Initial market: compete with Hyperion

[dennisp]

Hyperion is building small self-contained fission plants to service remote areas. $50 million for a 25 megawatt reactor. Still requires 3-5 year regulatory approval for each one. It’s a $135 billion market.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-17/miniature-nuclear-plants-seek-approval-to-work-in-u-s-update1-.html

A similar-size reactor at one percent of the price with no regulatory issues ought to compete in this market quite well…and there’s no legacy grid to get in the way.

[Breakable]

FF has not completed proof of concept, prototype or design phase so I would say there is a lot of uncertainty about the final pricing. It looks promising, but its far from done. Validation is an even bigger story.
I worked on several mediums size projects, and can say for certain that any journey looks easy before getting up.

[dennisp]

Obviously my comment is based on the idea that focus fusion works as described. Just like pretty much all other comments in the economics forum.

[Breakable]

Sorry, I did not want to discourage any speculation.

[Aeronaut]

Dennis, assuming FF does work as promised and pretty much on schedule, it will still require NRC type certification since the reaction is at the nucleus level AND because it makes X-rays. Couple that with the ability to derail some gigantic gravy trains, and the engineering challenges pale in comparison to the political challenges. In my opinion, anyway.

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