Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[bcreighton7]

asymmetric_implosion wrote:

A high efficiency, low waste fission system is a real threat to the future of fusion. It’s hard to argue against injecting a few neutrons to start an easily sustained chain of reaction.

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It certainly would not be a threat to aneutronic units… steam and turbines and waste handling eat up any potential savings.

And by the same token any of the smaller neutronic fusion projects such as General or Helion would do as well as the enriched U starter and would be safer to boot.

In my opinion fission breeders would be a power source of last resort… after people realize what the oligarch’s half-assed response to Fukushima is actually doing to Japan [em]any[/em] fission plant is going to have a hard row to hoe no matter how much better it is technically.

Aneutronic fusion should be the first priority and neutronic fusion the second string… and each should be funded accordingly simply because the relative potential payoff of each is worth the investment.

I appreciate that there are more efficient energy conversion systems than steam and turbines but they are and will continue to be the backbone of electricity production for a while. They don’t “eat up” any savings compared to another fission power system. Yes, I am comparing to fission for one reason and one reason alone. Fission power is here and working. The problem of fusion for most folks that work in the power industry is that fusion has yet to produce more electricity than it takes in or even less restrictive, more power generated by the plasma than is required to initiate it.

Fukushima was a disaster without a doubt but it placed a reactor in conditions that it wasn’t designed to operate in or deal with in shutdown. I would argue siting a nuclear power plant is critical and whoever sited it along a coast in a high earthquake area was nuts.

Potential payoff and risk need to be assessed for all these technologies but practicality needs to be mentioned. Fission power works and has worked for over 50 years. Fusion should be the power of tomorrow but we need power now. Even if FoFu or others make a breakthrough tomorrow, it will take a decade to engineer it and start selling electrons. Countries like China and India refuse to wait that long. India is heavily investing in a thorium reactors because they see a path to electricity in less than a decade.
What does this community think of the idea to resurrect the thorium liquid salt reactor of the 60s? It has a proven working model at least, and if we built out one, we may end up with a commercially viable plant within 10 years which could be used to replace the nuclear reactors which are now coming up for retirement while potentially keeping their electric generation systems. I’m sure there are still engineering problems to face on a full scale plant, but if the hype is to be believed it has many advantages over our current nuclear reactors:
– mining the thorium would add to our rare earth metal capability which we desperately need.
– most of the “nuclear waste” can simply be recycled in the reactor as fuel
– we can even use up existing nuclear waste
– we could produce Plutonium 238 for space uses while avoiding weapons grade Pu 239.
– while not being exactly “clean” energy, its dangers ie danger of meltdown or massive accidental radioactive release – sure seem much less than current water cooled reactors
– a lift thorium liquid salt reactor would use fuel much more efficiently than our current reactors, and could potentially use hot air generators instead of steam.
am I missing something or what are its bad problems?
If we continue to need fission power, it sure seems like a highly viable alternative to me

I’m not against fusion or pursuing it but you will not be able to convince people that are interested in the wall plug when fusion hasn’t produced any net power yet. Fission and fusion are on two different levels. Fission is into making it better. Fusion is still in a “we hope, we think and it should”.

I have to agree with this assessment. Maybe FF1 will start churning out electricity with its new Tungsten cathode, but let’s be real. Unless all goes perfectly, a virtual impossibility while venturing into an unknown field, there are still lots of engineering challenges to overcome. These have already raised their ugly heads in developing the full scale FF1. I love the idea of fusion power, and Focus Fusion has me glued to my chair right now. I am convinced it is an avenue we need to explore until we have a commercial product. So my hat’s off to you guys for pursuing it, and for creating this community to get the public excited about nuclear again. When I went to school the mere mention of “nuclear” was enough to turn some people into a raving tide of verbosity, when I felt that nuclear – albeit a different technology than what we were using – probably held a key to our future. It is hard to get excited about nuclear energy with the likes of ITR and the realization that it is too complex and expensive to be commercially viable without some huge breakthroughs. I believe Focus Fusion is the most viable form of fusion reactor power right now, but it seems in all likelihood the engineering challenges of fuel consumption, reactor wear and tear, and energy conversion will keep us busy for a good while to come. But I am praying for the Focus Fusion community – that it will be the first to reach energy equilibrium – how exciting!