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Even if fusion is an expensive power source, it may still be desirable in areas which aren’t well suited to wind or solar.
by jl6 2y ago
Even if fusion is an expensive power source, it may still be desirable in areas which aren’t well suited to wind or solar.
- ponty_rick 2y agoIf we figure it out, it might end up being cheaper than fission eventually.
- epistasis 2y agoCompared to fission? It's still quite unclear that fusion will provide improvements over fission.
- colechristensen 2y agoPeople won't be afraid of fusion, fusion plants can't be used to make bombs, fusion plants could maybe explode, but they won't poison the nearby land (or the whole planet) for decades-eons.
- jahnu 2y agoI wouldn’t bet on a sane response to it. People are afraid of 5G, vaccines, and even masks.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoMan I was doing ok this afternoon, why did you have to go poke a stick in people's totally rational responses to respiratory PPE?
- elcritch 2y agoIMHO, dislike of masks is built into us as a social species that place significant value on facial expressions. Makes sense from an evolutionary game theory perspective for societies to discourage them. Easy to find research showing the detrimental effects of masks on communication, etc: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10321351/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10321351/
- pfdietz 2y ago> fusion plants can't be used to make bombs Helion's reactor, if it works, could become a source of the cheapest neutrons on the planet. It would greatly enable nuclear proliferation by providing neutrons for breeding of fissionable material for bombs. A 50 MW DD reactor would produce enough neutrons to make half a ton of plutonium per year. Remember, none of these neutrons have to be turned around to make tritium, as they would have to be in a DT reactor.
- gpm 2y agoWithout any of the meltdown concerns a fusion powerplant is a lot simpler to actually build than a fission plant. It has a small fraction of the security, reliability, regulatory, etc concerns (not none, just way way less). Unless it's so marginal that it's barely producing electricity I'd be pretty surprised to find out we had Q>1 fusion and yet it couldn't out compete fission anywhere fission is practical.
- beeflet 2y agoI think that it will depend on economies of scale.
- epistasis 2y agoThat's astounding, I've never heard anybody claim that the reactors would be simpler before! Do you have any estimates of anybody working on the problem that thinks that? Every schemer I have ever seen is quite a bit more complex than a fission reactor. Often, designs will depend on materials that do not yet exist. That said there is a tremendous variety of techniques that fit under the umbrella term of "fusion," so I'm hoping to learn something more.
- elcritch 2y agoNot simpler in terms of technology, but simpler in terms of deployment, regulation, and security. Those are the majority of costs in fission power plants.
- epistasis 2y agoThe majority of the cost in fission is in the massive construction build, change orders, logistics, massive concrete pours, welding, etc. I've looked a lot into this in terms of how to get a project like Georgia's Vogtle to have cost less, or Olkioluoto in Finland, or Flamanville 3 in France. Big complex construction projects are expensive, and it's not clear at all to me that fusion would be simpler or smaller, or escape the rest of Baumol's cost disease that has been plaguing fission in highly developed economies.