UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

[bripat9643]

How much do you want to bet that the eco-wackos will also object to cheap, clean fusion power?http://phys.org/news/2014-10-uw-fusion-reactor-concept-cheaper.html

http://phys.org/news/2014-10-uw-fusion-reactor-concept-cheaper.html
UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven't penciled out. Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.

The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.

"Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current concept," said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics.

. . . . . . . . .

The UW researchers factored the cost of building a fusion reactor power plant using their design and compared that with building a coal power plant. They used a metric called "overnight capital costs," which includes all costs, particularly startup infrastructure fees. A fusion power plant producing 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2.7 billion, while a coal plant of the same output would cost $2.8 billion, according to their analysis.

"If we do invest in this type of fusion, we could be rewarded because the commercial reactor unit already looks economical," Sutherland said. "It's very exciting." ​

 

[Saigon]

Fusion is, like nuclear, potentially a wonderful clean, green form of energy production.

The key word here is safety, and I think we are some years away from harnessing safe fusion energy.

 

[TheOldSchool]

How much do you want to bet that the eco-wackos will also object to cheap, clean fusion power?

UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven't penciled out. Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.

The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.

"Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current concept," said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics.

. . . . . . . . .

The UW researchers factored the cost of building a fusion reactor power plant using their design and compared that with building a coal power plant. They used a metric called "overnight capital costs," which includes all costs, particularly startup infrastructure fees. A fusion power plant producing 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2.7 billion, while a coal plant of the same output would cost $2.8 billion, according to their analysis.

"If we do invest in this type of fusion, we could be rewarded because the commercial reactor unit already looks economical," Sutherland said. "It's very exciting." ​

Are you trying to destroy the coal industry???? FUCK YOU HIPPIE!!!!!!!!!!

 

[bripat9643]

Fusion is, like nuclear, potentially a wonderful clean, green form of energy production.

The key word here is safety, and I think we are some years away from harnessing safe fusion energy.

You obviously don't know jack shit about fusion. Safety isn't an issue whatsoever with fusion. The fuel is various forms of Hydrogen, all of which are completely safe. There are no fissionable byproducts. The issue is getting it to work.

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

Think coal.

 

[Saigon]

Fusion is, like nuclear, potentially a wonderful clean, green form of energy production.

The key word here is safety, and I think we are some years away from harnessing safe fusion energy.

You obviously don't know jack shit about fusion. Safety isn't an issue whatsoever with fusion. The fuel is various forms of Hydrogen, all of which are completely safe. There are no fissionable byproducts. The issue is getting it to work.

I don't know a great deal about fusion, but I understand enough to know - as with any form of energy production - safety IS a factor.

"In the magnetic approach, strong fields are developed in coils that are held in place mechanically by the reactor structure. Failure of this structure could release this tension and allow the magnet to "explode" outward. The severity of this event would be similar to any other industrial accident or an MRI machine quench/explosion, and could be effectively stopped with a containment building similar to those used in existing (fission) nuclear generators. The laser-driven inertial approach is generally lower-stress. Although failure of the reaction chamber is possible, simply stopping fuel delivery would prevent any sort of catastrophic failure.

"Most reactor designs rely on the use of liquid lithium as both a coolant and a method for converting stray neutrons from the reaction into tritium, which is fed back into the reactor as fuel. Lithium is highly flammable, and in the case of a fire it is possible that the lithium stored on-site could be burned up and escape. In this case the tritium contents of the lithium would be released into the atmosphere, posing a radiation risk. However, calculations suggest that at about 1 kg the total amount of tritium and other radioactive gases in a typical power plant would be so small that they would have diluted to legally acceptable limits by the time they blew as far as the plant's perimeter fence.[135]

"The likelihood of small industrial accidents including the local release of radioactivity and injury to staff cannot be estimated yet. These would include accidental releases of lithium, tritium, or mis-handling of decommissioned radioactive components of the reactor itself.

