A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
kcdodd
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by kcdodd »

Im not sure, maybe I made it up. Its kind of besides the point though. Going with a 1000yr power supply with fusion or fission because we see it as more economical then solar only means we bought another 1000yrs to figure out how to make solar economical.
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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Hi Guys,

I have been following this post in the background, and it is clear that the world faces a problem, what is even more clear is that most people think it is merely a temporary issue and that someone will soon fix it. Companies are investing in growth and prosperity will return, I see no less than 5 building cranes on the horizon, building office towers with lifts and air-conditioning systems, and those pretty windows that can't be opened, because it makes more sense to pump cold air through the building than to open the window...doh!

In the office next to mine, resides a consulting company, who are busy advising the Sydney Airport Corporation on how to improve the airport for increased capacity.....

Okay, a small group of informed people are beginning to ask where will it end, but what if anything is being done about it?

Not much at the moment, but if we re-engineered our world, and used the remaining resources to rebuild the obsolete infrastructure, we might stand a chance.

With communication through the internet, change can happen fast, so we need to reserve enough energy to run the internet, fortunately with the fiber optic roll out around the world, and more efficient processors, the net will consume a little less.

People need to live close to where they work, walk or ride a bike, offices need fresh air ventilation, go back to using fans and natural draft to ventilate in hot countries, cold countries need to redesign buildings to take advantage of light and build on the sunny side of the hill, animals have known this all along.

Grow food where people live, If you are a Golfer, I apologise in advance, but you simply can't have all that fertile irrigated land, just for walking around in funny pants hitting a 1" ball, this land, usually located in urban areas, can easily be turned into food growing areas.

Business people, don't need to fly all over the place to do business, try having virtual meetings using Skype or similar technology, it works and it will dramatically reduce your costs.

Solar energy is available now, and in Australia at least the average home can supply around 7kWh per day, just about enough for home consumption, but not enough for industry.

So we have a problem, too many people, with no way to access the energy required to feed them.

To conclude, I link to a recent page by Paul Chefurka, where he talks about the 5 stages of awareness, and how he believes 90% of the worlds population is in stage 1.

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/LadderOfAwareness.html

Steven
http://www.gammaspectacular.com - Gamma Spectrometry Systems
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Sesselmann - Various papers and patents on RG
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Frank Sanns »

High density cities are the most efficient. The most energy efficient structure for heating and cooling is a cube because it gives the greatest volume for a given surface area. Bigger cubes are even better so those high density living spaces are great. For solar living in a mega cube, 15 m^2 to 20 m^2 is sufficient for a family of 4 to have virtually unlimited energy available for all but the most hungry of appliances. It also puts the workers and families closer together thus requiring no cars. This is a typical feature in big cities where a car is not an asset but a costly liability.

In many of the world's largest cities, cars are already being eliminated by legislation. Often certain license plates can enter the city on certain days and not on others. Park and rides outside of the city with high efficiency rail predominates. The least energy efficient living space by far is a single family home. It uses the most energy and the materials to build. It also requires a car to commute to the store and to work and often it is significant distances on roads with no traffic light control strategy so it is stop and go. The future is here in some places of the world but unfortunately not in most.

Frank Sanns
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Chris Bradley
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Chris Bradley »

Frank, I'd need to see the figures. I just went looking for evidence that this is sustainable and can't find it. One paper ("Assessment of photovoltaic potential in urban areas using open-source solar radiation tools", Hofierka) suggests meeting 2/3rds of electricity needs with solar, but that's not counting heating (a town in Slovakia was used for the study). And that's only a numerical analysis, I'd like to see the practical infrastructure difficulties too of having that much installed capacity.

It's winter here in UK. There's not even enough ambient sunlight to melt the ice on my car all day long if there is cloud cover at the moment (and it's only getting down to zero C, not much lower than that), and we're still a month or two away from the coldest parts of winter! So what chance is there to heat my house all day-and-night long, let alone power it with electricity?

And that's long before dealing with the energy supply to the trucks that have borought me all my provisions from outside my town, and running the factories that have processed and made the stuff.

