EAST fusion reactor sustains plasma at over 50M Kelvin for 102 seconds

[78stonewobble]

34 minutes ago, Elthy said:

1. If you want to supply several billions of people with energy you will allways have huge numbers...

2. Dont forget that Uranium is not a renewable resource, so you would run out of it quite fast when using it to power the whole earth. And those powerplants consist of thousands of tons material, too.

3. I wouldnt consider 1 million km^2 much, we use 1/3 of the earth surface for growing food.

1. Yes, but people seem to forget just how big of a mega scale project it is to supply the earths energy needs through solar and/or wind. It IS a mega scale project and it has it's very own enviromental consequences.

2. That is true... but concrete and steel might be a bit easier to come by and reserves last longer. There is reserves for 230 years of current use of nuclear power. With breeder reactors that could be extended to 60,000 years. That is ... atleast some time to go on.

3. It's not area so much, as it is the fact that you have to drive around that area and put up the solar panels and maintain them. Remember they also degrade over time and thus will need to be changed at some point. And the sheer mass of raw materials going into and out of those panels... and whatever the necessary energy storage systems require. Eg. world wide production was silicon is 8,000,000 tonnes in 2011... if panels were made entirely out of silicon it would (I know they're not, but as an example), per the above example, it would take 1984 years to produce enough.

Possibly someone can make the same calculations for nuclear power for comparison... heck or point out mistakes I made... I probably did...

...

We can't solve eg. global warming by throwing up a few solar panels on rooftops or a few windmills... We need to throw up ALOT of them if that's the path we take and maybe it doesn't make sense to do it everywhere...

 

Edited November 16, 2016 by 78stonewobble

[Elthy]

Yeah, your numbers seem a bit to extreme, but currently i cant check them.

But remember everything is a megascale project. Imagine someone in the 70s talking about how to connect whole humanity and building billions of powerfull computers. Its done in lots of small steps. Noone is planning to build all solar panels at once.

[Streetwind]

1 hour ago, 78stonewobble said:

I will leave you with this:

Focusing purely on the energy density of uranium is not useful. Nuclear fission has massive problems that go well beyond available fuel, greenhouse gas emissions, or price per kWh. By far the largest of these issues is the question of what to do radioactive waste, and the fact that old power plants themselves become radioactive ruins.

<personalopinion> Providing a conclusive solution to that issue would be enough to get me onboard the fission train - in combination with renewables, mind you, as base load, or for those regions in the world that suffer from months-long nights. And yes, I know that there are a few proposals for dealing with the waste problem. But none of those proposals has evolved into an economically viable power plant so far - in contrast to renewables, which have done so. And I won't be satisfied with going halfway, either. "Only thousands of years instead of millions of years" is not a solution. High radioactive waste must be eliminated, period. We can't just go and make it a future generation's problem to find room, means and money to store copious amounts of absurdly toxic material and decomission the irradiated husks of old reactor buildings in order to solve our own problems today. That would be the exact same thing as burning fossil fuels today and letting future generations deal with the environmental impacts. </personalopinion>

 

37 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

As a point of comparison the Andasol powerplant in spain vaporizes 2,610,000 cubik meters a year of water. To match the worlds energy supply in 2012 via similar methods would vaporize 819,935,454,545 cubic meters a year. Which is equivalent to 124,402 amazon rivers.

Hmmm, that seems too high. Since multiple sources agree that concentrating solar thermal power plants consume comparable amounts of water for steam generation and cooling as other thermal electric solutions (coal, nuclear, biomass, geothermal), that would imply that the number you calculated is comparable the total amont of water the world dedicated to power production in 2012. In the World Energy Outlook 2012's chapter on water, it is estimated that the world withdrew just under 600 billion cubic meters of water for power production in 2010. That's almost 30% lower than your calculated number; even the 2035 worst-case scenario expectation in that report stays below 800 bcm. Also, this figure is only for withdrawals; the largest amount of that water is returned, and not actually consumed. Figures for actual consumption are in the neighbourhood of 50 bcm, significantly less than 10% of your calculated number. Either the math is off somewhere, or that Andasol plant must be extremely inefficient and wasteful with its water usage.

