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.

Comments

Re:The $50,000 question... more energy out than in

[CRCulver]

Scaling up to megawatts is where it solves the big problems, because it can power desalination plants to keep California habitable and other things which are energy/cost prohibitive as of now. As always, I hope this succeeds. Energy is money, and the more energy available, the more a country and a people can do.

Sure, cheap and plentiful energy is great for a consumer society that likes its electronics and cars. In the long run, however, I wonder if the arrival of convenient fusion will mark the start of issues with waste heat. When electricity is generated, much of it is immediately dissipated as heat, and later when the resulting electricity or whatever is used, this too ultimately produces heat. That planet-bound civilizations risk destruction from their waste heat has long been a theme of science-fiction -- it's a plot point in Larry Niven's Ringworld for instance, and it has only seemed fantastical so far because our ability to generate energy has been so limited. What happens when we can pursue our hunger for energy with no excessive costs or short-term environmental damage?

Re:The $50,000 question... more energy out than in

[towermac]

This subject makes me wish I had the math background, because I sure don't see it.

The energy available via fusion is exactly why you will never be able to contain it using any sort of force. It will always take more power to contain than it creates. Otherwise, you would see see self-contained fusion somewhere, under some circumstances, in nature.

You might think the Sun is an example, but it is not self contained. Gravity contains it, which you get for free simply by having mass. With or without fusion, the Sun would stay contained. Since the containment field is free, then yes, you end up getting net power out of the sun.

So I guess we could build an artificial fusion reactor that makes net power, but it would look a whole lot like the Sun, and would be exceedingly difficult to build on the surface of the Earth.

Re:The $50,000 question... more energy out than in

[zmooc]

Waste heat already is quite a lot: 15 terawatt. Global warming equals something like 250 terawatt. If energy consumption keeps growing about 1.5% / year like it has for the past few decades, it will take about 80 years (T+80) for waste heat contribution to overtake the heat flux from earths interior. 40 years later (T+120) our waste heat will equal the total energy used by photosynthesis. In about two centuries from (T+200) now it will have risen to values comparable to what the greenhouse effect does today. Two more centuries later (T+400) we'll finally quality for our Kardashev Type I medal according to some and yet two centuries later (T+600) our energy consumption will surpass the total solar irradiation. In theory, because by then we'd be fried unless we have our giant space coolers in place. About two millenia (T+2500) later our power requirements will outshine the sun.