Show me the numbers. Really, I'd like to see some evidence this is possible so I do not ignorantly blunder my way through life not realising solar is a global energy solution that exists already. From where I am sitting, running the world off of solar panels on rooftops does not look feasible. I'll agree that solar is a work-in-progress, works in some installations very well, and can provide a 'boost' in others. But to cover a wider scope and industrial scale, high-density power sources will still be required and it's the same argument then as other 'renewables' - if we have a base load of power stations that 'underwrites' solar when it's cloudy and cold and demand exceeds installed capacity, then why not use the base load all the time (that is to say, because it will have to be nuclear in the long run, so just leave it running!)?

We need to save our stocks of fossil fuels right, and immediately, now and not hang about hoping mankind will become magically more efficient over night so solar will be sufficient to meet needs. We need to start moving to 100% fast breeders *now*!!!! If it transpires over time that solar is sufficient, then we can turn them off, Great!, and give up funding fusion research (maybe!). If it transpires solar is not sufficient, we have the base-load sorted without fear of energy shortage for a few thousand years, and a plan to get fusion going still for the rest of human life on Earth, and maybe beyond?

I think I've exhausted any points I'd want to make on this subject, except to remind mankind about putting too many eggs in too few baskets!!
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Frank Sanns »

Chris,

Solar voltaics will only be a part of the solution as you say but here are some hard facts and numbers for just that.

Photovoltaic panels do not work only from direct sunlight. They work on photons. If it is light outside, then they work albeit at a reduced capacity. This reduced capacity is also factored in with the seasonal length of day calculations. Maps are produced for the locations of the world that figure in all of this data. They are called solar insolation maps. This map will show the number of hours of equivalent sunshine year round. For where I live in Pittsburgh, PA, the second most cloudy city in the USA, the number of equivalent hours of sunlight year round is 4.5 hours.

This 4.5 hours number means that 1 kw of photovoltaic panels produce for on average, 4,5 hours per day. So 1 kw of panels will produce 4.5 kilo watt hours of power for the day. This is very close to my actual yearly numbers of power production per kw of panels. I happen to have just under 3 kw of solar panels and I made around 4 MWh of electricity so far this year. With the short days for the next 60 days, I am at my production lows for the year for clouds and short days plus my panels get some shadows since the sun is only maximums at 26 degrees above the horizon now at noon. Still it is impressive that I am making on average, a quarter that I am making on a summer's day. Cooler temperatures (better panel efficiency) and clearer winter skies help.

I am connected to the grid so for all but the shortest days of the year, I put excess power into the grid during the day when the demand is the greatest, then I use some of it back at night. Right now this is great because coal fired plants take many hours or days to change power levels and if there is capacity for the day, it then is wasted into the night. Not good for fossil fuel consumption or for the extra pollution that that creates.

Again, just sticking with photovoltaics for this discussion, the question becomes how to manage it longer term. Without going 100 or 200 years, the transition in the US might look like a mix of solar, coal, and natural gas and nuclear and any other sources. Not in any particular order. The nice thing about solar is it is predictable to a significant extent by the weather. If a period of rainy days are coming, it is clear that other sources will have to pick up the slack. It is also clear that on partly cloudy days, a large region will still have a stable energy output as some panels will be in sun while others will be partly shaded. The big swings in solar output on a partly cloudy day when the panels are spread out, is a non issue yet I hear detractors crying this all of the time.

Coal then since it has the longest ramp up and ramp down time is the one that is given the majority of the base load. The load that it can do day after day with no changes so it is running maximum efficiency with as little waste as possible. Add in the nuclear to the capacity that is available and then make up the daily changes with a quick response natural gas plant coupled with the somewhat adjustable nuclear plants (or hydoelectrics or whatever the best adjustable local energy source is) and you have an energy management system. Energy management is already in place for the grid as power companies spend big bucks on systems that will tell them the predicted use of power on any given day of the year along with any other conditions like heating days, big sports days, holidays, etc.. They already do not want to waste their coal and other sources as it is $$$ off of their profits. Solar and all other contributing energy sources will be quickly absorbed into their models.

I tried to stay focused only on solar but this post could have turned into a White Paper on energy as a whole but I hope it conveyed more specifics about PV.

Frank Sanns
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Richard Hull
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Richard Hull »

I think future energy is really more related to human community, technological survival and geo-political issues than some form of new, old or renewable forms of supply. I fear that if the worst happens, solar, hydro and fossil will be the types of surviving real resorces in a post apocolyptic, greatly de-populated world.

If the above is realized, fusion will never be conquered on a time scale that is worth discussion and even fission would lapse for a century or more into that future, if ever to return at all.

Small localized communities with hyper-limited, rationed supplies of electrical and steam energy living in a useful but simpler world circa 1900, but with radio and perhaps even TV and what remains of computing power. Some here might rather die than live in such a world. Others here might welcome it.

Again, the fragility of our society's technology coupled with its tenuous and often strained supply chain to a vast population will certainly be the achille's heel and the ultimate snare to our feet. It wouldn't take much to upset the apple cart, big time.

There is no crystal ball in any of this.

The Boy Scout motto "be prepared" is sage, but the world, as a whole, isn't having any of it. So the motto returns to its original origin, the individual mandate involving accrued skill sets and a sense of purposeful doing.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
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Jim Kovalchick
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Jim Kovalchick »

By the time that fusion technology is developed to the point that it can be a practical energy source, we will also have the ability to get fusion fuel from off earth. He3 is an excellent fusion fuel and it exists in abundance on the moon.

Also, favorably comparing solar power collection to nuclear fission stations is silly. My plant still runs when it snows and at night. I'm not anti solar, and if I had a few extra bucks I would allow government subsidies to install some cells on my roof. But even with subsidies, the investment cost won't pay back my investment for well beyond the amount of time I plan to own my home. If I thought I could transfer the cost to the buyer when I sold (which won't happen) then okay. Even solar has a NIMBY and negative environmental aspect. Again, not trying to knock solar, but it certainly is no reason to abandon a drive to a clincher energy source such as fusion.
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by kcdodd »

Im not convinced helium 3 fusion is good for energy production, especially if you are talking about having to harvest it from the moon and bring it back. Its really only good for decreasing the neutronicity. My own estimates indicate a reactor at 10-15% neutronicity might be possible with a he3 mix. But the best possible Q of such a reactor is not good. Like 5, definitly less than 10. Power density is not good either. I would only consider it for special applications, like a fusion rocket or something.

Playing this game of economics and fusion versus solar is kind of silly since we don't know how much fusion would cost. If you use iter as a baseline, that would put it at like $60/watt. You would have to convince me that in the time it takes to build fusion power plants, that solar power wont still be the cheaper option per watt anyway. Especially if you want it to be he3. You would have to assume that the cost of solar would decrease way slower than the cost of fusion would.
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Chris Bradley
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Chris Bradley »

Jim Kovalchick wrote:
> He3 is an excellent fusion fuel and it exists in abundance on the moon.
'Abundance' is rather relative. It is no more than about 3 times more concentrated in lunar He than it is in terrestrial He. Hardly worth going to the Moon for; see - viewtopic.php?f=22&t=8445#p58648 .

I don't know where this tall tale came from. Someone clearly wanted to try to make a non-existent case to go to the Moon sound plausible, I guess.

At the moment, 'excellent fusion fuel' is a bit misleading too. Sorry.
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Jim Kovalchick »

Chris,
I stand by my statement that He 3 would make an excellent fusion fuel and I am not alone in thinking that. The use of the word 'excellent' is subjective enough that I feel safe in using it because how it's measured is my choice. Helium 3 will be harder to fuse than the hydrogen isotopes, but once we figure out how fusion can be managed as a real fuel supply I think that the choice of fuel won't seem as limiting. What is already true is that He 3 is much easier to handle than tritium which is radioactive and a nuisance pollutant. The neutron dynamics seem to be intriguing as well.

It's all fancy right now, but its never too early to look to the future.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26179944/ns ... er-future/

Jim K
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Chris Bradley
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Chris Bradley »

The news article is simply a demonstration of repeating the tall-tale.

Seriously, which do you think would be easier - extracting 1 part in 3,000 from lunar He on the moon, or extracting one part in 10,000 from terrestrial He whilst here on Earth?

In regards 3He being 'excellent', the fusion reactivity curve is lower even than the DD reaction at anything much below 100keV. Tritium handling is not an issue going in to the reactor for DT, but is an issue for retention and management within the chamber. Unfortunately, D+3He does not relieve that problem because the DD reactions will produce tritium too, so the same problem will exist. To what extent I don't know. The only way to beat that entirely (and the neutrons from DD) is to run 3He+3He, but you need MeV's for that.

It's just a bit hopeless to talk about these reactions being useful at the moment while DT still can't be made to work, which is an order of magnitude easier than any other reactions.
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by ab0032 »

I disagree, even without fusion we have enough Uranium to get by for one billion years at todays energy consumption levels, if we breed, that would last 100 billion years supply of todays energy use.

Of course energy consumption will continue to rise at 3% per year as it has done in the past 150 years. Uranium can be derived from unconventional sources such as ocean water, and the price really does not make a difference.

Also it is no problem to develop thorium reactors, either molten salt or other within a few years and thorium is even more abundant.

So today already we have energy security for a very long time. Energy is abundant. Only anti-humanist environmentalists are preventing that we access the cleanest and safest of all known energy sources.

And I see no reason, why humanity should not be able to access source on mars, moons of jupiter or elsewhere, if we would really come to a crunch.
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by ab0032 »

Solar power first needs a large initial energy and resource investment. We dont have these resources now and it would be silly to do it. Solar collectors in deserts also pose a major challenge, with dust and storms.

But the main point is that solar is such a diluted form of energy, that all deserts of the world would not suffice to supply a demand growing at 3% by 2070 or 2080. So solar is just a short bridge to nowhere.

Anyone could do the math on the back of an envelop. It doesnt add up.
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by ab0032 »

Why dont you give a reason, why you oppose nuclear? It has the lowest number of deaths of all energy forms, even better than PV and Wind. It is also the cleanest.

Is it just an emotional thing? Does it feel better to live in the mainstream media mindset, than forming an own opinion that digresses from the greenpeace propaganda, which is preventing a clean solution for much to long now and has kept us locked in a coal and oil world?
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Chris Bradley
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Chris Bradley »

Alexander Biersack wrote:
> ...we have enough Uranium to get by for one billion years at todays energy consumption levels, if we breed, that would last 100 billion years supply of todays energy use.

Not sure that is true. Do you have figures for this claim?

According to the IAEA study there is surprisingly little - about 50 years worth of current stocks and 'immediate' reserves if burnt in slow reactors, which I understood should mean multiplying up to 5~10,000 years, at current consumption, in fast breeders, from known/predicted reserves.

The more I think about this, the more I realise why people get excited about developing thorium. Seems to hit a lot of the right buttons. Maybe fusion will never get to 'over unity' but if it works as a half-decent neutron source, then maybe the future is by activating Thorium to make it fissile? Maybe Rubbia's 'energy amplifier' will have its day after all... but even that will probably only last a few 100,000 years.

Following text from "ANALYSIS OF URANIUM SUPPLY TO 2050" ;
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publicatio ... 04_scr.pdf


