3 ms·

Furthermore, if fusion ever works electricity will be too cheap to meter. So why sign a non-binding forward purchase agreement for something that if it works w

Furthermore, if fusion ever works electricity will be too cheap to meter. So why sign a non-binding forward purchase agreement for something that if it works will cost $0?

exe34 2y ago
fusion is quite costly in capital isn't it?
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Yeah. Personally I think the most plausible fusion power plant is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_ion_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_ion_fusion which is like laser fusion but 10-100x more efficient in terms of wall plug to energy delivered to the pellet and also capable of multiple shots per second compare to laser systems that are doing good if they fire a few times a day. Nobody is interested in developing it because the high energy requirement for the ion beams to transfer energy effectively into the pellet means you need multiple big accelerators so you can’t demonstrate it at less than a full scale power plant. Such a thing would cost about 1/10 of what a certain billionaire spent to buy a washed up social network. Advanced particle accelerators are an area that could be proliferation sensitive and I think you might get some trouble if you tried to advance the technology. For instance a particle accelerator that drives a spallation neutron source could be used to make Plutonium with a smaller thermal footprint than a nuclear reactor. For that matter, a D+T fusion reactor produces copious very high energy neutrons which would be great for making Pu239 or U233.
advisedwang 2y ago
Good thing for Oklo that neither they nor anyone else is selling fusion power.
ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Renewables are already causing that. Today often even negative prices. No need to wait for some future power source. The revenue potential for any nuclear reactor in the age of renewables is going to be incredibly slim.
- wffurr 2y ago
  For a data center operator that wants to maximize utilization and needs a lot of power, they might be willing to pay a premium for consistent on site power rather than dealing with intermittent sources or grid connection costs and battery backups.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    Add storage and the costs are still lower than nuclear. They will also only be felt the hours batteries need to ensure operation. During all other time renewables will be the marginal producer which means renewable costs for the electricity.
    - kjhcvkek77 2y ago
      That's where future markets come in. The producer won't get negative prices on shiny days. The consumer won't pay through the nose on rainy days. The marginal producer doesn't matter with a prenegotiated price. This derisks both sides letting both of them build without worrying about the market moving against them and rendering their capital investments worthless.
yumraj 2y ago
> Furthermore, if fusion ever works electricity will be too cheap to meter. Not to take this discussion in a different tangent, but I seriously doubt it. In CA, PG&E’s share of renewable keeps increasing, as do our rate. There’re a myriad of operating expenses as well as monopolistic rent seeking, and in this case IP development cost recovery that cost reduction may remain a pipe dream..
wffurr 2y ago
Oklo isn’t a fusion startup. They are planning to build small modular molten salt fission reactors aka next gen SMR fast reactors if you want the buzzwords.
- philipkglass 2y ago
  Oklo's fission reactor is not molten salt based but is a liquid metal fast breeder reactor inspired by Argonne National Laboratory's old Experimental Breeder Reactor II, per their technology page: https://oklo.com/technology/ https://oklo.com/technology/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I...
trashtester 2y ago
Why do you think fusion will be cheaper than fission power? Fusion will, at least for a significant time, require investments in the fusion plants as well as maintenance and operations. The only way I can see something like fusion become cheap quickly, is if all labor becomes cheap because of AI.
- anon25783 2y ago
  I think you're right, and I also wonder: Considering how hard it is for us to engineer a fusion plant that merely "breaks even" in terms of energy made usable to us, will fusion plants ever be competitive with fission plants? Like, I understand that hydrogen is a lot cheaper than plutonium or enriched uranium, but iirc we never had an issue getting fission plants to break even. As far as I'm aware, the technology for exploiting fission was obvious as soon as they realized that radioactive decay could be hot enough to boil water, and at risk of sounding glib, everything else about it is just safety measures. Whereas there is no fusion equivalent of "The Pile"[1] from Fermi et al. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
  - trashtester 2y ago
    I do expect fusion to some day be the dominant source of energy, at least if we intend to continue to increase our energy consumption, instead of going all Amish. But that MAY be after we spent all the easily extractable uranium and (unfortunately) fossil fuels. When looking at costs for almost anything, there tends to be 3 main components: 1) Raw materials for construction. (Edit: + energy consumed) 2) Raw materials for fuel/operations. (Edit: + energy consumed) 3) Labor Fusion may require very significant amount of raw materials for construction, and also (with today's technology) a lot of labor. But it is nearly free in terms of fuel costs. Now, let's assume (as a thought experiment) that AI will make labor virtually free within 100 years, we're down to fuel costs vs the materials needed for construction. As long as we live in a world where we expect capital to yield some kind of significant/exponential "return on investment", we can calculate a "present day value" based on what we expect that return on investment to be. But it's not a given that the assumption of exponential growth will hold true in the future Or rather, it's almost certain that SOME DAY it will cease to hold true. In particular, when we run out of other fuels (and we've covered Earth in solar panels), stagnation is inevitable. That means the natural interest is basically 0. In such a world, and with the assumption that labor is free, fusion would give "free" energy, since capital costs no longer matter compared to the present day value of a permanent revenue stream. So, given enough time, it seems clear that fusion will almost certainly take over as the dominant energy source. The question is when. If our energy needs remain moderate for quite a long time or if we get a 300 year AI winter, it could take 100s of years for fusion to become dominant. On the other hand, if AI makes labor virtually free 50 years from now (or makes labor only slightly more expensive than the energy used), and we continue to need more and more power to drive our data centers, manufacturing and every other need we may have, we may need it sooner. Also, if we're not able to progress beyond barely breaking even in terms of energy produced vs energy consumed in the process, that will make progress slow. But if we continue to make progress in terms of energy efficiency, and especially if we're able to scale fusion power to generate very large outputs (10's, 100s or 100s of GW), it may take over relatively quickly. If I were to bet, I would guess it will take somewhere between 50-300 years for it to generate more than 50% of our power requirements.
klyrs 2y ago
> electricity will be too cheap to meter Anybody who says this about any technology isn't thinking about infrastructure costs.
- wiml 2y ago
  "Too cheap to meter" means too cheap to meter, not free. Like residential internet — I pay for infrastructure, but my usage isn't metered. In some places water is that cheap, for example.
fallingknife 2y ago
Fusion is an incredibly energy dense power source, but that does not necessarily make it cheap. e.g Uranium 235 is 3 million times more energy dense than coal, but nuclear power is not cheaper. And fusion is much closer in energy density to fission than fission is to coal.

