Small Tri Alpha news blurp

[mvanwink5]

I trust cost analysis these days as far as I can throw my trailer because of green power advocate lying. That is not to say I distrust you, it is just the people that write these analysis reports. Green power is a crooked business and heavily subsidized.

Coal is dependent on the location of the plant and source. China has put in a massive number of coal plants. With regulation and subsidies you can make any technology competitive or non competitive, you just can't make your country economically competitive that way. Reality bites. Wind is also BS. Get a high pressure system and wind goes to zero for 2 weeks, or the wind is too strong and you can't run them. Then the maintenance of something stuck up in the air. Wind is dead. People have finally figured it out.

That is it for me on this subject. Believe what you want to believe.

[crowberry]

A modern coal fired plant has pulverizers, primary air fans, forced and induced draft fans, SCR's, SO2 scrubbers with limestone pulverizers pumps etc., precipitators, a coal field, stacker/ reclaimer coal handling systems, boiler which can be 200 ft tall, not to mention the 500 foot tall stacks to get the gas up there.... and that is just to make steam.

Granted, a fusion reactor will have auxiliary systems too, but the scale and capital is not worse, it just can't be!

Gas fired boilers are simpler, less capital, but gas is always going to be more expensive. And gas turbines are really high maintenance and likely will be best in a combined cycle with a gas fired boiler, but developing countries will likely be capital constrained.

I agree that conventional power plants take up large amounts of space, but I was more thinking of the size of the other fusion concepts. Even if it is a linear device, still almost 110 m of length for a fusion core will be a large device.

[crowberry]

Also interesting that their target for initial plants is mega cities in developing countries as it seems they think it won’t be as cost competitive with other alternatives in the developed world.

Also fission is being considered as an option in African and other countries.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Artic ... h-Africa-t

[Maui]

I trust cost analysis these days as far as I can throw my trailer because of green power advocate lying. That is not to say I distrust you, it is just the people that write these analysis reports. Green power is a crooked business and heavily subsidized.

Coal is dependent on the location of the plant and source. China has put in a massive number of coal plants. With regulation and subsidies you can make any technology competitive or non competitive, you just can't make your country economically competitive that way. Reality bites. Wind is also BS. Get a high pressure system and wind goes to zero for 2 weeks, or the wind is too strong and you can't run them. Then the maintenance of something stuck up in the air. Wind is dead. People have finally figured it out.

That is it for me on this subject. Believe what you want to believe.

Meanwhile I'll believe what is getting installed vs decommissioned both in the US and globally.

Regardless of what you believe, it behooves TAE to have a pretty darn good understanding of the market and where it is going. Not saying necessarily that they agree with my view vs yours, but it was interesting to me that they felt like their mega-cities in developing nations were the best bet.

[Skipjack]

The scale of the TAE Technologies devices is becoming impressive. Norman is about 30 m long, Copernicus is planned to be more than 45 m long and the power plant plan is for a device almost 110 m long. These are linear devices and that gives of course a lot ot benefits, but they will still be rather big. It will take serious money to build those machines.

110m? Do you have a reference for that? This seems a lot bigger than their original projections for plant size.

[Maui]

The scale of the TAE Technologies devices is becoming impressive. Norman is about 30 m long, Copernicus is planned to be more than 45 m long and the power plant plan is for a device almost 110 m long. These are linear devices and that gives of course a lot ot benefits, but they will still be rather big. It will take serious money to build those machines.

110m? Do you have a reference for that? This seems a lot bigger than their original projections for plant size.

It was in the first slide presented in the video and is also here:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/01/c ... -2024.html

[paperburn1]

I have been in one or two power plants in my time and 110 meters does not really seem that overly large to me

[Skipjack]

Yes, I have since then found it. Thanks guys! I find it quite large, at least compared to their original projected plant sizes. I guess things did not always quite turn out as planned, or maybe they are still planning to optimize the scale after Initial commercialization (and the larger funds that they will hopefully have as a result)?

[crowberry]

I agree that for conventional equipment 110 m is not that large. But controlling a plasma is a rather different thing. The length of the FRC will be significantly scaled up in the planned machines. Naively one could think that there could be additional complications in controlling a very long FRC, but maybe TAE Technologies has solved all the stability issues already?

[mvanwink5]

It was my understanding that the 'science' would be proven with Norman with a target of 2019, that the next prototype, Copernicus, would be used to nail down the engineering details for a commercial machine. I think that until the experiments on 'Norman' are concluded and published, the 2023 is just reflecting positive 2018 progress that makes TAE think that proof of science is in the bag.

