5 ms·
>Fusion in the home Why would you possibly want to make reactors that small when we already have such extensive electric grids?
by elil17 6y ago
>Fusion in the home
Why would you possibly want to make reactors that small when we already have such extensive electric grids?
- DarmokJalad1701 6y agoSpaceflight
- justicezyx 6y agoBecause it is cool? Seriously, having such thing on a car is a god send. And a lot of people are looking for live off-grid nowadays; plus US power grid does not look like will sustain without a lot of capital.
- elihu 6y agoI'm now imagining an implausible scenario with a SPARC reactor loaded onto a trailer and being used to power Jay Leno's steam powered car.
- Florin_Andrei 6y agoAll I want is truck-size fusion reactors. That would open up the Solar System the way the steam engine opened up the oceans. Ideally you'd have a custom design for rocket engines, where the reactor is semi-open: you feed in fuel through one end, and have the nozzle generating thrust at the other end. Even better if you could optionally close that, when you need only electricity but no thrust.
- dovin 6y agoI see why you might make the analogy. Steam ships opened up trade routes that were impractical for sail power, but the way you phrased it is odd as the oceans seemed pretty open to sail already. I think fusion rockets would be a lot more revolutionary actually.
- Florin_Andrei 6y agoSpaceX's Starship is the "age of sail" in space. For the "age of steam" we need nuclear power.
- pfdietz 6y agoDT fusion reactors have no advantage over fission reactors in space; in fact they are inferior. Putative space fusion reactors would have to use advanced fuels.
- dexwiz 6y agoHonestly I think the grid will change over coming years. The cities will remain similar but rural towns and remote homes will be switched to local power or limited connectivity. It’s too expensive to maintain a modern grid. Connecting power used to be closely related to phone, but this is less the case with cell and satellite service. Also building utilities can be amortized in a way that assumes the entire population in a region are captured customers. But as individual homes start generating power instead of consuming it, those methods of paying for the grid no longer make sense.
- nradov 6y agoThe modern grid is very affordable. What you describe is not an actual problem that we have.
- teruakohatu 6y agoI am doubtful that is something I will see in my lifetime, but there are loads of reasons why people would want it. For a start in New Zealand we pay a lot more to the grid operators than I pay to generators for power most of the time, the only exceptions being large spikes in power prices due to shortages.
- danans 6y agoObviously, to power DeLorean time machines https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion