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Fusion Reactor Concept Could Be Cheaper Than Coal
vinces99 writes Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply. Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven't penciled out. Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output. The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.
2034.
Alternate post title: How I regurgitated an opinion I read elsewhere on the internet with absolutely no thought.
Yep...it's pretty much 1. Step one 2. Step two 3. Make the whole Fusion thing work. 4. Cheap Energy!
For gods sake, this is /. You forgot: 5. Profit!!
"Hey boss, I have a functional proof of concept for something that's supposed to theoretically work"
"Well throw it out! Everyone knows engineering can't improve on existing designs"
A new analysis and report on Andrea Rossi's E-Cat reactor suggests a new type of nuclear reaction may be real. http://matslew.wordpress.com/2... A new Hydrogen-Nickel-Lithium fuel source may be in our future...
I'm not holding my breath -- fusion power has been 20-30 years away since the 70s.
In fairness, fusion power works just fine if you scale it up. It's just the attempts to make it work in systems that don't weight ~2x10^29kg or more that haven't been so hot.
It's that the energy output is less than the energy inputs.
They could fix this if they used Monster Cables.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Simple: with unlimited energy, we can run every air conditioner on the planet 24/7, fixing global warming as a side effect!
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
We'd obviously have to situate it off-world and use some sort of electromagnetic beam to send the generated energy to earth. Heck, given the amount of extra power generated, we could just send off the energy everywhere and there'd still be enough hitting the earth. We could then use devices here to convert that energy into electricity.
I already have a working, self-sustaining, exothermic fusion reactor. I made it pretty big, so that the necessary pressure is created by gravity alone. This design produces 400,000,000,000,000 terawatts and is completely maintenance free. It also uses a passively safe design so the reaction can't run away, at least for a few billion years. I managed the containment issues (and the truly excessive power production) by suspending the reactor in vacuum about 100 million miles from any population center. Rather than building a 100 million mile cable, I'm transmitting power wirelessly via medium-wavelength electromagnetic radiation. The reactor uses a simple blackbody emitter to generate the radiation. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford to build a good focusing system at the reactor site, so only about 1/10,000,000,000 of the power (50,000 terawatts) actually reaches my potential collector site. However, we only need 13 terawatts to serve our potential market, and really more like 4 terawatts if we can convert the energy to electricity.
Now I'm just working on a system to convert this medium-wavelength electromagnetic radiation into electricity at the collector site. A lot of the fusion reactor designs I've seen use the radiation to boil a fluid to run a turbine. But I'm thinking it would be much cooler to use semiconductors -- maybe use the electromagnetic radiation to excite electrons across a bandgap and create electricity directly? I've got working prototypes of the solid-state converters, and they're already pretty cheap -- I can produce electricity for about 15 cents per kWh. I think with a few more years' work the whole system will be cheaper than coal power (it helps that I don't have to pay for the reactor or fuel). I figure if I cover 0.05% of my collector zone (the Earth's surface) with 15% efficient converters, I can provide enough energy for everyone on the planet.
We'd obviously have to situate it off-world and use some sort of electromagnetic beam to send the generated energy to earth. Heck, given the amount of extra power generated, we could just send off the energy everywhere and there'd still be enough hitting the earth. We could then use devices here to convert that energy into electricity.
I oppose this idea, especially out of care for the children. I think the giant fusion reactor would have to be situated too close to schools and nature preserves and other sensitive areas and I don't think the radiation risks have been thoroughly analyzed and quantified.
Look, I'm not opposed to giant balls of hydrogen as long as you build them in suitable places. There are many examples where they have put them light-years away from Earth, where there aren't any schools or preschools, and I'm all in favor of those ones.
If it's off-world, we could use the radiation and some catalysts to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars and oxygen, and ferment it under pressure and heat for a few million years until it's in an easy-to-use portable form.