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If We Ever Get Sustained Fusion Reactions...Then What?


Spacescifi

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1 hour ago, starcaptain said:

gottem

...wait

For a second I thought you were talking about girlfriends.

I would think that a smaller reactor uses less material to build and thus costs less. But then again I'm not even an armchair layperson when it comes to fusion power. I'm like a know-nothing schlub when it comes to fusion power.

there is also the florine-politician fueled rocket engine.

when it comes to magnetic confinement there are hard physical reasons why you cant make it smaller. you dont want a failed fusion to send the particle and all its energy into the reactor walls, because that takes energy out of the plasma. you want it to recirculate and potentially have another opportunity to fuse. so your toroid cross section has to be large enough for the particle to turn back into the flow.  unfortunately it has the side effect of making your tokamaks huge and heavy. there was the polywell which used a spherical arrangement rather than a torioid, which would make it 3 or 4 meters across. but a recent paper has shelved the concept. i have a feeling first gen reactors are going to be tokamaks. its just the most well understood arrangement. 

Edited by Nuke
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I'm pretty much at @starcaptain's level when it comes to fusion but your comment about spherical arrangements jogged a memory, specifically, reading the news blurb about this:  https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/all-systems-go-for-uks-55m-fusion-energy-experiment/

No idea what the difference between a spherical tokamak and a polywell is, but the former still looks to be under active investigation.

 

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5 hours ago, KSK said:

I'm pretty much at @starcaptain's level when it comes to fusion but your comment about spherical arrangements jogged a memory, specifically, reading the news blurb about this:  https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/all-systems-go-for-uks-55m-fusion-energy-experiment/

No idea what the difference between a spherical tokamak and a polywell is, but the former still looks to be under active investigation.

 

polywell was a different machine arrangement entirely created by robert bussard of interstellar ramjet fame. a bunch of magnetic coils contains a ball of electrons in the core which the ions "fall" into. effectively replacing gravity with a potential well. in theory they cross in the middle and have a chance to fuse. it was meant initially for d-d and then p-b11 fuels. but the university of sydney put out a paper that has been consider a final nail in the coffin.  it was such a shame because its the kind of reactor you could stuff in a rocket fairing and put on a space craft. 

Edited by Nuke
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On 11/10/2020 at 11:18 PM, Spacescifi said:

Suppose one day man finds a way to actually contain a sustained fusion reaction via a magnetic field within a vacuum chamber?

Then what?

I am sure it can be exploited for energy production as far as electricity goes...SSTOs?

Not so sure.

We all know that barring we make materials that can survive temperatures beyond all known melting points of our best materials, we have to just cope with not being able to fully utilize fusion.

 

Is that not ironic? We cannot have torchships even if we HAD sustained fusion because the heat produced is too much.

So what could we use sustained fusion for anyway?

Did not. Mean to post twice. Delete second post please.

We didn't use the first rockets to go to space, Chinese intially used them as fireworks :P

Fusion, controlled, and producing more energy than it consumes is legit a game-changer; once you have it you now can take all that nasty radioactive waste from your Fission Plants and blast it with neutrons until it decays into nothing (Just....don't be anywhere near this, the radiation would be incredible). You also can now breed all the Uranium, Plutonium and Fissionables you want; yes they can absolutely be used for bombs. But they can also go into RTGs, NTR's and everything else you need them for. You also now have access to energies absolutely inconceivable before, so our colliders, lasers and other energy-limited experiments can push harder.

Basically Fusion makes your Fission "Cleaner", and allows you to create as much fuel as you want (Or even any other material.....as long as the decay chains are there). It allows you to use materials in ways that were previously uneconomical, and run your experiments to find new ones. No; we probably won't see a direct fusion drive for decades, if not a century at least after we get the first truly viable Fusion reactor.

But we don't need the torchships for now, we'll be plenty busy with our new "Fireworks".

