The Focus Fusion Society › Forums › General Transition Issues › Fusion Oil
Well, I guess it’s hard to keep the various energy alternatives isolated.
I note that if FF takes off, even light, sweet crude will be a glut on the market.
Brian H wrote: Well, I guess it’s hard to keep the various energy alternatives isolated.
I note that if FF takes off, even light, sweet crude will be a glut on the market.
Let us hope that with a clean cheap alternative like cheap fusion, environmentalism and national security will win over cooperate profiteering. Take for example the USA which can supply only <30% of it oil needs within it boarders, with cheap fusion it can tell OPEC to go **** it self at the same time it can feel all good about saving the world from global warming. In the end fossil fuel though depleted but still able to provide a significant percentage of world energy needs could potentially be outlawed.
Just reading through this thread, and…
Viking Coder’s post on prior page uses capital cost of $300k / 5MW of Focus Fusion. This is not correct. This number is what Mr. Lerner, has, in other posts, stated as the cost to make a FF module. That is NOT an installed cost.
I’m know I’ve stated this elsewhere, but it will cost money to install them. We might disagree on what the cost split is, but basic rule of thumb estimates used professionally for this type of work is between 60/40 and 40/60 for materials (FF module) and installation cost. This back calculates to an installed cost of between $500k and $750k per module total installed cost.
I see so many bad estimates done due to ignoring installation costs, and the results are generally ugly. I would urge the board to use installed costs in this kind of discussion.
By the way, $1/watt is way low for a fission plant. I would feel that between $2-2.5K per kw capacity would be more in line.
Coal, which is cheaper to build than nucs’s, currently runs about $1,500/kw, based on a couple of year old project I was involved with ($1.1 billion for a 750MW unit). That price included SCR, wet scrubber and carbon injection baghouse, the back end air pollution control equipment needed to capture NOX, SO2 and Mercury/particulate, respectively.
Rematog wrote: Just reading through this thread, and…
Viking Coder’s post on prior page uses capital cost of $300k / 5MW of Focus Fusion. This is not correct. This number is what Mr. Lerner, has, in other posts, stated as the cost to make a FF module. That is NOT an installed cost.
I’m know I’ve stated this elsewhere, but it will cost money to install them. We might disagree on what the cost split is, but basic rule of thumb estimates used professionally for this type of work is between 60/40 and 40/60 for materials (FF module) and installation cost. This back calculates to an installed cost of between $500k and $750k per module total installed cost.
I see so many bad estimates done due to ignoring installation costs, and the results are generally ugly. I would urge the board to use installed costs in this kind of discussion.
By the way, $1/watt is way low for a fission plant. I would feel that between $2-2.5K per kw capacity would be more in line.
Coal, which is cheaper to build than nucs’s, currently runs about $1,500/kw, based on a couple of year old project I was involved with ($1.1 billion for a 750MW unit). That price included SCR, wet scrubber and carbon injection baghouse, the back end air pollution control equipment needed to capture NOX, SO2 and Mercury/particulate, respectively.
fission plant? lets add up the numbers, lets say 1M for building it and 2M for installation, yes those numbers are several times larger then given but lets play with worst case estimates, that 3M for 5MW or $.6 per w or $600 per kw, still below coal by a half, not including that it will cost maybe a few hundred dollars oh lets say at worse $5K to fuel it with boron and hydrogen for a year of operation, how much does it cost per year to power a coal power plant per megawatt?
eh?
The reference in the post I was referring to was to the current cost of an uranium fission plant. Not the cost of Focus Fusion. Sorry if this was confusing.
Rematog
Note that the $300K is stated as a very conservative figure for mass production as compared to $500K for hand-built one-off. The number might well be well below $200K. And since the units are standardized and prefab, the installation costs are likely to be much lower than the usual one-off figures you cite. My bet is that the $300K will likely be pretty close to the installed figure. “Plug and Play”. 😉
Anyhow, 6
Note that the $300K is stated as a very conservative figure for mass production as compared to $500K for hand-built one-off. The number might well be well below $200K. And since the units are standardized and prefab, the installation costs are likely to be much lower than the usual one-off figures you cite. My bet is that the $300K will likely be pretty close to the installed figure. “Plug and Play”. 😉
Anyhow, 6
Transmute wrote:
Sad I was sort of liking the idea of solar, wind and wave and current power, something very zen about getting energy from what freely exist around us, oh well fusion bets oil and coal hands down in that aesthetics factor.
Interesting that wind and wave are “displaced” solar energy, too. The options that aren’t are few: geothermal, perhaps. Maybe if Pelletier thermoelectric devices get cheap enough and efficient enough it will be possible to sink a shaft pretty much anywhere and get power at competitive cost. ??
Brian H wrote:
Sad I was sort of liking the idea of solar, wind and wave and current power, something very zen about getting energy from what freely exist around us, oh well fusion bets oil and coal hands down in that aesthetics factor.
Interesting that wind and wave are “displaced” solar energy, too. The options that aren’t are few: geothermal, perhaps. Maybe if Pelletier thermoelectric devices get cheap enough and efficient enough it will be possible to sink a shaft pretty much anywhere and get power at competitive cost. ??
I don’t know you would still need a cold sink, I would think Kalina cycle geothermal might do, it only needs a difference between hot and cold sinks of 50C, so even hot rocks a 2km below South Dakota could provide power.
