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I see this is fallacy, there are a ton of industrial processes that use a ton of power just to produce heat. A great early use case for fusion will directly use

I see this is fallacy, there are a ton of industrial processes that use a ton of power just to produce heat. A great early use case for fusion will directly use the heat for these industrial processes. For example, aluminum requires ~14-17MWh to produce 1 ton... If you use the heat directly you reduce your processes inefficiency by removing the conversions: heat to steam to electric to heat. Yeah, next 50 years you might not see coal/nat gas being replaced by fusion. But you will see fusion displacing chunks of what those powerplants will be powering

nothercastle 1y ago
To take advantage of this you would need to build an integrated power/manufacturing hub. The project would be extremely expensive and difficult to finance in places that don’t have strong central planning.
hwillis 1y ago
> A great early use case for fusion will directly use the heat for these industrial processes. There is no chance that early fusion plants will be small enough to justify building them in the same building as a factory. They will start large. > For example, aluminum requires ~14-17MWh to produce 1 ton The Hall–Héroult process runs at 950 C, just below the melting point of copper. It is close to twice the temperature of steam entering the turbines. It is not something that can be piped around casually- as a gas it will always be at very high pressure because lowering the pressure cools it down. Molten salt or similar is required to transport that much heat as a liquid. Every pipe glows orange. Any industrial process will effectively be a part of the power plant because of how difficult it is to transport that heat away. Also NB that the Hall–Héroult process is for creating aluminum from ore, and recycling aluminum is the primary way we make aluminum.
- o1inventor 1y ago
  > Every pipe glows orange. Any industrial process will effectively be a part of the power plant because of how difficult it is to transport that heat away. Industrial parks centered around power plants might become a thing in the future, being looked at as essential infrastructure investment. Heat transport could be seen as an entire sub-industry unto itself, adding efficiency and cost-savings for conglamorates that choose to partner with companies that invest in and build power plants.
shitpostbot 1y ago
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ryao 1y ago
> I see this is fallacy, there are a ton of industrial processes that use a ton of power just to produce heat. A great early use case for fusion will directly use the heat for these industrial processes. For example, aluminum requires ~14-17MWh to produce 1 ton... If you use the heat directly you reduce your processes inefficiency by removing the conversions: heat to steam to electric to heat. The other guy was correct while you are the one who posted the fallacy. If using heat from nuclear sources to drive aluminum production were feasible, people would already be doing it using heat from HTGR reactors rather than waiting for nuclear fusion reactors to be made. The reason it is not feasible is because the heat is an output, not an input. The actual input is electricity, which is what drives the reaction. The 940–980°C temperatures reached during the reaction are from the electricity being converted into heat from resistive losses. It should be noted that production nuclear fusion reactors would be even more radioactive than nuclear fission reactors in terms of total nuclear waste production by weight. The only reason people think otherwise is that the hypothetical use of helium-3 fuel would avoid it, but getting enough helium-3 fuel to power even a test reactor is effectively an impossibility. There are many things that are hypothetically attainable if all people in the world decide to do it. The permanent elimination of war, crime and poverty are such things. Obtaining helium-3 in the quantity needed for a single reactor is not. However, the goal of powering the Hall–Héroult process from a nuclear fusion reactor is doable. Just use solar panels. Then it will be powered by the giant fusion reactor we have in the sky. You would want to add batteries to handle energy needs when the sun is not shining or do a grid tie connection and let the grid operator handle the battery needs. Finally, industrial processes that actually need heat at high temperatures (up to around 950°C if my searches are accurate) as input could be served by HTGR reactors. If they are not already using them, then future fusion reactors will be useless for them, since there is no future in sight where a man made fusion reactor is a cheaper energy source than a man made fission reactor. Honestly, I suspect using solar panels to harness energy from the giant fusion reactor in the sky is a more cost effective solution than the use of any man-made reactor.
- nothercastle 1y ago
  Somewhere there was an excellent blog post that I lost the link to that explains that fusion and nuclear have basically the same requirements for energy extraction. You can therefore estimate the ideal cost of a perfect fusion reactor and zero out the cost of the generation side and get a rough estimate of the lowest possible cost for fusion with current technology. I think that put you at somewhere near the 20c mark. Solar is 4-5c and going down, it’s hard to beat that. Also you have to be careful when comparing solar to fusion because there are significant lifecycle costs on fusion that are not present in solar. So you have to take that into account when calculating total cost

nothercastle 1y ago

To take advantage of this you would need to build an integrated power/manufacturing hub. The project would be extremely expensive and difficult to finance in places that don’t have strong central planning.