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On 11/18/2020 at 11:09 PM, kerbiloid said:

I would remind about the uranium separation process. It's much more complicated, but they do it.
Also the natural oil and gas refining.

The uranium separation process is complicated, but some reactors can be fueled by natural uranium. Even those that aren't are generally fueled by low enriched uranium.

On 11/18/2020 at 11:09 PM, kerbiloid said:

This doesn't make the uranium itself endless. Deuterium is by orders of magnitude more available.

It doesn't have to be endless, my point is that the extraction is a mature technology that can be used for mature technologies (fission reactors).

On 11/18/2020 at 11:09 PM, kerbiloid said:

Certainly, we want all tritium we get. From U, Li, and whatever else.
Actually, it's a a powerplant fueled with seawater.
But possible also on any other celestial body with available hydrogen.

Fission reactors can (and do) breed tritium from Li.

14 hours ago, starcaptain said:

For a second I thought you were talking about girlfriends.

I would think that a smaller reactor uses less material to build and thus costs less. But then again I'm not even an armchair layperson when it comes to fusion power. I'm like a know-nothing schlub when it comes to fusion power.

Yes, smaller reactors can be said to generally cost less. They also generally perform worse. There's a few reasons for this, but basically miniaturizing fusion reactors isn't really in the cards right now.

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5 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

The uranium separation process is complicated, but some reactors can be fueled by natural uranium. Even those that aren't are generally fueled by low enriched uranium.

I mean that if the complexity of uranium enrichment doesn't stop people from doing that, the lithium isotope separation would fear them even less.
(Why load useless Li-7 when you can have all lithium be 6 in the pellets to easily recycle it and reload again after extraction),

8 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

It doesn't have to be endless

Uranium is very not endless, compared to deuterium.
So, why stop on the temporarily available fission.

9 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Fission reactors can (and do) breed tritium from Li.

They don't need that tritium.
While the deuterium reactor can produce tritium for its own needs.

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15 hours ago, Nuke said:

i have a feeling first gen reactors are going to be tokamaks. its just the most well understood arrangement. 

I think that ICF is more likely to work out. It's hard on its own, but it looks like it has a better chance to me.

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

I mean that if the complexity of uranium enrichment doesn't stop people from doing that, the lithium isotope separation would fear them even less.
(Why load useless Li-7 when you can have all lithium be 6 in the pellets to easily recycle it and reload again after extraction),

But my point is that it's just one more obstacle to using tritium. Might as well try to avoid even needing it.

Li7 isn't useless, it can breed tritium too. It costs energy and releases a neutron though.

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Uranium is very not endless, compared to deuterium.
So, why stop on the temporarily available fission.

I don't understand what you're saying here. I never said to stop with fission. Fusion is worth developing. My point is that if early fusion reactors need tritium, we can breed it with fission reactors. And fission reactors have a much larger existing industry to leverage.

Not only that but there's plenty of fission fuel that we can use for quite some time, billions of tonnes in the ocean (which may be renewable even). There's way more deuterium, of course. But the point is that both are likely to be used and fission has many decades on fusion, and by the time fusion works fission may have a century of advantage over fusion. We need to leverage that. Fission and fusion can and should complement each other.

6 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

They don't need that tritium.
While the deuterium reactor can produce tritium for its own needs.

Eh, in all likelihood the tritium containing material will need to be shipped to a processing site, so a deuterium reactor won't produce tritium for its own needs in that sense. Fission reactors don't need tritium but they can and are being used already to breed tritium. It's well understood and ripe to be taken advantage of for tritium used in fusion reactors.

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10 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

We didn't use the first rockets to go to space, Chinese intially used them as fireworks :P

Fusion, controlled, and producing more energy than it consumes is legit a game-changer; once you have it you now can take all that nasty radioactive waste from your Fission Plants and blast it with neutrons until it decays into nothing (Just....don't be anywhere near this, the radiation would be incredible). You also can now breed all the Uranium, Plutonium and Fissionables you want; yes they can absolutely be used for bombs. But they can also go into RTGs, NTR's and everything else you need them for. You also now have access to energies absolutely inconceivable before, so our colliders, lasers and other energy-limited experiments can push harder.