Furthermore, if fusion ever works electricity will be too cheap to meter. So why sign a non-binding forward purchase agreement for something that if it works will cost $0?

exe34 2y ago

fusion is quite costly in capital isn't it?

PaulHoule 2y ago
Yeah. Personally I think the most plausible fusion power plant is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_ion_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_ion_fusion which is like laser fusion but 10-100x more efficient in terms of wall plug to energy delivered to the pellet and also capable of multiple shots per second compare to laser systems that are doing good if they fire a few times a day. Nobody is interested in developing it because the high energy requirement for the ion beams to transfer energy effectively into the pellet means you need multiple big accelerators so you can’t demonstrate it at less than a full scale power plant. Such a thing would cost about 1/10 of what a certain billionaire spent to buy a washed up social network. Advanced particle accelerators are an area that could be proliferation sensitive and I think you might get some trouble if you tried to advance the technology. For instance a particle accelerator that drives a spallation neutron source could be used to make Plutonium with a smaller thermal footprint than a nuclear reactor. For that matter, a D+T fusion reactor produces copious very high energy neutrons which would be great for making Pu239 or U233.

advisedwang 2y ago

Good thing for Oklo that neither they nor anyone else is selling fusion power.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago

Renewables are already causing that. Today often even negative prices. No need to wait for some future power source. The revenue potential for any nuclear reactor in the age of renewables is going to be incredibly slim.

wffurr 2y ago
For a data center operator that wants to maximize utilization and needs a lot of power, they might be willing to pay a premium for consistent on site power rather than dealing with intermittent sources or grid connection costs and battery backups.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  Add storage and the costs are still lower than nuclear. They will also only be felt the hours batteries need to ensure operation. During all other time renewables will be the marginal producer which means renewable costs for the electricity.
  - kjhcvkek77 2y ago
    That's where future markets come in. The producer won't get negative prices on shiny days. The consumer won't pay through the nose on rainy days. The marginal producer doesn't matter with a prenegotiated price. This derisks both sides letting both of them build without worrying about the market moving against them and rendering their capital investments worthless.

