While I am throroughly convinced that my view is legit, this is will be my last attempt to illustrate it. This is a purely economical presentation based on intial and startup costs versus value of output to grid.
Portlan OR Gas Plants presented as a baseline economically viable investment.
The plant would produce 240 to 350 average megawatts, enough electricity to power as many as 230,000 homes. PGE would not disclose the price tag, but energy experts peg construction costs for a plant that size at roughly $200 million.
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This plant has a GAS cost for every MW produced, the Boron Plasma Reactor wouldn't have fuel costs (Except Boron II) after startup, One could suppose from this that a Boron Reactor would be VERY COMPETITIVE at 150MW output and $200 million investment. (NO continuing GAS costs), also $200 million would go into reactor to electron capture, not invest in turbines and steam infrastucture.
Any $200 million investment in a Boron reactor that could net 150mw to grid power would seem viable investment. The issue of factors isnt relevent to the economics.
If we can build a 1000mw gross self fed Boron Reactor for $200 million that produces 150mw net to grid, it is viable economically.
Factors only apply to investment
For example, a $400 million Boron Reactor needs to produce 300mw to grid etc.
If the scale of 75mw to grid per $100 million investment can be met at some point in scale of investment, eg: 1 billion dollars = 750mw. Then we have a economically feasible model. It dosnt matter if gross reactor might be 5000mw and net is only 750mw or 15%.
Why 10-25 times net power?
I'm with djmelfi on this. The reason for not having lots of 'free energy' wind and solar stuff; Firstly, why not, it's happening now just slow developlement to a high volume product. But secondly, and the real reason why the argument for a tiny net gain holds for MW plants, these aren't tremendous power outputs from these 'renewable' supplies. They're just not enough to power an electric toilet, so of course you don't get to see the commercial payback as you STILL need a base supply.
If you are proposing a 100MW plant and you have to put in 50MW, that's worth a $50M investment today, with current prices. Dial in all the 'green' stuff and the almost zero fuel cost and you could easily throw $200M at such a plant and still bank on customers lining up on your door to get you building these plants. And these figures are those bandied around for the current Polywell, so I don't see where the objection to djmelfi's point is where he's after just a modest power gain.
If you are proposing a 100MW plant and you have to put in 50MW, that's worth a $50M investment today, with current prices. Dial in all the 'green' stuff and the almost zero fuel cost and you could easily throw $200M at such a plant and still bank on customers lining up on your door to get you building these plants. And these figures are those bandied around for the current Polywell, so I don't see where the objection to djmelfi's point is where he's after just a modest power gain.
Okay, two things. One (regarding thermal conversion):
For a D-D BFR steam plant, which is what MSimon has been talking about, the bulk of the capital cost is in the thermal power conversion equipment (turbines and the like). Given finite plant lifetime, that drives the economics. The conversion equipment isn't costed to net power; it's costed to gross power. 5 GW is one XBOX HUEG steam turbine, and if net power is only 100 MW you WILL NOT make money on this power plant.
Two (regarding direct conversion):
You're making up numbers. MSimon has been looking into this for quite a while, and has some idea of how BFR capital costs, power outputs and gains would be interrelated if Bussard was right about the performance. The way it works is that if you account for finite plant lifetime, you have to make a BFR a certain minimum size or it won't make money. The gain at that size is... well, we can probably get away with lower gain in the direct conversion case, but there IS a minimum, and it isn't 1.01...
For a D-D BFR steam plant, which is what MSimon has been talking about, the bulk of the capital cost is in the thermal power conversion equipment (turbines and the like). Given finite plant lifetime, that drives the economics. The conversion equipment isn't costed to net power; it's costed to gross power. 5 GW is one XBOX HUEG steam turbine, and if net power is only 100 MW you WILL NOT make money on this power plant.
Two (regarding direct conversion):
You're making up numbers. MSimon has been looking into this for quite a while, and has some idea of how BFR capital costs, power outputs and gains would be interrelated if Bussard was right about the performance. The way it works is that if you account for finite plant lifetime, you have to make a BFR a certain minimum size or it won't make money. The gain at that size is... well, we can probably get away with lower gain in the direct conversion case, but there IS a minimum, and it isn't 1.01...
