[zapkitty]

Tulse wrote:
I’m confused — I see .02 cents…

That was a typo on my part, should have read 0.2

Tulse wrote: .15 cents, .2 cents, and 3 cents as estimates. Is there really two orders of magnitude uncertainty? (Although even that high end is substantially cheaper than US power.)

It all depends on your starting assumptions and how much you assume mass production will bring costs down…

Brian, do you have a link or background on the 3 cents/kwh figure?

[zapkitty]

First, a side note: As we type at our keyboards, holes in the basements of three reactor buildings in Fukushima are still quietly spilling radioactive debris nonstop even as the oligarchy flat-out lies about it to the public… with impunity. So all standards, from the TEPCO definition of [em]”It’s not a radiation kill unless it burns you down where you stand!”[/em] to the Greenpeace refrain of [em]”Chernobyl is still killing people to this very day!”[/em], all prior definitions of fission accident costs and casualties are still waiting to be rewritten by Fukushima. So [em]”The record thus far…”[/em] might not be the best place to make a stand on the safety of fission.

dennisp wrote: Zapkitty: How is the situation you describe any different than it’s been for the entire history of fission reactors, and the demonstrated safety record they’ve already achieved despite using technologies with far less inherent safety than what’s available now?

It differs because of the simple fact, the undeniable fact that the <1% have been busy dismantling the regulatory structure that backs up whatever claims one may wish to make about fission safety… and they've made it very clear that they don't intend to stop any time soon… or ever. They gained their power through control of access to power and they do not intend to give that up.

dennisp wrote: And LFTR would be superior to today’s technology…

The technology does not matter, it’s the absolute worst-case damage multiplied by the terminally ingrained indifference of the people running the planet. To swipe from a similar thread on the subject: [em]”An oligarch looking for a way to add a .001% margin to a multi-billion dollar profit on a balance sheet can do more damage and inflict more misery than all the terrorists that ever were… and couldn’t care less.”[/em]

The times they are a’changing and although our rulers may be getting more used to displaying their power openly they certainly aren’t getting any smarter. It doesn’t matter what all an engineer calculates that could go wrong with a given tech… not unless the engineer also calculates the possible results from combining a given tech with a total disregard for rules, laws, regulations, common sense and the existence of other people.

dennisp wrote: It’s not as good as FF but in case we don’t achieve fusion, it’s probably our best shot at an energy-rich, carbon-free society. It’s nice to have backup plans.

As for climate… time is the killer, literally. The methane clathrates are bubbling and we only have years, not decades, to begin averting the deaths of billions.

Deaths that need not even have been risked but for the oligarchic’ insistence on gaming the system. The side-effects of that particular power-play by the <1% have been magnified by their immense wealth into truly dire consequences for the rest of humanity.

Fatal consequences if we’re not very swift, very careful and and very lucky.

[zapkitty]

Tulse wrote: zapkitty, how reasonable are your figures for the cost of FF electricity? In the other thread you posit .2 cents/kwh — do you have a source for that number?

That’s from LPP. They have a breakdown of estimated FF costs in the Google talk and Lerner-hakase has used .02 kwh several times.

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewreply/1060/
https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewreply/2369/

[zapkitty]

While I appreciate your forthrightness, asymmetric, and I will attempt to respond in kind I’m afraid your view of the future of fission has a serious flaw… you will not be allowed to choose the final usage parameters or the siting requirements of any new breeder technologies.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: I agree that siting needs to be better but accidents will only tighten regulations leading to stricter siting requirements.

The people who make those decisions have been and will be chosen by the <1%, and that varied assemblage of oligarchs will continue to select the people who will make those decisions and the politicians and officials who will implement those decisions. They will make their selections according to their needs and requirements. And the <1% consider their needs and requirements in a very different light than the rest of us…

Case in point: the NRC and Jaczko. Obviously there will be different sides to that blowup but no amount of “he said/she said” will change the fact that even post-Fukushima BWR reforms are going nowhere slowly… and will continue to go nowhere slowly… and it’s not an accident.

Not an accident. The <1%, through their political tools, feel free to reject even obviously needed reforms of regulations governing decades-old technology… so who now is going to tell them that they can't build the new plants wherever the profits will be greatest? Who now will tell them they aren't allowed to build the new tech as cheaply as humanly possible… or cheaper? Who now will tell them that they must not skimp on safety measures even when those measures entail additional costs? Not the engineers… engineers are not allowed to make those kinds of decisions without "guidance." The sort of "guidance" that got us Fukushima.

Even aneutronic fusion will not be immune to this effect, of course, but the inherent safety advantages that come with aneutronic power will mitigate even the most improbable worst-case event into something the neighbors can live with.

[zapkitty]

Dr_Barnowl wrote: I think the big win might be desalination, in terms of the developing world.

