3 ms·
Both fission and fusion are awful at peaking. For peaker energy you want low capital investment and higher marginal costs. Fusion and fission are extremely cap
by Gwypaas 4y ago
Both fission and fusion are awful at peaking. For peaker energy you want low capital investment and higher marginal costs.
Fusion and fission are extremely capital expensive with quite hefty marginal costs through the steam side. They're simply awful at solving the last 20%. Even worse when they're undercut badly enough to never run for the first 80%.
- DennisP 4y agoWhether fusion is good at peaking will depend on which fusion technologies end up working. Helion for one would be fantastic at peaking. It's likely to be quite cheap, wouldn't use a turbine, and could run fusion pulses at whatever rate we need.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y agoit's still a pretty bad peaker. it's cheaper than a tomumak but it still needs a ton of capacitors and incredibly precise machining.
- DennisP 4y agoThey claim an electricity price of $0.01/kWh even before mass production kicks in. If they achieve that, the economics will work out fine.
- pfdietz 4y agoI'll believe that when I see it, but that price would be more than good enough to beat renewables. I find it amusing that Helion's approach also strongly depends on the cost of storage, just in a very different part of storage parameter space.
- pfdietz 4y agoHelion's approach is I'd guess still dominated by capital cost, not fuel cost, so it's relatively bad at peaking. Granted, if they split the reactors into DD reactors making 3He, and field reactors burning the 3He (with reduced DD), it might make more sense to turn the latter up and down, if they have a relatively larger part of their cost from their fuel.
- bell-cot 4y agoWith the capital costs of every form of ~continuous-output fusion reactor, the only fusion technology that would be good for peaking would be H-bombs. That has been looked into, in the context of propelling very large spacecraft. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls... )
- ilyt 4y agoWhy would fusion be bad for peaking ? It got none of the fission problems regarding that.
- moloch-hai 4y agoIt has exactly the same problems, same as any high capex steam-driven turbine.
- throw_me_5555 4y agoCan it start generating electricity without waiting for steam to reach required temperature? For now we can only assume the worst case scenario and group it with fission in "up to 12h startup time". The report in https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956 compares existing power sources
- janef0421 4y agoThey can't peak independently, but their reliability and low marginal cost means that they can are well suited to providing peaking capacity in conjunction with storage. Excess power from the reactor can be used to place energy in the storage source, which is then discharged during peak load. Due to the reliability of the nuclear generator, the amount of storage required can be relatively small.
- panick21_ 4y agoYou right, just build high-temperature nuclear and use if for everything, then no peaking is required. And you can also use if for both industrial and residential heat. Solving all your problems at once. If you have electrified transport (electric trains and electric cars) you can have a 100% green economy.