But if water requirements are an issue, then a combination of wind and photovoltaic solar is by far the most water-frugal option we can build today. It should consume less than 1% of the water need of thermal electric solutions - both in terms of withdrawal and in terms of consumption.

[78stonewobble]

22 hours ago, Streetwind said:

1. Focusing purely on the energy density of uranium is not useful. 2. Nuclear fission has massive problems that go well beyond available fuel, greenhouse gas emissions, or price per kWh. 3. By far the largest of these issues is the question of what to do radioactive waste, and the fact that old power plants themselves become radioactive ruins.

<personalopinion> 4. Providing a conclusive solution to that issue would be enough to get me onboard the fission train - 5. in combination with renewables, mind you, as base load, or for those regions in the world that suffer from months-long nights. And yes, I know that there are a few proposals for dealing with the waste problem. But none of those proposals has evolved 6. into an economically viable power plant so far - in contrast to renewables, which have done so. 7. And I won't be satisfied with going halfway, either. 8. "Only thousands of years instead of millions of years" is not a solution. 9. High radioactive waste must be eliminated, period. We can't just go and make it a future generation's problem to find room, means and money to store copious amounts of absurdly toxic material and decomission the irradiated husks of old reactor buildings in order to solve our own problems today. 10. That would be the exact same thing as burning fossil fuels today and letting future generations deal with the environmental impacts. </personalopinion>

 

11. Hmmm, that seems too high. 12. Since multiple sources agree that concentrating solar thermal power plants consume comparable amounts of water for steam generation and cooling as other thermal electric solutions (coal, nuclear, biomass, geothermal), that would imply that the number you calculated is comparable the total amont of water the world dedicated to power production in 2012. 13. In the World Energy Outlook 2012's chapter on water, it is estimated that the world withdrew just under 600 billion cubic meters of water for power production in 2010. That's almost 30% lower than your calculated number; even the 2035 worst-case scenario expectation in that report stays below 800 bcm. Also, this figure is only for withdrawals; the largest amount of that water is returned, and not actually consumed. Figures for actual consumption are in the neighbourhood of 50 bcm, significantly less than 10% of your calculated number. Either the math is off somewhere, or that Andasol plant must be extremely inefficient and wasteful with its water usage.

But if water requirements are an issue, then a combination of wind and photovoltaic solar is by far the most water-frugal option we can build today. It should consume less than 1% of the water need of thermal electric solutions - both in terms of withdrawal and in terms of consumption.

1. I'm not focusing purely on the energy density. My point is that if we have to dig for raw materials, transport them and through that transport energy, uranium will require the least digging and transport.

2. Wind and solar energy has massive problems. Wind kills more people and I presume once you start installing solar panels on every rooftop and have to maintain those, people are gonna fall off those roofs. You didn't take that into account, when you only mentioned price per kWh, which is not useless, but not the whole story.

3. Yes, those are problems with nuclear power. I'll estimate it will still take up less space than Tanzania tho...

4. I agree, that requires solving... However breeding reactors afaik. greatly reduced the amount of nuclear waste did they not?

5. I do believe renewable energy does have their uses and places... It would be silly not to exploit it in the "good areas" and areas where there is no built up electrical infrastructure. Might as well take what we can from truely sunny, windy and hydro optimal places, but I don't think it's prudent to try and put it everywhere.

6. I'll call it a bubble... At some point we're gonna have so many windmills and solar panels that the income per electricity produced is gonna bottom out...

7. But there is no reason to go half assed either... by not knowing what kind of damage it will do to the enviroment by producing enough rawmaterials to produce so many solarpanels and windmills, to supply a significant proportion of the worlds energy needs, then maintain them, replace photovoltaics as they degrade, the storage systems and so forth. We need more information...