I must agree with Brian et. al. Regardless of whether the capital cost is $200/kw (my guess-timate) or $60/kw, I know of no other power supply option that comes close to these low costs (both are dang low).
AND…we all agree operating costs will be relatively low. We just disagree on how low. But, if FF becomes technically possible, I see no reason that it shouldn’t totally dominate the electrical power and industrial process heat markets.
If FF becomes technically possible, wind, solar (except for small remote applications), wave, tide, geothermal, and of course conventional steam turbine (whether fossil fuel or fission heat makes the steam) are all dead end technologies.
Rematog wrote: I must agree with Brian et. al. Regardless of whether the capital cost is $200/kw (my guess-timate) or $60/kw, I know of no other power supply option that comes close to these low costs (both are dang low).
AND…we all agree operating costs will be relatively low. We just disagree on how low. But, if FF becomes technically possible, I see no reason that it shouldn’t totally dominate the electrical power and industrial process heat markets.
If FF becomes technically possible, wind, solar (except for small remote applications), wave, tide, geothermal, and of course conventional steam turbine (whether fossil fuel or fission heat makes the steam) are all dead end technologies.
Well I hope printable solar panels will make up some of the market at least, there just something unpleasing with one power source representing 99% of the market. Even so the need for plastics and jetfuel, etc would mean that at the end level the user would still see a variety of energy products, but at the source fusion would be providing nearly all the energy, be it as electricity or as chemicals converted from organic matter to gas, liquid and solid products.
Actually, a single dominate technology is very common.
Piston type steam engines totally replaced by steam turbines.
Internal combustion engines for vehicles (still over 99% of market. Note, Hybrids use in IC engine as primary energy source).
Internal combusion engines totally replace by gas turbines in large aircraft (either turbo-prop or turbo-fans).
The transister and it’s (current) ultimate developement, the silicon chip integrated circuit, totally dominate the computer industry. How many devices use vacuum tubes today?
Hard drives, one basic technology. Compact Disc/DVD/Blue-ray, all one basic tech.
We use what works best, and forget the rest. How many people today can chip a flint knife?
Rematog wrote: Actually, a single dominate technology is very common.
Piston type steam engines totally replaced by steam turbines.
Internal combustion engines for vehicles (still over 99% of market. Note, Hybrids use in IC engine as primary energy source).
Internal combusion engines totally replace by gas turbines in large aircraft (either turbo-prop or turbo-fans).
The transister and it’s (current) ultimate developement, the silicon chip integrated circuit, totally dominate the computer industry. How many devices use vacuum tubes today?
Hard drives, one basic technology. Compact Disc/DVD/Blue-ray, all one basic tech.
We use what works best, and forget the rest. How many people today can chip a flint knife?
Interesting point.
It is thus perhaps significant that power generation has been a pot-pourri of technologies: hydro, coal, gas, oil, nuclear, etc. That variety has a certain flexibility and robustness, but it certainly has the look of fumbling about for something that produces adequate results at reasonable cost.
Rematog wrote:
…
The transister and it’s (current) ultimate developement, the silicon chip integrated circuit, totally dominate the computer industry. How many devices use vacuum tubes today?
Maybe not so ultimate. Google the “memristor”. :cheese:
There’s really nothing new about the idea of fusion oil. I had done already arrived at the idea (and possibly many others) years ago that some non – fossil energy source such as nuclear could assist in making renewable hydrocarbons. In fact, I made a post some time ago about how many other energy sources could come riding in on the back of focus fusion : cheaper solar cell manufacture, greater agricultural production of biomass, and etc.
There are many different versions of how nuclear power can do this, from processing recycled garbage, to biomass crops grown specifically for that purpose, to seawater extraction of CO2, and etc. The possibilities are endless.
Several years ago, I came – up with the idea of how thorium nuclear reactors could provide the process heat for more economical large – scale pyrolysis of industrial hemp into renewable petroleum products. If a non – fossil fuel nuclear source is used to provide the process heat, it greatly improves the economics of the entire operation. Because you no longer have the law of diminishing returns, where you have to burn – up hydrocarbons in order to produce them.
Just substitute the thorium reactor for focus fusion and you have thermal pyrolysis of hemp, algae, switchgrass, municipal trash and garbage, etc. by way of endless fusion power. The permutations of the same basic idea are endless, and would radically change the whole economic equation to cellulosic alcohol production and just about everything else.
There is also a company called Startech Corporation. They are already using a high temperature plasma torch to recycle municipal garbage into renewable fuel. It also burns – up toxic chemicals and immobilizes toxic metals in an insoluble glassy material similar to obsidian volcanic rock. The extra glassy rock byproduct can be used as a building and construction material, and also a superior type of asphalt road pavement. Such a plasma torch method could all be powered by nuclear fusion.
And while hydrogen alone in itself is bulky and not very economic to store, it can be added to things like garbage or biomass to increase the amount of renewable diesel fuel and other hydrocarbons produced. It makes the fisher – tropsch synthetic fuel process much more efficient when a higher proportion of hydrogen is added to the synthesis gases. And electricity generated by focus fusion can supply plenty of additional hydrogen to the chemical reaction by way of electrolysis.
And although it would not help the global warming problem any, nuclear energy can also assist in producing more hydrocarbons from things like conventional oil wells, oil shale, and coal. But to avoid global warming, I would prefer the renewable methods as much as posible.