ITER nuclear fusion for energy production

[Mayflow]

Have any of you looked into this? It looks very positive for the future! Much much safer than fission and more powerful too, I think.

 

https://www.iter.org

 

BTW, hi all, I just joined and this is my first post.

[mathematic]

The main problem with fusion energy is getting it to work on a practical scale. For the last fifty years it has always been twnety years off.

[ajb]

My farther worked at JET and it always seemed close, but never quite close enough for a working model of a power station. That said, JET was a huge success in teaching scientists & engineers how plasmas behave and this knowledge will be employed in ITER.

 

Hopefully ITER will be even more successful.

[Enthalpy]

There is no significant tritium in our surroundings. Breeding it in tokamaks, provided they can, would pollute as much as uranium reactors do.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/69318-is-fusion-power-the-way-forward/#entry704591

[Schneibster]

Enthalpy you're being a one-trick pony: no nukes. This despite the fact you don't seem to actually understand how they work (you claimed the TWR wouldn't work based on the opinion of a single nuclear engineer who has a financial stake in it not working, for example).

 

Do you believe you can stop the Chinese and Indians from building power plants? (BTW I should note than when I say, "Indians," I always mean people from India, never First Americans.)

 

If not, then why are you insisting they build out coal-fired ones instead of nuclear? Do you not "believe in" global warming?

Edited April 10, 2014 by Schneibster

[Lizzie L]

The main problem with fusion energy is getting it to work on a practical scale. For the last fifty years it has always been twnety years off.

 

When my husband started at medical school he had already done a PhD in plasma physics. At his med school interview, just as it was winding up, they said: "one more question: how far off is fusion energy?" Can't remember what his answer was but that was just over forty years ago!

[ajb]

There is no significant tritium in our surroundings. Breeding it in tokamaks, provided they can, would pollute as much as uranium reactors do.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/69318-is-fusion-power-the-way-forward/#entry704591

You are right, after some time the walls of the tomamaks will become dangerously radio active.

 

On the plus side, there is no chance of a nuclear meltdown like at Chernobyl. They can be turned off very quickly.

[Enthalpy]

It's not only the walls. Tritium regeneration itself would need to multiply the neutrons (on tritium fusion makes one neutron, one neutron is needed to convert a lithium into one tritium). The neutron multiplicator would let 14MeV neutrons hit a heavy atom like lead, and this makes radioactivity, including with medium life (I just checked by hand, software would find more nuclides).

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/82015-nuclear-fusion-when-do-we-get-the-energy-of-the-future/#entry794721

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/69318-is-fusion-power-the-way-forward/#entry704591

Enthalpy you're being a one-trick pony: no nukes. This despite the fact you don't seem to actually understand how they work (you claimed the TWR wouldn't work based on the opinion of a single nuclear engineer who has a financial stake in it not working, for example).

 

[...]

 

If not, then why are you insisting they build out coal-fired ones instead of nuclear? Do you not "believe in" global warming?

 

I understand better how reactors work than the crooks who proposed the travelling-wave reactor and wanted to ignite it with uranium instead of plutonium. I cited no opinion, because I make mine by myself.

 

I don't insist, and actually never suggested, to build coal-fired power plants. You do, as nuclear proponents who suggest it's the only choice. I don't.

 

I dislike your method of attributing me things I didn't write.

 

The alternative to both nuclear and carbon dioxide emissions is renewable energy, it works already, and wind electricity is already cheaper than nuclear one.

92.50£/MWh for nuclear energy http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Strike_price_deal_for_Hinkley_Point_C_2110131.html

82.00€/MWh for wind energy http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/Les-tarifs-d-achat-de-l,12195.html

nuclear electricity is unaffordable.

[BearOfNH]

[...]

92.50£/MWh for nuclear energy http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Strike_price_deal_for_Hinkley_Point_C_2110131.html

82.00€/MWh for wind energy http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/Les-tarifs-d-achat-de-l,12195.html

nuclear electricity is unaffordable.

The alternative to both nuclear and carbon dioxide emissions is renewable energy, it works already, and wind electricity is already cheaper than nuclear one.

 

Rather than "unaffordable" I would say "expensive". OTOH, nuclear is also more available so in a sense you're paying more for guaranteed access to power. Guaranteed that is, unless you're near 3-mile island USA, Chernobyl USSR or Fukushima Japan.

[Mordred]

both wind and solar power both have one significant problem, in that they require huge battery storage. Although technologies in such are improving both methods still have problem supplying enough electricity to meet peak hour demands. Even when both methods are used on the same grid

[Enthalpy]

The amount of uranium on Earth limits the producible electricity to much less than oil, gas or coal - sunlight and wind being limitess.

 

Geothermal energy needs no storage. Solar thermal energy stores heat for nighttime or bad weather since years. For wind electricity, batteries would be more or less affordable and for sure small, with a Japanese univerity developing sodium batteries instead of less abundent lithium. Though, I expect other methods will replace batteries with better efficiency and at lower cost: flywheels, underwater air bags, artificial ring islands.

http://www.energyharvestingjournal.com/articles/compressed-air-energy-storage-00003358.asp?sessionid=1

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/01/belgium-plans-to-build-island-to-store-excess-wind-energy

 

For my cost estimates, running fewer fossil fuel power plants at constant full power, helped by flywheels to smoothen the demand out, would already save money.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/59338-flywheels-store-electricity-cheap-enough/