93143 wrote:Okay, two things. One (regarding thermal conversion):
5 GW is one XBOX HUEG steam turbine, and if net power is only 100 MW you WILL NOT make money on this power plant.
That's funny. This power station seems to have paid its way for 70 years (and survived a world war and several recessions) at 100MW...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agecroft_Power_Station
You want I find a few more??
Tell that to Monsieur Carnot. I'll stick with 1-Tc/Th. Conversion efficiency just depends on the source/sink temperatures you are driving through. Feel free to adjust the numbers as you wish.
Two (regarding direct conversion):
You're making up numbers.
As for rated costs for installed power, I keep hearing $1 per installed watt as an approximated general industry figure. I guess djmelfi has heard similar figures as that's what he put aswell. Again, feel free to pin up some absolute numbers if you wish to provide greater accuracy (rather than hand-wave the errors you see).
Chris:
What was the maintenance cost? How often were the turbines refurbished? At what cost.
Carnot is fine. What is the material limit under neutron bombardment? How much of the generated power is needed to run the plant? Can it be used as steam - feed water pumps etc. - or must it be converted to electrical power first (BFR grids).
It is a lot more complicated than a wiki entry about a coal fired plant.
And even then you are talking about 33% conversion efficiency - steam to electricity for a plant that old. And it does no good to go to higher temps/pressures if the turbine is not replaced. They are designed for the plant as built not the higher efficiency plant you would like. They have pressure/temperature/flow limits. Which even with better boilers and feedwater pumps can't be exceeded.
Right off the bat with Carnot the boilers must produce 3X the required electrical output. Plus 3X the plant required electrical input. And any steam power required for auxiliaries. Which means the boilers and the turbine generators must be sized larger than the desired output would indicate.
If a plant is designed to be fully amortized in 40 years running it beyond that time sees a significant rise in maintenance costs. The bath tub curve hits and you begin taking the maintenance bath. Which makes up for the fact that the plant is "paid for".
The amount that needs to be amortized rises the smaller the net gain of the system. At some point it is uneconomical. Rule of thumb is that you need to produce 5X the energy in for a viable system. Multiply that by Carnot and you are up to 15X. And of course the higher the multiple the sooner the eqpt pays for itself and the faster you can deploy them.
The desired range is 5X to 20X. At 5X the system is cost limited. Beyond 20X you don't get much extra bang for investments in improvement.
Let me give you a hint. I know a fair amount about this stuff because I was a Reactor Operator in the US Navy. I have actually operated and maintained steam plants and their auxiliary eqpt. including generators.
What was the maintenance cost? How often were the turbines refurbished? At what cost.
Carnot is fine. What is the material limit under neutron bombardment? How much of the generated power is needed to run the plant? Can it be used as steam - feed water pumps etc. - or must it be converted to electrical power first (BFR grids).
It is a lot more complicated than a wiki entry about a coal fired plant.
And even then you are talking about 33% conversion efficiency - steam to electricity for a plant that old. And it does no good to go to higher temps/pressures if the turbine is not replaced. They are designed for the plant as built not the higher efficiency plant you would like. They have pressure/temperature/flow limits. Which even with better boilers and feedwater pumps can't be exceeded.
Right off the bat with Carnot the boilers must produce 3X the required electrical output. Plus 3X the plant required electrical input. And any steam power required for auxiliaries. Which means the boilers and the turbine generators must be sized larger than the desired output would indicate.
If a plant is designed to be fully amortized in 40 years running it beyond that time sees a significant rise in maintenance costs. The bath tub curve hits and you begin taking the maintenance bath. Which makes up for the fact that the plant is "paid for".
The amount that needs to be amortized rises the smaller the net gain of the system. At some point it is uneconomical. Rule of thumb is that you need to produce 5X the energy in for a viable system. Multiply that by Carnot and you are up to 15X. And of course the higher the multiple the sooner the eqpt pays for itself and the faster you can deploy them.
