ITER news

[paperburn1]

Given that the usa used 4120 Billion Kilowatthours a year with the general trend of increes usage. How many polywells would it take to replace current electrical usage. So take a size polywell times a production rate lets say one a day not including gearup time to reach that level of production. So rough math would say at 200Mwatts reactors would totaly replace our current needs and expected growth in about 75 years. And still not eliminate our need for fossil fuel Not as big of game changer as we all would think. Someone could check my math as it is 2 am

[quixote]

Given that the usa used 4120 Billion Kilowatthours a year with the general trend of increes usage. How many polywells would it take to replace current electrical usage. So take a size polywell times a production rate lets say one a day not including gearup time to reach that level of production. So rough math would say at 200Mwatts reactors would totaly replace our current needs and expected growth in about 75 years. And still not eliminate our need for fossil fuel Not as big of game changer as we all would think. Someone could check my math as it is 2 am

I don't know what growth factor you assigned, but it seems to be too high. According to the DOE, electricity usage between 1999 and 2011 has only gone up by 1% per year on average.

I'll give a calculation a whirl.

For simplicity's sake, let's say these polywells you're producing at 1 unit per day are left inactive until they have the capability to replace, in toto, all other generation (so we don't have to calculate a series); or alternatively, think of it like we're dropping an energy-equivalent plant elsewhere as the polywell replaces it. Then your math is easy:

Code: Select all

4120 * 10^9 kilowatt hours / 365 days / (2 * 10^8 watts / unit) = 2352 units

So 2352 units to meet that demand. Producing 1 unit per day means:

Code: Select all

2352 units / (1 unit / day) ~ 6.5 years

So my numbers differ considerably. Curious to see you lay out your math so I can see it, if you don't mind.

ps,
Note that I am leaving aside the question of the possibility of being able to produce 1 unit per day.

[paperburn1]

I may have hosed something up Things are so much clearer in the daylight. usage per capita was 4000KWH in 1960 and about 13000KWH in 2009 but in 1995 it Stabilized a bit to only small growth/ reduction cycle a year until 2009. My first mistake was averaging in the high growth rate of the sixties to 2009 was the local norm.
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explor ... ty%20usage
And then it looks like I may have slipped a zero. But what is a zero among fellows

[ladajo]

Your reasonings are not quite correct.
As with the same success you can consider competition between China and USA. And I am not sure that USA economics will give in more slowly at low oil prices. I am just confident in the contrary.

Lost in translation Joseph. I have no idea what you are saying here.

The US Economy is not currently dependant on Oil/Gas/Coal Exports.

If the energy imports get cheaper, it can only help the US economy.
Another point to consdider, is a Global Commons advantage the US enjoys; US Companys are generally much quicker on the draw to adapt for changing circumstances than Companys based in other countries.

[ladajo]

In order to properly analyze the impact of placing "Polywell" Power Stations in the economy, you must do the series analysis.
Also consider the secondary effects of unburdening the transportation infrastruction that the distribution of current fuels require.

Each 200 Megawatt added via Polywell, disengages 200MW worth of Oil/Coal requirements. The series progression is required to fully appreciate the impact.

One must also consider that 1 per day is probably aggressive and that the actual production and implementation rates will be some sort of a bell curve function.

Either way, I think it is reasonable to consider that a major shift would occur within 10 years of introduction.

[Joseph Chikva]

If the energy imports get cheaper, it can only help the US economy.
Another point to consdider, is a Global Commons advantage the US enjoys; US Companys are generally much quicker on the draw to adapt for changing circumstances than Companys based in other countries.

I tried to say that both economics - USA and China are import dependent. But Chinese is becoming more and more competitive. And may be that this advantage will increase faster at lower oil prices.
And if so, USA also can be less interested in their falling.
As Cina is the strongest competitor of USA whose economics will become #1 in 2016 and further.

[ladajo]

Ok, but understand that the US is much better positioned to more quickly implement and deploy the technology.

I also have doubts about your prediction of the Chinese economy. We shall see.

[Joseph Chikva]

Ok, but understand that the US is much better positioned to more quickly implement and deploy the technology.

I also have doubts about your prediction of the Chinese economy. We shall see.

They learn well. And their strength in their poverty - extremaly cheap labour with fast growing technology potential. That is well known.

And prediction of their economics is not mine. That trend is well known too.

[quixote]

In order to properly analyze the impact of placing "Polywell" Power Stations in the economy, you must do the series analysis.

I assume this is directed at me. If so, I don't agree that it's necessary for a simple quantitative analysis like paperburn1 was attempting. If you wanted to do a qualitative assessment, then I agree completely.

[parallel]

From Vortex. Worth repeating.

James Bowery Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:23:36 -0800

My response:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... comment-18



18. jabowery
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/page. ... ount>06:21
PM 1/24/13

>From a founder of the US Tokamak Fusion Program to Congress:

The DoE committment to very large fusion concepts (the giant magnetic
tokamak) ensures only the need for very large budgets; and that is what the
program has been about for the past 15 years - a defense-of-budget program
- not a fusion-achievement program. As one of three people who created this
program in the early 1970's (when I was an Asst. Dir. of the AEC's
Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction Division) I know this to be true; we
raised the budget in order to take 20% off the top of the larger funding,
to try all of the hopeful new things that the mainline labs would not try.
Each of us left soon thereafter, and the second generation management
thought the big program was real; it was not. Ever since then, the ERDA/DoE
has rolled Congress to increase and/or continue big-budget support. This
worked so long as various Democratic Senators and Congressmen could see the
funding as helpful in their districts. But fear of undermining their budget
position also made DoE bureaucrats very autocratic and resistant to any
kind of new approach, whether inside DoE or out in industry. This led DoE
to fight industry wherever a non-DoE hopful new idea appeared.

See http://www.oocities.org/jim_bowery/BussardsLetter.html

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Terry Blanton <hohlr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[ladajo]

In order to properly analyze the impact of placing "Polywell" Power Stations in the economy, you must do the series analysis.

I assume this is directed at me. If so, I don't agree that it's necessary for a simple quantitative analysis like paperburn1 was attempting. If you wanted to do a qualitative assessment, then I agree completely.

I said to "properly analyze" That would not include beer napkin estimates such as paperburn's. Drilling into this properly requires a complex progressive series approach. Each identified factor being it's own series, and then taking the series outputs and performing an integrated progession as you step it all forward. The end result would require being reduced into meaningful quantitative focal outputs. Doing this in concert with a qualitative analysis assessment process would further refine the findings into something really meaningful. But all that said, I would fear that some of the required assumptions would be huge, and would thus need to be very carefully considered to prevent a highly potential skewing the final results.
or, we could have a beer, scribble some numbers on a napkin, and get the general idea.