feasible. Europe has trouble with it and even Germany to a degree, and the US is a good chunk larger.
Sidenote :Germany annually publishes a pretty extensive report by their energy ministry which is a drag to read but has enough nice graphs to be able to glance over.