""
ANALYSIS OF CUMULATIVE SUPPLY
AND DEMAND TO 2050
The adequacy of resources to meet demand is
measured in two ways. The first measure is a direct
comparison of resources at different confidence levels with
market based production requirements. The second
measure takes into account the fact that not all resources
will be utilized within the study period by comparing
projected production with requirements. The importance
of the difference between the two ways of measuring
resource adequacy is indicated for the middle and high
demand cases in Table II.
Production from high confidence RAR is projected to
be adequate to meet all requirements in the low demand
case. Therefore, deficits are not projected to be a factor in
the low demand case. As we progress to the middle
demand case, relatively high confidence known resources
fall short of market based production requirements by only
146 000 t U, or by less than the annual demand in each
year from 2041 to 2050. With the addition of lower confidence (undiscovered) EAR-II, resources actually exceed
requirements by about 2 million t U. However, a combination of timing when production centres will be cost
justified and the size of their resource base precludes full
utilization of resources, resulting in a projected shortfall of
844 500 t U between production from known resources
and market based production requirements.
""
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by ab0032 »

The German Desertec project is in its death throws right now, most of the major big supporters have jumped ship and cut off funding. I guess they where all only in it for the subsidies.

Also Germany now has a record of 30GW peak installed PV as of this year after a massive spending spree. And what can we show for the 400 billion Euros spent? (Over half a trillion $)

Solar now produces about as much power as one normal coal or nuclear power plant and storage problems are not solved and major investments into the grid are needed to handle this power that comes into it, when the sun shines and not when it is needed. We are talking of a few thousand km of strong high voltage grid and tens of thousands of km of lower voltage grid. Who is going to pay for that?

Germany could have spent 1 less then one billion on a normal gas or coal plant or 5 billion for a modern and safe and clean nuclear power plant.

And where does all of the so called renewable energy come from in Germany? 3/4 are biomass, Germany is turning food into gas or electricity, which not only kills people but also has a negative environmental balance as lots of studies have shown. Rain forest destruction for palm oil plantations, more air pollution and even more green house gases.

Germanys neighbors are now installing huge switches at their borders to disconnect from the German grid, because they dont want to go into a blackout with the Germans, who are destabilizing their grid with all this "renewable" Energy that comes when it wants and not when needed.

Also many conventional power generators will go of the grid, because profitability is not given under these conditions. It is harmful to the power plant and inefficient to turn normal power plants on and off all the time and keep them in warm standby. Hence the German government is thinking of subsidies for them to keep running. Things are not all gold if you take a closer look.
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by ab0032 »

I dont want to know how much sun light the UK gets, Germany is on a par with Alaska.

The Chinese have seen the light, they are building 25 nuclear power plants now till 2015 and are definitely going to build another 40 by 2020. They want to reach energy independence. And they want to make hydrogen from cracking water in thorium reactors and make gas and gasoline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... LX8jCKL9I4
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by ab0032 »

Steven, can you explain, what the problem is? The only problem we have, is that we are not building nuclear power plants fast enough. With power we can do anything we want, we could even desalinate sea water and turn the whole of the sahara into a huge crop basket for another 7 billion or more people.
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by ab0032 »

Richard, the dangers to our fragile society come from environmentalists on a mission, trying to tell others how they have to live. Liberty and freedom, free markets have brought us great wealth, this in danger now. The knowledge and the solution is not in the heads of a few environmentalists, it is distributed. I have checked all the things the environmentalists have succeeded to force upon others, and the interesting thing is that now one single measure actually is good for nature. Nothing of their policies does the slightest good for the environment. A classic case of well intended but with lots of unintended consequences that they did not fore see.

It is always fanatics that do most harm.
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by ab0032 »

From Wikipedia unconventional sources of Uranium:
The uranium concentration of seawater is approximately 3.3 parts per billion but the quantity of contained uranium is vast. Researchers estimate there are some 4.5 billion tonnes - this amounts to approximately 1000 times more than known terrestrial resources.

Japanese scientists have shown that Uranium can be extracted from sea water with ion exchangers for 200$ a pound, Oak Ridge scientists have recently increased performance by magnitudes.

And just think of terrestrial Uranium: every ton of granite contains about 3 grams of uranium, how much granite is there?

But there are two guys who did the math. McCarthy and Bernard Cohen.

