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Having a heat source is useful for all sorts of industrial processes. And heck, for that matter, even tokamaks and ICF machines ultimately produce heat (or would when/if they work). There are very few direct generation technologies.

But yeah, aneutronic and direct generation is the way to go. If only there were a way to make that happen…

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I don’t disagree with your point, but my response was that this is nothing new for nuclear, and that this is a new technology with a much smaller footprint and interesting applications. It doesn’t solve all the problems of fission reactors, but it does make them much more convenient, more flexible, and allegedly much safer.

All that said, I’d much prefer to see a FF installation in my neighbourhood than one of Hyperion’s modules…

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To be fair, as far as I know currently nuclear plants don’t figure in permanent disposal costs in their bills to consumers. And my guess is that one major market for these units is outside the US, where issues of insurance may be less of a concern. (I’m also not clear that a sealed unit would have more insurability problems than a conventional plant.)

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Exactly, Brian — FF may not be simple to achieve at first, but LPP plans on demonstrating over unity with a program costing what amounts to pocket change for most governments (and even for many corporations), using a very straightforward device. If they can do it with this rig, it is hard to imagine that many others won’t be able to succeed as well.

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That article seems excessively bleak. There are plenty of alternative technologies, such as thorium reactors, that would avoid the issue of reduced uranium availability. Also, there is no consideration of aneutronic fusion, or even anything other than ITER. I’ll grant that these various alternative technologies will not be ready short-term, but I think it is highly likely that one or more of these options will pan out in the next decade or so.

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Axil wrote: the only fusion reactor that can produce fusion in heavy water is FF.

What is your source for this? I’m not clear that FF will work with heavy water.

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I’ve been following EESTOR for a while, but at this point I’m somewhat skeptical, as they seem to make a lot of claims without any real product. Perhaps I’m just being cynical, however (I’ve also followed Moller because I want my goddamned flying car already, but that’s also seen years and years without anything concrete).

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Rezwan, what is the broader purpose of this video, and the video series in general? Is it to provide the curious with some information? Is it to clear up misconceptions about FF that might be prevalent? Is it to promote FF to potential investors and government funders? I find with these kind of projects it is extremely helpful to know what audience one is aiming for, and the impact one wants to have, prior to outlining the approach.

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Phil’s Dad wrote: In the end though it comes down to bang for buck. How much net electricity per dollar (including capital payback, fuel sourcing and processing, decommissioning costs, waste disposal, security costs, tea, coffee and so on over the expected lifetime of the machine). Let’s call it $Q.

And the thing I find hugely exciting about FF is that it’s perhaps the only fusion technique that even offers a ballpark estimate of this — with tokamaks and ICF, who the hell knows how expensive the actual physical plant will be, or how much it will cost to decommission the radioactive gear? Big Fusion is so far away from engineering an actual plant that we don’t have a clue whether it will be economical, even if it reaches theoretical breakeven. By contrast, it’s very clear that if FF actually produces fusion, it will be extremely cheap to engineer it to start pumping out electricity.

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Axil, no offense, but I think you’re being a bit paranoid. First off, it is certainly not the case that all “greens” are against nukes (I would count myself among that number), and it is completely unjustified to claim that greens in general would be against a fusion technology that leaves no long-term radioactive waste and has no chance of catastrophic meltdown. In many ways, FF is an ideal green technology — it provides electricity with no CO2 or waste of any kind (helium is hardly a waste product); it is suitable not only for grid power but for large transport as well (ships and trains could be instantly zero-emission vehicles); it can be built very small and so does not require the investment of a huge utility (it is more “community-sized”); and it is suitable for remote locations, including Third World locales that don’t have a huge electrical grid and which might be tempted to use hugely polluting sources for power otherwise, such as coal.

As for the issue of “control” on the part of the government, again, that seems excessively paranoid to me. As has been states several times, there is nothing that a FF reactor will produce that can’t already be generated through more conventional means — there are already commercial sources for ions, x-rays, and neutrons. Given that, FF is no more a target for “control” than hospital cyclotrons or industrial ion beam milling machines, and not any more threatening than wind power or solar thermal generation.

And the notion that FF might go “black” seems silly to me, if for no other reason than the general approach is fairly straightforward and already very public, and there is nothing preventing other organizations or governments from pursuing the work if LPP’s work gets classified.

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Brian H wrote: once the initial blip is fed into the electrodes by the capacitors, there is no external power required from the grid.

Right, but once a commercial tokamak is running, it will not require grid power either (just like a conventional generating plant doesn’t). That doesn’t tell you how efficient the device is, how much extra energy is produced above what is needed to sustain the reaction. I may be misunderstanding how one calculates Q, however.

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Brian H wrote: It’s questionable whether the NRC’s mandate even stretches to cover it.

It appears that the NRC plans to regulate fusion reactors, at least “whenever such devices are of significance to the common defense and security, or could affect the health and safety of the public”. I’m not sure if FF would be covered by the first criterion, and public health and safety is extremely little impacted by FF. While I don’t doubt that the NRC would want to extend its mandate as far as it can, I think a strong case can be made that, by their own criteria, FF shouldn’t fall under their jurisdiction.

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Brian H wrote: As I understand it, the ability of the pulsed FF system to recharge its own capacitors and refire indefinitely means it has infinite Q, the ideal. Perhaps I’m wrong about that, but that’s how I understand it so far.

But that would be true of any over-unity fusion device — surely for FF one would determine Q on the basis of the energy balance for an individual shot.

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Axil wrote: If a reactor and/or its fuel is not self protected and its can be subject to proliferation, it must be guarded against any credible threat.

Unless this IAEA security requirement (aka security plan) is met, the NRC will not license the reactor.

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In order for the FF reactor to be licensed by the NRC, if the FF reactor is not buried underground, a security force will be required to repel any credible threat 24/7/365. Most probably, the size of that force will be the same as the guard force that protects the current fleet of light water reactors.

Proliferation of what? Decaborane? The reason the NRC and IAEA worry about fission reactors is that their fuel can be used for bombs, and is highly radioactive. FF devices have extremely low levels of radioactivity, and their fuel isn’t useful for making weapons. I doubt the IAEA would even see a FF device as falling within its mandate (at least no more so than a hospital cyclotron), and similarly the NRC is going to care much less about a FF device than a nuclear battery filled with uranium.

There are plenty of devices in the world that produce X-rays and ion beams and neutrons. Many of those are used for industrial and medical purposes. FF isn’t really doing anything new, and is not a proliferation threat.

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Brian H wrote: The real “net energy” is usable energy, I think, which is either captured heat or electric current (the ideal end result, which FF gets to far more directly than D-D fusion or D-T fusion can). Energy in the form of neutron emissions etc. is pretty much “lost”.

Is there a standard definition of “over unity” for fusion projects? The impression I have always gotten is that the way “breakeven” is typically used is very theoretical, and involves all released energy, whether it would be practical or not to harvest it (and that such things like the Carnot limit and other parasitic energy losses are not considered). It seems to me that the real beauty of the FF approach is that since most of the energy gets captured directly as electricity, it will be very easy to demonstrate practical breakeven, that is, breakeven with all those losses factored in. (By contrast, even if ITER or NIF produce theoretical breakeven, that tells us very little about whether it can be practically turned into more usable power than it consumes, since the actual generation of electricity requires so much additional engineering.)

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