8 ms·
> Existing fusion reactors rely on the resulting alpha particles—and the energy released in the process of their creation—to further heat the plasma. The plasma
by orthecreedence 5y ago
> Existing fusion reactors rely on the resulting alpha particles—and the energy released in the process of their creation—to further heat the plasma. The plasma will then drive more nuclear reactions with the end goal of providing a net power gain. But there are limits. Even in the hottest plasmas that reactors can create, alpha particles will mostly skip past additional deuterium nuclei without transferring much energy. For a fusion reactor to be successful, it needs to create as many direct hits between alpha particles and deuterium nuclei as possible.
This is one of the most clear explanations of fusion power I've read so far. Worth a read just for that alone.
> And as the technology matures, it could also find uses here on Earth, such as for small power plants for individual buildings
Distributed power generation is the ideal. Why bother with transporting energy when you can just generate it where you need it?
Really cool article/tech. I've not heard of LCF until now. Seems promising.
- willis936 5y agoThe reason to use MCF (and why IEC can't work) is that it's okay if particles don't collide often if they are confined for sufficiently long. So what if the fast alpha doesn't collide? It's charged and thus well confined. It will transfer its energy to other particles eventually.
- PaulHoule 5y agoInertial confinement fusion works just fine if you are building a 1 megaton device driven by a fission bomb. You probably can't make it work if you're driving with a laser because the wallplug efficiency of a laser is terrible, but at least you can build a failing facility which is only huge as opposed to gargantuan. Real breakeven might be possible with heavy ion beam ignition but the minimum size facility to make an attempt is gargantuan.
- willis936 5y agoIEC is inertial electrostatic confinement: fusors and polywells. Conduction through the confinement/accelerator coils being immersed in the plasma reduces the confinement time lengths far too short for a reactor.
- vkou 5y ago> Why bother with transporting energy when you can just generate it where you need it? For the same reason every household no longer grows, harvests and threshes its own wheat, bakes its own bread, and why Mao Zedong's Great Leap Foward idea of building a blast furnace in every village, in order to increase the country's steel output was an utter failure. Power transmission is cheap, and economics greatly favor utility-scale deployments. You also get significantly less need for wasted peak capacity when multiple power producers can pool together into a grid.
- shakezula 5y ago> For the same reason every household no longer grows, harvests and threshes its own wheat This feels like a weird point to make when solar power is as popular and growing as it is. Localized power generation is not only here now, we already have programs to tie your localized power generation into the existing power grid and you get paid for it. I don't see how this system couldn't work the same way.
- deepnotderp 5y agoUtility scale solar has a MASSIVE cost advantage. Also, the vast majority of houses can’t sustain their energy use off of rooftop solar alone.
- vkou 5y agoIt's popular and growing because of credits and subsidies. Remove all credits and subsidies, and I can build utility-scale solar for less than half the cost per KWH than you can install panels on your roof. There's way too much human labour involved in getting someone to drive to your house, climb onto your roof and bolt panels to it. In that time, that same worker could set up a dozen similarly-sized panels when building out a utility solar farm. And yes, if your time is worthless, and you don't value your neck, you could DIY, and save on some of those costs. ... But you'd still be tied to the grid (and paying grid fees), unless you are ready to invest $XY,000 for a massive battery bank... That might still leave you without electricity during a period of low generation/high consumption.
- 7952 5y ago> Distributed power generation is the ideal. Why bother with transporting energy when you can just generate it where you need it? You need to be able to throttle the power output up and down. That is harder to design and harder to make efficient. Or you need lots of batteries, which is expensive. And it all has to be sized for peak demand rather than being able to benefit from flows across the grid.
- dd36 5y agoProduce at double max and use the excess power to remove carbon from the atmosphere?
- saiya-jin 5y agoor desalinate & clean water, or store the excess for next peak use in ie high & low connected dams, or... that's really a nice problem to have
- 7952 5y agoYes, accept those things are all designed for large scale grid systems.
- tempestn 5y agoThe problem with using excess power for things like that (or desalination per sibling comment) is that the infrastructure to do these things is expensive, and it becomes less cost-effective if it's only used part of the time, when the energy is available. The one application I'm aware of that can cost-effectively use excess power of that sort is crypto mining, since there the vast majority of the cost is electricity; the capital cost is relatively low. Unfortunately it's arguable whether it does anything useful besides enriching the producer.
- faeyanpiraat 5y agoYou mean you can cost effectively use the excess power to produce even more heat?