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Carter, Where did you get the idea that fusion power is functionally free? The fuel you burn is nearly free, but you also use up a ton of material and make it

Carter, Where did you get the idea that fusion power is functionally free? The fuel you burn is nearly free, but you also use up a ton of material and make it radioactive so it's hard to recycle. The structural and shielding elements of the reactor will likely degrade (for we haven't tested this) on a similar timescale to the degradation of wind turbines, solar collectors, and the other components in the balance of the plant. The heat from the sun and at the core of the earth is functionally free, in the same sense: the question is how expensive it is to get it out! I've never seen a really reasonable and measured study of what commercial fusion might cost to produce power.

lutorm 17y ago
Indeed. Plus the thing about fusion power is that likely these plants will be absolutely massive, which raises issues about: * single point of failure * huge transmission needs * very large start-up cost, likely banning developing countries from using it. All of these issues are much alleviated with distributed power like solar or wind (or the mini-reactors suggested by this article), which makes me think it's preferable.
- sketerpot 17y ago
  One of the encouraging things about IEC fusion and dense plasma focus fusion is that they're supposed to be something you can do with smaller facilities, and construct incrementally. What you said certainly applies to more traditional fusion methods, though. We've already seen the economic problems of huge power plants with recent nuclear reactors: they're so darn big nowadays that financing them is a huge headache.
sketerpot 17y ago
This is part of why I'm moderately excited about aneutronic fusion: the radiation damage you mention will be greatly lessened by reactions that release dramatically fewer neutrons. As for the commercial cost of fusion, the reason you've never seen such a study is because nobody even knows yet how to get fusion to produce commercially usable amounts of power, and there are so many possible methods being looked at, with such different costs involved, that we can't really do a meaningful study of fusion economics yet.
- DaniFong 17y ago
  I was working on aneutronic fusion for some time: my feeling is that there is a lot of research to go before we can know if it's even feasible; even then unless there are breakthroughs it will be difficult to do in small reactors. There are significant thermodynamic barriers to be overcome e.g. Todd Rider's thesis (I believe they can but they're difficult -- almost like no-go theorems for fusion). As for whether one could do an economic study, I believe at least one could lower bound the cost, using the cost of the balance of the plant (steam generator, heat exchangers, cooling towers) and an expected cost and lifetime of the various structural and shielding materials.

lutorm 17y ago

Indeed. Plus the thing about fusion power is that likely these plants will be absolutely massive, which raises issues about: * single point of failure * huge transmission needs * very large start-up cost, likely banning developing countries from using it. All of these issues are much alleviated with distributed power like solar or wind (or the mini-reactors suggested by this article), which makes me think it's preferable.

sketerpot 17y ago
One of the encouraging things about IEC fusion and dense plasma focus fusion is that they're supposed to be something you can do with smaller facilities, and construct incrementally. What you said certainly applies to more traditional fusion methods, though. We've already seen the economic problems of huge power plants with recent nuclear reactors: they're so darn big nowadays that financing them is a huge headache.

sketerpot 17y ago

This is part of why I'm moderately excited about aneutronic fusion: the radiation damage you mention will be greatly lessened by reactions that release dramatically fewer neutrons. As for the commercial cost of fusion, the reason you've never seen such a study is because nobody even knows yet how to get fusion to produce commercially usable amounts of power, and there are so many possible methods being looked at, with such different costs involved, that we can't really do a meaningful study of fusion economics yet.

DaniFong 17y ago
I was working on aneutronic fusion for some time: my feeling is that there is a lot of research to go before we can know if it's even feasible; even then unless there are breakthroughs it will be difficult to do in small reactors. There are significant thermodynamic barriers to be overcome e.g. Todd Rider's thesis (I believe they can but they're difficult -- almost like no-go theorems for fusion). As for whether one could do an economic study, I believe at least one could lower bound the cost, using the cost of the balance of the plant (steam generator, heat exchangers, cooling towers) and an expected cost and lifetime of the various structural and shielding materials.