Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[asymmetric_implosion]

The message is that every energy producing system to date has problems. They have safety that needs to be addressed and we are learning from our mistakes. The mistake at Three Mile Island was a return signal. That was corrected. Chernobyl was a flaw from its design and should never have been built. The USSR had different safety standards than the west. Fukushima started because of a once in two lifetimes event. Errors made after the fact made the situation worse. Why didn’t they design the plant for a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami? It has to do with risk analysis and cost. All engineered systems have to address these issues as the final product or during production. For example, solar is very clean once the panels are built but building the panels requires toxic chemicals.

I’m not saying that nuclear waste isn’t a problem. In fact it is the biggest problem of fission power. I believe it is a problem within our ability to solve using reprocessing and either fast reactors or particle accelerator driven systems to burn up the waste. There are plenty of systems that can burn the waste and produce energy. If you are asking for a perfect system with no impact it doesn’t exist. Even p-11B will have some by-products that will be undesirable. The one that come to mind of great concern is diborane and other boron containing materials; bad stuff from the chemical side.

The PF can continue to fire after the fuel is expended which is useless but relatively safe. The key questions about a pulse power system are less safety and more about reliability. One might argue that a unreliable power source can cause as many deaths as a power source that produces waste. Imagine losing traffic lights at rush hour because the pulse power failed on a PF. Good news, it produces little waste; bad news, it only works some of the time. I think the pulse power can be overcome but again, like gain from a p-11B fusion reaction, it needs to be demonstrated. I support funding p-11B systems and other fusions systems. If fusion is to be practical, an aneutronic solution is required. The DT reaction produces almost as much waste as a fission plant when you consider the replacement rate of wall materials and other structures.

I know tokamak bashing is popular on this site and I agree that the tokamak is far from ideal, but one should look at the history and compare to the plasma focus. The tokamak is a stable pinch device designed to eliminate the end loss problem of linear pinches (like the plasma focus). Stuff squirts out the ends and the tokamak was supposed to solve it. It sort of solved the problem but introduced new problems. The PF took the other path which is fast pinch devices. Fast pinches have a number of problems which I have mentioned in this thread. They can be solved but the biggest problem remains the net energy problem. I feel safe in saying that those of us that support fission don’t do it because we think it is the best option that could be done, but rather it is the best option we have right now.

Of course, dennisp said the same thing as I’m typing. A thousand curses upon your fast fingers. 🙂