[Rematog]

Just off the cuff, but as I recall, Germany used methanol injection to boost horsepower of fighter engines in World War II. They did this as the synthetic fuels they were using were very low octane (roughly 80). A major drawback was that the methanol was very hard on the engine and would destroy it in only a couple of hours of operation. This was acceptable in a combat situation, but… as a long term fuel, would not methanol cause major problems with engine reliability and life… I know I now expect a car I buy to last 125,000 to 150,000 miles.

[Rematog]

And hardware made of diamond does not sound like it would be “off the shelf” or easily duplicated at thousands of sites in the US alone. (remember, you would need 954 sites of 1 GW capacity to equal the current installed fossil and fission fuel capacity in the US (98 GW of the remaining 134 GW of capacity is hydropower, solar is 1/2 a GW, wind is now up to almost 17 GW.)

And how is this GW of electric going to be made? If the X-rays are generated in a “sphere N meter’s in diameter”, how is all of this heat getting out? If this is done with a steam system and heat exchangers… I see the plant costing $1000/kw for the steam system equipment alone. If this reactor costs only $200 million for a 1 GW machine, this brings it to $1,200/kw… not too expensive by today’s standards.. but not cheap.

Remember, for the $1,000/kw steam cycle, I’m including not just the turbine/generator, but also the condensate pumps, boiler feed pumps, condenser, cooling tower, circulating water pumps, feed water heaters (normally 6-7 stages), make-up water treatment (ultra-pure water to protect the turbine from being destroyed by steam impurities, ERPI guidelines require <5 micro-mho conductivity), unit transformers, motor control centers (control and supply of power to all of this equipment), piping, valves, instrumentation, DCS system, turbine controls, control room, turbine foundations, turbine building and site, including offices and shops.

So $1,000/kw assumes steam is made in a black box labeled “miracle occurs here” that costs nothing to build.

[Rematog]

I believe Aeronaut was talking about wind turbines as well. The politicians pushing them are always using words like “green jobs”. The maintenance and repair of these big wind turbines will be a multi-billion dollar per year industry. Heck, you need a multi million dollar crane just to work on one.

Unless they are subsidized to a ridiculous level, the owners will have to keep them running. I like the fact Congress is at least considering basing the subsidy on the power actually generated.

In the first great wind boom in the 80’s, California offered so great a subsidy that windmills generated tax benefits of over 100% of there installed cost. I clearly remember driving over the Altamont pass and seeing almost every windmill shut down. It cost more to fix them then the power was worth, so the owners just let them sit. They made their money installing them, not running them.

Notice, T. Boone isn’t interested in serving the power needs of customers, only in generating subsidized wind power. When the wind doen’t blow, “..or someone else…” will have to generate the power. As he didn’t mention any plans for the stand-by generation, he’s not building it. Think about it, that would be natural gas based generation, no subsidy, and subject to the risk of gas price increases. T. Boone is no fool, he won’t take on the risks without rewards… so he’ll leave reliability to TXU or others to build, and charge to rate payers.

[Rematog]

But, if you can increase the power output, the cost of the rectifier MAY be justified, requires a cost-benefit analysis.

[Rematog]

As to the gas industry loving windpower, certainly they do.

In general, for every MW of wind power installed, a MW of back-up power needs to be there, for when the wind does not blow. This back-up generation is, in the US at least, generally natural gas fired diesel or gas turbines.

[Rematog]

hmmm… the EPA just determined that CO2 is a pollutant that they can regulate…. and they just determined that even thought flyash passes the leach tests, it’s now going to be ruled “hazardous waste”, because the EPA want’s to regulate it.

Be glad OSHA and EPA regs don’t apply to peoples homes…..

[Rematog]

“A purpose built data acquisition and control system would need to be developed to get it to work, however. “

This is referred to as a DCS (Distributed Control System). It would need to be purchased, designed and installed, not “developed”. You can Wiki “Distributed Control System” for background.

