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Great, but I don't see how these extremely expensive nuclear fusion projects will ever beat price/kW of coal without heavy subsidies. My bet is that dense plasm
by rpedela 13y ago
Great, but I don't see how these extremely expensive nuclear fusion projects will ever beat price/kW of coal without heavy subsidies. My bet is that dense plasma focus is the future of cheap, clean power. Only time will tell though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus
- germano 13y agoI would imagine that the price/kW of coal will become easier to beat as we run out of it.
- mikeash 13y agoWe're not running out of coal any time soon.
- rpedela 13y agoPick your favorite energy technology (oil, wind, solar), it still applies.
- NhanH 13y agoIt's quite a bit harder to run out of wind and solar.
- rpedela 13y agoYeah. My comment has nothing to do with finite or infinite amount of any energy technology but rather that my original comment applies to fusion competing with the price of any existing energy technology such as coal, oil, wind, solar, etc.
- tyree732 13y agoSure, but it's not too difficult to run out of the materials necessary to usefully collect those energy sources.
- gizmo686 13y agoMuch of the cost of these projects likely results from the research nature of them. Once we get a viable model, we will likely be able to produce a cheaper plant because 1) we know what we are doing, and 2) now that we know it works, we can build it bigger.
- rayiner 13y agoLots of things beat coal on a price/kW basis once you account for the massive externalized costs of coal: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/tallying-coals-hidden-cost/?_r=0 http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/tallying-coals-hid.... Coal isn't cheap, it just has the desirable property that more than half its costs can be easily externalized rather than being paid by the people who use the power.