Conservatively, a 5MW unit could desalinate 350,000 gallons an hour (at a cost of ~ 14kWh per 1,000 gallons [1]) ; maybe more if you were to use the waste heat as well.

It’s as Tulse said. The purpose of these elaborate techniques is to lower the energy costs of the process… but in turn these techniques add to the cost of the process.

BTW there was a thread on exactly that topic…
https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/1017/

If you postulate using an FF unit for desalination then you have broken that vicious circle. You have plenty of cheap power so it suddenly makes sense to use the cheapest separation method available: brute force evaporation. Boil the seawater, collect the freshwater steam.

If you have an FF unit available then using any other method would not make sense.

And along the lines of the estimates I used in that other thread: if you dedicate an entire FF unit just to desalination… say 12MWt with a few dozen KWe left over to power pumps, fans etc… then you come out with 400 metric tons per day at a cost of 5 cents.

Not 5 cents per ton… 5 cents per day.

[zapkitty]

asymmetric_implosion wrote:

A high efficiency, low waste fission system is a real threat to the future of fusion. It’s hard to argue against injecting a few neutrons to start an easily sustained chain of reaction.

I appreciate that there are more efficient energy conversion systems than steam and turbines but they are and will continue to be the backbone of electricity production for a while. They don’t “eat up” any savings compared to another fission power system. Yes, I am comparing to fission for one reason and one reason alone…

Errrrrrrrrrr… but you didn’t 🙂 You were speaking of TWR or similar fission breeders vs fusion.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: Fission power is here and working.

The fission power we have [em]now[/em] is unsustainable and continually creates severe waste problems that future generations will have to deal with… or that we may have to deal with ourselves depending on quakes, floods, wind and human error.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: The problem of fusion for most folks that work in the power industry is that fusion has yet to produce more electricity than it takes in or even less restrictive, more power generated by the plasma than is required to initiate it.

Which is analogous to the case for TWR etc until the first prototype goes live.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: Fukushima was a disaster without a doubt but it placed a reactor in conditions that it wasn’t designed to operate in or deal with in shutdown.

Fukushima is a continuing disaster and the radiation is spreading with various isotopes of extremely recent vintage popping up in the damnedest places.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: I would argue siting a nuclear power plant is critical and whoever sited it along a coast in a high earthquake area was nuts.

… that would be the same sort of people who sited various U.S. plants near faults and water and who will be siting any new fission breeder plants…

asymmetric_implosion wrote: Potential payoff and risk need to be assessed for all these technologies but practicality needs to be mentioned. Fission power works and has worked for over 50 years. Fusion should be the power of tomorrow but we need power now.

And any new type of fission breeder plant is… just how far away from commercial use?

asymmetric_implosion wrote: Even if FoFu or others make a breakthrough tomorrow, it will take a decade to engineer it and start selling electrons.

Why would you think that? Your estimate somewhat differs from the LPP estimate of 5 years from FoFu-1 feasibility to generator. Why would do you think it would take twice as long when there is no radioactive fuel nor nuclear waste nor even a steam loop to deal with?

asymmetric_implosion wrote: Countries like China and India refuse to wait that long. India is heavily investing in a thorium reactors because they see a path to electricity in less than a decade.

? The soonest estimate I’ve seen from India is that they hope to have a prototype by “the end of the decade.” And I’ve not even heard that much from China…

asymmetric_implosion wrote: I’m not against fusion or pursuing it but you will not be able to convince people that are interested in the wall plug when fusion hasn’t produced any net power yet.

I don’t think so. People who are “plugging in” on any commercial scale have a very distinct self-interest in finding, and perhaps funding, the best potential power options. The challenge lies in making them aware of other options.

asymmetric_implosion wrote: Fission and fusion are on two different levels. Fission is into making it better.

Fission “as is” cannot continue and, honestly, fission right now is more into “Researching techniques for not adding to an existing potential disaster.”

asymmetric_implosion wrote: Fusion is still in a “we hope, we think and it should”.

And, aside from the deliberate tar pit that is ITER, the neutronic fusion contenders are on a time-scale competitive with any new fission breeders… and aneutronic fusion could steal a march on them all due to its very nature.

Again, given that the <1% will starve all alternative energy options but the one that they figure will give them the best leverage for control, the rational research triage is aneutronic fusion research first and neutronic fusion research second. Preferably both at once.

The breeders are now funded and might well become the <1% fallback option after fossil but rationally, as I said previously, even fusion-fission hybrid breeders would be the option of last resort.

[zapkitty]

asymmetric_implosion wrote: A high efficiency, low waste fission system is a real threat to the future of fusion. It’s hard to argue against injecting a few neutrons to start an easily sustained chain of reaction.

?

It certainly would not be a threat to aneutronic units… steam and turbines and waste handling eat up any potential savings.

