A power plant closely based around ITER design basis assumptions would be cost competitive with some energy sources being introduced in some markets but would not be expected to compete widely, although the developments needed to bring the economics into the right range are not very great.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
6. ... vacuum energy
... harness it in some kind of power plant - this can easily be done without arousing too much suspicion - then surreptitiously allow the reaction to run out of control. The resulting release of energy would easily be enough to annihilate all of planet Earth and probably the Sun too.
I am afraid that this is just the first of such news.
As the development progresses (and costs scale up), they might discover that a batch of hamsters in a treadmill will probably be more competitive in producing power.....
The only good stuff that will come out of ITER is going to be the advanced in construction materials and electronics that can be used by other industries.
There is a dairy farmer who makes his cows walk up a treadmill to eat and gathers a bit of elecricity from them. IIRC, he anticipates ~35kW of continuous power when his system is all done. Not bad. He has to feed them anyway.
I wonder if you could tune (tone?) the quality of beef that way? Gentle walk for Kobi type beef, hard uphill striding for quick growth McD burgers.
I had an idea like that with the elephants in the Portland zoo, but they didn't have enough of them to smooth out the power output.
Giorgio wrote:I am afraid that this is just the first of such news.
As the development progresses (and costs scale up), they might discover that a batch of hamsters in a treadmill will probably be more competitive in producing power.....
The first of such news? Did you read the article? It was actually about how cost competitive fusion would end up being after optimization. Even the quote that MSimon provides makes their position clear. They are expecting a carbon tax though, but currently Europe is already doing something like a carbon tax anyway.
After optimization?
They still need to prove that it can work... even worst, they are still discussing on the choice of construction material for most of the mechanical parts of that beast.
Let's talk about this 40 years from now, when (maybe) they will be able to demonstrate a working reactor and we will have at least an idea of what will be the final design. Than we can start to discuss about costs and optimization