The desired range is 5X to 20X. At 5X the system is cost limited. Beyond 20X you don't get much extra bang for investments in improvement.
Let me give you a hint. I know a fair amount about this stuff because I was a Reactor Operator in the US Navy. I have actually operated and maintained steam plants and their auxiliary eqpt. including generators.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
I can only repeat what I said in my first reply to you on your x15-60 rating: "Generally, that sounds reasonable from a commercial perspective, given all the other associated costs and radioactive materials handling issues, and I wouldn't've thought anyone would pay too much attention to anything less whilst cheap fossil fuels abound. "
We're not disagreeing, but I don't see the data, the facts, the costs, just generalisations, so it is difficult to know for sure.
Remember, you are speaking from a 'PGW' experience ("pre-global warming"). What used to be uneconomic is rapidly being taxed and manipulated into becoming economic. I would dispute anyone who says they know what will or will not be economic tomorrow as the dice haven't stopped rolling on that story yet.
We're not disagreeing, but I don't see the data, the facts, the costs, just generalisations, so it is difficult to know for sure.
Remember, you are speaking from a 'PGW' experience ("pre-global warming"). What used to be uneconomic is rapidly being taxed and manipulated into becoming economic. I would dispute anyone who says they know what will or will not be economic tomorrow as the dice haven't stopped rolling on that story yet.
And chris you are speaking PGC.
Post Global Cooling.
No sun spots today.
http://spaceweather.com/
BTW all we have to go on is rules of thumb until an actual plant is designed and can be costed out.
And my opinion of AGW? It is a WES. Wallet Extraction Scheme. I gather about 60% of Brits are of the same opinion.
Post Global Cooling.
No sun spots today.
http://spaceweather.com/
BTW all we have to go on is rules of thumb until an actual plant is designed and can be costed out.
And my opinion of AGW? It is a WES. Wallet Extraction Scheme. I gather about 60% of Brits are of the same opinion.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
That power plant does not generate 5000 MW, 4900 of which are necessary to run the equipment. That's what I meant.chrismb wrote:93143 wrote:Okay, two things. One (regarding thermal conversion):
5 GW is one XBOX HUEG steam turbine, and if net power is only 100 MW you WILL NOT make money on this power plant.
That's funny. This power station seems to have paid its way for 70 years (and survived a world war and several recessions) at 100MW...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agecroft_Power_Station
You want I find a few more??
...what has that got to do with my accusation? Please don't try to impress me with name-dropping and equations; I'm trained as a mechanical engineer. (a) Carnot has nothing to do with direct conversion, which is what I was talking about at that point, and (b) you guys really were just making up numbers for the sake of argument.Tell that to Monsieur Carnot. I'll stick with 1-Tc/Th. Conversion efficiency just depends on the source/sink temperatures you are driving through. Feel free to adjust the numbers as you wish.
Two (regarding direct conversion):
You're making up numbers.
Carnot is where the factor of 1/3 comes from. Raw fusion gain is upstream of that. And if you're doing direct conversion the 1/3 becomes more like 3/4...
As I said, if the thermal conversion isn't necessary you can get away with a smaller gain. But power scales with size a lot faster than capital cost does, and if you believe in bremsstrahlung mitigation I'm pretty sure the raw fusion gain for a 100 MW plant (the sweet spot for grid installation) winds up a lot higher than 2. I believe it's about 8 for the 50 kV resonance point (MSimon calculated it once, and I'm too lazy right now - MSimon? Correct me if I'm wrong...), and even higher for the global cross-section peak (which has more parasitic losses, and thus a lower potential total system gain).
Last edited by 93143 on Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
IIRC the resonance peak has a gain of about 22 (cross section about .1 barn) and the broad peak has a gain of about 8 (cross section 1.2 barns).
Basically you trade off reactor size for lower drive losses. Of course bremss will be lower at the lower drive - but without knowing the operating conditions it is hard to figure what that would be.