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/prog ... r-faq.html

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by ab0032 »

Here is one such calculation for sea water in brief
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Richard Hull »

Lots o' pie in the sky assumptions related to fusion and fission fuels. Regardless of availability of fusion fuels, it would be nice to get just one fusion reactor working at an economically viable level on the easiest possible reaction, D-T, prior to dreaming about which fuel we are to use and where it is coming from. This cart is miles out in front of the poor, currently useless, horse that is touted to win many races.

Uranium from sea water is also a bit of a dream. There is far too much in far easier to extract forms and higher concentrations still in the ground.

Given that fusion is not even on a visible horizon and the current political failure to advance fission in the free world, Coal remains the number one cheapest energy resource for the foreseeable near future, no matter how many other sources we heap on the pile of oughta'-be energy sources. I'm very pro-fission, but it is a dead horse in this country.

Again, most of this blather will probably be moot given totally non-energy related stuff brewing on the horizon. I am not personally committed to this bad result, but the world seems to be.

Richard Hull
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Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Jim Kovalchick »

Richard,
Fact check: nukes make cheaper power than coal. We passed coal at least fifteen years ago based on improved capacity factors and operating cost controls.
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Frank Sanns »

There have been three accidents out of just over 400 reactors worldwide. While the number of deaths from radiation is low, the amount of hardship by those involved is huge. Loss of properties, family members, pets, belongings, and entire lives are just gone. I have seen up and close what it looks like in Japan and the uncertainly with the food contamination that they are still battling. It is not pretty at all. While this is just the human factor which seems to be dismissed in many of these banters, let's look at the technology.

1. Nuclear is not foolproof. The odds are low but when things go wrong, they go very wrong and affect significant populations. There will be more accidents and it may be coming to a neighborhood near you.

2. More reactors means more highly radioactive waste. Even reprocessing, if implemented, does not eliminate ultra high level waste. It reduces the volume of the waste but all that is the most radioactive is still entirely present. It also by far increases the chance for nuclear proliferation.

3. More reactors means more quantities and opportunities for proliferation of fissile material. It also increases the number of potential targets for terrorists.

4. If left unchecked, energy will be consumed at a faster and faster pace even if there were a nuclear reactor in every person's backyard. It is not a solution. It is a symptom of a energy gluttonous society.

Frank Sanns
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Re: A discussion on fusion future. - A 'gentle' primer.

Post by Frank Sanns »

Math is not needed. History is.

The ancients knew how to manage their resources. There was water and sewage management in the first of the successful civilizations. There also was a large amount of utilization of wind for cooling and for doing mechanical work. Buildings were built to capitalize on daytime heating and held in dirt or stone structures for night time warmth. These are not survivalist tactics, they are prudent choices.

Building a house that has a significant number windows facing south can provide a significant portion of winter heat. Building under deciduous trees preserves this for the winter yet provide a cool canopy for shade in the summer. These are wise practices that were learned and utilized by even our fathers. Unfortunately it is being forgotten by the new "I want all I can get now" generation. These people did not unplug their transformer wall chargers for their smartphones as they did know any better and did not care. It was the smartphone manufacturers that, because of legislation and environmental groups, switched over to solid state switching power supplies that did not have the phantom load. Nobody had to give anything up and no trees were harmed in the process and no dangerous chemicals were needed. This is just a small example of what needs to be done for those that do not know any better.

FYI, I do not think it is "Green" for a couple to build a summer house that is enormous and put 30 kw of panels on the roof only to use it all. This is money being abused in the name of environment but it is not green. Not even close.

There are answers but they do not fit well into the box that the world it used to. Things need to be done with a diverse vision of the future and not with an unchecked "I want all I can get and I am entitled to get it" mentality.

Frank Sanns


Alexander Biersack wrote:
> Solar power first needs a large initial energy and resource investment. We dont have these resources now and it would be silly to do it. Solar collectors in deserts also pose a major challenge, with dust and storms.
>
> But the main point is that solar is such a diluted form of energy, that all deserts of the world would not suffice to supply a demand growing at 3% by 2070 or 2080. So solar is just a short bridge to nowhere.
>
> Anyone could do the math on the back of an envelop. It doesnt add up.
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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