hwillis 1y ago

> A great early use case for fusion will directly use the heat for these industrial processes. There is no chance that early fusion plants will be small enough to justify building them in the same building as a factory. They will start large. > For example, aluminum requires ~14-17MWh to produce 1 ton The Hall–Héroult process runs at 950 C, just below the melting point of copper. It is close to twice the temperature of steam entering the turbines. It is not something that can be piped around casually- as a gas it will always be at very high pressure because lowering the pressure cools it down. Molten salt or similar is required to transport that much heat as a liquid. Every pipe glows orange. Any industrial process will effectively be a part of the power plant because of how difficult it is to transport that heat away. Also NB that the Hall–Héroult process is for creating aluminum from ore, and recycling aluminum is the primary way we make aluminum.

o1inventor 1y ago
> Every pipe glows orange. Any industrial process will effectively be a part of the power plant because of how difficult it is to transport that heat away. Industrial parks centered around power plants might become a thing in the future, being looked at as essential infrastructure investment. Heat transport could be seen as an entire sub-industry unto itself, adding efficiency and cost-savings for conglamorates that choose to partner with companies that invest in and build power plants.

shitpostbot 1y ago

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ryao 1y ago

> I see this is fallacy, there are a ton of industrial processes that use a ton of power just to produce heat. A great early use case for fusion will directly use the heat for these industrial processes. For example, aluminum requires ~14-17MWh to produce 1 ton... If you use the heat directly you reduce your processes inefficiency by removing the conversions: heat to steam to electric to heat. The other guy was correct while you are the one who posted the fallacy. If using heat from nuclear sources to drive aluminum production were feasible, people would already be doing it using heat from HTGR reactors rather than waiting for nuclear fusion reactors to be made. The reason it is not feasible is because the heat is an output, not an input. The actual input is electricity, which is what drives the reaction. The 940–980°C temperatures reached during the reaction are from the electricity being converted into heat from resistive losses. It should be noted that production nuclear fusion reactors would be even more radioactive than nuclear fission reactors in terms of total nuclear waste production by weight. The only reason people think otherwise is that the hypothetical use of helium-3 fuel would avoid it, but getting enough helium-3 fuel to power even a test reactor is effectively an impossibility. There are many things that are hypothetically attainable if all people in the world decide to do it. The permanent elimination of war, crime and poverty are such things. Obtaining helium-3 in the quantity needed for a single reactor is not. However, the goal of powering the Hall–Héroult process from a nuclear fusion reactor is doable. Just use solar panels. Then it will be powered by the giant fusion reactor we have in the sky. You would want to add batteries to handle energy needs when the sun is not shining or do a grid tie connection and let the grid operator handle the battery needs. Finally, industrial processes that actually need heat at high temperatures (up to around 950°C if my searches are accurate) as input could be served by HTGR reactors. If they are not already using them, then future fusion reactors will be useless for them, since there is no future in sight where a man made fusion reactor is a cheaper energy source than a man made fission reactor. Honestly, I suspect using solar panels to harness energy from the giant fusion reactor in the sky is a more cost effective solution than the use of any man-made reactor.

nothercastle 1y ago
Somewhere there was an excellent blog post that I lost the link to that explains that fusion and nuclear have basically the same requirements for energy extraction. You can therefore estimate the ideal cost of a perfect fusion reactor and zero out the cost of the generation side and get a rough estimate of the lowest possible cost for fusion with current technology. I think that put you at somewhere near the 20c mark. Solar is 4-5c and going down, it’s hard to beat that. Also you have to be careful when comparing solar to fusion because there are significant lifecycle costs on fusion that are not present in solar. So you have to take that into account when calculating total cost