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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 dramatic
by 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 agoI 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.