Reply To: minimal size device for focus fusion to work?

[vansig]

Tulse wrote:

FF is transformative almost beyond conceiving.

Just how much cheaper are you expecting FF to be compared to conventional power generation? More than an order of magnitude? I’ve never seen a good breakdown of the anticipated costs of an FF plant compared to the costs of, say, a conventional coal plant, so I’m unsure of claims of huge cost reductions.

I saw an estimate from Eric awhile back, that a 10 MW reactor would be about $250,000 installed. that would be 2.5 cents per watt, beating solar (presently $1/watt) by a factor of forty.

but, now that you mention it, an updated estimate of costs, including installation and maintenance should be done. please feel free to fill in your own estimates…

parts list
———-
physical plant: each small building may house 1 or more reactors. the library i’m sitting in right now could easily fit ten.
reactor core: vacuum chamber, anode, cathodes
capacitors: 100 .. 250 uF at 50 .. 75 kV
switches:
transformer: converting exit beam at >90% efficiency
onion: spherical, ~1m radius, perhaps 22% efficiency
cooling system: primary=helium and maybe secondary=steam; if steam is involved, there is the possibility to run turbines
heat exchangers: something must be done with waste heat. co-generation was discussed in these forums
radiation shield: 1 m water jacket, plus boron, plus lead
misc parts: monitoring equipment, attachments to the power grid, security
max size: 5 metre diameter each, should include enough space to walk between them

attendee: 4 persons (in shifts) for 24×7 monitoring and control
monthly maintenance: inspect/adjust parts that wear (eg: cathodes, anode)
regulatory compliance: unknown

so, ongoing expenses will depend on operational life of the various parts. each part has a mean-time before failure, and may cause service interruption during maintenance/replacement. costing should be in terms of whole life-cycle cost, (a.k.a. cradle to cradle, assuming full recycling of materials). as with other power generation facilities, there is the possibility of building spare units, to bring them online rapidly in the event of a failure, since “if a generator costs $1 M and takes a year to build, how many spares do you need?”