Basically you trade off reactor size for lower drive losses. Of course bremss will be lower at the lower drive - but without knowing the operating conditions it is hard to figure what that would be.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
I hardly call mentioning Carnot in a discussion on efficiency is 'name-dropping'!!
...what has that got to do with my accusation? Please don't try to impress me with name-dropping and equations;
Good for you! Paper qualifications are everything. All those old scientists of history were never very good were they, proven by the fact that they had no training. How about that jumped-up patent clerk who only had a degree from ETH Zurich (I guess you've presented technical papers there) to his name when he questioned Newtonian mechanics! I presume you are arguing that to better debate something it's quicker just to whip out your qualifications and see who's the 'top trump' rather than actually sticking to talking about the facts. We can play that game if you like and you would loose, but there will still be people better qualified than you, and there will be those better qualified that I. Running that to its logical end, you and I should not debate these things at all and just leave it all up to Presidents of Professional Institutions to debate.
I'm trained as a mechanical engineer.
You should be able to tell by now I am not at all interested in personal comments and how good or bad someone has been in the past. One can always talk up or down someone's background but it does not aid a factual debate.
You were talking about steam-based turbines, then you went from there on to something about making up numbers(a) Carnot has nothing to do with direct conversion, which is what I was talking about at that point,
I'm confused then as to what numbers you are accusing us of making up, seeing as we WEREN'T talking about direct conversion, and I positively rejected the fantasy. We cannot have made up numbers about something we weren't talking about. Can you please just state what made-up numbers you have an issue with?
and (b) you guys really were just making up numbers for the sake of argument.
It seems curious when a statement such as:
If you can produce 200mw from a $200 million investment you have a viable plant.
Is refuted by engineers. I don't know what part of their training makes this a bad model.
This is well within the PRE GLOBAL WARMING enconomy.
Normal plants convert one energy source to another. Fussion Reactors can be self breeding and convert a realtively cheap feed stock (Boron) to energy. You do not have the continuing cost of energy input in this scenario so it would seem that operational costs would be competitive.
The interim issues of how much energy would be produced INSIDE a reactor is meaningless to this scenario.
If we could agree that 100mw to grid per $100 million investment, and that operational costs would be comparable, we could then discuss if this model could be built. It is totally amazing to me that the engineers would propose that what happened in between would impact the viability of 100mw for $100 million investment.
In fact the statement that 100mw per $100 million investment is viable is so self evident based on current profitable plants that it is embassing to see it refuted.
Now once we can get on that page, we could possibly discuss what size Plasma Reactor would be needed if it was designed to run on own output and models for steam and direct capture could be speculated on. Here perhaps the engineers could contribute something valuable.
If you can produce 200mw from a $200 million investment you have a viable plant.
Is refuted by engineers. I don't know what part of their training makes this a bad model.
This is well within the PRE GLOBAL WARMING enconomy.
Normal plants convert one energy source to another. Fussion Reactors can be self breeding and convert a realtively cheap feed stock (Boron) to energy. You do not have the continuing cost of energy input in this scenario so it would seem that operational costs would be competitive.
The interim issues of how much energy would be produced INSIDE a reactor is meaningless to this scenario.
If we could agree that 100mw to grid per $100 million investment, and that operational costs would be comparable, we could then discuss if this model could be built. It is totally amazing to me that the engineers would propose that what happened in between would impact the viability of 100mw for $100 million investment.
In fact the statement that 100mw per $100 million investment is viable is so self evident based on current profitable plants that it is embassing to see it refuted.
Now once we can get on that page, we could possibly discuss what size Plasma Reactor would be needed if it was designed to run on own output and models for steam and direct capture could be speculated on. Here perhaps the engineers could contribute something valuable.
In Search of conservative principles
Well yes you do. It is called accelerating the ions.Normal plants convert one energy source to another. Fussion Reactors can be self breeding and convert a realtively cheap feed stock (Boron) to energy. You do not have the continuing cost of energy input in this scenario so it would seem that operational costs would be competitive.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.