[zapkitty]

Rezwan wrote: And you mention this because…?

“When they came for the FRC supporters I did nothing, because I was not an FRC supporter…”

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote:

It gets better… at 9 w(e) and 3 w(t) the efficiency equals 300%!

🙂

Or, in reality, 75% (9/12 x 100%). :coolgrin:

… but what if the quantities measured were in numbers of bananas and aardvarks instead of two different varieties of watts? Would your denominator measure bananvarks or would your denominator measure aardnanas?

[zapkitty]

It gets better… at 9 w(e) and 3 w(t) the efficiency equals 300%!

🙂

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote:
Waste is not represented in your formula. w(t) is total energy, ¼ + 3/4 = 1.

Ah. I understand what you want to do now and it can be applicable to a problem with more given parameters… but in this case you’ve made an erroneous assumption regarding the basic data.

Viewed from outside, as a black box, the plant actually has only two factors that would concern us: its thermal output and its electrical output. w(t) and w(e)… and that’s all. What happens inside the plant is not a concern from an external point of view.

Of course the plant may be generating electricity at less than capacity and may be running cooler than it needs to… but for our example it’s close enough and in real life plant owners don’t tend to run plants at half power or build in much more cooling than they need.

And that would be why the comparison of the Dai-ichi units nominal ratings for w(t) and w(e) happens to hew fairly closely to the expected efficiency of those types of reactors.

Does it represent an actual reading of the efficiency of the plant? Within limits, a varying set of parameters, the answer is that it does if it is stipulated that the purpose of the plant is to provide power, not heat.

If one claims that one is using some of the heat produced by the plant for useful work in addition to the electrical output then certainly one can legitimately claim higher efficiencies than straight w(e)/w(t)… dividing w(t) into useful and rejected heat might get you eff = w(e)+w(tu)/w(tr) or something like that… but in our example here we are assuming that the heat is unwanted and is thus rejected.

So, from an external point of view you must assume that the w(t) accounts for all the losses in getting the w(e) to the grid. You need not make, and actually can not make, any other assumptions with the data that is given.

So the efficiency given by 3 w(e) and 9 w(t) in the example is indeed .33

[zapkitty]

nope… in the example w(t) is measured at 9 and w(e) is measured at 3.

…. if ;w(t) were to be forced to w(t) = 12 then w(e) would = ~4 and then your method would add 12+4 for 16 w(t) and then w(e) = 5.3 and then 16+5.3… oh… no wonder the reactors kept exploding…

Fly + corned beef is much safer even with the containment issues…

[zapkitty]

eerrrr…… isn’t the only figure wanted here the factor of how much waste heat is generated for electrical power delivered?

I.E. watts (thermal) rejected for each watt (electrical) delivered to the grid?

It’s just a version of the energy conversion efficiency equation n=Qout/Qin:

eff = w(e)/w(t)

Now I can’t find the references offhand and could be called on this 🙂 but I found on the web about a week ago the cooling stats together with the electrical output for each of the units at Dai-ichi… and I noted that the thermal stats were all just about 3 times the electrical rating of the particular units. So if you set w(e) at 3 watts and w(t) at 9 watts then 3/9 = .33

[zapkitty]

It’s not complicated. For the Fukushima Dai ichi reactors each watt of electricity generated also generates about 3 watts of heat that must rejected. At least that’s how the total power and cooling aggregates stack up.

[zapkitty]

But how much are the licenses?

And what safety provisions will be needed to handle a containment breach?

[zapkitty]

The filaments and their contents, and thus the contents of the plasmoid, are formed from a plasma “sheet” that’s accelerated down the anode. Force the filaments too much too soon and you’d just wind up with multiple individual arcs running up the core simultaneously and petering out.

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote: Check the total efficiency, fuel therms consumed to therms wasted. I think you’ll find that FF is throwing away far less heat than any competitive energy gen method per MW generated, from shovel or well to output.

Topical example: Each of the units at the afflicted Fukushima plant had to reject 3 times as many megawatts worth of heat as they produced of electricity. 33%.

Coal and oil fired plants on average range from 30% to 49%.

Gas turbine plants average about 50% with very expensive heat recovery steam generators (HRSG) in their exhaust systems boosting that to 60% in one plant in Wales at the current highest level.

If an FF unit can produce only twice as much heat as it does electricity, 50%, without needing to resort to steam, turbines, or HRSG then it has all major players beat hands down and walking away on cost vs. thermal efficiency as well as cost per MW… and global adoption would actually lower the current total heat output of power stations worldwide.

And of course the heat produced by all power stations combined is irrelevant to the warming caused by their CO2 emissions.

