[zapkitty]

Actually, “CQME AND GET IT” would be more appropriate to spreading the word about FF… an overt act of sharing.

[zapkitty]

So it comes down to the onion working more or less to spec.

BTW, I don’t think it’s a huge leap for an air-cooled FF to be patched into an existing HVAC system more cheaply than new electrical equivalents. Same thing for low pressure steam and oil loops. I’d think that the FF as a heat source can work efficiently with appropriate existing plant infrastructure.

The proposed helium loop cooling the FF core lends itself to a modular cooling design paradigm where the helium delivers the heat to any setup that can carry it away fast enough… and there are some choices.

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote:
Unless FF is over unity, it is using more energy than it produces, and is just a complicated resistance heater. Who needs it? If it is over unity, see above. The cost of installing and operating any added heat recovery gear must work out to be equal to or less than using power from another FF to generate the heat. No such technology exists, which is why FF is such an economic breakthrough.

I’d assumed overunity… else what’s the point? 🙂

You’re assuming that the onion works and is more efficient than any current thermoelectric options, right?

And Aeronaut’s meme, last I checked, was that an overunity FF has potential as an industrial heat source even without direct or thermoelectric conversion…

… as to what you two are going on about now I’m not exactly sure but it seems rather circular in outline 🙂

edit: i was responding to Brian 🙂

[zapkitty]

errrrrrrrr… it seems to me that the question relies upon the actual efficiency of the default FF conversion method… the onion.

If the onion proves to be more economical than any given thermoelectric solution then thermoelectric solutions can never catch up, right?

And if a thermoelectric solution can economically make use of even the leftover heat from the onion then that solution theoretically can just replace the onion, right?

Or is this all just a rehash of Aeronaut’s meme that an FF without an onion or thermoelectric solution still has a future as a replacement for other heat sources?

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote:

…

The numbers are good and depending on loop arrangements and temps you could have anywhere from current FF projections (~5MWe and ~8MWt) up to 8MWe/5MWt…

…but could the JTEC be considered any closer to reality than the “onion”?

Actually, the numbers suck. They are “hoping” to get the cost/kwh down to “half” of 25¢ — which is 12.5¢/kwh. Which is about 50X as high as the output from FF.

There is NO arrangement, regime, or setup whereby a 50X higher cost technology can improve on the net costs of FF. I.e., every kwh thus recovered/salvaged from the “waste heat” could have been provided at 2% of that price from another FF.

Fuggedaboudit.

*bleep!*

I missed the cost estimate and it’s implications.

Back to the onion…

… or, say, anyone work out at what point even a marginal net power profit from the alpha beam alone would allow an FF to be competitive?

[zapkitty]

Breakable wrote:

…but could the JTEC be considered any closer to reality than the “onion”?

Yes, definitely. They have some stuff for JTEC that is already working (as I understood from the article they had the fuel cell membrane long time ago).
And AFAIK there needs to be a lot of work done to even get the “onion” project proof of concept funded.

… that was my point: JTEC’s been jammed up for years because of financing and, apparently, because of Johnson’s worries about control issues.

The tech is not really usable if it’s tied up or locked down… even if the blockages are for non-technical reasons.

[zapkitty]

Breakable wrote: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/shooting-for-the-sun/8268/1/

http://www.johnsonems.com/?q=node/2

This tech has been hanging fire for a while… to the point where I’d put it in the “It’d be nice” territory.

The numbers are good and depending on loop arrangements and temps you could have anywhere from current FF projections (~5MWe and ~8MWt) up to 8MWe/5MWt…

…but could the JTEC be considered any closer to reality than the “onion”?

[zapkitty]

Simpler version… emphasize boron.

Boron fusion is more efficient than the fusion that occurs in the Sun and thus is vastly more compact and usable than the solar arrays that would be needed to do the same job as the fusion generators.

Boron fusion is dirt cheap and works 24/7/365 come rain or shine… and does all this without the toxic byproducts of manufacturing solar arrays and without the nuclear waste and weapons pofential of other types of reactors.

… yeah, lot of info implied in any reply re: fusion…

[zapkitty]

Aeronaut wrote: Too much talk radio, Zap?

Sorry, but dismissing the facts with a label doesn’t change the facts. The wars are extremely profitable for those who dictate policy and thus they will continue unless circumstances are changed drastically… and those holding the reins of power, the quite literal financial reins on the politicians, will regard any attempts at such changes as attacks on their wealth and power. They will resist, and they have the means to resist.