Basically Fusion makes your Fission "Cleaner", and allows you to create as much fuel as you want (Or even any other material.....as long as the decay chains are there). It allows you to use materials in ways that were previously uneconomical, and run your experiments to find new ones. No; we probably won't see a direct fusion drive for decades, if not a century at least after we get the first truly viable Fusion reactor.

But we don't need the torchships for now, we'll be plenty busy with our new "Fireworks".

 

What do you mean 'create fuel'? 

More fuel for fusion? Or propellant?

I am not sure what new materials could be made after fusion is perfected, but I gather they would be power intensive to make.

I like what Canada is doing though...trying to brute force it with pistons.

If that does not work, perhaps a combinatio of the canada piston solution with a magnetic torus might work?

Never hurts to throw everything to the wall to see what sticks I say.

If that STILL does not work?

Add strongly diamagnetic chilled fluids to mix and maybe that can help somehow...I dunno.

Edited by Spacescifi
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4 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

I think that ICF is more likely to work out. It's hard on its own, but it looks like it has a better chance to me.

is anyone still doing icf? i also think that is going to have a huge problem with getting to engineering breakeven due to  the inefficiency of lasers. 

jet is going to be going for the q record using d-t next year.  iter is looking forward to the result. lets hope they raise the bar.

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3 minutes ago, Nuke said:

is anyone still doing icf? i also think that is going to have a huge problem with getting to engineering breakeven due to  the inefficiency of lasers. 

jet is going to be going for the q record using d-t next year.  iter is looking forward to the result. lets hope they raise the bar.

Yeah, people are still doing ICF. Lasers can do it, but I don't think they're the best for ICF as it is. Heavy ion beams seem to have better performance but no one has built a heavy ion beam ICF system.

But lasers are getting better and will continue to do so. It's just that there really isn't enough funding for fusion research, sadly. 

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4 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

What do you mean 'create fuel'? 

More fuel for fusion? Or propellant?

I am not sure what new materials could be made after fusion is perfected, but I gather they would be power intensive to make.

I like what Canada is doing though...trying to brute force it with pistons.

If that does not work, perhaps a combinatio of the canada piston solution with a magnetic torus might work?

Never hurts to throw everything to the wall to see what sticks I say.

If that STILL does not work?

Add strongly diamagnetic chilled fluids to mix and maybe that can help somehow...I dunno.

Fission fuel, or use the energy to create hydrocarbons. When you have cheap reliable energy and a surplus even extremely lossy pathways are plenty viable. Also I'm going to be honest, I seriously doubt the Canadian reactor will work. At least when scaled up, all of those moving parts along with the challenges of containment and removing heat will become liabilities.

As for new materials, mostly thinking of heavy elements. There's quite a bit more we can explore on the periodic table, but it's limited by available targets and energy. So more energy means we can make heavier elements for targets, and so on. Perhaps even find the illusive island of stability (or lay it's hypothesized existence to rest). 

But, I'm agreed that having more people working on fusion isn't a bad thing. More data from different designs could easily inform the construction of more conventional reactors (like the tokamak) and help them solve the remaining engineering problems. 

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8 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

I don't understand what you're saying here. I never said to stop with fission. Fusion is worth developing.

According to wiki, the world's supply of uranium is ~5 mln t, including 0.7% (i.e. ~35 000 t) of 235.

It's not just "few", it's "nothing" if talk about millenia. Even if increase it with oceanic uranium.

So, spending uranium now literally means to leave the future humanity without both fission and fusion.

The fission is just a short-term temporarily available technology given to us by Mother Nature to implement the fusion.
So, advantages of the fission above the fusion don't play any role, like advantages of oil and gas. Even if they are easier to use, their supply is very limited.