yumraj 2y ago

> Furthermore, if fusion ever works electricity will be too cheap to meter. Not to take this discussion in a different tangent, but I seriously doubt it. In CA, PG&E’s share of renewable keeps increasing, as do our rate. There’re a myriad of operating expenses as well as monopolistic rent seeking, and in this case IP development cost recovery that cost reduction may remain a pipe dream..

wffurr 2y ago

Oklo isn’t a fusion startup. They are planning to build small modular molten salt fission reactors aka next gen SMR fast reactors if you want the buzzwords.

philipkglass 2y ago
Oklo's fission reactor is not molten salt based but is a liquid metal fast breeder reactor inspired by Argonne National Laboratory's old Experimental Breeder Reactor II, per their technology page: https://oklo.com/technology/ https://oklo.com/technology/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I...

trashtester 2y ago

Why do you think fusion will be cheaper than fission power? Fusion will, at least for a significant time, require investments in the fusion plants as well as maintenance and operations. The only way I can see something like fusion become cheap quickly, is if all labor becomes cheap because of AI.

anon25783 2y ago
I think you're right, and I also wonder: Considering how hard it is for us to engineer a fusion plant that merely "breaks even" in terms of energy made usable to us, will fusion plants ever be competitive with fission plants? Like, I understand that hydrogen is a lot cheaper than plutonium or enriched uranium, but iirc we never had an issue getting fission plants to break even. As far as I'm aware, the technology for exploiting fission was obvious as soon as they realized that radioactive decay could be hot enough to boil water, and at risk of sounding glib, everything else about it is just safety measures. Whereas there is no fusion equivalent of "The Pile"[1] from Fermi et al. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
- trashtester 2y ago
  I do expect fusion to some day be the dominant source of energy, at least if we intend to continue to increase our energy consumption, instead of going all Amish. But that MAY be after we spent all the easily extractable uranium and (unfortunately) fossil fuels. When looking at costs for almost anything, there tends to be 3 main components: 1) Raw materials for construction. (Edit: + energy consumed) 2) Raw materials for fuel/operations. (Edit: + energy consumed) 3) Labor Fusion may require very significant amount of raw materials for construction, and also (with today's technology) a lot of labor. But it is nearly free in terms of fuel costs. Now, let's assume (as a thought experiment) that AI will make labor virtually free within 100 years, we're down to fuel costs vs the materials needed for construction. As long as we live in a world where we expect capital to yield some kind of significant/exponential "return on investment", we can calculate a "present day value" based on what we expect that return on investment to be. But it's not a given that the assumption of exponential growth will hold true in the future Or rather, it's almost certain that SOME DAY it will cease to hold true. In particular, when we run out of other fuels (and we've covered Earth in solar panels), stagnation is inevitable. That means the natural interest is basically 0. In such a world, and with the assumption that labor is free, fusion would give "free" energy, since capital costs no longer matter compared to the present day value of a permanent revenue stream. So, given enough time, it seems clear that fusion will almost certainly take over as the dominant energy source. The question is when. If our energy needs remain moderate for quite a long time or if we get a 300 year AI winter, it could take 100s of years for fusion to become dominant. On the other hand, if AI makes labor virtually free 50 years from now (or makes labor only slightly more expensive than the energy used), and we continue to need more and more power to drive our data centers, manufacturing and every other need we may have, we may need it sooner. Also, if we're not able to progress beyond barely breaking even in terms of energy produced vs energy consumed in the process, that will make progress slow. But if we continue to make progress in terms of energy efficiency, and especially if we're able to scale fusion power to generate very large outputs (10's, 100s or 100s of GW), it may take over relatively quickly. If I were to bet, I would guess it will take somewhere between 50-300 years for it to generate more than 50% of our power requirements.

klyrs 2y ago

> electricity will be too cheap to meter Anybody who says this about any technology isn't thinking about infrastructure costs.

wiml 2y ago
"Too cheap to meter" means too cheap to meter, not free. Like residential internet — I pay for infrastructure, but my usage isn't metered. In some places water is that cheap, for example.

fallingknife 2y ago

Fusion is an incredibly energy dense power source, but that does not necessarily make it cheap. e.g Uranium 235 is 3 million times more energy dense than coal, but nuclear power is not cheaper. And fusion is much closer in energy density to fission than fission is to coal.