And by the same token any of the smaller neutronic fusion projects such as General or Helion would do as well as the enriched U starter and would be safer to boot.

In my opinion fission breeders would be a power source of last resort… after people realize what the oligarch’s half-assed response to Fukushima is actually doing to Japan [em]any[/em] fission plant is going to have a hard row to hoe no matter how much better it is technically.

Aneutronic fusion should be the first priority and neutronic fusion the second string… and each should be funded accordingly simply because the relative potential payoff of each is worth the investment.

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote: You might be surprised. The time freed up from fuel-gathering is often rapidly turned into micro-enterprise by people (notably the women). Markets spring up, cell phones appear and start co-ordinating things, etc.

And a basic 5 MW unit can drive literally thousands of residential/micro-enterprise establishments in such areas.

… a recent theme has been such people using small solar panels to provide lights, cell phone charging etc.

There could be areas where even a single FF unit would be expensive overkill at first but cheaper solar panels produced in FF-powered factories would be an affordable option.

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote: Hilariously, the JAXA IBUKI satellite map of CO2 emission/uptake has revealed that the West is a major sink, and the undeveloped world a major source…

*sigh*

No.

The O’Sullivan screwup again? You’ve checked the actual paper that the map came from, right?

On the Benefit of GOSAT Observations to the Estimation of Regional CO2 Fluxes (PDF), by H. Takagi et al

One of the researchers of the actual paper, Tomohiro Oda, checked in with Suite101 and said, in short, “That’s not what the map means.”

http://www.suite101.com/news/japanese-study-of-carbon-dioxide-measurements—the-real-story-a395051

[zapkitty]

jamesr wrote: The other aspect to D-T fusion fission hybrid designs is that you can take a fusion reactor (whether ICF or MCF) that would not be able to achieve nett gain on its own, to a system that with the extra heat of the actinide fission (plus decay heat of fission products) makes a whole system that can generate nett power. However unlike a standard fission reactor it is sub-critical without the fusion neutrons so there is no chance of runaway chain-reaction.

So it has all the benefits of the accelerator driven sub-critical reactor ( http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf35.html ), but swapping the problems of designing a stable, efficient, high current particle accelerator with the problems of laser or magnet design.

(… pokes head back in…)

Hmmm…

Increasing stability in accelerators (uptime) is a point… we’re going to be at this for decades at a bare minimum… but with cheap power just how efficient would the accelerators need to be?

So would the following comparisons be accurate? Have I skipped something? I tend to favor FF 🙂 but this seems like it would turn out very lopsided to me…

The costs of FF units, the as-yet undesigned accelerators and handling the (very) hazardous waste on its trips through the accelerators… but it would all happen on-site and external to the power supply.

versus

The costs of neutronic fusion, steam handling, turbines and the additional problems and expenses of requiring the integration of the (very) hazardous waste as a part of the power supply… and the question of if using one of the neutronic fusion solutions would mandate prepping the waste for transport, transporting it cross-country and then handling it again for integration into the power supply?

What have I overlooked? 🙂

[zapkitty]

dennisp wrote: You missed the part where I said “make hydrocarbon fuels [em]from CO2[/em].” If the fuel you’re burning is made from CO2 that you just pulled out of the air, you’ve got a closed loop with no net emissions. The overall effect is no different than if you were using electric vehicles.

Nope, it’s very different. What you’re doing with your plan is essentially paying extra just to tread water on the CO2 levels contributed by hydrocarbon fuels without mitigating any of the other health and environmental problems they also cause.

As I said, even just sustaining the petroleum-based part of the CO2 load isn’t an option we can afford anymore.

dennisp wrote: Other advantages: no need to wait for sufficiently good batteries. No need to convince people to replace their cars with new ones that take hours to “refuel” instead of minutes…

Even current electric vehicles such as the Leaf or the Volt can be fully recharged in 30-45 minutes and you can top them up whenever you are near a charger.

The “hours of charging time” meme is rooted in attempts to allow charging at home with the existing grid and home circuits,… and [em]those[/em] will have to be upgraded regardless of what else we may do.

As for the shifts in the auto industry? They’re already happening. Paying extra in monerary, health and environmental costs just to try hang on to what’s already past won’t be doing those workers, or the rest of us, any favors.

[zapkitty]

dennisp wrote:
This is one reason I think it makes sense to use FF to power technologies that make hydrocarbon fuels from CO2. Instead of putting the oil companies out of business with electric cars, we give them a way to stay in business despite “peak oil.”

… and we should subsidize the pollution and inefficiency of hydrocarbon fuels at great expense to the public and the public health and welfare just so the <1% can maintain their grip on power?

In the hope that they might deign to allow us to have a few of the benefits of aneutronic fusion… but only on their terms?

dennisp wrote: We still use their refineries, pipelines, and gas stations. The only people out of business are the ones who do nothing but pump oil out of the ground (or mine coal).

