Reply To: Mind, Spirit, Science connection?

[mjv1121]

zapkitty has, perhaps unwittingly, made an very good point – The easiest way to improving cooling would be to decrease output.

Take a 1MW device – that is 1000 FoFu’s per GW. Eric was hoping that these things could be mass produced for $300,000. So let’s guesstimate an average install cost of $500,000 per MW – that’s $500,000,000 per GW.
Coal and Natural Gas are struggling to hit $2,000,000,000 per GW installed. Add to that the cost advantage to grid systems – placing generator’s near the load – FoFu’s could put a serious dent in the pylon industry – would be especially in emerging markets.

Of course there’s still merit in having 5MW generators or 6, 7 or even 10MW if it can be done – I’m just saying that a 2 or 3MW device is far from being a failure. A 2MW generator (including a reduction on transmission costs) would represent a saving of 8 to 10 times less than all other options currently available – a 5MW generator, 20+ times cheaper than any other option currently available.

redsnapper

The proportion of energy released from each beam is dependent of several variables – fuel gas pressure, magnetic field strength, quantum mechanical effects – shit like that. Also the size of the electrodes plays a big role. The basic idea at this stage is to get the plasmoid as dense as possible to create conditions for pB11 fusion. Until they get past the experimental stage its entirely clear exactly what size the electrodes will be and consequently the “combustion” chamber and how much and in what proportions the energy will be released and recovered. Seeing as no one has put forward any objection to my numbers they’re probably as good as any right now.