Reply To: Focus fusion and transportation

[Axil]

Rematog wrote: And hardware made of diamond does not sound like it would be “off the shelf” or easily duplicated at thousands of sites in the US alone. (remember, you would need 954 sites of 1 GW capacity to equal the current installed fossil and fission fuel capacity in the US (98 GW of the remaining 134 GW of capacity is hydropower, solar is 1/2 a GW, wind is now up to almost 17 GW.)

And how is this GW of electric going to be made? If the X-rays are generated in a “sphere N meter’s in diameter”, how is all of this heat getting out? If this is done with a steam system and heat exchangers… I see the plant costing $1000/kw for the steam system equipment alone. If this reactor costs only $200 million for a 1 GW machine, this brings it to $1,200/kw… not too expensive by today’s standards.. but not cheap.

Remember, for the $1,000/kw steam cycle, I’m including not just the turbine/generator, but also the condensate pumps, boiler feed pumps, condenser, cooling tower, circulating water pumps, feed water heaters (normally 6-7 stages), make-up water treatment (ultra-pure water to protect the turbine from being destroyed by steam impurities, ERPI guidelines require <5 micro-mho conductivity), unit transformers, motor control centers (control and supply of power to all of this equipment), piping, valves, instrumentation, DCS system, turbine controls, control room, turbine foundations, turbine building and site, including offices and shops.

So $1,000/kw assumes steam is made in a black box labeled “miracle occurs here” that costs nothing to build.

Thanks Rematog, I am glad you brought this diamond matter up.

And hardware made of diamond does not sound like it would be “off the shelf” or easily duplicated at thousands of sites in the US alone.

Diamond is off the self, and the cost of diamond is dropping fast. Industrial diamond can be made from nano-diamond.

A new nano-diamond fabrication process can drop the current price from $10 / gram to under $1/ dollar. Pure graphite is placed in a cavitation reactor where perfect pure 10 nanometer diamonds is produced in about a minute.

Compare this price to beryllium. This is comparable to beryllium at a range of $1 to $ 10 per gram based on the purity and quantity of beryllium.

The use of Beryllium carries other costs besides manufacture. The cost of beryllium fabrication(milling), O&M;, and use in general is high because of its health risk. Diamond has no such risks.

The next step in the formation of large diamond objects is called hot isostatic pressing. Nano-diamond is placed in a hot isostatic press for about 8 hours at 2200C where it recrystallizes and assumes the desired form.

The formation of an x-ray reflector requires much more processing through application of repeated layers of various carbides through vapor disposition. But diamond electrodes can be manufactured quickly

If the X-rays are generated in a “sphere N meter’s in diameter”, how is all of this heat getting out?

I said as follows:

In a fusion application, boron/hydrogen fusion at the center of the large sphere produces X-rays that are directly converted to electricity on the inner surface of the sphere by a foil based X-ray to electricity conversion layer.

I specify a power production process identical to the current FF design; no steam involved in this type of reactor.

In summation, this design is just a bigger multistage version of the current FF design for boron fusion.