Talk-Polywell.org

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http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080612/ ... 3829a.html

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It is going to cost more and take longer.

ITER is the Fusion Reactor Of The Future.

"Up to"? Ha. I think they mean "at least."

You know, it must be ten years ago now I was reading about better performance from spheromaks. Odd they still went with the torus. Guess there's a lot of inertia there.

I have posted a few comments on the article here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... uture.html

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The main critic thinks the budget will double. I think he is low balling it. The essential deal is that there was a lot of plasma physics that could have been ironed out at a smaller scale before they committed to ITER.

In that respect Bussard was always true to the engineering method: Work out your problems on the smallest scale possible. R. Nebel pointed out that some of the problems have been known for 20 years.

Simon
I am reposting the comment I made on your blog a while back:

A long time ago now I worked at DOE's Jefferson lab down in VA. One of the cool things they had there was a series of speakers come in every month or so. One of the speakers was the head of Plasma Physics at Princeton(the Tokamak people.) In the Q & A after his presentation I asked him point blank when the would be a working fusion Tokamak and he said fifty years. I also asked if having more money would make any difference and he said that it would not.

The thing is that there has been some big breakthrough that I missed somewhere the same deal applies now that applies then. Tokes are dead end.

What is the state of the art with tokamaks? I was under the impression that, for brief periods, conditions close to break-even have been achieved.
But the biggest problem with the tokamaks isn't technical, it's economical - even if they got it to work, the short reactor lifetime makes it impossible to recoup the cost of the plant. No sane power company would build one.

JohnP wrote:But the biggest problem with the tokamaks isn't technical, it's economical

My feeling is that the major problem is bureaucracy.
I experienced a trinational defense programme ten years ago. That was already messy. Now for ITER, consider 7 participating countries, actually 33, since the EU, the largest contributor, consists itself in 27 nations with more or less equal rights.
Consider ITER's being managed by diplomats, rather than scientists and engineers. Imagine the amount of energy (should it be taken into account in the break-even balance ?) spent in negotiation between participants, trying to influence the project in their selfish interest.
It can ruin the talents of the most gifted physicists, but it is not doomed to (bright people are often more resilient than expected). This is why, I sincerely wish them all the luck. So much is at stake.

Hello John,

According to Joe Khachan, JET achieved break-even + (net power) in the middle of the 90's ... but the run times were measured in seconds.

Economic break-even is a different matter, and should be measured more by dollars per megawatt than energy in vs energy out. Unlike energy break-even, economic break-even is more a sliding scale than a yes/no answer.

Most people mean economic break-even when they use the term; and perhaps we really ought to use "cost-effective" or "economically viable" instead of break-even.

Regards,
Tony Barry

Mixed feelings. It is worrisome to see the beautiful horizon move away as you approach it. At the same time, is ITER so expensive?

• 2007 profits (billion USD)
  1 - Exxon Mobil : 41
  2 - Royal Dutch Shell : 31
  3 - British Petroleum : 21
  4 - Chevron : 19
  5 - Total : 19
  TOTAL AMOUNT : 131

which weighs no less than 17 ITERs or 650 BFRs per year. For sure I am oversimplifying (it does me good sometimes), but something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

And the federal gov got what in taxes. I like it when companies make profits. It means they will be able to attract more investments and grow. Do we give even more to the feds instead?

Jccarlton wrote:And the federal gov got what in taxes. I like it when companies make profits. It means they will be able to attract more investments and grow. Do we give even more to the feds instead?

The estimate I've heard is the net profit for oil companies is about 5%, while the government takes at least 15%. More, if you count local government taxes, plus front-end loading of costs from what little drilling is done in the U.S. So, at least 400 billion.

Plus, all it would do is force the oil companies to raise prices even further, as they'd just roll the tax into cost of business and it would trickle down to the consumer.

It'd be nice if one of those 5 took an interest in BFR. That 650 BFR number is based just on the prototype estimate - imagine if in mass production they drop to $20 million, or $2 million...

Scupperer wrote:

Jccarlton wrote:And the federal gov got what in taxes. I like it when companies make profits. It means they will be able to attract more investments and grow. Do we give even more to the feds instead?

The estimate I've heard is the net profit for oil companies is about 5%, while the government takes at least 15%. More, if you count local government taxes, plus front-end loading of costs from what little drilling is done in the U.S. So, at least 400 billion.

Plus, all it would do is force the oil companies to raise prices even further, as they'd just roll the tax into cost of business and it would trickle down to the consumer.

It'd be nice if one of those 5 took an interest in BFR. That 650 BFR number is based just on the prototype estimate - imagine if in mass production they drop to $20 million, or $2 million...

I think $20 mill is doable.

1. SC Magnets $3 mil
2. Vacuum vessel and pumps $ 3 mil
3. Start up power supplies $4 mil (could be reduced if the start up pulse is short enough)
4. Aux eqpt $2 mil
5. Power Conversion eqpt (80 MW DC to AC $.25 a W) $20 mil - that may be high. OTOH converting 2 MV DC to 13 KV 3 ph AC is not going to be a snap. OTOH semiconductor prices are going down. And voltages are going up. Widely available Si MOSFETs and IGBTs are up to 1,200 VDC with selected items as high as 1,600 VDC devices. No one is making a SiC MOSFET or IGBT yet. In theory a SiC device ought to have a figure of 25 merit improvement over Si.

A lot also depends on how plants are priced. If the switchgear is included then the increment for a BFR is only the cost of the semiconductors and any improvements required for the switch gear transformers to accommodate a switching 2 MV input.

Here is some good stuff about SiC:

Research. Theoretical figure of merit stuff.

http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/WBG/MURI/Overview/page3.htm

http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/WBG/Device_Re ... Index.html

Other stuff:

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/RT/2005/RI/ ... deck2.html

http://compoundsemiconductor.net/cws/article/news/22491