They are already very addicted to corporate welfare and this plan won’t help them with their problem. The <1% literally pay money to encourage culture war shrieking about "the welfare state" while blithely ignoring the fact that their own corporate footstools are always eyebrow-deep in the government trough.

And there is the 10,000,000,000 ton elephant in the room: CO2

Not only will new emissions need to be cut but total CO2 content is going to have to be driven down sharply just to mitigate the damage already underway and the deaths and disruptions that will result from it. While coal is the larger part of it, petroleum fuels will have to go as well.

Even just sustaining the petroleum-based part of the CO2 load isn’t an option we can afford anymore.

[zapkitty]

wolfram wrote: the human body operates at 100 watts, in the pretty heavily industrialized countries there’s about a 1000 watts per person, an order of magnitude more. a megawatt is another 3 orders of magnitude, it’s like the average person has 10000 people’s worth of mechanical slaves

… but the human brain/body combination is actually pretty efficient at using that energy to accomplish a very wide range of tasks… but as for our gadgets at this time? Not so much. They tend to be either very efficient at a very limited set of tasks or not so efficient at a wider range of tasks. Thus more gadgets and/or more power per gadget are needed to accomplish a given set of tasks.

So while a megawatt per capita would be a giant leap forward in comparison to current available reserves it seems that at this time it would be nowhere near the equivalent of 10,000 people supporting one person. But that will change over time with advances in technology.

… BTW…. doesn’t “slave” in that usage imply sapience? Probably not a good idea to tick off the AIs…

wolfram wrote: I wonder if anyone has done that analysis, position in a hierarchy or something based on available wattage.

I’m sure Cordwainer Smith would have had no problem at all adding the concept to the list.

wolfram wrote: Anyway, non sequitur.

No sequin left unturned.

wolfram wrote: You seem pretty confident that deviating/abandoning from every bodies favorite economic models will be a walk in the park.

The timing would indicate no need for that.

The current state of play is that the <1% spend good money just to perpetuate the myth that anyone can rise to the elites with luck and pluck... while simultaneously utilizing utterly corrupt governments to maintain their position at the top.

They then spend about an equal amount perpetuating the myth that any attempt to rein them in and hold them accountable to the society that created and supports them is actually an attempt by “moochers” and “leechers” to “seize their hard-earned wealth…”

All that aneutronic fusion would do would be to enable the first myth to come closer to reality than they’ll like while removing any grounds at all tor the second myth.

Given the elite modus operandi I’m sure they will try to justify seizing control of the practically limitless power that aneutronic fusion represents… if for no other reason than just to see if they can… but they’ll be trying to do that at the [em]exact same time[/em] that the global population is realizing that the elites casually condemned billions of them to an early death just to maintain their (literal) grip om power.

They live in a love-hate relationship with the idea of mass revolt but they need not be torn down… unless their fear and lust for validation through force causes them to insist on it.

[zapkitty]

wolfram wrote: Anybody feel like talking? Anybody feel like melting down the Earth?

… say what?

Those types of graphics for power use hide a basic fact: the actual per-capita use of energy is badly skewed in favor of a relatively few groups compared to the bulk of the population. The rest of the people are simply doing their best to catch up to a still-advancing energy elite… and they will continue to do so. Energy inequality is no different in its effects than any other form of wealth inequality. It exists but it’s not something to be praised or worshipped.

Add to that the fact that the various “limits to growth” groups tend to overlook something: that population growth tends to decline as median prosperity rises.

And add one more factor: once each person has sufficient power to modify their individual environs and/or modify themselves to suit their desires no more power will be needed.

.. and the issue resolves itself

The question then becomes at what energy level can a future population expect to live comfortably with a given energy reserve.

A more reasonable future is one with a population of 14 billion people on Earth (double the current population, offworld populations wouldn’t count, of course) and each person of that future Earth having access at will to energy reserves of up to 1 megawatt of power for use 24/7/365 for a thousand years.

The measurement of energy reserves on that scale (1 MW/millennium per capita for double the current population) is one “Zap” :)… and last time the subject was brought up hereabouts the questions were along the lines of how just many megazaps of boron-11 were actually accessible on Earth…

As for heating in the relatively near-term, it’s not an issue. Adoption of fusion will actually reduce both direct heating effects and climate-change heating effects even while increasing energy availability for all.

And, as opposed to the nasty trick carbon fuel use played on us, by the time we actually start using enough energy to directly heat the planet we might have to paint the roofs white… or not, if we’re in the middle of another glaciation…

[zapkitty]

dennisp wrote: Back to the first post about making methanol…the oil companies have an efficient process already commercialized to turn methanol into gasoline. If you can make methanol, you can take one more step and keep all the vehicles and infrastructure we have right now.

… and again, why?

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