Brian H wrote: The problem is the SIZE of the FF rig: it’s too small! So the temp rises fast. I put it to you that the real problem is high electrode temperatures, not total heat disposal. Once extracted from the core, the only heat-handling equipment that will pay its way is about the level of ducts and fans. Maybe hypothetical hi-efficiency thermocouples, if they’re cheap and durable enough.

Yes, once boron fusion is demonstrated the first issue in designing a practical power generator will not be the ion coil(s) or even the x-ray conversion “onion”… it will be to cool the core. How much He is needed at what pressure in what kind of internal electrode design?

I look forward to it 🙂

[zapkitty]

mitakeet wrote:
If anyone knows of something that is actually in-use to capture as electric energy the movement of the alpha particle please speak up, but I am getting the impression that, just like the promise of fusion energy, theoretically trivial often turns out to be extremely non-trivial in practice.

Well, aside from the dual non sequitur of calling transformer mechanics “non-mainstream” and the assumption that because it’s not a standard power generation mechanism it must somehow be unusually difficult, your premise would also require ignoring every instance where someone has used a magnetic spectrometer or other electromagnetic instrument to measure alpha particle properties.

[zapkitty]

1. Alpha particles are helium nuclei.

2. As the He nuclei are sans electrons they carry a charge.

3. An FF unit happens to eject a stream of these charged particles at high velocity along the axis of the core with each pulse.

4. If one wraps a coil around the path these particles take it is basic induction physics to charge the coil and extract work from these fast-moving particles. The slowed particles then hook up with some electrons and become the helium that is the “exhaust” of an FF unit.

As with the x-ray photovoltaics this is known physics, no speculation as to possibility required, but there’s never been any need outside of fusion physics to research the best methods of building these things… and with the tokamaks dominating fusion research funding there was almost no money to check it all out regardless.

The closest practical research along these lines was “alpha batteries” which generally rely on plutonium radiating the alphas in an omnidirectional spray. and thus are not applicable to an FF unit. However you will find that the Polywell (another aneutronic fusion contender) and its “venetian blinds” alpha collectors are closer to the alpha battery designs than anything in an FF unit.

Does this help?

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote:
Joking aside, the take-away is that it requires a hyperactive imagination and rapid application of destructive force and violence to achieve even a small risk exposure.

Do not underestimate the power of the Stupid Side of the Force. An oligarch looking for a way to add .001% 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. (Really, by the data to date they seem to be trained and raised to be functionally psychopathic.)

As an example: Just imagine all the energy in all the caps accidentally being shorted through the main fuel container and the results being forcefully expelled out through the cooling system intake vents at ground level… the Stupid will do that for you if you are not careful.

As the man responsible for the frogs said: “Design is Law.”

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote: Zapster;
Ya, the C11 is even harder to get to than the decaborane plasma which implodes and congeals as soon as you break into the vacuum chamber. Oh, well, I s’pose you could lick the cathodes! After checking to make sure they weren’t hot or “hot” (receiving lotsa KV from the the caps).

zapkitty, indeed!

Well, I was thinking of post-shutdown radiation worries of a jittery public, but the fuel has a chance of being toxic as well if you broke into the chamber and stuck your head in… but there’s no particular reason for the disassociated fuel gas to reassemble itself as decaborane, is there? From the plating issue Lerner mentioned I suspect you’d mostly have solid B11, free H2, and some hydrogen boranes…

Hmmm… if someone took an axe to an active FF, wouldn’t the disassociated fuel gas still just plate out as B11 and a somewhat randomized collection of boranes as the air hit it?…

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote:

Errr…. what FF containment buildings?

Not sure what term to use; the little garage-sized buildings that house the FF core and caps, and provide access for servicing.

Call it the housing, I’d guess. Then heading inwards the shielding would be “the shielding” 🙂 Then the FF reactor itself consisting of the caps, onion, vacuum chamber, ion coil, and the core itself… good terms for common use?

“Containment” implies we’re trying to contain something that’s wants to get out… say, after an accident… and the word will have a definite meaning to the public post-Fukushima.

The only thing that might possibly worry the public after an FF shutdown would be the C11… and you’d have to break into the vacuum chamber from the outside in order for that to be a problem… and it would still only be a problem inside the shielding even then. Might be a good point to make when talking FF safety?

Brian H wrote:

Anyways, people can get that sort of stuff for free by sunbathing on granite outcroppings and they’d get a wider selection as well :coolgrin:

I understand concrete and brick are pretty good sources, too. 😉

I suppose the best spot for that would be be sunbathing on a granite outcropping that juts out over an exposed coal seam while a classroom’s worth of kindergarteners build a brick wall around you… but we don’t want people to get the wrong impression…

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