DCS hardware is off-the-shelf and available from a number of suppliers, such as Honeywell, Foxboro, Allen Bradly, ABB, Westinghouse, General Electric…

Yes, the system has to be designed, logic written, hardware installed, wiring/fiber pulled and tuning done. The design and logic for each application would be custom, but this is commerically available hardware and services, no problem (if you can pay for it) rough guess for a 100-200 or so FF module site, $5M to $10M installed. Not including the building to put it in.

In addition to control, these systems provide information gathering and storage, alarming (warning that a parameter is outside of set limits) and other services. The same fiberoptic system used for DCS communications can carry information networks and security camera feeds.

[Rematog]

Diamond containment walls…..

fluoride thorium salt ….

Heavy water,

CO2 gas turbines are the closest thing you’ve mention to “off the shelf”

“This construction cost should be about $1000/kw. ” Where do you get this figure for a very high tech, cutting edge plant?

Axil, you most likely have a PhD. but…. how much time have you spent in a hard hat and steel toed boots?

You talk about doing things on an industrial scale and cost, that are hard to do and expensive in a lab….

Would this thing run 18 months between planned 4 week outages… and have a 90% capacity factor….?

Somehow, I don’t see something like this bringing cheap power to the 3rd world.

[Rematog]

But, before you think I’m negative about things…. I believe that a world with 3 million FF modules in 20 years is to be strongly wished for… yea, it will add some risks but…

The reduction of poverty will reduce more risks than the deployment of FF would cause.

and

It is already a riskly place.

and

Despite how terrible the detonation of a small fission device in a major city would be…. it’s a lot less terrible than the all out nuclear exchange between the USA and USSR would have been… and I grew up halfway expecting that to happen, so the world is already a lot better then it was when I was my children’s age.

[Rematog]

Note, by “more powerful ion and/or x-ray source” I meant quantity, not energy state of individual ions/x-ray photons.

Second…. think about trying to license and inspect, world wide, every FF module. Refer to my previous posts about number of modules needed, in the US alone, just to generate electrical power for current usage…. over 200,000 modules.

“Based on total US electrical generation capacity of 1,032,000 MW (Jan, 2009 per Energy Information Administration figures), you would need 206,400 FF power modules of 5 MW capacity to equal this. “

So world wide, what, 1 million modules…and with load growing to double the current load in US and and triple world wide in 20 years (less developed countrys will have more load growth to catch up with western standards of living), that would mean something on the order of 3 million modules in 20 years…

Sure, the world regulatory bodies won’t lose track of a dozen modules out of a world wide population of 3,000,000. That’s at least 0.0004%… and we all know international governement agencies are 99.9996% accurate, and can’t be bribed or fooled….

The world will continue to be dangerous and bad things will happen….just hope my kids and grandkids aren’t in the city that happens to be unlucky…

[Rematog]

I am a lay person in regard to nuclear physics. With that said, I ask the following question:

Is the 5,000 watt FF a more powerful ion and/or x-ray source then the others mentioned as ways to breed plutonium?

If so, then yes, it would be a proliferation threat. But, I don’t think it would be one that could be controlled. And stealing a distributed generation module is not the real risk.

If it works as well and cheaply as this board has been assuming, then FF modules will be copied (some licensed, some not…China has a record of not respecting intellectual property) around the world very soon. We will encourage it! The world will want cheap power to reduce poverty and reduce CO2 emissions… so FF will be everywhere.

A large sub-national group, or just a regular small nation state with an axe to grind, could buy 12 modules (installed cost, roughly $12 million, a single well heeled group could raise this much) and running 3 power modules to supply power to one “breeder” could have 3 breeders running day and night…. a year or two later, enough plutonium for a dirty bomb, at the very least… maybe a couple of years more for a small fission weapon….

In a FF future, non-proliferation would, IMHO, have to concentrate on uranium supply, FF modules will be ubiquitous.