Fusion power - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[Two Thumbs]

Fusion is, like nuclear, potentially a wonderful clean, green form of energy production.

The key word here is safety, and I think we are some years away from harnessing safe fusion energy.

You obviously don't know jack shit about fusion. Safety isn't an issue whatsoever with fusion. The fuel is various forms of Hydrogen, all of which are completely safe. There are no fissionable byproducts. The issue is getting it to work.

don't they use hydrogen to make hydrogen bombs?

why do you hate the planet?





sorry, just getting the jump on the leftist

 

[candycorn]

Liberals need to embrace atomic power. It's clearly the most reliable source going forward. We've had nuke ships in our Navy for 40+ years now and their safety record in harsh environments is staggeringly good.

I'm all for more nuke energy. I would strongly prefer that we use our heads and no rely on the lowest bidder to do the job....it's a recipe for actual disaster since the private sector will always cut corners to maximize shareholder return.

I say, let the Navy run them. They've proven they can, there is no profit motive to cut corners. There usually is no nepotism where unqualified get promoted because they know someone. There is little careerism to the job for most of the sailors.

 

[Saigon]

I think everyone should embrace nuclear power - Greens, Liberals, Conservatives alike.

It amazes me that we see dinosaurs promoting coal over nuclear, purely and simply our of political spite.

 

[Old Rocks]

I was around before they had commercial nuclear power. I remember the selling points. Absolutely fail safe. Electricity so cheap it would not be metered. And plentiful power. Only the last turned out to be true. Nuclear is very expensive power. And it is a point source, easily shut down either at the point of generation, or somewhere in the transmission. The alternatives are less costly, and closer to the places where the electricity is used. Nuclear has a place in the mix, but it is not viable as the sole source of our power.

 

[Freewill]

Fusion is, like nuclear, potentially a wonderful clean, green form of energy production.

The key word here is safety, and I think we are some years away from harnessing safe fusion energy.

Saying that nuclear power is clean is a little naïve in my opinion. Nuclear stations release radioactive isotopes into the air and water as part of production. The spent fuel is the most toxic substance on Earth. The subject of nuclear waste is one of the first things I thought Obama wrong on. He folded to Harry Reid's pressure and closed Yucca Mountain wasting billions of US dollars. He said there were alternatives but none of those materialized as with a lot of what Obama says. So now the most toxic of substances is piling up on nuclear sites some within close proximity of urban areas. It is stupid and it is dangerous. Just a accident waiting to happen, and it will.

I just hope if they develop fusion that any risk is definitely taken into consideration before hand.

 

[Saigon]

Freewill -

I totally agree that it is clean within inverted commas, so to speak. The waste is obviously not clean, but in my opinion nuclear stations now produce so little waste per Mw as to be considered in an entirely new light from the older stations.

One interesting point I heard the other day - apparently coal stations release more radioactivity than nuclear stations do.

 

[konradv]

How much do you want to bet that the eco-wackos will also object to cheap, clean fusion power?

UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven't penciled out. Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.

The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.

"Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current concept," said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics.

. . . . . . . . .

The UW researchers factored the cost of building a fusion reactor power plant using their design and compared that with building a coal power plant. They used a metric called "overnight capital costs," which includes all costs, particularly startup infrastructure fees. A fusion power plant producing 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2.7 billion, while a coal plant of the same output would cost $2.8 billion, according to their analysis.

"If we do invest in this type of fusion, we could be rewarded because the commercial reactor unit already looks economical," Sutherland said. "It's very exciting." ​

You're kind of late to the party. Fusion power has been touted for decades as clean, nearly limitless and a source of hydrogen for other uses. Leave it to you to act like it's something you just discovered and use it to bash people you don't like.

