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How Close Are We, Really, To Nuclear Fusion?
StartsWithABang writes: The ultimate dream when it comes to clean, green, safe, abundant energy is nuclear fusion. The same process that powers the core of the Sun could also power everything on Earth millions of times over, if only we could figure out how to reach that breakeven point. Right now, we have three different candidates for doing so: inertial confinement, magnetic confinement, and magnetized target fusion. Recent advances have all three looking promising in various ways, making one wonder why we don't spend more resources towards achieving the holy grail of energy.
Achieving practical nuclear fusion for power generation would be a very nice step forward. But "holy grail" is rather overselling it, I suspect.
Even when practical, we're still talking very big, very expensive plants that depend on a long supply chain for all its parts, the high-purity fuel and so on. When you consider the building, running and maintenance costs, and the cost of dealing with the spent fuel (much better than for fission plants of course) the energy won't be all that cheap. Hopefully cheaper than fossil fuels at least, but I would not be surprised if a first generation of plants, at least, become more expensive than that.
And they'll be competing with rapidly dropping costs for solar and other renewables. A big, expensive plant like that will need a 40-50 year lifetime to pay for itself. If you can't show that it will likely run profitably for that time period few or no companies will be willing to take on the very major investment. We may well see a technical breakthrough for fusion, and still get no plants actually built.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Except when it's a cloudy day.
Except when it's night time where you need power.
Except where it's not practical or possible to have solar panels.
Except that, I surmise, the power density and lifespan of a practical fusion reactor will make it many times more practical than littering every available horizontal surface with solar panels that will have to be replaced in 20 years or less.
Oh, and don't tell me 'battery banks!' because unless someone comes up with a way of directly storing electric power that scales up very, very cheaply, it's not really a practical solution to have bank after bank after bank of Li+ (or whatever) batteries, which in way less than 20 years will have to be junked and replaced, too.
I suspect you're the environmentalist type, like the Sierra Club or similar, and really are going to be against any type of centralized power generation; get over it already. We need nuclear power, if we're going to get out of the downward spiral that will turn the Earth into a copy of what Venus looks like now: A searing, lifeless black hell hot enough to keep lead molten on it's surface.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Not everyone in Saudi Arabia are bedouin; in particular the ruling House of Saud is descended from town dwelling Arabs.
I'll go out on a limb and guess that not everyone in Saudi Arabia is worthless. Even people involved in managing their oil. And as for the elite they don't seem to be worse than anyone else who's inherited oil-based wealth; they've managed that for the long term benefit of themselves and their families. If they're ostentatious with their wealth, well they have a lot of it and it hasn't bankrupted them yet.
So there's no rational reason to want to destroy Saudi Arabia. But there's every reason not to want to be so dependent upon them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
About $30 billion away. When the predictions of fusion being 20 years away were made, they were based on there being an adiquately funded research program. Since then we've spent less than what was projected as the "fusion never" scenario, which lo and behold is what we've got. Even ITER took 20 years just to figure out who was going to pay for it (first proposed in 1985)
Here on Planet Earth, we invented both mechanical and electric motors quite some time ago.
And we've found ways to heat things. And we have weather forecasting, which to the surprise of some is quite accurate.
When the snow is falling, stand the panels up to minimize the amount that sticks to the surface. When the storm is over or abating, apply heat to the panel surface to melt the residue. Solar is not going to be the primary power source in snowy or cloudy countries and no reasonable person expects it to be.
But it's still very useful.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Germany provides about between 6 and 7% of its total net electricity with solar. It's southernmost city (Munich) has the lattitude of St. John in Newfoundland. And yes, there is snow.
Have you analyzed how much energy you will expend to melt the snow, relative to the time rate of electric energy produced by the panel? Nice powder snow falls are not a big problem, but freezing rain, rime ice accretions, and slop which then freezes solid when the temperature falls prior to your heat application are all conditions a lot of us live with every winter.
The complication and expense of providing the distributed electric-resistance or other type of heating equipment, not to mention the machinery to tilt the panels 90 degrees, would be substantial. And the machinery would have to operate under extremely unfavorable conditions of icing.
I don't suggest these measures cannot be taken, but I do suggest they might have a serious effect on overall cost (initial capital, maintenance, and energy consumption) -to-production performance.
I live in those conditions too - since the early 70s and did outdoor construction work through 4 consecutive winters.
None of these issues are more difficult than keeping homes, vehicles & roads in working condition through severe weather.
It takes work, planning, foresight and innovation but that's how we got from half-naked subsistence scrounging to where we are today.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Right, and Germany is sunnier than the USA
Strawman. I never said anything of the sort.
You're right. I didn't see you anywhere in that video. It was just an interesting vdeo of what some folks on your side were talking about. We doing Oxford debate rules here?
Remind me again what portion of the INDUSTRIALIZED FIRST WORLD runs off of local wind turbines and/or local solar? Oh, that's right: not much. There's a perfectly good reason for that: it's not reliable power like grid power. Solar doesn't work when it's cloudy, at night, or when panels are covered by snow. Wind doesn't work unless it's windy.
And yet, looking at the Allegheny front near my place, there are a lot of wind turbines that seem to be running all the time. You occasionally see one in a turbine field that is stopped - I suspect that's for maintenance.
And as a small correction, the solar panels aren't charging at night. That's when we use the batteries tht the solar panels charge during the day. Works pretty well.
Grid power works all the time, every time.
Oh - bullshit. Here's a small sampling of your "works all the time, every time":
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/25/...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
http://www.foxnews.com/weather...
Living here in the Northeast, we've had a lot of major power interruptions, that put that "Grid power works all the time, every time." claim as utter bunkum. The interruptions are generally due to freak weather, but caused me to get first a generator, and I'm now working my way over towards solar. Some of the interruptions have been around a week, and it doesn't take too many freezerfulls of spoiled food to make you think about the need for alternative power.
Power that isn't there when you need it most is rather useless.
I agree wholeheartedly. However, your vaunted grid is not the uninterruptible power source that you claim it is. I really needed the power not available from the grid until I got those alternatives. I can't rely on your promises for power. Thos promises don't make power come out of the wall sockets. It gets too cold when we're out of it for a week.
Oh, and nice dig at Fox News, not that it's remotely relevant to the discussion. But it does show your bias.
I'm not a liberal, if that's your implication. I'm a pragmatist who likes to point out bullshit. And yes, the idea that Germany is successful in their attempts to use solar power because they are sunnier than we are is bullshit.
And the overall point of that post is that Fox News is not the only group spreading bullshit about alternative forms of power.
Especially when those folk write:
Grid power works all the time, every time
So really what was that? Was the quote bullshit? Or do you actually believe that :
Grid power works all the time, every time
Because it certainly doesn't.
Not even in Germany.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.