People were complaining about coal strip mining, well if you replace those with stripmining for rawmaterials for solar panels and windmills and possibly much more of it... Then, sure we've cut out particle pollution, acid rain and co2, but we're still repeating the past mistakes, to a certain degree.

8. I would take thousands of years of non co2 emitting nuclear over a minimal investment in solar and wind, which still makes us have to have conventional powerplants as backup. In any case I see fission as a stop gap measure til we get fusion.

9. Consuming a gigantic amount of ressources for solar and wind powerplants, putting a gigantic amount of co2 into the air for building, transporting and maintaining them and generate gigantic amounts of waste from that... is also handing the future generations a problem. I'd say overall... waste from nuclear ... while dangerous... will be alot less.

10. Yet, you argue for solar power, like you have the answers to the questions from those, you don't...

11. I certainly can have made a calculation error, but if I remember correctly the Spanish plant I base those calculations on are from a relatively hotter geographical area and thus it uses more water?

12. In the table you provided, there are several cases, where nuclear uses less water or none at all. If we are gonna power the entire world, which takes alot, especially into the future, with more people having higher living standards, then we need to look at that critically.

13. I certainly might have made mistakes.  I used the Andasol plant, because it was an example of a solar powerplant using troughs and having energy storage for night time, is relatively modern and a commercial plant. Possibly there are some local geographical or enviromental factors that make it consume more water than others would. Or the numbers here are wrong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andasol_Solar_Power_Station 

 

14. And more generally... However, if my numbers are correct and considering my mathskills, that is a big if... Then it goes to show that powering a significant portion of the worlds energy consumption through solar- and possibly wind-power and associated energy storage, is gonna run into bottlenecks in regards to production of rawmaterials like possibly eg. plastics, silicon and potassium nitrates.

And I don't know what the enviromental consequences are of scaling those productions and the production of solar and wind up to megascale project size, which it is... Sometimes doctors kill the patients, even while trying to save them...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 17, 2016 by 78stonewobble

[magnemoe]

On 16.11.2016 at 0:45 PM, Streetwind said:

Focusing purely on the energy density of uranium is not useful. Nuclear fission has massive problems that go well beyond available fuel, greenhouse gas emissions, or price per kWh. By far the largest of these issues is the question of what to do radioactive waste, and the fact that old power plants themselves become radioactive ruins.

<personalopinion> Providing a conclusive solution to that issue would be enough to get me onboard the fission train - in combination with renewables, mind you, as base load, or for those regions in the world that suffer from months-long nights. And yes, I know that there are a few proposals for dealing with the waste problem. But none of those proposals has evolved into an economically viable power plant so far - in contrast to renewables, which have done so. And I won't be satisfied with going halfway, either. "Only thousands of years instead of millions of years" is not a solution. High radioactive waste must be eliminated, period. We can't just go and make it a future generation's problem to find room, means and money to store copious amounts of absurdly toxic material and decomission the irradiated husks of old reactor buildings in order to solve our own problems today. That would be the exact same thing as burning fossil fuels today and letting future generations deal with the environmental impacts. </personalopinion>

 

Hmmm, that seems too high. Since multiple sources agree that concentrating solar thermal power plants consume comparable amounts of water for steam generation and cooling as other thermal electric solutions (coal, nuclear, biomass, geothermal), that would imply that the number you calculated is comparable the total amont of water the world dedicated to power production in 2012. In the World Energy Outlook 2012's chapter on water, it is estimated that the world withdrew just under 600 billion cubic meters of water for power production in 2010. That's almost 30% lower than your calculated number; even the 2035 worst-case scenario expectation in that report stays below 800 bcm. Also, this figure is only for withdrawals; the largest amount of that water is returned, and not actually consumed. Figures for actual consumption are in the neighbourhood of 50 bcm, significantly less than 10% of your calculated number. Either the math is off somewhere, or that Andasol plant must be extremely inefficient and wasteful with its water usage.