9 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

, in all likelihood the tritium containing material will need to be shipped to a processing site, so a deuterium reactor won't produce tritium for its own needs in that sense.

Lithium (and uranium) are not a part of the deuterium reactor active zone process. They can be placed around the reactor like you can place thorium to produce U-233.
So, no problems with producing tritium.

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51 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Fission fuel, or use the energy to create hydrocarbons. When you have cheap reliable energy and a surplus even extremely lossy pathways are plenty viable. Also I'm going to be honest, I seriously doubt the Canadian reactor will work. At least when scaled up, all of those moving parts along with the challenges of containment and removing heat will become liabilities.

As for new materials, mostly thinking of heavy elements. There's quite a bit more we can explore on the periodic table, but it's limited by available targets and energy. So more energy means we can make heavier elements for targets, and so on. Perhaps even find the illusive island of stability (or lay it's hypothesized existence to rest). 

But, I'm agreed that having more people working on fusion isn't a bad thing. More data from different designs could easily inform the construction of more conventional reactors (like the tokamak) and help them solve the remaining engineering problems. 

Thanks...regarding the heat, that seems solved actually. You WANT the heat.

 

Laberge suggests a vortex of liquid lead and firing the plasma down the empty tunnel created by the liquid lead vortex, then compressing it rapidly (60 times a second).

The liquid lead exchanges heat with heat exchangers to drive a steam turbine which also powers the pistons.

The only heat issue I predict is perhaps the plasma melting the injectors, since the walls of the chamber are otherwise surrounded by liquid lead which will protect them anyway.

The only problem Laberge still has is...plasma.

He said it did not last long enough in the vortex before compression to create fusion, but he said they are working on that. 

Added to that is that the plasma must be compressed like sphere, not any other way...which plasma LOVES to do.

If he can beat those challenges, he will have more than enough to hire Bill Gates as his pool boy and as many Porsches as he could want.

I do think the wear and tear on the plasma injectors is the biggest possible point of failure, even if he did get ot to work.

Breaking even for power generation will be hard.

 

Does the sun even do that?  I think even it has more mass than the energy it puts out.

If that is truly so, then it makes what we are trying to do seem impossible...get more for less.

 

 

Edited by Spacescifi
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3 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Thanks...regarding the heat, that seems solved actually. You WANT the heat.

I have a hunch that maybe if he just...ignited a modified low powered nuke 

Laberge suggests a vortex of liquid lead and firing the plasma down the empty tunnel created by the liquid lead vortex, then compressing it rapidly (60 times a second).

The liquid lead exchanges heat with heat exchangers to drive a steam turbine which also powers the pistons.

The only heat issue I predict is perhaps the plasma melting the injectors, since the walls of the chamber are otherwise surrounded by liquid lead which will protect them anyway.

The only problem Laberge still has is...plasma.

He said it did not last long enough in the vortex before compression to create fusion, but he said they are working on that. 

Added to that is that the plasma must be compressed like sphere, not any other way...which plasma LOVES to do.

If he can beat those challenges, he will have more than enough to hire Bill Gates as his pool boy and as many Porsches as he could want.

I do think the wear and tear on the plasma injectors is the biggest possible point of failure, even if he did get ot to work.

Breaking even for power generation will be hard.

 

Does the sun even do that?  I think even it has more mass than the energy it puts out.

 

If that is truly so, then it makes what we are trying to do seem impossible...get more for less.

You do want the heat, but in the right places. If your pistons begin expanding because of excess heat, and then your timing is off by a few miliseconds...well then no fusion. That's the advantage with Tokamak and Laser-initiated designs vs "Brute-forcing" it.

Also the energy comes from the mass, or rather the energy released by fusing the elements in the first place. If the fusion reactions at the center of the sun didn't release more energy than they consumed, then they wouldn't counter the gravitational force attempting to crush the star inward. So no; it's not impossible by far. It's all very, very mathematically possible. Hell Hydrogen Bombs are only possible due to the fact that you can create a massive fusion event in a secondary by using the energy from a fission primary to initiate fusion in a sphere of fusion fuel (Normally Lithium, which undergoes fission into H-3 which then can undergo fusion into He-4 and releases massive amounts of neutrons, which also initiate fission in the remaining Uranium/Plutonium).

