We're not doing enough to find alternative fuels.

The goal might well be 50% nuclear, 20% thermal, 30% renewable.

Once efficient fusion is achieved, we could phase out thermal entirely, and start closing old fission plants and replacing them with cleaner fusion ones.

edited 10th Apr '11 8:38:30 AM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

^^^ Hey, fact-free post! The figures I used encompass all economically viable current sources of uranium, including MOX (spent fuel.) You'll also notice I pointed out global deposits of thorium below the break-even point amount to a tiny fraction of uranium reserves, and that's WITH the highly speculative 4.36 megaton estimation, rather than the USGS's more widely accepted 1.3 MT one.

Breeders are, as I have noted repeatedly including in the very text you quoted, a separate issue. I have already pointed out both their currently experimental nature, their numerous safety problems even compared to conventional reactors, and the legal difficulties stemming from their tremendous security risks.

Also, all statements about how fusion generators may or may not function are utterly baseless, seeing as how the tokamak reactor design is almost certainly unworkable as an energy source from a physics standpoint. If fusion generation is possible (which trillions of dollars in the hands of the smartest people in the world for the last 70 years has failed to prove,) the shape it could take is completely unknown and unknowable, it's like speculating about the safety aspects of FTL spaceships.

Eric,

edited 10th Apr '11 9:41:39 AM by EricDVH

Except that it's at least theoretically possible, even if it's something we're unlikely to see in our lifetimes.

Still I am annoyed by people who expect Fusion to just rush in and save the day soon. We need to focus on solutions that already exist.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Theoretically possible? Show me the theory that says it's possible.

Eric,

The IFER project expecting to begin running experiments in 10 years. If that's a success we'll see fusion power on the practical scale THIS CENTURY.

Fusion as been 30 years in the future for at least 50.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

You mean ITER? That looks extremely dubious to me, a cursory read gives me no information on how plasma containment will break even, no information on how it will breed the tritium it needs to work, and the extremely vague impression that its claimed energy profit will be under an instantaneous rather than continuous (I.E.: actually useful) reaction, which may be concealing a more practically truthful energy figure. Also, of course, it appears it's not actually an experimental generator, just another experimental _reactor_, as it's lacking any heat-electricity mechanism.

Color me extremely unimpressed.

Eric,

It would help if there was not delays on building the new experimental fusion plants....
Well, the moment fusion breaks the "limit" of needing more energy to keep the process going than it produces, we have indeed reached nuclear fusion. And I do not think we are that far away from it.

A guy called dvorak is tired. Tired of humanity not wanting to change to improve itself. Quite the sad tale.

Well, it seems that talking my mouth off and being stupid actually taught me a few things. Thanks, fellow TV Tropes forumites!

That said...

Economic viability depends strongly on the price of energy from other sources as well as technological advancements, for what it's worth.

That said, I am not an expert on nuclear, so...keep on talking.

That said, Bunny (pictured here) hates cattomic power plants.

edited 10th Apr '11 6:56:36 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

The E Ro EI that Eric mentioned is what a lot of people arguing against "Peak Oil" forget when they start mentioning Oil Shale and such. Sure, there may well be plenty of "oil reserves" but if you have to invest more energy to get it than you get from it, it becomes rather meaningless.

In fact, the E Ro EI is one of the underpinnings of the concept of "Peak Oil" - not that the oil fields "run out" but that the cost of extracting oil gets too high.

Actually, while I have yet to find precise numbers to back up the notion, I strongly suspect the entire process of refining oil into gasoline and burning it in an ICE already has a negative ERoEI, meaning that the only fossil fuels that actually produce more energy than it requires to make them usable are coal and natural gas.

^^ ERoEI is independent of money (though money problems are a good warning sign for negative ERoEI,) what I mean is that the amount of energy (electrical or otherwise) needed to turn such uranium/thorium/etc deposits into reactor-grade fuel is greater than the electricity that can be generated from that quantity of fuel in a conventional reactor.

Eric,

I do know that the petrol refinery here uses a huge chunk of our country's electricity to refine crude oil down into petrol and other products - makes me wonder how much electricity would be freed up for the domestic market (including E Vs) if the refinery were shut down.

And I was not just thinking of "cost" in terms of money - cost in energy, resources, man-power etc. Many of which also equate to a financial cost as it happens - at least when it comes to charging the consumers for the end product

edited 10th Apr '11 11:35:50 PM by Wolf1066

I wonder if the energy cost for refinement is considered in the comparative firgures I've seen for plug-in hybrids and electric vs ICE's. They say they consider the engine efficiencies and the electricity costs and their generation efficiencies.

RE: the last three pages- don't nuclear power stations use batteries to deal with variations in demand? Plus I am much more certain that nuclear and diesel submarines both use great big batteries in some form of energy rationing. Just a cursory search about for these things had results talking about people converting them to use in their home turbine and panel systems.

There are also probably several methods for energy storage already in use for our current energy systems. There's air compression, water pumping and that thing with molten salt.

And wouldn't heat waves also improve the output from solar power?

Also, ITER was mentioned: I had some friends involved in the project-the goal for ITER is that they achieve continuous positive energy production and that they go beyond that momentarily. It's a research project so their setting it up to be able to test things. Also, there's the the tritium breeder here, part of the point is to develop the breeder technology and it will improve plasma confinement in a really rather elegant way: it will be fucking massive, magnets work better the bigger they are. I think anymore specifics requires a PhD in kinetic theory.

It's in fact the one after ITER that is intended to be the experimental generator. I don't expect to be an old man when we get the first nuclear fusion plant design but I do expect to be going through a mid-life crisis.

I know for a fact that diesel submarines have batteries because that's how they work. They charge the batteries with the diesel engine while "snorkeling" etc so that they can run off of electric motors. I don't think nuclear powered submarines have large batteries as they don't turn off their reactors except during maintenance in port, due to not being able to remotely start them up.

Fight smart, not fair.

I believe the nuclear submarines have both diesel engines and electric batteries as back ups or supplements to help manage the load in the times it takes to dial up the nuclear power.

They don't. Nuke subs (SSN's and the like) have only the reactor and in case of emergency aka the reactor dies or otherwise needs shut down mid-voyage a set of batteries (Basically enough power to surface and phone the Navy for a tug).

Submarines are extremely limited in space. SSN's alone would be as big as aircraft carriers if they had both nuclear reactors and diesel engine backups.

Boomer=/=nuclear submarine.

Fight smart, not fair.

They use smaller turbines, not batteries. Generators tend to be designed to work best at full power — so what you do is design one giant turbine to provide base load (ie, fulfills minimum demand) and a bunch of smaller ones that can be added as needed. As far as I know, this is the case in pretty much every large-scale power plant, not just nuclear. After all, the only thing that the fuel is used for it most power plants is producing steam — the actual power-generation is pretty much the same regardless of fuel.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.