Reply To: Focus fusion and transportation

[Brian H]

Rematog wrote: Aeronaut,

You may be right that I’m on the high side on duration, but again, I could be on the low side of parts costs…..? I cetainly don’t have hard data. But, we’re nit picking the numbers, and the point was the order of magnitude. For exampe, if maintenance is only 60% of what I guesstimated, then cost per household would go from $200/month to $150/month. A nice savings, but not revolutionary.

And, I can see FF as revolutionary… but that it does not REQUIRE distributed installation to acheive this revolution. Which is good, as I think the regulators and/or public would be NIMBY to any nuclear reactor….and fusion is a nuclear reaction.

On another note, I don’t see utilites as providing core rebuilds. If this was done in a shop (nice thought there Aeronaut!), I’d guess it to be more likely factory offered or specialy technical companies. Utilites are regulated public business’s, with very high barriers to doing work in the un-regulated arena.

Rematog

Eric’s estimate of cost FOB factory door under full mass-production was MAX $250,000, and he gave examples of large cost ratios between hand/small volume and large volume items (e.g., the beryllium window being 14x cheaper per in² in even low-volume standard size vs. custom hand-made). There is also something that feels wrong about your allocating all site prep and connection costs to the new FF installations; there is a re-use/replacement issue here.
Anyhow, transmission lines are in place and comparatively inexpensive compared to the savings from siting on cheap/easily serviced, or otherwise economically attractive land. The options are considerably greater for FF clusters than coal or nuke plants, e.g.