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I 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 econo
by ChuckMcM 6y ago
I 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.
- tsimionescu 6y ago> 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. You're missing one important part: the reactor must be profitable enough so that it can recoup the build cost for its lifespan. The lifespan of fusion reactors, even disregarding failure modes, will be severely limited by the high energy neutrons which it generates, and which turn all materials brittle. And maintenance for the brittle material will mean stopping the reactor, and sending in robots to dismantle and carry away the brittle radioactive walls, and build new walls in place. It may well be about as cheap to scrap it for parts (for those parts that haven't been turned to radioactive Swiss cheese) and build a new one.
- eutropia 6y agoThe various links to the talks by the head of the ARC/SPARC project in this comment thread talk about the size of the fusion reactor, as does wikipedia: > ARC is a 270 MWe tokamak reactor with a major radius of 3.3 m, a minor radius of 1.1 m, and an on-axis magnetic field of 9.2 T.[2] > The design point has a fusion energy gain factor Qp ≈ 13.6 So the reactor is about 25-30 feet in diameter, plus the steam plant / FLibE processing. Have you seen the size of a nuclear cooling tower?
- pfdietz 6y agoThat's not the reactor itself. I'm talking about the cost of the reactor. The reactor part itself of a fission NPP is quite cheap. Replacing it with a much larger fusion reactor means your containment building (and one will be needed) is larger and more expensive, and you still need the same things (turbines, generators, cooling towers, switchyard) outside the nuclear island.
- nickik 6y agoNext generation fission does not need cooling towers. As soon as you go to a high temperature design, they can run perfectly fine in the desert.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoNot familiar with that design. Unless you dump heat, any generator will melt down. How does the 'next generation' dump heat? A cooling tower does it very quickly, and can be scaled arbitrarily large.
- 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.