Talk-Polywell.org

Axil wrote:

Hydrogen- Boron11 fusion would not be as much, but I suspect it would still be in the ball park compared to Uranium fission.

If I were an advocate of boron fusion, I would be concerned with the cost of isotopically purifying the boron both in terms of cost and power, since large amounts of boron would be needed to compensate for the low energy production levels per reaction.

One interesting question that might come up, does it take more energy to purify a mole of boron, than can be obtained from fusion of that mole.

How many tons of boron are needed to produce a gigawatt year of power. Has anyone ever done the calculation?

200 g a day for 100 MWth. 2 kg a day for 1 GWth. About 1 ton a year more or less. The cost to purify is quite small relative to the value of the energy.

Quote from R. Nebel concerning possible costs

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/05/interv ... el-of.html

"Question: What do you estimate a kilowatt hour from your fusion reactor to cost?
Answer: We are looking at 2-5 cents per kilowatt hour. That should make electricity generation less expensive than any alternative, including coal and nuclear. So if this technology works it will be like a silver bullet, and be fundamentally superior to any competing technology. The issue is whether it works or not. "

I assume this considers capital costs and operational costs (including fuel).

Dan Tibbets

Fuel is not a concern (costwise) for KWh cost considering the infinitesimal amount it will use. Operational costs was kept out altogether.

The estimate (if I remember correctly) was solely done based on capital costs using an higher/lower depreciation rate to compensate the unknown operational costs. Hence the 2-5 cents figure.

On the Issue of Giant reactors, where maybe one per state or one per region provide most of our power - I really don't like that idea.

In addition to the limited points of failure argument others have raised, there's also an economics argument: I like a competitive market, not monopolies.

One giant power plant implies one owner, implies no competition from other power plants. Fusion, or hybrid fission/fusion, promises lots of cheap electricity. But, when you have a monopoly, pricing isn't based on cost of production like in a competitive market. With a monopoly, the price for electricity is based on what the owner of the monopoly thinks the market can bear (in other words, how high a price, and how low a level of service, can we get away with).

Possibly, you could get the government involved (like a Public Utilities Commission), and set the price that producers can charge, but such setups are somewhat vulnerable to corruption (bribes/donations to key bureaucrats and politicians to get them to allow a price increase).

I'd rather have dozens of different companies running smaller reactors and competing on price and service, than a giant monopoly.

Giorgio wrote:Fuel is not a concern (costwise) for KWh cost considering the infinitesimal amount it will use. Operational costs was kept out altogether.

The estimate (if I remember correctly) was solely done based on capital costs using an higher/lower depreciation rate to compensate the unknown operational costs. Hence the 2-5 cents figure.

Your basis for this claim is???

The basis for all of them or for a specific one of those points?

I'll assume you wanted the basis for all the claims to make it quick:

Costs:
Boron as been indicated on FF website to reach a 2$ gram in refined state but even at 10 US$ gram, with a consumption at 200g/day rapresent a neglectable cost (is less than one tenth of a cent).

Workforce and capital cost are the two main sizing factor for deciding final price of sales of electricity.

A 100 MW Polywell plant has been suggested as a start to cost 200M US$ to be recovered in 20/30 years

Workforce cost is limited, as the plant is pretty small. Anyhow let's make 40-50 people if you want to be safe and 2M US$ payroll/year.


Income:
A 100 Mw plant is earning you between 16M and 40M US$ with electricity sale price of 2 or 5 cents/KWh.

Deduct from this amount your personell costs and you just have to decide ammortization for your capital costs to choose a suitable selling price.

I know well that a full analisys is more complicated, but to get a rough figure this system is pretty solid. Plus the more you scale up the plant the more important depreciation becomes and the less important (in Polywell case) operating costs become.


I saw a couple of PDF with these calculations (or part of them). I might look back for them if you are interested.

Giorgio wrote: A 100 MW Polywell plant has been suggested as a start to cost 200M US$ to be recovered in 20/30 years.

Maybe I missed it, but that amount was the cost of a research demo plant, not a production plant. Do you have a source for that value or is it an assumption on your part?

