3 ms·
When talking about breaking even, does that include the energy needed to make the deuterium? Or rather to collect it, considering it has to be extracted from w
by grondilu 12y ago
When talking about breaking even, does that include the energy needed to make the deuterium? Or rather to collect it, considering it has to be extracted from water or something. IIRC deuterium costs quite a lot of energy to produce and as a result for a while it was only produced by countries having large amount of hydroelectricity available.
Not exactly related, but this made me wonder : inside a tank full of liquid hydrogen, do the DH and DD molecules lie on the bottom? Is it possible to just siphon them from there?
- cpihl 12y agoThat's a good question. The short answer is the energy that it takes to extract D2 from water is so small compared to the fusion energy released it isn't a factor. That is reflected in the cost of D2O at about $0.70 per gram. In a fusion reactor, even with inefficiencies, that gram of D2O will create about $1000 worth of electricity.
- grondilu 12y agoYeah that makes sense. Now that I think about it, I realise the energy needed to extract deuterium is related to the chemical energy binding water molecules together. This chemical energy is orders of magnitude lower than the nuclear energy released by fusion. So the cost of fuel production will likely be irrelevant for fusion power.