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Registered Member #1792
Joined: Fri Oct 31 2008, 08:12PM
Location: University of California
Posts: 527
Solar thermal looks attractive to me because of the potential for built-in energy storage, which can provide power during a couple of cloudy days.
I recall reading that pumping water up hydroelectric dams is currently the most widely used grid-scale energy storage solution. It works well, but there are still problems transporting energy long distances to and from hydro plants, and the land used by the dam.
Registered Member #152
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384
"Finally, the breeder reactor can employ not only the recycled plutonium and uranium in spent fuel, but all the actinides, closing the nuclear fuel cycle and potentially multiplying the energy extracted from natural uranium by more than 60 times."
Registered Member #3414
Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245
Bjørn wrote ...
Solar power won't work everywhere, and doesn't work anywhere at night.
Here is a picture of the midnight sun to obliterate the rest of your argument.
Isn't it dark for months at a time in Hyperborea?
You'll need some pretty big batteries to keep you warm during the 'Polar night'.
Bjørn wrote ...
Seeing that the worlds combined supply of experts are unable to figure out what a nuclear reactor would do when external power is cut off I have absolutely zero confidence in any claims from that camp.
A fusion plant will shut down immediately if external power is cut off. That is one of the main advantages over fission. The other is the lack of long term radioactive waste, although there will obviously be some 'irradiated' components to dispose of upon de-commissioning..
Registered Member #2901
Joined: Thu Jun 03 2010, 01:25PM
Location:
Posts: 837
wrote ...
I am fairly sure it ultimately will come down to solar power, but I am not convinced exactly what type. I work making triple junction solar cells, so I really hope that concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) wins out.
The concentrators use too much material per m2 ... maybe if they succeed in making the concentrators with thin DOEs.
Registered Member #996
Joined: Sun Sept 09 2007, 06:17PM
Location: Canada
Posts: 16
Just to offer another viewpoint, the stability of our current AC transmission system is proportional to the amount of energy stored in the inertia of rotating synchronous machines. Adding more renewable energy without ensuring there are enough spinning reserves to absorb system disturbances from faults, large loads coming online, etc. will lead to greater frequency instability.
Registered Member #96
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062
Actually according to some literature shutting down a fusion plant without first ramping down the magnets or losing cryogenic flow could result in serious damage to the magnets from an uncontrolled quench. Its not like turning off a light bulb, that mega-amp supercurrent has to go somewhere which CERN discovered the hard way.
The plasma itself should just dissipate on the walls which would probably do some damage but nowhere near as much as the magnets quenching.
Registered Member #1221
Joined: Wed Jan 09 2008, 06:17PM
Location: Odense, Denmark
Posts: 196
If the powers shut off, the magnet will possibly be damage indeed, I think the superconducting magnets in some hospital scanners are only shut off for maintance because of the 'difficulties' involved in properly quencing superconducting magnets. However this is really a minor problem compared to what we have seen of fission accidents.
The main advantage is that the fusion process will stop more or less instantly, unlike a fission process.
I guess one could say that a fusion process requires heating whereas a fission process requires cooling. Obivously this is an advantage because if the heating stops(power failure), so does the fusion. We all know what happens if the cooling stops in a fission process.
Registered Member #27
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058
Isn't it dark for months at a time in Hyperborea? You'll need some pretty big batteries to keep you warm during the 'Polar night'.
So your argument is really that it does not work when it does not work. The same applies for fusion reactors too, you need backup for when they fail too. They also have the disadvantage that they don't exist and most likely will not until all of us have been dead a long time.
A fusion plant will shut down immediately if external power is cut off. That is one of the main advantages over fission. The other is the lack of long term radioactive waste, although there will obviously be some 'irradiated' components to dispose of upon de-commissioning..
On paper, yes, but that is only valid for an imaginary design that does not exist. Someone will surely find a way to make it cheaper and quite unsafe by injecting plutonium or something worse into it.
Registered Member #1221
Joined: Wed Jan 09 2008, 06:17PM
Location: Odense, Denmark
Posts: 196
The same applies for fusion reactors too, you need backup for when they fail too. They also have the disadvantage that they don't exist and most likely will not until all of us have been dead a long time.
Fusion reactors exist, they just havent managed to produce more electricity than what is put into them. There is JET in England for example or KSTAR in South Korea, there is various reactors in the US and at least one in Germany too. I think they make excellet opertunities for people studying plasma physics.
Someone will surely find a way to make it cheaper and quite unsafe by injecting plutonium or something worse into it.
Why not say the same about solar cells then, maybe they would become cheaper too if there was "injected" plutonium into them too... really you could ruin just about everything by injecting plutonium into it. Maybe even make windmills out of plutonium? If you are paraniod anything is possiable.
Technicly speaking I think injecting plutonium or anything other than 'fuel' into a fusion reactor would cool the plasma down and potentially even stop the fusion reaction. From what I have read they seem to be taking serious actions to limit the amount of impurities in the plasma because such impurites would cool the plasma. So it probably wouldnt even make it cheaper. It would sabotage the whole reactor.
Registered Member #2901
Joined: Thu Jun 03 2010, 01:25PM
Location:
Posts: 837
Fusion creates lots of neutrons (ignoring moon mined fusion fuel) so it has been suggested that it would make sense to breed fission fuel with fusion reactors.
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