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Brian H wrote:

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that IF DPF works as desired, if not energy multiplication from fission of waste and of course heat engines will be needed to achieve energy positive function. I would argee deep sea storage is a great option in theory but politically it a nightmare all the environmental groups would have a orgasm of outrage, you could more easily convince them with destroying nuclear waste then storing it where it could leak out (no matter how unlikely that is, they will cry murder over it)

We are kind of working on the FF/DPF assumption, here. And subduction zones are those areas where the ocean floor is being drawn down beneath the continental plates, and merging with the mantle. Lots and lots of half-lives later, some of it may resurface in volcanic lava, but it is LITERALLY millions of years.

Pandering to public ignorance must come to an end somewhere.

I read the SciAm article on deep sea storage of nuclear waste so I understand what your saying in enough detail to agree. But if your running on the assumption that DPF/FF/F2 works I’m being a little more pragmatic, it might end up being nothing more then a neutron generator. Now if it does work as described there is still going to be needs for medical and industrial radionuclides, fusion driven fission and neutron capture of heavy actinides could manufacture them more cheaply then exiting reactors, mind you there is only a few such reactors in the work of supplying radionuclides, but when they eventual shut down something going to need to replace them, now I never said fusion driven subcritical reactors would become the norm, but they would exist if only a handful of them even in a fully successful F2 economy,and if F2 is not that successful fusion driven subcritical reactors would likely be more economical.

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Brian H wrote:

You people should look up accelerator driven nuclear reactors, this is what a DPF could do, if DPF do not manage to become has energy positive as theory suggest then as a neutron generator for a sub-critical reactor they could make nuclear fission cheaper, safer and cleaner, sure it won’t be a great as a true fusion economy but it may be a good backup plan if DPF fails to meet it mark, even if DPF reaches practical net positive energy with aneutriatic fusion, neutratic fusion with DPF would still be greatly usefull in a accelerator driven sub-critical reactor as a means of destroying nuclear waste.

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/141/

You still have the fission/heat engine to build out, and compared to building more FF reactors it’s throwing away money. The fission waste is only a problem because of politics and ignorance.

Drop it on a subduction seam under the ocean and let geology recycle it for a few million years.

that IF DPF works as desired, if not energy multiplication from fission of waste and of course heat engines will be needed to achieve energy positive function. I would argee deep sea storage is a great option in theory but politically it a nightmare all the environmental groups would have a orgasm of outrage, you could more easily convince them with destroying nuclear waste then storing it where it could leak out (no matter how unlikely that is, they will cry murder over it)

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You people should look up accelerator driven nuclear reactors, this is what a DPF could do, if DPF do not manage to become has energy positive as theory suggest then as a neutron generator for a sub-critical reactor they could make nuclear fission cheaper, safer and cleaner, sure it won’t be a great as a true fusion economy but it may be a good backup plan if DPF fails to meet it mark, even if DPF reaches practical net positive energy with aneutriatic fusion, neutratic fusion with DPF would still be greatly usefull in a accelerator driven sub-critical reactor as a means of destroying nuclear waste.

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/141/

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If the fusion “hump” is the problem just use deuterium or deuterium and tritium as the fuels, these require nearly 1/10 as much heat as p+B11 fusion, the only problem (which can be their advantage for nuclear waste destroying) is that d+d and d+t fusion produces high energy neutrons.

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D+D or D+T fusion could be used to “burn” nuclear waste, but in general cheap fusion would end the nuclear industry, including theoretical thorium nuclear industry, the only nuclear industry that could be left would be fusion power nuclear waste destroyers.

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1. In tomorrows grossly expensive energy economy your could make a profit making energy out of just about anything
2. The goal is not to replace all oil just to make a profit, synthetic oil made from solar or wind power desalination plants with attach hydrogenate gasification plants could be profitable in todays $100+ per barrel prices.
3. If it profitable it will expanded, someday it might actually be so big as to represent most of our energy consumption.
4. I would put my bets on EV and PHEV over the inefficiency of making synthetic fuels to power grossly inefficient conventional engines, the future for sythetic oil is what batteries and hydrogen cannot replace: jet fuel, plastics, composites, pharmaceuticals, ect.
5. If cheap aneutronic fusion becomes a reality kiss all other energy sources good bye, it will become the power source for everything, electricity, sythetic fuel manufacturing, waste recycling, desalination, everything, and will change the world even at a rate cheap printable solar power could never even dream of.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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?

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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.

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And this has what to do with fusion oil?

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Brian H wrote:

Yes but the amount of helium produced is minor, though pumping it into a storage tank would not be hard and replacing said tank every few months any trained ape could do.

IIRC, Eric estimated that at full stretch FF would supply about 1/8 of the world’s current helium consumption.

Exactly, we would need 8 times the electricity production to just match todays helium production… Oh wait that would be a good thing! 😀

Rematog,

Don’t debate Scientologiest, you can’t debate religious beliefs, especially cults, the only things that will work is de-brainwashing and (in Scientology lingo) “R2-45”.

I understand your argument but why would they require strict regulation at first? After testing and a few pilot plants the full safety of the device can be gaged, if it turns out to be as safe as these guys claim then why would strict regulation be needed?

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Yes but the amount of helium produced is minor, though pumping it into a storage tank would not be hard and replacing said tank every few months any trained ape could do.

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Rematog wrote: And we have disagreed before as well.

Scary as X-ray machine, to you. To the general public, in my opinion, it will be seen as more like a fission plant, at first.

As dangerous as a transformer. Absolutely disagree. Transformers are not powerful sources of X-ray and less powerful, but still considerable sources of neutrons. They no longer have PCB’s in their oil (and it wasn’t considered a hazard when it was used).

Point to you on value of heat for HVAC and process use. This will drive distributed use to happen somewhat sooner.

Regarding ecomomy of scale, your point about the core size of a focus fusion module neglects all of the supporting infrastructure. Cooling, fuel and waste handling, controls, maintenance etc. All of these are subject to economy of scale.

I agree that the best fit plant size will be smaller then the current 1-3 GW per site. And distributed use will start sooner and grow more and more with time.

But not to any large percentage of installed capacity during the first 5-10 years. Note: I’m assuming distributed to mean less then 10 power blocks and especially, being place in an urban or commercial setting. Large industrial plants will have them early on.

We will see what public opinion will be, as long as the “N” word is not used it will be as acceptable as MRI, if the “N” word is used it could go down like NMRI.

The fusion reactors x-ray and neutron emission are protected against by solid shielding, it would take someone dismantling the thing at which point it would turn off from the drop in coolent and radiation emission would stop anyways.

Coolent is simply distilled water, and a water to water heat transfer system is not very large as for the hot water produced that could either go to really big radiator (or a heat sink of somekind) or to a building. we are talking about 5 megawatts of heat (assuming the claim 50% efficiency) that about as much heat as a diesel electric locomotive gives off. The fuel use is tiny! A hand held tank of the stuff could power a reactor for month or even years! There is no waste to handle except helium gas which could be jettisoned into the air. The controls are automated and the caps used to charge the reactor are already being arrayed so making larger arrays won’t save anything, maintenance is once every couple of months, not worth a full time staff

Now that I think about it though many dense plasma cores could be mounted together and shoot down the same decelerator, the reactor could be scaled in this manner and use less materials then a single core reactor. But a muliple core reactor is probably going to take some research after single core reactors are proven.

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