If you want to know a bit more; look into the "Binding Energy" and specifically the curve of binding energies. Basically, until you reach Iron, you release more energy from fusion than you consume by getting the needed temps. The issue with terrestrial fusion is that we want to increase the rate of fusion, and that means much, much higher temps. So the floor is higher, and the challenges greater.

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2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

So, spending uranium now literally means to leave the future humanity without both fission and fusion.

Modern humans have only existed for at most 300,000 years. Civilization has only been the last 100,000 years at most, more likely beneath 50,000.

Honestly if we're running out of something in another 10,000 years then I'm pretty sure we'd have found an alternative by that point, or the previously unviable sources would turn viable (much like fracking and heavy oil; the same thing is going on with helium).

 

Though I'd say that a lot more potential are still to be seen from renewable resources like hydro, wind, solar and geothermal.

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14 minutes ago, YNM said:

Modern humans have only existed for at most 300,000 years. Civilization has only been the last 100,000 years at most, more likely beneath 50,000.

Honestly if we're running out of something in another 10,000 years then I'm pretty sure we'd have found an alternative by that point, or the previously unviable sources would turn viable (much like fracking and heavy oil; the same thing is going on with helium).

 

Though I'd say that a lot more potential are still to be seen from renewable resources like hydro, wind, solar and geothermal.

yes but building those things also depletes the resources. any they dont last forever. entropy calleth no matter what you do. 

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1 hour ago, YNM said:

Modern humans have only existed for at most 300,000 years. Civilization has only been the last 100,000 years at most, more likely beneath 50,000.

And they're spending uranium for last 100 years.

If the humanity doesn't want to finish 300 000 years later with stone axes, it should treat the uranium like a short-term gift to ease implementation of the artificial suns.

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Honestly if we're running out of something in another 10,000 years then I'm pretty sure we'd have found an alternative by that point

Physics and chemistry will stay same and 10 000 years later.

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Googling "world supply of ..."

Quote

According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total.

Quote

So, thorium is not an option.

***

And for better dramatism:

http://www.daretothink.org/numbers-not-adjectives/how-long-will-our-supplies-of-uranium-and-thorium-last/

***

So, we have U & Th for 200+ years of fission, according to the article.
(Probably millenia, though. Because of U238 and fast neutron breeders.)
That means that we just can't spend them for energy. Their purpose is to be a fusion energetics doping.

***

Upd.

Googling bring 4.5 bln t as amount of uranium dissolved in oceanic water.

I.e.

Thorium:
3.5 mln t of world supply

U:
5.5 mln t of found world supply
~10  mln t of missed but wannabe found
4 500 mln t of dissolved in water.

So, a couple of centuries on mined uranium and several millenia on the fished one.
That's all. After that - no U, no Th, no coal, no oil, no gas, and even dry manure looks somewhat unfriendly.
 

Edited by kerbiloid
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14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

According to wiki, the world's supply of uranium is ~5 mln t, including 0.7% (i.e. ~35 000 t) of 235.

It's not just "few", it's "nothing" if talk about millenia. Even if increase it with oceanic uranium.

So, spending uranium now literally means to leave the future humanity without both fission and fusion.

The fission is just a short-term temporarily available technology given to us by Mother Nature to implement the fusion.
So, advantages of the fission above the fusion don't play any role, like advantages of oil and gas. Even if they are easier to use, their supply is very limited.

