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The 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
by eutropia 6y ago
The 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.