But if water requirements are an issue, then a combination of wind and photovoltaic solar is by far the most water-frugal option we can build today. It should consume less than 1% of the water need of thermal electric solutions - both in terms of withdrawal and in terms of consumption.

Nuclear waste is an invented problem by the anti nuclear groups. 
Compare how easy its to store toxic heavy metals like quicksilver who will never break down, but will be around forever. 

Three ways to handle it: 
Current one who keeps it close to the reactor who is obviously most dangerous.
Store it in an secure location is way safer, you need to watch it but far less maintenance is needed.
Standard argument is that location is not safe for million of years, it is if you maintain it a bit. If civilization falls most people alive will die and the survivors has far larger problems than an vase dump in an desert. 

Idiot proof final storage, drill an kilometer deep hole in the ocean floor, stuff the drums down together with concrete, top with concrete then clay. No nothing will leak out trough the thick clay layer even after the drums breaks down after some thousand years, the ocean floor is extremely stable. The mud is very good containing stuff. 
Downside is that its hard to get up if you need it later, very hard if the drums has decayed. 

----
Steam systems don't have to use much water. If its free you can let plenty evaporate as it makes cooling cheaper, if its expensive you make sure it don't evaporate this makes cooling more expensive. 
 

[wumpus]

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Idiot proof final storage, drill an kilometer deep hole in the ocean floor, stuff the drums down together with concrete, top with concrete then clay. No nothing will leak out trough the thick clay layer even after the drums breaks down after some thousand years, the ocean floor is extremely stable. The mud is very good containing stuff. 
Downside is that its hard to get up if you need it later, very hard if the drums has decayed. 

Glassification pretty much solves the problem as well.  You take your waste, mix it with a bunch of sand, and then hit it with a ton of electricity (very easy to get at a nuclear power plant).  The results lock up the waste in such a way that any erosion will still disperse the waste evenly and at extremely low levels (which are going to be extremely low anyway after a few years.  Presumably by the time you pull the spent rods out of a pool, most of the nasty stuff has decayed).  If only coal ash were so simple.  I'd be surprised if dealing with PV manufacture and the eventual (every decade or so) replacement and (possible) recycling thereof was such a non-issue.  About the only [non made to fit an agenda] [other than esthetics, certainly a classic Holland windmill facade would be too expensive] issue for wind turbines is the [current] need for rare earth elements and the means to produce them.

Remember how we knew that "cold fusion" wasn't fusion?  Neutrons.  Those same neutrons are going to irradiate fusion plants something fierce, so expect a decommissioned fusion plant to have all the issues of a decommissioned fission plant (although more about anything near the plasma being radioactive than the spent fuel issues).

[cantab]

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Nuclear waste is an invented problem by the anti nuclear groups. 

It's not an invented problem, radioactive waste is challenging to handle and hazardous if dealt with improperly. But there's an excessive amount of paranoia about it. I think if it were considered more rationally, diluting the high level waste and spreading it in the ocean would be a reasonable way to go, done properly the effect would be insignificant compared to natural background radiation. As for "geological repositories" it seems like often the perfect is allowed to become the enemy of the good, countries being paralysed by fear of unlikely remote events, when the danger of having the stuff lying around at nuclear plants in a concentrated form vulnerable to malicious or accidental release is much greater.

[Elthy]

6 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Nuclear waste is an invented problem by the anti nuclear groups. 
Compare how easy its to store toxic heavy metals like quicksilver who will never break down, but will be around forever. 

There is a huge, huge difference! Any dangerous chemical can simply be reacted till its almost inert, while radioactive waste is dangerous in which ever form it is.

