2 ms·
Fusion likely wouldn’t solve much. Fuel and disposal costs are a small part of nuclear costs. It’s amortized capex for the extremely expensive plant, then maint
by dalyons 10mo ago
Fusion likely wouldn’t solve much. Fuel and disposal costs are a small part of nuclear costs. It’s amortized capex for the extremely expensive plant, then maintenance. Fusion would make both of those costs worse
- pfdietz 10mo agoExactly right. Fusion's only hope (and IMO it's not a great one) is a system where entire parts of a fission plant can be deleted. Helion does this by not needing turbine + generator, but doing direct conversion of plasma energy to electrical energy. But even so, they have to struggle with capex and reliability. Their reactor is coupled with a huge bank of capacitors (Zap has a similar problem; it's startling how large the capacitor bank is compared to their small fusion cell.)