[Rematog]

We, and I am a career professional in the power industry, use the commerially available technology that can produce power at low cost and low finanical risk.

Thoses reasons are why convention nuclear fission plant’s haven’t been built in the last 25 years, cost and risk.

If FF can produce power directly without a steam cycle T/G, that is better as it costs less. And small scale risks can be taken (but that does not mean we a venture capitialists).

If you think about it, retail utilities are used to distributed operations. They have lines, transformer, substations, all throughout their service territories.

But, they are hard eyed, bottom line, risk adverse, business. Someone has to produce a working piece of hardware they can buy. They will likely buy demonstraton unit’s for (to them) a small cost, to see if it works. If it does, they will buy more.

[Rematog]

I believe most transmission conductors are aluminum, costs less, better strength to weight ratio.

I’ve advanced the idea that FF deployment would follow the pattern of:

Repower existing plants sites, reusing transmission, cooling towers and buildings.

Add new FF plants near load centers, transmissions hubs, etc, closes to loads, but still outside urban areas.

In urban areas, in controlled plant sites

Distributed use, after 20-30 years, maybe.

Also Heavy industrial use, following same rough outline.

[Rematog]

Yes, but……Economies of scale apply to maintenance and operations as well as capital cost.

One large coal fired plant generates between 500 to 750 MW (they have been built up to 1000 MW), so to replace a single typical 600 MW unit with 5 MW FF modules would require 120 modules. So, even though each one is low maintenance, you have 120 to work on. You woud need to go to six or seven a day to visit each once per work month for about an hour of actual work.

There are 21-22 work days (21-2/3 avg), without training, holidays or vacation in each work month. Remember, required training takes quite a bit of time, OSHA required training takes between 5 to 10 work days per year, add 10 holidays and 15 days vacation (3 weeks/yr, avg). Added together this is 30-35 work days per year, or 2.5 to 3 days per month, avg., you have say 19 work days/ month available, if no sick time is used. So estimate 18 days working, to visit 120 modules, 6-2/3 modules per day. If they are on a large central site, your crew “works” 8 hr/day, less morning tailboard, morning and afternoon break, and pick-up at end of day, you get 6-7 hours acutal work, at best. So, at best, you get an hour each month per module per person on the crew, which includes travel time between modules.

If they are dispersed, you need more travel time, a crew might need 15-20 minutes to each, so a crew can only get to 4-5 FF modules per day for 1 hr of “wrench time”. You’d need 1.5 to 1-2/3 crews to perform 1 hr of routine monthly maintenance on the 120 FF modules that replace a single 600 MW unit.

This does not include the operators to monitor 120 modules, 24 hrs/day, 356 days per year. (the convential plants operators cover this as well).

[Rematog]

Lot’s of jobs, yes

Based on total US electrical generation capacity of 1,032,000 MW (Jan, 2009 per Energy Information Administration figures), you would need 206,400 FF power modules of 5 MW capacity to equal this. For your 3 man crew to spend 1 day per month at each FF module, they could deal with no more then 20 modules, so you would need 10,320 crews, each with an engineer, this does not include higher level engineers (managers, etc).

To put this into perspective, the plant I work at has a rated capacity of 1725 MW and we have 7 line engineers. For the FF modules of the same capacity you would need 17.25 engineers at the rate your suggesting. (1 engineer per 20 modules x 5 MW = 1 per 100 MW)

You’d also need to train/re-train 20,640 maintenance personnel.

But that’s for today’s capacity. I’d guestimate you’d need to at least double that to allow for load growth in twenty years (that is only a roughly 3.5% annual growth rate). Ok, maybe triple that (5.6% growth). Remember, cheap power, electric cars, heating and process heat switching to electrical power from oil and gas…..

By the way, I’d guess the maintenance crew could be twice as productive if you centralized the FF modules. As the cost of power with FF is going to be more dependant on the Operating and Maintenance cost and less on the capital (and have almost no fuel cost), this alone would drive some level of centralization, other factors aside.

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