ITER - the way to new energy

 

[Freewill]

I was around before they had commercial nuclear power. I remember the selling points. Absolutely fail safe. Electricity so cheap it would not be metered. And plentiful power. Only the last turned out to be true. Nuclear is very expensive power. And it is a point source, easily shut down either at the point of generation, or somewhere in the transmission. The alternatives are less costly, and closer to the places where the electricity is used. Nuclear has a place in the mix, but it is not viable as the sole source of our power.

I worked at the first commercial nuclear station so I know what you say is true. The thing that killed nuclear was Three Mile Island. It stopped new construction and cost the utilities, consumers, a boat load of money. After TM the cost of nuclear went through the roof.

As for cost you are correct:

Table 8.4. Average Power Plant Operating Expenses for Major U.S. Investor-Owned Electric Utilities, 2002 through 2012 (Mills per Kilowatthour)

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Operation	Maintenance
Year	Nuclear	Fossil Steam	Hydro-electric	Gas Turbine and Small Scale	Nuclear	Fossil Steam	Hydro-electric	Gas Turbine and Small Scale
2002	9.00	2.59	3.71	3.26	5.04	2.67	2.62	2.38
2003	9.12	2.74	3.47	3.50	5.23	2.72	2.32	2.26
2004	8.97	3.13	3.83	4.27	5.38	2.96	2.76	2.14
2005	8.26	3.21	3.95	3.69	5.27	2.98	2.73	1.89
2006	9.03	3.57	3.76	3.51	5.69	3.19	2.70	2.16
2007	9.54	3.63	5.44	3.26	5.79	3.37	3.87	2.42
2008	9.89	3.72	5.78	3.77	6.20	3.59	3.89	2.72
2009	10.00	4.23	4.88	3.05	6.34	3.96	3.50	2.58
2010	10.50	4.04	5.33	2.79	6.80	3.99	3.81	2.73
2011	10.89	4.02	5.13	2.81	6.80	3.99	3.74	2.93
2012	11.60	3.73	6.71	2.46	6.80	3.99	4.63	2.76

[THEAD] [/THEAD]
[TBODY] [/TBODY]

SAS Output

Not sure about your "point source" comment. Close to where I live there is a nuclear station and a coal station right next to each other. They would both be "point sources." Never the less both could be shut down at the source regardless of location.

As for reliability, doing a google I came up with these numbers from a UK site:

wind farms have an assumed availability at peak of 10%
Solar power is an intermittent energy source.
hydroelectric power stations have an assumed availability at peak of 60%.
nuclear power stations have an assumed availability at peak of 75%.
gas-fired power stations have an assumed availability at peak of 90%
coal-fired power stations have an assumed availability at peak of 90%.
oil-fired power stations have an assumed availability at peak of 80%.

So it seems that one of the cheapest most reliable sources is what we are shutting down. Nuclear is good and reliable with an output that is very predictable. One of the major metrics in measuring nuclear performance is on line time. Which really is the only way nuclear is viable. Short outages and nice long on line times.

 

[2aguy]

I think everyone should embrace nuclear power - Greens, Liberals, Conservatives alike.
It amazes me that we see dinosaurs promoting coal over nuclear, purely and simply our of political spite.

They aren't promoting coal over nuclear over political spite...we promote coal because the left in this country has successfully stopped the creation of nuclear power plants...conservatives don't care where energy comes from...we have no emotional ties to energy sources...we want safe, clean energy that is cheap...and it doesn't matter where it comes from...if you can make solar and wind as efficient and reliable and as cheap and as land efficient as coal, oil and natural gas...fine...I don't care...but tell me I have to accept solar and wind even though it is currently less efficient, less reliable, more costly and less land efficient...simply because green energy makes lefties happy...sorry, not going to go along with that...

If you can create fusion energy that is safe, cheap and plentiful I will make a prediction...the left will go nuts...at the core of leftism is the idea that the world is over populated...and cheap, safe, clean, plentiful energy will mean more people will be able to make more people...which the left hates...

Just wait...the left doesn't want more energy or more people...they want less of both...

