Hacker News Reader

Comment by giantrobot | Hacker News Reader

There's a few reasons as I understand it, the power output can be on the same order as a nuclear fission plant. So a single plant taking relatively little real estate can output gigawatts of power to the grid. The fuel is abundant to the point of being practically unlimited. The fuel also needs little in the way of refinement and is not hazardous. A fusion core is naturally fail safe since energy and fuel need to be constantly applied, an accident might destroy a core or plant but not irradiate the surrounding countryside.

View on HN

> The fuel is abundant to the point of being practically unlimited.

Well, only insofar as we have all the required elements on earth. You still have to go threw a considerably complex and expensive process to make that fuel.

You need to mine lithium and then expose it to plasma to breed tritium.

> A fusion core is naturally fail safe since energy and fuel need to be constantly applied

With a breeder reactor that can be consciously refueled you can also keep its access reactivity very low. And even better, if its fuel is a molten salt the dangerous elements are chemically bound in the fuel. So even if an explosion (terrorist planting C4) would happen in the power plant, and fuel would get spread but the dangerous elements would remain in the molten salt. The dangerous elements are never gaseous and thus never leave the safety boundary of the plant.

A fission reactor in comparsion when hit by C4 can actually release gaseous radioactive material. Just not very much.

So I am not saying fusion reactors are unsafe, but rather then fission reactors can be incredibly as safe.

For myself I would much rather sleep next to a molten salt breeder reactor rather then fusion reactor.

There will never be a commercial fusion reactor power plant.

And if there were, this would not contribute to its development.

Fuel for such a plant (tritium) is practically non-existent. What of it that exists is synthesized at great expense.

It could quite literally save the world in terms of clean energy. I can understand why one would at least try.

100% false.

As with fission, most of the operating costs would have nothing to do with buying fuel. Solar and wind power suffer none of these costs, so fusion, like fission, would be wholly unable to produce power at a price anyone would pay without being forced to.

The fission plants still operating will find themselves increasingly unable to produce power at a price anyone will pay, so will be mothballed long short of their design life.

Generating electricity from sunlight and wind is anything but free. I prefer to pay $0.12/kWh for nuclear energy, as compared to $1.75/kWh for wind or solar, in fact.

If you know you have to lie to make your case, what does that say about your case?

And, who do you imagine you are fooling?

I don’t follow. If anything, the nuclear energy electric rate I quoted is too high.

Regarding Diablo Canyon nuclear plant: “The plant produces electricity for about 6 cents per kWh, less than the average cost of 10.1 cents per kWh that PG&E paid for electricity from other suppliers in 2014.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant#:~....

Fission literally demonstrated that 40 years ago. But we refuse to seriously try that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com