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And just like nuclear - we will be stuck with tons of radioactive waste. Ah progress.
Instead of putting Trillions of wasted dollars in the DOD/Pentagon budget, why not siphon off around $20 Billion per year for 10 years and have a breakout in Fusion research?
this was already discussed, they do in smaller amounts. try and keep up.Do your homework before making ignorant comments. Fusion doesn't generate nuclear waste.
And just like nuclear - we will be stuck with tons of radioactive waste. Ah progress.
that is assuming a perfect reaction with no by products. that is not the case in man made fusion reactors. i have already agreed that the radioactive material byproducts will be less and yes above I already stated a 50 year half life.
Fusion waste will be insignificant regardless of which method is used.. but as I mentioned earlier it will exist. It doesn't matter one whit if you have a perfectly clean reaction because just as with a nuclear bomb the source material is not the main radioactive element after detonation..... ignorant much?
There is no radioactive waste. The byproducts are Helium and energy
1D2 + 1T3 --> 2He4 + 0n1 + 17.6 MeV
He4 is stable every day helium
The radioactive isotope involved in the process is the fuel tritium. So little would be stored at one time that even if it all released into the air it wouldn't be a problem
Now if you are talking about the core (which is a one-time 'waste') it's small being highly radioactive for about 50 years then low level for another 50 compared to 1000s of years for fission
Look - a Neutron is expelled by the reaction.
D + T -> n (14.1 MeV) + He4 (3.5 MeV).
He4 is nothing to worry about. Notice the Neutrons @ 14.1 MeV. Whatever this Neutron hits will become irradiated. The DT Plasma is created. In that DT plasma, D + D reactions create two things -
1 ) p + T
2) n + He3
T is radioactive.
And just like nuclear - we will be stuck with tons of radioactive waste. Ah progress.
As a last note. Modern nuclear plants are cheap. Dirt cheap. The myth that nuclear power is expensive really needs to end.
The problem though is the radioactive material to worry about isnt the tritium its the actual reactor itself due to bombardment of neutrons from the D-T reactions.Far, FAR less waste than fission. Less dangerous radiation than the tailings from a coal plant, or phosphate mine, or even being in a concrete building, if it's deuterium and tritium powered.
Neither is energetic enough to penetrate even skin, inhalation is the only way to get close to dangerous exposure, and even that is relatively hard to do, since they're far lighter than air (they're just pimped-out hydrogen) and will dissipate quickly if released.
And they're very short-lived radioactive elements. Deuterium and tritium have half-lives of a bit over 12 years, while the uranium waste produced by most fission reactors has a half life of 160 THOUSAND years...
Tritium is so benign we use it to make watch dials glow.
The problem though is the radioactive material to worry about isnt the tritium its the actual reactor itself due to bombardment of neutrons from the D-T reactions.
While the half life of said radioactive waste can be considerably less than that of a fission plant it still is radioactive waste that needs to be dealt with at the end of life of the plant. Lastly the waste amounts are largely theoretical as we dont have a multi gigawatt fusion plant worth of output to actually see what the results are
At these rates, fusion will beat solar/battery infrastructure by a century.
Incorrect. Solar and Wind are both exponential technologies (as are batteries). "Century" for linear products. "Decade" for exponential. More than likely solar/wind + batteries is cheaper than any fussion ever will be even today. Fussion will be the best option for massively dense population centers like NYC, anywhere outside of major cities it will be wind/solar + batteries
The problem though is the radioactive material to worry about isnt the tritium its the actual reactor itself due to bombardment of neutrons from the D-T reactions.
While the half life of said radioactive waste can be considerably less than that of a fission plant it still is radioactive waste that needs to be dealt with at the end of life of the plant. Lastly the waste amounts are largely theoretical as we dont have a multi gigawatt fusion plant worth of output to actually see what the results are
.... ignorant much?
There is no radioactive waste. The byproducts are Helium and energy
1D2 + 1T3 --> 2He4 + 0n1 + 17.6 MeV
He4 is stable every day helium
The radioactive isotope involved in the process is the fuel tritium. So little would be stored at an one time that even if it all released into the air it wouldnt be a problem
Now if you are talking about the core (which is a one time 'waste') it's small being highly radioactive for about 50 years then low level for another 50 compared to 1000s of years for fission
no you didn't ... The 1st fission reactor was created in WW2 to create the needed Uranium for the nuclear bombs. Power stations using nuclear fission have been on the grids in multiple countries since the 1950'sBack in the early 90's I was reading that Fission powered reactors were 10-20 years away at most...