 

[Delta4Embassy]

How much do you want to bet that the eco-wackos will also object to cheap, clean fusion power?http://phys.org/news/2014-10-uw-fusion-reactor-concept-cheaper.html

http://phys.org/news/2014-10-uw-fusion-reactor-concept-cheaper.html
UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven't penciled out. Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.

The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.

"Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current concept," said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics.

. . . . . . . . .

The UW researchers factored the cost of building a fusion reactor power plant using their design and compared that with building a coal power plant. They used a metric called "overnight capital costs," which includes all costs, particularly startup infrastructure fees. A fusion power plant producing 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2.7 billion, while a coal plant of the same output would cost $2.8 billion, according to their analysis.

"If we do invest in this type of fusion, we could be rewarded because the commercial reactor unit already looks economical," Sutherland said. "It's very exciting." ​

Fusion reactors are the only viable future energy source. And they're already a reality. They're just being made more efficient and thus cheaper.

 

[Freewill]

Freewill -

I totally agree that it is clean within inverted commas, so to speak. The waste is obviously not clean, but in my opinion nuclear stations now produce so little waste per Mw as to be considered in an entirely new light from the older stations.

One interesting point I heard the other day - apparently coal stations release more radioactivity than nuclear stations do.

Yep, coal is somewhat radioactive. But radioactivity is all around us. Did you ever use a Colman type lantern? The "bags" used in the light were very radioactive with the kind of contamination you just don't really want to come in contact with.

So the point is that there are risks to everything. I guess we just need to weigh the best, least, risks to society. But if a disaster, man made or natural, strikes one of the spent fuel storage locations, nuclear is done, in my opinion. Right now lots of spent fuel is being stored in 40 feet of water in more or less tin buildings.

 

[Freewill]

Liberals need to embrace atomic power. It's clearly the most reliable source going forward. We've had nuke ships in our Navy for 40+ years now and their safety record in harsh environments is staggeringly good.

I'm all for more nuke energy. I would strongly prefer that we use our heads and no rely on the lowest bidder to do the job....it's a recipe for actual disaster since the private sector will always cut corners to maximize shareholder return.

I say, let the Navy run them. They've proven they can, there is no profit motive to cut corners. There usually is no nepotism where unqualified get promoted because they know someone. There is little careerism to the job for most of the sailors.

In the world cost is always a consideration. The nuclear navy have reactors that are much smaller then commercial. They are made very fool proof at a high cost. And a big majority of those working in commercial nuclear power are ex-navy nucs. Or were. Navy reactors when at sea see little fluctuation in power output. They don't really have to worry about an electric furnace tripping off line or all of Cleveland losing power. They basically just sit there at the same power output. And as far as I know NONE have ever been tested in battle. The Thresher being different and it went down because the reactor tripped off line and wasn't restarted.

Three Mile Island didn't happen because of design. What happened at David Bessie, which was close, very close, to being much worse then TM. Didn't happen because of design. TM was operator error, which the nuclear industry has learned a great deal and it should not happen again. DB on the other hand was caused by EXACTLY what you said. They fooled themselves into doing things that were just not right for the sake of staying on line and making money. There should have been jail time for a lot of those involved, but it came down to crucifying one engineer and pretty much ending the careers, in nuclear, of others.

So no, the government should not run anything, they should be in the oversight business. The DB incident showed that the NRC was ineffective in enforcement. Even at that the owners sued in court to stay running even when the NRC said they needed to shut down.

The Navy has built in oversight as does the commercial nuclear industry today. The government roll needs to be oversight not a divided interest in making the power they need to be completely divorced.

 

[bripat9643]

I was around before they had commercial nuclear power. I remember the selling points. Absolutely fail safe. Electricity so cheap it would not be metered. And plentiful power. Only the last turned out to be true. Nuclear is very expensive power. And it is a point source, easily shut down either at the point of generation, or somewhere in the transmission. The alternatives are less costly, and closer to the places where the electricity is used. Nuclear has a place in the mix, but it is not viable as the sole source of our power.