Also i think you underestimate the dangers of radioactive waste, you seem to confuse the different levels of waste. There is low radioactive waste (like e.g. gloves from a nuclear power plant) and there is spent fuel cells, which are so radioactive that they can kill you without having to touch you. You dont want this stuff to enter the ecosystem in literaly millenias, which is a big technical challenge. Its not unsolvable, but dont expect this to be cheap:

The german goverment estimated the costs for a permanent storage solution to be around 50-70 billion Euros (and thats from an nuclear friendly government), estimates by other groups are even higher. Our government made a deal with the power companys operating the powerplants, they paid 23 billion € and the government promised to pay the additional costs. Everyone knows it will be more expensive, but there isnt much to get from the power companys since they are collapsing after they oversaw the rise of renewables.

[HebaruSan]

Uranium and its byproducts are so powerful and useful; why waste them here on Earth? We're already 8 light minutes away from a gigantic fusion reactor that distributes its copious output in all directions for free, inviting us to collect as much of it as we need. But if we want to operate anything out past Jupiter, we're going to need those denser energy sources.

[Sereneti]

The Solar-array are a good idea.
But what about the industry that needs a huge amount of Energy.
ore more worse, coal as reagent, like the steel/aluminium produktion?

To extract that from the air, you have to use a lot more energy.

or Aircrafts.
they need a lot of energy (a turbine from a aircraft, i think, was about 3,6MW of Power). too much to carry about by Batteries.
you have to use fuel (syntetic, renewable or fosil) -> if you want to syntetisice that , you need a huge amount of power.

A fusion reactor are good.
One fusion reactor produce a lot of energy, at a single point -> you can add there a lot of massive power-consuming industry.

So you dont have to transport the energy over a huge distance.
Solar-power are good enough for the private-buildings like houses, and so on.

[magnemoe]

12 hours ago, Elthy said:

There is a huge, huge difference! Any dangerous chemical can simply be reacted till its almost inert, while radioactive waste is dangerous in which ever form it is.

Also i think you underestimate the dangers of radioactive waste, you seem to confuse the different levels of waste. There is low radioactive waste (like e.g. gloves from a nuclear power plant) and there is spent fuel cells, which are so radioactive that they can kill you without having to touch you. You dont want this stuff to enter the ecosystem in literaly millenias, which is a big technical challenge. Its not unsolvable, but dont expect this to be cheap:

The german goverment estimated the costs for a permanent storage solution to be around 50-70 billion Euros (and thats from an nuclear friendly government), estimates by other groups are even higher. Our government made a deal with the power companys operating the powerplants, they paid 23 billion € and the government promised to pay the additional costs. Everyone knows it will be more expensive, but there isnt much to get from the power companys since they are collapsing after they oversaw the rise of renewables.

Its high radioactive reactor waste I talk about, I know neutron radiation will cause problem for the casing and that gamma radiation make it dangerous outside it. 
I also aware that it would be dangerous for thousands of years. 
Keeping things safe for some thousand years is pretty simple in an dry climate, in an humid one its harder, cold would work too if stable. 
Mercury is still an poison after a billion years. 

The problem with the final storage plans is that they has unrealistic requirements: be safe for millions of years, be verified safe during an alien invasion or the coming of Christ and not in my backyard. 
I'm happy with something who is some magnitudes better than current solution. 




 

[Elthy]

2 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Keeping things safe for some thousand years is pretty simple in an dry climate, in an humid one its harder, cold would work too if stable. 

Such enviroments arent as stable as it seems, even the Sahara was a wet climate area a few thousand years ago. With the incomming climatic change its impossible to predict the conditions in a few thousand years.

Burying the waste is also not as easy as it seems, the german "Asse" was such a try for a long lasting solution. It didnt last a few decades, and now the taxpayer has to get the stuff out of there before it contaminates the groundwater. It will cost a few billions if its technicaly possible at all (has to be done by robots since so radioactive).

Those storys are what made the german public to angry about nuclear power, not some irrational fear about green glowing children...

[magnemoe]

1 minute ago, Elthy said:

Such enviroments arent as stable as it seems, even the Sahara was a wet climate area a few thousand years ago. With the incomming climatic change its impossible to predict the conditions in a few thousand years.