Aeronaut wrote: I’ll cede the point about it being impossible to eliminate war. But a poisoned attitude will never find anything worth finding.

If you don’t attempt to reduce and mitigate the causes of the wars then all else you might wish to achieve will be in vain… as those achievements will promptly be torn down and used to fuel the next set of wars.

[zapkitty]

Calling Obama a wannabe tyrant is as disconnected from reality as calling him a progressive or (even more silly) a socialist. He is only a tool for a plutocratic oligarchy that has accumulated stunning wealth and power at the expense of everyone else.

The current American wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen etc etc are not wars of scarcity but are instead intended to accomplish two goals: to siphon ever-more public treasure into the coffers of the corporations… and from there it goes into the holdings of a very small and immensely powerful elite… and to provide a pretext and a proving ground for the ever-expanding powers that their vassals in office need to perpetuate and enforce the status quo.

And most Americans do not know just how bad that situation has gotten… just how few and just how wealthy the elites actually are… and they are kept ignorant of the fact that their heritage of upward mobility has been co-opted and corrupted to the point where it’s nearly impossible to move up into those rarefied heights.

And thanks to a media that was at first complacent and is now complicit you can’t even,tell them that the elite has no intention of allowing them even the possibility of ascending to the higher ranks… the Pavlovian screams of “Bootstrap!” and “Self-reliance!” start before you can even finish phrasing the question.

So how can fusion fix that can of worms? Because if you don’t address the problem then all you will have is a fusion-powered oligarchy waging fusion-powered wars of choice.

[zapkitty]

KeithPickering wrote: I hate to be a wet blanket … but half a joule per pinch, even at a 100 hz firing rate, is just 50 Watts …

I guess it’s the demonstration of any net energy, no matter how small, that counts.

Wouldn’t “net” energy be any yield that exceeded the cap’s input energy?

I’d assume, perhaps mistakenly, that at this point they’re just getting started on the “we have fusion” part… with actual net power yields coming later.

edit: “started” for “stared”

[zapkitty]

Hah! More stonewalling! It’s always the same with you fusion types… “Fusion is always 30 days away.”

😉

[zapkitty]

Smaller, as well… what would be the parameters and cost of a 25 kWe home unit?

[zapkitty]

Aeronaut wrote:

But in a multi-fusion world, FF will favor isolated and/ or stand-alone power plants which may or may not be grid-connected. Polywell favors centralized power generation, and boy are they going to have some cooling challenges! Anybody recall their target MWe and MWt figures?

Polywell initial target is 100 MWe at 80% efficiency, so that’s 120 MWt to deal with.

No mention of theoretical minimum or maximum MWe for Polywell that I can recall, with considerable speculation on 300+ GWe units etc…

[zapkitty]

Tulse wrote: I ran across this statement at the talk-polywell forums:

Remember, this work is really not in competition with Poly. There’s an upper limit to how large a FF reactor can be built and it’s a very low limit. We’re talking about 10 MW reactor IIRC. Would make a decent thruster if ganged together, but not gonna ever be worth ganging them for GW power. This is really intended for micro-distribution, so it’s not in competition with the Poly.

How correct is this? What is the most reasonable maximum power for a single DPF device? And how practical would it be to use DPF for main grid power? Would this involve a more distributed power approach, or could one create large generating stations with DPF?

From what I’ve read FF units were proposed in the 25 MWE range but the initial units have been scaled back to 5 MWe because of cooling concerns.

The FF core is small and if it’s generating 8 MWt then heat rejection is not so easy when you have to move a large amount of coolant through a small volume.

Though it’s true that 10 MWe units would be better and 25 MWe units better still….

If cooling is dealt with then at least the original 25 MWe FFs become feasible.

As for ganging mass quantities of FFs together for GWe power levels… at the currently proposed installation and overhead costs of FF units a gigawatt-class fossil fuel utility could replace all of its steam turbines with an equivalent wattage in 5 MWe FF boxes and still come out ahead… so that ‘s simply not an issue.

And 5 MWe designs can cut their teeth by providing peak power units on an as-needed basis so utilities won’t have to take an all-out plunge into fusion… they can test the waters first and make a profit in doing so.

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