I worked at the first commercial nuclear station so I know what you say is true. The thing that killed nuclear was Three Mile Island. It stopped new construction and cost the utilities, consumers, a boat load of money. After TM the cost of nuclear went through the roof.

As for cost you are correct:

Table 8.4. Average Power Plant Operating Expenses for Major U.S. Investor-Owned Electric Utilities, 2002 through 2012 (Mills per Kilowatthour)

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Operation	Maintenance
Year	Nuclear	Fossil Steam	Hydro-electric	Gas Turbine and Small Scale	Nuclear	Fossil Steam	Hydro-electric	Gas Turbine and Small Scale
2002	9.00	2.59	3.71	3.26	5.04	2.67	2.62	2.38
2003	9.12	2.74	3.47	3.50	5.23	2.72	2.32	2.26
2004	8.97	3.13	3.83	4.27	5.38	2.96	2.76	2.14
2005	8.26	3.21	3.95	3.69	5.27	2.98	2.73	1.89
2006	9.03	3.57	3.76	3.51	5.69	3.19	2.70	2.16
2007	9.54	3.63	5.44	3.26	5.79	3.37	3.87	2.42
2008	9.89	3.72	5.78	3.77	6.20	3.59	3.89	2.72
2009	10.00	4.23	4.88	3.05	6.34	3.96	3.50	2.58
2010	10.50	4.04	5.33	2.79	6.80	3.99	3.81	2.73
2011	10.89	4.02	5.13	2.81	6.80	3.99	3.74	2.93
2012	11.60	3.73	6.71	2.46	6.80	3.99	4.63	2.76

[THEAD] [/THEAD]
[TBODY] [/TBODY]

SAS Output

Not sure about your "point source" comment. Close to where I live there is a nuclear station and a coal station right next to each other. They would both be "point sources." Never the less both could be shut down at the source regardless of location.

As for reliability, doing a google I came up with these numbers from a UK site:

wind farms have an assumed availability at peak of 10%
Solar power is an intermittent energy source.
hydroelectric power stations have an assumed availability at peak of 60%.
nuclear power stations have an assumed availability at peak of 75%.
gas-fired power stations have an assumed availability at peak of 90%
coal-fired power stations have an assumed availability at peak of 90%.
oil-fired power stations have an assumed availability at peak of 80%.

So it seems that one of the cheapest most reliable sources is what we are shutting down. Nuclear is good and reliable with an output that is very predictable. One of the major metrics in measuring nuclear performance is on line time. Which really is the only way nuclear is viable. Short outages and nice long on line times.

You expect us to accept an Obama managed source of information? The government is about as credible as Pravda was during the Soviet era.

 

[bripat9643]

How much do you want to bet that the eco-wackos will also object to cheap, clean fusion power?

UW fusion reactor concept could be cheaper than coal

Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven't penciled out. Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.

The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.

"Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current concept," said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics.

. . . . . . . . .

The UW researchers factored the cost of building a fusion reactor power plant using their design and compared that with building a coal power plant. They used a metric called "overnight capital costs," which includes all costs, particularly startup infrastructure fees. A fusion power plant producing 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2.7 billion, while a coal plant of the same output would cost $2.8 billion, according to their analysis.

"If we do invest in this type of fusion, we could be rewarded because the commercial reactor unit already looks economical," Sutherland said. "It's very exciting." ​

You're kind of late to the party. Fusion power has been touted for decades as clean, nearly limitless and a source of hydrogen for other uses. Leave it to you to act like it's something you just discovered and use it to bash people you don't like.

ITER - the way to new energy

What's new is the fact that this design appears to be commercially viable. Up to now all designs have consumed more power than they produced. Liberals haven't been confronted with the possibility of commercially viable fusion power until now. That's the only reason they haven't been complaining about it. The minute any corporation starts to build one, the usual culprits will appear to protest.

In short, you're an idiot who didn't get the point of the story.