There's a difference between what we think the supply is now and what it could be in the future.  Indeed, there's a history of the supply for a given resource expanding in size over time as we discover or consider new sources.  Even in the crust there's a high confidence that there's 2.2 billion tonnes of uranium in concentrations higher than 100 ppm. For conventional reactors that can last nearly a thousand years for 50 TWth capacity. Add in breeders and you get over 100 thousand years.  And if the energy return on lower concentrations is reasonable in the future, then we could extract uranium from even lower concentrations and then have access to vastly more uranium - the numbers are mind-bogglingly huge. If we run out of uranium it won't be because there's no uranium to mine, it'll be because we stopped mining it. And that's not even getting into seawater uranium, which is practically renewable unless we go overboard and use a massive amount of energy beyond what we could feasibly need. 

Quote

Lithium (and uranium) are not a part of the deuterium reactor active zone process. They can be placed around the reactor like you can place thorium to produce U-233.
So, no problems with producing tritium.

You misunderstand. They'll definitely produce tritium. But you have to extract it. This is generally done in dedicated processing sites. 

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

And they're spending uranium for last 100 years.

If the humanity doesn't want to finish 300 000 years later with stone axes, it should treat the uranium like a short-term gift to ease implementation of the artificial suns.

Physics and chemistry will stay same and 10 000 years later.

While physics and chemistry will be the same 10k years from now, the extent of human civilization may not be. We may be extinct by then, in which case it doesn't matter. If we aren't extinct at that time, then we will almost certainly have perfected alternative energy sources like fusion and if we haven't then it seems reasonable to assume that we have expanded beyond Earth and have found other sources. In any case, it's pointless to try and consider the problems humanity in 10k years will face. Our use of uranium won't really matter by then. Even if we conserve our uranium future humanity will probably use it at a faster rate than we do. Not much point in not using it today. Indeed, using fission to some extent is likely to be critical to the survival of civilization for this century.

 

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9 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Even in the crust there's a high confidence that there's 2.2 billion tonnes of uranium

And unlikely will be able to get even a small part of this in several millenia.
And even if we do, how much energy should we spend to refine the crust? 
And where should we hide all radioactive and toxic wastes produced out of this uranium?

Realistically speaking, almost none except what we can find now would be available in future.

9 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

And if the energy return on lower concentrations is reasonable in the future

Why should it be when anyway this uranium will be extracted either chemically (and that's exactly what we have to the date(, or physically (and this will take much greater energy, otherwise it would be used right now instead of chemical voodoo)?

9 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

You misunderstand. They'll definitely produce tritium. But you have to extract it. This is generally done in dedicated processing sites. 

You've repeated this several times.
Where did I say that some kind of reactors can't produce tritium, or that they won;t be producing it?
I thought, from the very beginning my position was exactly about that they will be producing tritium in every manner they can.

9 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

While physics and chemistry will be the same 10k years from now, the extent of human civilization may not be. We may be extinct by then, in which case it doesn't matter.

We can get extinct in a century if we wish. Does it mean that we should just burn everything right now?

9 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

then we will almost certainly have perfected alternative energy sources like fusion

If we get spent all available fission fuel before that, there will be neither fusion, no crust reworking.
Also to rework the crust we definitely need fusion, not fission, powerplants, which make the project useless at all.

And "they will invent something instead of fuel" looks not like a reliable position. Yet we haven't.

9 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

it seems reasonable to assume that we have expanded beyond Earth and have found other sources

Any known uranium asteroid? I would be a fan of it.

9 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

it's pointless to try and consider the problems humanity in 10k years will face.

It's not pointless to make these problems for them.
While I believe that biohumans will probably evolve into hiveminds with optional  casual bodies in centuries (still requiring energy, btw), 10k is not very long time.to "risk it in one turn of pitch-and-toss", because if the humans"loose" this time, they won't be able to "start again at your beginnings".

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16 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Googling "world supply of ..."

So, thorium is not an option.

***

And for better dramatism:

http://www.daretothink.org/numbers-not-adjectives/how-long-will-our-supplies-of-uranium-and-thorium-last/

***

So, we have U & Th for 200+ years of fission, according to the article.
(Probably millenia, though. Because of U238 and fast neutron breeders.)
That means that we just can't spend them for energy. Their purpose is to be a fusion energetics doping.