Burying the waste is also not as easy as it seems, the german "Asse" was such a try for a long lasting solution. It didnt last a few decades, and now the taxpayer has to get the stuff out of there before it contaminates the groundwater. It will cost a few billions if its technicaly possible at all (has to be done by robots since so radioactive).

Those storys are what made the german public to angry about nuclear power, not some irrational fear about green glowing children...

Sahara was savanna some thousand years ago, still dry enough for little corrosion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine
And yes that was an bad one, mines tend to fill with water, salt is not very stable if its lots of holes in it. 
Drums should be in the same condition as then stored unless they was total idiots. 
an horizontal tunnel into rock would be better 

[Kerbart]

"technology X cannot be used for the world's energy needs, there's all these technological problems that make it unfeasible for large scale. Use technology Y instead. Sure there are problems but we can solve these over time.”

Y’all need to step up your game a bit, yo. The reasoning has as many leaks as a basket. Any technology can be improved, the biggest problem is that people think there is only ONE solution.

Tesla's showing how there's a place for solar cells. If they look like regular roof tiles in any form or shape then there's no reason why it shouldn't provide for a good chunk of our energy needs.

Obviously wind power has it's issues but it hard to beat it's density as a renewable source. So there's going to be room for that.

To be honest, fission is the most uncertain. It's not that it cannot be done safe, if that by nature (it's costly, so you need big plants to be cost effective) when things go bad they go really bad. And the nuclear industry has proven time and time again that they shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to dealing with that, making it nearly impossible to gain trust of the general population. There will always be a major problem, and as long as it continues to be downplayed at first and “nothing happened, the system worked” is always preceding a major disaster, then you cannot blame the public for distrusting “it's perfectly safe, nothing will happen.” That's not to start a discussion about nuclear safety here, it's just that the nuclear industry has serious trust issues with the general populace that will be very hard to overcome.

Eventually we'll figure out fusion. We have to. And by then we're so good at solar power and wind energy (and tidal energy and other renewables) that it will supplement it, not replace it.

[Elthy]

Yeah, nuclear power doesnt look bad on paper, but together with human errors it becomes a dangerous technology. Look e.g. a france, where lots of pressure vessels were build of bad steel (and a nuclear pressure vessel is propably the last part in the world where you would want suboptimal steel). Avoiding stuff like that with lots of controlls is realy costly.

You dont ave such risks with e.g. wind power plants, the worst that could happen is one of them falling over, and since they are build in remote areas you would have to be realy unlucky to stand below it at that time.

[78stonewobble]

On ‎18‎-‎11‎-‎2016 at 2:32 PM, Elthy said:

Yeah, nuclear power doesnt look bad on paper, but together with human errors it becomes a dangerous technology. Look e.g. a france, where lots of pressure vessels were build of bad steel (and a nuclear pressure vessel is propably the last part in the world where you would want suboptimal steel). Avoiding stuff like that with lots of controlls is realy costly.

You dont ave such risks with e.g. wind power plants, the worst that could happen is one of them falling over, and since they are build in remote areas you would have to be realy unlucky to stand below it at that time.

Actually... Combining with the same human error factor and people fall off windmills and the wings do fall of windmills. Which is why windmills kill people at a rate higher than nuclear power.

And it's gonna be alot of people and enviromental damage, from production and maintenance (which also has hazards for humans and the enviroment) of windmills, if we are gonna scale windmills up to supply the entire planet with windpower. Add to that, the requirements for energy storage.

...

The alternative to nuclear power and associated risks, isn't just powering the world with solar plus wind plus storage (which, again, has their own giant human and enviromental consequences)... The other alternative is doing token efforts with solar and wind, while we are still using coal, gas and oil...

The UN estimated at some point that global warming is gonna cost 5,000,000 lives a year, through indirect consequences, from 2025-2050, or 125,000,000 lives total. For comparison, a high estimate for the deaths associated with Chernobyl are 5,000... In other words... We would need 25,000 Chernobyl sized meltdowns over 25 years for nuclear power to be as bad as what we've been doing sofar.