General Fusion Power Discussion

I might be behind this but how fusion reactor can convert those potentially massive amount of energy it produces into something we can work with like electricity ?. Is it using yet another rankine cycle (steam turbine etc) or can we directly "farm" electricity from the reactor ?
 
stealthflanker said:
I might be behind this but how fusion reactor can convert those potentially massive amount of energy it produces into something we can work with like electricity ?. Is it using yet another rankine cycle (steam turbine etc) or can we directly "farm" electricity from the reactor ?
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Boil water.
 
Arjen said:

Magnetohydrodynamic generator - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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That would probably be more reliable. But...

"MHD generators have not been employed for large scale mass energy conversion because other techniques with comparable efficiency have a lower lifecycle investment cost. Advances in natural gas turbines achieved similar thermal efficiencies at lower costs, by having the turbine's exhaust drive a Rankine cycle steam plant. To get more electricity from coal, it is cheaper to simply add more low-temperature steam-generating capacity."
 
First get the fusion thing sorted, then, possibly, do MHD. If you *really* want to.
 
Arjen said:
First get the fusion thing sorted, then, possibly, do MHD. If you *really* want to.
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That would seem to be the logical final state. Anytime you can get away from moving parts it's a win.
 
IMHO, as it stands, the laser-pulse thing is just a 'better spark-plug / igniter' for a very different system.

Okay, sufficiently scaled, the pulse thing could become a stand-alone power system, akin to the mega-diesels that propel VLCCs, 13kTEU box-ships etc etc. But, unless they can get the laser system's 'footprint' down by a vast factor, they have a problem.....

Overall, the fusion field seems akin to the early days of 'steam', albeit a lot more civil. IIRC, those protagonists spent a lot of time, money and ingenuity trying to out-wit each other's essential patents. Okay, it drove design evolution, but thwarted 'combined' designs for many, many years...

IMHO, current roadblock is the sheer lead-time required to fund and craft the mega-tech required to escape power-law constraints.

Even the Chinese have apparently accepted the cruel reality that fusion scoffs at peroptimistic plans. IIRC, they reckoned they'd have fusion ready for when their 'Grand Aqueduct' schemes needed power for the mega-pumps. Now, looks like they'll be building linear solar / wind farms along the banks. Cheaper by the dozen, a boon to locals, but...

Upside, the sheer capacity of such mega-aqueducts makes them a good fit to weather-varying power delivery...
 
The NIF is a very different system to the reactor Lockheed's working on. If their project is still active, that is. I haven't heard anything from them since 2017.
 
From May of last year:
A German start-up has secured initial funding to develop a revolutionary fusion energy machine that it hopes can provide a future source of abundant, emissions-free power.

Proxima Fusion, incorporated in January, aims to build a complex device known as a stellarator and is the latest company to join the emerging fusion industry’s effort to generate electricity by fusing atoms.

Although the amount of funding is small at only €7mn, it is significant as Proxima is the first fusion company to spin out of Germany’s revered Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics.

The institute is the home of the world’s most advanced existing stellarator in Greifswald, in eastern Germany, built by government-funded scientists over the past 27 years using supercomputers and advanced engineering.

Little known outside the world of plasma physics, a stellarator is an alternative to the better known tokamak device, pioneered by Soviet scientists in the 1950s.

Both use huge magnets to suspend a floating mass of hydrogen plasma as it is heated to extreme temperatures so the atomic nuclei fuse releasing energy.
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The stellarator was conceived by the American physicist Lyman Spitzer in 1951 but largely abandoned after tokamak breakthroughs in the 1960s appeared to offer an easier route to fusion. Germany was one of a small number of countries that persevered with stellarator research, starting work on the Wendelstein 7-X at the Max Planck Institute in 1996, at a total cost to date of €1.3bn.
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Our scientists will achieve the cure of all diseases, the regeneration of any part of the human body, they will manufacture food using artificial photosynthesis, they will develop artificial gravity generators, FTL engines, time machines... but fifty years from now there will still be the New York Times and someone will republish the article on nuclear fusion.:confused:
 
sferrin said:
That would probably be more reliable. But...

"MHD generators have not been employed for large scale mass energy conversion because other techniques with comparable efficiency have a lower lifecycle investment cost. Advances in natural gas turbines achieved similar thermal efficiencies at lower costs, by having the turbine's exhaust drive a Rankine cycle steam plant. To get more electricity from coal, it is cheaper to simply add more low-temperature steam-generating capacity."
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The difference is that you already need massive electromagnetic coils to contain the plasma in a fusion system. Start that plasma moving and now it induces voltages in your containment coils.
 
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