That is not the only source... one of the byproducts of the fusion process is neutrons (this is what then irradiates the installation causing decommission concerns). Lithium-6 when bombarded with neutrons will create titrium. That is why lithium is one of the additional fuels for fusion reactors (something we don't have much of )Where do get fuel for Tritium for Fussion Reactors? From Nuclear Fission Reactors - that's where.
While the Fusion radioactivity on a per-kilogram basis is smaller than Fission - the volume and mass of "Fusion Activated Materials" can exceed the former.
Where do get fuel for Tritium for Fussion Reactors? From Nuclear Fission Reactors - that's where.
--- Energy.. both mental and physical. Its required to produce anything. 40 years ago we did not have the practical or material sciences in place to actually make the theory work beyond brief moments. Today we have computers of vastly more complexity that let us progress much more rapidly. Why? Well, simulations let us entirely skip whole sections of prototyping. As computers advance and our knowledge of material sciences(so we can program a proper simulation), all things fusion will advance as well.So, my questions are...
Have we successfully had a fusion reactor produce more energy than it took to cause the reaction? If we can't reliably do this, all of this is nothing more than an interesting lab exercise.
---In short term scales Yes. In practical application. No. The problem is more maintaining the reaction.
If we can generate more energy than it takes to kick things off, is it something we can actually utilize? I honestly don't know what methods would be used to create electricity from a fusion reaction. I would guess it would be used to create steam to turn a turbine since that's what fission reactions are used for, and coal and oil plants do the same. Does having a greater heat source for generating steam really translate into more usable energy or is there a point where a portion of the heat energy created is so much overkill for the process that it's just wasted?
--- Steam. It is immaterial how this is created. We can utilize most of it quite simply. Cases, where "more" steam is created in a shorter time period, are simply processed differently. Remember the steam loop is entirely independent of a fusion reaction. We can build that loop to spec which in general means a high level of efficiency and capture.
How close are we to maintaining plasma containment for practical periods of time? I thought the longest sustained containment, with or without actual fusion, has been 101.2 seconds.
--- This is a fun one just because its a simple yet complex answer. In short, we don't know. Nuclear reactions are quirky and require timing that can sometimes drop into the picosecond range for precision. Right now getting the reaction to start consistently and in a predictable way is what is generally being looked at. After that, you can move on to keeping that reaction stable longer and longer. In practical reality, you do both of these things at the same time. When one of the teams makes a breakthrough it will be sudden from the public perspective.
Color me skeptical, but after hearing about fusion being just around the corner for the past 40 years, this seems to be a similar claim. Given that the current record for fusion power generation was made over 20 years ago and we still are no closer to any sort of practical application.....
Engineering is all about failing until you don't. We can just perform more fails per second today than we could then. Hence progress!
Will people actually allow it without simply freaking out about it being another form of "nuclear" power?
The problem with "long term" plans is the assumption that they're financially sustainable. So big corporation (only ones who can afford this) builds a nuclear reactor, they are charged 0.2 cents per MWh of energy produced by NRC to pay for the dealing with the end of life of the reactor. Company says "fuck yeah" passes that cost onto all consumers, and at the end of the 40 year life span of the reactor the company simply walks away and the NRC deals with the cleanup/storage of all radioactive stuff. Sounds great in theory, except that rate that's charged might not pay for the actual cleanup because 40 years later the cost cleanup/storage is exponentially higher. There simply is no mechanism in place to go after more money from the company who raked in all the cash from the reactor.Any design that would go into long term operation would build in plans to remove a specific amount of waste.
I don't understand. Why are we in a big hurry to research fusion reactors? We already have a monster fusion reactor powering the solar system, and so far it's been pretty dependable and hasn't killed us. Rather than designing a new fusion reactor, why don't we continue to improve our ability to make use of the one we have? You know, the one we don't need to mine fuel for, the one we don't need to clean, the one that doesn't have waste products or downtime.
P.S. We hope it doesn't have down time.
Many places, I would suspect, have zero coincident peak in the winter. Winter peaking utility (as many are) would be screwed. Short story: you still need 100% backup power. That's where the cost is at.Good reason for some locations to look for alternative Fusion sources right here: https://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/1961-1990/redbook/atlas/serve.cgi
Some parts of the US in winter can have basically 0 solar production for weeks at a time.