5 ms·
Controlled fusion seems one of the few awesome future things that's unambiguously good.
by Florin_Andrei 6y ago
Controlled fusion seems one of the few awesome future things that's unambiguously good.
- technofiend 6y agoParticularly if there's some way to capture carbon that's otherwise impractical due to energy requirements.
- adrianN 6y agoFusion power will likely not be significantly cheaper than solar and wind for this purpose. Fusion plants are probably quite expensive and won't have an infinite lifetime. The big benefit is that you don't need batteries, but that doesn't matter if you want to use the power for carbon capture.
- pfdietz 6y agoWhy is is unambiguously good? There's great reason to doubt it could be anywhere close to economically competitive. That makes its value pretty ambiguous, in my view.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoI think that an argument can be made that it will always be economically competitive. That reasoning includes the 'fuel cycle' is non-waste producing, the economics of other energy sources continues to rise thus creating a wider window for economic recovery, the liability associated with fusion will always be less than the liability associated with fission, and as the carbon externalizations of fossil fuel are priced into its production it will become in-economic as well. Well designed fusion power should come in at or below hydro-electric power without the environmental impacts or risks associated with dams.
- pfdietz 6y agoThis is a bad argument. The fuel cycle is a small fraction of the cost of fission power. The main cost is the cost of building the plant. Fusion reactors will be much larger than and much more complex than fission reactors, per unit of thermal power output, so they should be more expensive. Fission reactors today are uncompetitive, even with liability artificially set to a small value, so that argument fails too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- reissbaker 6y agoThe reason nuclear fission is uncompetitive is its high operating costs. The cost to build the plant is a sunk cost: if the reactor is expected to be reasonably profitable to operate, you can fund building it. If the reactor is not expected to be reasonably profitable to operate... Good luck. That's what fusion aims to solve. The fuel is plentiful and you can easily buy it; the same can't be said of uranium. It's also much safer to run than fission, and produces vastly less dangerous waste. Perhaps your argument is that solar and wind are sufficient to power humanity's needs, without fission or fusion. That's debatable. But compared to fission, fusion is theoretically better on some pretty critical metrics — if we knew how to build a fusion reactor, which we don't yet. If you assume solar and wind won't be sufficient, fusion seems worth research.
- pfdietz 6y ago> The reason nuclear fission is uncompetitive is its high operating costs. The cost to build the plant is a sunk cost This is nonsense. You can't ignore the cost of building plants, when trying to determine if a technology is competitive. Nuclear plants have to be paid for; they're not given to us free by the Nuclear Fairy. If you include capital and financing costs, you will find they contribute more to the cost of energy from the plants than do operating costs.
- AareyBaba 6y agoEconomics of a nuclear reactor https://youtu.be/cbeJIwF1pVY?t=58 https://youtu.be/cbeJIwF1pVY?t=58
- HPsquared 6y agoWind and solar have zero fuel cost, but they cost money to build. A fusion plant is always going to be a rather high-tech, expensive thing.
- xvilka 6y agoWind and solar are non-continuous and impossible to use in space, underground, underwater. Fusion potentially could be used everywhere as a relatively high density energy source.
- pfdietz 6y agoSolar is impossible to use in space? Please explain this claim. The energy density of fusion is inferior to fission, when you take the mass of the reactor into account (as you must, if you are worrying about the mass of your system.)
- xvilka 6y agoYes, anything beyond Mars is impractical for anything but very small missions.
- lultimouomo 6y agoIs the way from here to Mars not "space"?
- socialdemocrat 6y agoWhat if fusion was combined with renewables? Meaning fusion served similar role as batteries. Storage costs are really high so fusion might be competitive in that space. What I am thinking of is using output from fusion in molten salt storage. Generators are coupled to this thermal storage. When wind and sun is good, there is a continuous build up of heat stored in molten salt by fusion reactor. When it is low, net heat gets drained from molten salt storage to power steam generators.
- why_Mr_Anderson 6y agoYou are right, in short term, fusion has not much value. But in (very) long term, unlike fission, which no matter how incredible it is, is still only 'planetary-level tech', fusion is the first 'stellar-level tech' we've unlocked so far. If we ever plan to go somewhere else than Solar system, fusion is the key.
- pfdietz 6y agoBeamed power will likely be much more practical for interstellar missions, or even large activities in the outer solar system. In particular, beamed power minimizes entropy generation at the target (and can even actively cool the target), which is vital for high thrust at high Isp.
- dmos62 6y agoMolten salt reactors and thorium fission is pretty exciting too.