Let me clarify my position. I am one of the FAQ answerers and am seeking to answer the general "how much" FAQ.
Thanks for your support!

KitemanSA wrote:

Giorgio wrote: A 100 MW Polywell plant has been suggested as a start to cost 200M US$ to be recovered in 20/30 years.

Maybe I missed it, but that amount was the cost of a research demo plant, not a production plant. Do you have a source for that value or is it an assumption on your part?

Let me clarify my position. I am one of the FAQ answerers and am seeking to answer the general "how much" FAQ.
Thanks for your support!

WB-D is to be a 100 MW net power production plant. It is a research plant only in respect that it is the first of its kind and a lot of R&D is still needed in developing proper power plant designs, optimizing the scaling math for larger plant designs, subsystems, safety systems, etc etc. Besides that, 100 MW is pretty small by power plant standards, most nuke plants range from 850MW-1.4 GW in the US.

There likely will not be commercial duplication of the WB-D design at its designed scale. We will likely see that design evolve and eventually result in a 4 meter design that generates a few GW of net power, for commercialized use, retrofitting coal plants that are going to be shuttered this coming year for continued mercury emissions violations.

IntLibber wrote:WB-D is to be a 100 MW net power production plant. It is a research plant only in respect that it is the first of its kind and a lot of R&D is still needed in developing proper power plant designs, optimizing the scaling math for larger plant designs, subsystems, safety systems, etc etc. Besides that, 100 MW is pretty small by power plant standards, most nuke plants range from 850MW-1.4 GW in the US.

There is no indication that there will be ANY power conversion equipment in the WB-D, is there?

Regarding the large size of current fission reactors, it is mainly an artifact of the certification processes for plant design and site design. Given the high cost of certifying each part of the design, it would never be economic to certify small designs.

Most power plants in the States are WELL under the GW size, though base-load plants tend to be about there, IIRC.

Here is the summary of the last conversation I had on costs:

The cost of building a 100 megawatt Polywell reactor can estimated to be about $50 million by assuming the following:
1. The vacuum pumping system for the reaction chamber costs about five million dollars.
2. A set of super conducting magnets that are one meter in diameter with a field strength of 20 Tesla costs another five million dollars.
3. The starting power supply of about 20 Megawatts for the reactor to ramp up the system is also five million dollars.
4. A reactor vessel large enough to hold everything would again be about five million dollars.
5. The high voltage collectors that will be used to capture the high energy helium costs about $10 millions to fabricate.
6. Another $15 million will be needed for a High Voltage DC to AC converter to deliver the power to the public grid.
7. Lastly a three story tall concrete building with protective shielding in place that costs another five million dollars.

Mike_P wrote:Here is the summary of the last conversation I had on costs:....

May I ask, conversation with whom?

IntLibber wrote:Besides that, 100 MW is pretty small by power plant standards, most nuke plants range from 850MW-1.4 GW in the US.

Actually I've had several conversations with people in the power industry and they have indicated that many of their customers are asking for co-generation projects in the 100 MW range. Both military and commercial (Can we say Disneyland?)

Mike_P wrote:Actually I've had several conversations with people in the power industry and they have indicated that many of their customers are asking for co-generation projects in the 100 MW range. Both military and commercial (Can we say Disneyland?)

Hmm. You couldn't be thinking of the Hatch Geothermal Power Plant? Reportedly, thus far it is consuming 4MW to produce 5MW for Anaheim. Nowhere close to 100MW...

There likely will not be commercial duplication of the WB-D design at its designed scale. We will likely see that design evolve and eventually result in a 4 meter design that generates a few GW of net power, for commercialized use, retrofitting coal plants that are going to be shuttered this coming year for continued mercury emissions violations.

Physics of the reactor and licensing notwithstanding, from what I understand 100MW is about perfect from the perspective of distribution for a lot of applications, more so than multi-GW.

The retrofitting idea always seemed a bit dubious to me. I mean, sure, if the fusion plant is that much cheaper, it could make sense. But for it to be that much cheaper, you'd probably need p-B11 and direct conversion, in which case you're not just retrofitting (i.e. replacing the source of thermal power in an existing coal plant).