***

Upd.

Googling bring 4.5 bln t as amount of uranium dissolved in oceanic water.

I.e.

Thorium:
3.5 mln t of world supply

U:
5.5 mln t of found world supply
~10  mln t of missed but wannabe found
4 500 mln t of dissolved in water.

So, a couple of centuries on mined uranium and several millenia on the fished one.
That's all. After that - no U, no Th, no coal, no oil, no gas, and even dry manure looks somewhat unfriendly.
 

Is that figure how much supply exists in theory? Or the sum of all surveyed deposits? Uranium Supply I'd expect to be higher due to it having commercial applications, but Thorium currently has few if any practical uses.

I agree it's all limited resources, but the idea that there's less Thorium than Uranium legitimately doesn't make sense. Not only is it 2 atomic numbers lower, but it's a daughter product of several radioactive decay chains. So it should be even more common due to it being replenished.

Also those figures are based on traditional LWR reactors that are known to be incredibly inefficient (Not the amount of U and Th, but how long they can "Burn" in a reactor), so using more efficient reactors (Like the Fast Neutron breeders you mentioned above, or Liquid Sodium reactors) would drastically extend these timelines while reducing the amount of material needed.  And we're only using Fission to bridge the gap between current Renewables and Fusion power, once we have Fusion we could make Fissionable material from Lead if we had to due to the incredible amount of Neutron radiation available.

So basically; i think we're honestly agreed on most of this. You even addressed most of it yourself xD

 

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1 minute ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Is that figure how much supply exists in theory?

This figures how much supply is available without "kids are clever, they'll invemt something".

Known and presumably yet missed deposits in concentrations reasonable for chemical extraction.

Thorium is by order(s) of magnitude less common, so it's just a little bonus.
You can rework all Th into U-233, but also you can rework U-238 into Pu-239 for fast neutrons reactors, so Th addition is negligible,

And it's always easier to refine deuterium from seawater than uranium from the crust.

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2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

This figures how much supply is available without "kids are clever, they'll invemt something".

Known and presumably yet missed deposits in concentrations reasonable for chemical extraction.

Thorium is by order(s) of magnitude less common, so it's just a little bonus.
You can rework all Th into U-233, but also you can rework U-238 into Pu-239 for fast neutrons reactors, so Th addition is negligible,

And it's always easier to refine deuterium from seawater than uranium from the crust.

Yeah that's fine; i just wanted to know if it was "Market supply" or "What's in the ground"

It seems to be the latter.

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On 11/21/2020 at 6:07 AM, kerbiloid said:

According to wiki, the world's supply of uranium is ~5 mln t, including 0.7% (i.e. ~35 000 t) of 235.

It's not just "few", it's "nothing" if talk about millenia. Even if increase it with oceanic uranium.

So, spending uranium now literally means to leave the future humanity without both fission and fusion.

The fission is just a short-term temporarily available technology given to us by Mother Nature to implement the fusion.
So, advantages of the fission above the fusion don't play any role, like advantages of oil and gas. Even if they are easier to use, their supply is very limited.

Breeder reactors create plutonium. You can also recycle the fuel, US does not for political reasons who made some ideological sense 30 years ago during the cold war. 
Note it probably also make economical sense today, cheaper to dig up and enrich more uranium. 

Now worrying about scarcity issues of raw materials 100 year into the future is  just stupid, it was popular back in the 70'ts and was hilarious wrong. Note raw materials not environmental concerns like habitat loss and biodiversity. Still say that projecting global warming past 2050 is a lot like prediction. predicting the amount of horse excrements in major cities in 1990 back in 1910 :) Yes this was an major issue. 

Fix our problems short term and leave the next generation more tools and power to fix our problems :) Coal was once the fuel who stopped deforestation, back in 1700 it was very environmental friendly. 
 

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