Reply To: EmDrive + Focus Fusion = Space Access for all?

[DaveMart]

I don’t think it is as bad as that!
According to the guys at the Plasma toroid research project, the use of boron in a nuclear reactor at current prices leads to a fuel cost of around 1/20th of fossil fuel:
‘The low cost of operating a PB11 spheromak as an electric generator (currently estimated as a 20:1 saving) is based on fossil-fuel prices as of this year. If oil prices continue to rise as predicted, the savings differential may become even greater. This would more rapidly make up for the rather steep capital outlay involved to install a home heating system priced at USD $12,000. (Ref. 14) However, using a relatively rare element as part of a fuel-input system could cause the price of boron to rise, and calculations of cost saving which are based on its current low price may have to be revised somewhat in the future.’
http://pesn.com/2006/03/08/9600242_Spheromak_Plasma_Toroid/
Unfortunately though they do not source this comment.
Here are a couple I dug up:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/boron/boronmcs05.pdf
http://www.indexmundi.com/en/commodities/minerals/boron/boron_table%204.html
http://www.imf2005.itu.edu.tr/field.php
http://www.consrv.ca.gov/cgs/minerals/min_prod/non_fuel_2002.pdf
It looks like a price per ton of a few hudred dollars.
Commonly mined ores seem to be in fairly limited supply, mainly in Turkey, but with substantial resources in California and Russia.
What I don’t know though is the prevalence of lower grade ores not presently mined, which it might be necessary to exploit if boron was utilised for a lot of energy generation, how the likely rates of depletion under those circumstances would square up to current resources and so on.
Nor am I qualified to try to put some numbers on those questions.
Some approximate figures frot hsi might be needed though, to convice potential investors that boron resources are likely to last beyond next Tuesday! 😉
My own wild guess would be that at a price of 10 times current, available exploitable resources might be 100 times greater than current, leading to a fuel cost about half that of current fossil fuel resources, and allowing focus fusion to still capilalise on no generating equipment being needed and so on.
Hopefully this might give a resource base which would be OK for a few hundred years at, say, American rates of power consumption for a world of 10billion.
As boron is a rare element some numbers would be handy though, rather than just surmising.
Regards,
DaveMart