39 ms·

Fusion power is 24x7 (unlike solar) and can provide base load. Fuel transportation costs are minimal as there is enough D2 in pretty much any source of water (e

Fusion power is 24x7 (unlike solar) and can provide base load. Fuel transportation costs are minimal as there is enough D2 in pretty much any source of water (even rainwater) to provide all the deuterium you need. You need a bit of lithium to make tritium but on the order of a few hundred kilograms, not tonnes. So a water truck and maybe a dump truck can transport the raw material you need for power generation to a local power plant. That means no oil or gas pipeline, no train loads of coal. Just a couple of easy to acquire vehicles on a trip that they do, perhaps every couple of YEARs. And this power plant isn't your typical 10MW peaker plant that runs on Natural gas, no a fusion plant of the type being discussed in the article and elsewhere are multi-gigawatt plants. So imagine the entire energy budget for California provided by a dozen power plants[1] that are fueled up once a year by a couple of trucks. So it is easier on infrastructure because you can distribute plants around, it makes the fuel issue a non-problem since there is so much energy available to the process. So think about the externalities that eliminates. No coal fumes, no CO2 generation, no tank cars of oil or coal, no pipelines for natural gas, no risk of contamination, and no long term waste that escapes the plant. Those advantages are especially powerful in a country like Japan which imports fossil fuels for their energy production, or Somalia which is economically constrained by an inability to protect pipelines that might otherwise operate a fossil fuel power plant. Or Israel which is using power to desalinate water. Having the ability to generate the entire economy's domestic requirement for energy with a fuel that is both locally accessible and easily transported, means that you stabilize geo-political issues like the Russian gas pipelines going into the European Union[2]. The availability of energy, in quantity, reliably, also jump starts investment in manufacturing, refining, and other energy intensive endeavors. [1] https://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html https://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_sys... [2] https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/why-russian-natural-gas-will-dominate-european-markets/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/why-russian-natural-gas-w...

ksec 8y ago
I assume Fusion can't be used for scaling up and down energy output ( So even if it is baseload it is a constant value ), so we will need some form of Energy Storage to make full use of it? I imagine with AI, Data Science, Robotics, means Manufacturing will move from overseas to local? We can already 3D Print most parts. We cant already do Multi Floor Plant Farming, Currently it is mostly an electricity issues, if that becomes cheap enough we could do Plant based meat based on it. So every nation on earth will become self sustainable by default? How is Economy going to change with much less trading?
bewo001 8y ago
What if the construction cost of the fusion plant is so high that the electricity price is not competitive? That's already a concern with recent fission reactor projects, where the investors demand price guarantees from the public.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  That is a valid concern, if perhaps a fusion plant requires the outside be coated in platinum or something. It would have to be both expensive and difficult to manufacture/obtain. It is essentially where we are today with ITER, which is to say if ITER generated net power it would still be a hard pill to swallow if it costs $100B per power plant. Fortunately, many of the significant costs the plague fission plants (like the legal expense of dealing with all the lawsuits, the cost of unlimited insurance, Etc.) would likely not apply to fusion plants.
  - pfdietz 8y ago
    Fusion reactors will be both much larger than and much more complex than fission reactors. They will necessarily be more expensive, even if they aren't made of resublimated unobtainium. The size difference follows from limits on heat transfer through the first wall, and has been known for 35 or more years.

ksec 8y ago

I assume Fusion can't be used for scaling up and down energy output ( So even if it is baseload it is a constant value ), so we will need some form of Energy Storage to make full use of it? I imagine with AI, Data Science, Robotics, means Manufacturing will move from overseas to local? We can already 3D Print most parts. We cant already do Multi Floor Plant Farming, Currently it is mostly an electricity issues, if that becomes cheap enough we could do Plant based meat based on it. So every nation on earth will become self sustainable by default? How is Economy going to change with much less trading?

bewo001 8y ago

What if the construction cost of the fusion plant is so high that the electricity price is not competitive? That's already a concern with recent fission reactor projects, where the investors demand price guarantees from the public.

ChuckMcM 8y ago
That is a valid concern, if perhaps a fusion plant requires the outside be coated in platinum or something. It would have to be both expensive and difficult to manufacture/obtain. It is essentially where we are today with ITER, which is to say if ITER generated net power it would still be a hard pill to swallow if it costs $100B per power plant. Fortunately, many of the significant costs the plague fission plants (like the legal expense of dealing with all the lawsuits, the cost of unlimited insurance, Etc.) would likely not apply to fusion plants.
- pfdietz 8y ago
  Fusion reactors will be both much larger than and much more complex than fission reactors. They will necessarily be more expensive, even if they aren't made of resublimated unobtainium. The size difference follows from limits on heat transfer through the first wall, and has been known for 35 or more years.