Commercialization is not the key milestone, IMO, 'proof of science' is. Size comparison for a Boron fueled machine compared to a tritium or deuterium machine is unreasonable. Others like LM target small size by going to a hot fuel and expendability. GF uses 'hot fuels' and a huge liquid metal ball which serves the dual purpose of shielding and compression fluid.

I would be interested if Skipjack has heard from his sources what Helion is targeting for 'proof of science'. They should be close too based on his previous unofficial reports.

[Skipjack]

I would be interested if Skipjack has heard from his sources what Helion is targeting for 'proof of science'. They should be close too based on his previous unofficial reports.

Helion has been very quiet and they barely release any new information. The only things I posted about were things that had been previously published (like the Seattle Business Times article below). Beyond that I can not say much.
I do know that Helion's proof of concept reactor seems to be smaller than Tri Alpha's as it is about the size of a large shipping container (15 meters or so). That does _not_ include the pulsed power supply which is quite big. The goal of the current machine is to generate up to 50 MW of fusion power or at least demonstrate break even. Helion has not released any information about what experiments they will conduct with this prototype and what fuels they will use for them but I would guess D+D initially and then D+He3 later. If they hope to do D+He3 at break even levels, then they should also be able to do D+D. The difference is relatively small and AFAIK more a matter of tuning the parameters of the reactor. In fact, the final power generating D+He3 reactor will HAVE to do D+D in order to "breed" the He3 they need for fuel.
https://www.seattlebusinessmag.com/tech ... generation

[Skipjack]

Someone said on reddit that Binderbauer was misquoted and that the two year time frame is not correct. It will be more like 5 years until they demonstrate break even.

[Maui]

New Forbes article on TAE including 44 minute video discussion of TAE status. Predicting breakeven in two years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmaho ... b130671d4a

Clarification: The headline on this story originally began, “Energy From Fusion In Two Years.” Two days after the story was published, Binderbauer backed away from that statement through a spokesperson, who said, “While Michl said a ‘couple years,’ he meant a small number of years. Not literally two.”

Still, he seemed pretty confident they will be ready for commercialization in five.

[mvanwink5]

Look, I will say it again, the big milestone for TAE is proving the science and that is supposed to be done with Norman, their current machine, and their target is 2019 for that. Furthermore, 'PROOF' is a high standard. Before the 'proof' there is evidence, and as you can see TAE is confident based on the evidence from Norman testing they have done so far.

Copernicus, on the other hand, is a machine to flesh out the engineering details for commercialization. Again, let me say it in stronger terms, You do not need to make a machine that actually 'breaks even' to get the engineering data. This is not the machine to prove their technology, 'The Science' is what says you have the bird in hand. Indeed, ITER is known to be able to make net power fusion... the problem with ITER is engineering. Engineering will not be TAE's issue once the science is proven, just as engineering is not an issue for General Fusion.

Unlike ITER which has Gruberment funding, these private funded efforts are seriously conservative when it comes to taking risky steps with huge money.

Now, for General Fusion, notice that they have built the small sphere with 2 maybe 3 hundred small pistons, along with the grid liners to control the compression wave front created by the pistons. This device is likely built to verify their hydrodynamic models before building their 'demonstration machine'. Again, the demonstration machine does not need to 'break even'. Proving the science is the key and in this case for GF, they have to prove they can compress the plasma without poisoning it with contaminants from the hydrodynamics of the collapsing wave front. It looks like they have the right plasma geometry with the spherical Tokamak and can make it at scale.

These huge machines planned will only be built once the effort is guaranteed to succeed. The money men won't front the money until then (as opposed to what Gruberment will throw money at).

Thinking that a 'breakeven machine' is the key milestone is for those that do not believe in science. It ain't the key milestone. Proof that TAE & GF can make a commercial machine will be made with smaller machines and for TAE that will be done with Norman. I think GF will have to make their Demo machine for that, but maybe this small 2 or 3 hundred piston mini compressor will do the job.

[mvanwink5]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567- ... myhA%3D%3D

A newly published paper in Nature Physics reporting breakthrough results from experimental work on C-2U targeting the key goals of achieving and maintaining fusion temperatures and alpha particle ash removal. Stable plasma was already achieved, but temperature was not. This is the science milestone that TAE needed to make their approach successful. Norman, as I understand it is extending these results to prove scaling.

I wonder if Polywell can use the neutral beam results that TAE has pioneered, after all, plasma heating is also the missing key to make Polywell's approach successful as EMC2, too, has shown containment with proof of Grad's postulate on cusps?