Reply To: Fusion Oil

[Impaler]

@Milemaster

I’m afraid none of those links are pertinent to having a PV device act AS a capacitor. Rather they deal with storing energy from PV in capacitors or creating “hybrid” capacitor/battery devices which will be hybrid like a hybrid car aka having a battery and capacitor in one package sharing load. I know the nature of the X-Ray collector resembles a capacitor with its numerous thin foils separated by insulation but that dose not mean it would be wise to try to make it serve double duty as one, assuming it is even possible which I am doubtful of. Given that designing the X-ray collector will be one of the key goals of the prototype development phase then the collector by definition can not be an off the shelf component. Nor is their any indication that anyone out their has the tech to make the current visible-light based PV cells act as capacitors that could be applied to an X-Ray collector.

Capacitors are NOT a serious technical challenge to prototyping a FF reactor and keeping the collector and capacitor as separate devices lets each one be optimized for one singular purpose. Efficiency is hurt not helped by combining functionality in the way you describe and higher cycle rates are another reason to have separate capacitors as any cycle limit in the capacitors can be solved by just adding more capacitors and switching between them. The only advantage I can see to a combined PV-Capacitor is weight reduction which might be a goal for a second generation system designed to be miniaturized for a vehicular application.

@BrianH

If you’ll examine my post you’ll see 1¢/kwh is not an estimate of any kind of cost of refueling, it’s an estimate of what price the market would BARE for refueling a FF reactor. I arrive at it by simply matching the fuel cost of a coal power-plant, the main energy source we want to eliminate. Coal is favored mainly because of its low up-front capitol costs, but its operating costs (of which fuel is only a portion) are actually quite high (Natural Gas is much the same having even lower capitol costs but higher fuel costs). Investors and Utilities consistently prefer energy sources with low capitol costs and high operating costs over the reverse (high capitol and low operating). So the best way to get FF adopted quickly and universally is to cut capitol costs to the bone and make all profit on fueling. Licensing worldwide non-exclusive rights to build and install the reactor will ensure the market delivers the reactor at minimum price, while maintaining a monopoly on fueling gives LPP a reliable revenue stream. As for what the fueling operation will cost I’d guess just a few grand mostly in labor unless isotopic separation of boron-10 and boron-11 is required.

If it were possible LPP should actually subsidize the instillation costs of the Reactor and make it up on the fueling. That’s the X-Box strategy, Microsoft loses $100 dollars for each box sold but makes it up on the games which are quite profitable. The best way to get rapid market penetration is shift cost in this way because the fundamental nature of capitalism will always favor delayed costs over present costs. Unfortunately LPP won’t have the manufacturing/instillation capacity to do this for some time so the free-2-build, fuel-monopoly scenario I propose is the best that can be achieved in the early adoption phase.