[JimmyT]

I think that the ability to switch capacitors out is probably important. I believe this will be one of the most frequent failure modes. (Besides switches and electrode erosion). I do wonder if Eric has any info on capacitor longevity. And how dependent is it on the number of discharges vs simply the age of the capacitors? How heavily dependent is it on capacitor operating temperature? My personal experience is that inductance units seem to suffer from overheating more than do capacitors. But that’s just with little electronic stuff. Ham radios and such.

Another thing to keep in mind is that once mass production is approached fewer larger capacitors might make more sense. Companies would be happy to make them in million lot batches. Or maybe the total capacitance can be a bit smaller. Maybe only 10 capacitors of the current size will be optimal.

Lots to sort out once the data starts coming in.
Interesting line of thought though. We need to get them to fit in those modular shipping containers, if at all possible.

[JimmyT]

Aeronaut wrote:

Indeed…however if the predictions on the ultra-low cost per unit and per kWh hold true…you can bet that there will be millions of them built and then much more overall waste heat will be produced as we consume orders of magnitude more power in our society due to the near-free cost of it 😉 That old supply-and-demand curve thing.

No one would ever need more than a megawatt.

Just as no one would ever need more than 640K bytes of memory in their computer.

-Dave

ROFL absolutely!

How’s this scenario- 20 years from now, (if that) when the X-ray converter engineering is cut-and-dry, and ever smaller, lighter packaging become THE competitive advantages for FF factories, the electric air car will become the new Model T. Imagine at least one FF in every garage or back yard…

Yes and I can see implementation of the Moller-skycar finally becoming a reality. And people will still be talking on their cell phones while driving/flying and applying their make-up. Only instead of having a fender bender as a result, they will come crashing thru your roof.

[JimmyT]

Concerning the need to capture some of the x-rays. Watch Eric’s video. Particularly the question and answer part at the end.

The title of this thread suggests a discussion of converting the grid to DC. How about converting the grid to 3oo Hz?

[JimmyT]

Yeah, there is a puzzling lack of written records from the middle ages left behind by the illiterate masses. Who knows what they believed?

Forgive me. I couldn’t resist.

[JimmyT]

Well stated. But be careful about using the “everyone thought the earth was flat” argument. That is pretty much a myth. About anyone who could read realised that the earth was a sphere in the middle ages. What was controversial was whether the earth rotated around the sun.

[JimmyT]

One universal truth about commodities is that they tend to be exchangeable for other commodities: Cheap energy begets inexpensive fresh water (whether thru desalination or redistribution); which in turn begets aerable land thru irrigation.

When you make a basic commodity like energy cheaper by two orders of magnitude interesting things happen. Suddenly commodity exchanges like energy for land or energy for available mineral ores, which were previously not feasible, become downright attractive. This is the principal reason that the tentacles of this project are so far reaching.

It also makes war for any resource less likely. People always find reasons to fight wars. But the underlying reason is quite often resources, even if race or religion is given as the pretext.

[JimmyT]

Rematog

The big number in your calcs is the maintenance ($1500), but your frequency number is way high, IMO. The maintenance cycle I’ve seen referred to is 2X/yr, 2 days downtime each. (9 hrs. cooling off, refuel, replace any degraded parts/items, restart). Your capital costs are also VERY ‘generous’, possibly double, IMO. Roughing it, that would cut the cost per household in half. I think you also overstate the margin necessary for peak for 100 homes; that’s a sufficiently large ‘sample’ that usage patterns are likely to track the overall grid fairly closely, with only a few % points wider peaks and valleys. Which would further dilute the cost/household. Your peak allowance of 50kw/household is probably triple actual max load. It takes quite a bit of hypothesizing to see 100 homes simultaneously drawing 15kw or more.

IAC, such a “cluster” would probably have some linkage to the overall grid, if only to be able to feed excess power into the system, which would be most of the time, maybe even virtually all the time.

IOW, I think you’re pushing your conservative ‘worst case’ assumptions way too far.

P.S.
There’s another category of cost reduction I haven’t taken into account, as it’s rather tricky to figure. It’s the reduction of ongoing and prospective alternative expenditure on conventional (=existing) power system construction and maintenance. That would vary hugely from situation to situation, I think.

Fifteen Kw/household does seem like a big load….now. But maybe not if this undercuts natural gas for heating. And maybe a sizable fraction of households overnight recharge their electric vehicles ….and God only knows what else. Recharging their light sabers maybe?

[JimmyT]

Rematog,

I’m reluctantly forced to agree with you about the probability of regulation. It is interesting to note, however, that all the safety issues discussed do not involve the reactor. But rather the high voltage transmission equipment. And this equipment is present at all power facilities, be they coal powered, hydroelectric, etc.

[JimmyT]

I just read through the page you link, and am guessing that this is a clue about where Aeronaut got his mysterious weight=32*mass formula. It gives the mass weight equivalence as a ratio between a slug and a pound, where a slug is = 32.2 lbs.

Of course, the mass of a ‘slug’ is irrelevant to the discussion, even though it is a standard mass, but I thought this might be where that strange number came from, leading to the astonishing revelation that 2 tons = 64,000 lbs! (1 ton = 2000 slugs?)

Brian,
Yeah, you are right. That’s why I included that link to begin with, as it was the only possible place I could think of where Aero could be getting the factor of 32. I thought perhaps the point of confusion was that the pound is a unit of force or weight. Not a unit of mass. So hoping to clarify it I included the link. I may have just muddied the waters in doing so.

[JimmyT]

Rez,
If I put it anywhere I’d probably put it under “blue revolution. Water forums”. It is about supplying water. And may have a place in the post fusion world.

[JimmyT]

With regards to weight and mass. This may help. Or maybe not: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/Mechanics/slug.html

Hmmm. Any suggestions on getting this link to work?

Aero coached me on this. Had an extra space, which I removed. Thanks Aero!

[JimmyT]

Rematog wrote: Of course, you will need a license from the NRC and State regulator’s to operate a nuclear fusion reactor. As a powerful source of X-rays, it would be dangerous in the wrong hands or improperly built and operated. And I’d guess that the ion beam would be of some concern.

Maybe Eric or someone else with the physic’s knowledge could address that.

Either way, I’m sure some licensing would be required. We have to get a license to hold any radioactive source or a commerical x-ray analyzer.

Rematog

I can tell you from personal experience that being in close proximity to an Ion beam for long periods of time does significantly lower your I.Q. Did Gilligan ever get off that island?

[JimmyT]

Henning wrote:

Pressures won’t be very extreme–several atomospheres.

I thought it would be around 7 torr (around 10mbar) like I read in the various papers.

I believe that Eric must have thought that this ongoing discussion was about the helium coolant. Not the decaborane in the reaction chamber. The thread title does suggest that this is the gist of the discussion.

[JimmyT]

The point in packaging a unit in a modular shipping unit is not to provide mobile power. It’s to make the power units easy and inexpensive to transport to the site where they are to be utilized.

[JimmyT]

Brian H wrote:

How can we be sure, with our current data, that the earth’s magnetic field will be optimal with any tilt of the electrodes? Maybe a somewhat stronger field is necessary. In which case —> Blake coil.

The required field was imposed with internal magnets once it was discovered that the terrestrial field was responsible for the rotation of the filament.

But this has never been done in reality. It’s all theoretical at this point. Eric thinks that it will work. I think it will work. How strong of a magnetic field produces the best result? Can the same result be obtained without the coil, merely by changing the orientation of the electrode? How do we know, if we don’t know what the optimal field strength is?

[Author]

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