Fusion power and peak oil

J

jtr1962

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Despite all the hoopla about fusion as the ultimate power source of the future, the truth is pretty depressing. Especially sobering is the fact that starting up a single commercial fusion reactor will require more tritium than currently exists on Earth. Sure, deuterium fusion is a better option, except the containment criteria are about 100 times harder than tritium fusion. Overall, it doesn't look like fusion will be the white knight marching in to save us from peak oil. A more pragmatic approach would be to continue fusion research as a long-term insurance policy, but focus on renewables such as solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal, combined with advanced fission. If you read through the comments you'll also learn that we'll need better energy storage technologies to smooth out the sporadic nature of these renewables.

The entire article, particularly the lengthy comments, are a worthy read if you have the time. Most of the people commenting seem to know what they're talking about. Many appear to be directly involved in either fusion or fission.
 
mubs

mubs

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Depressing indeed. I confess I haven't yet read your link (it's a ginormous amount of material), but I have bookmarked it and will read it because the topic (energy) is close to my heart and worries me. Despite the writing on the wall, we seem to be rushing headlong pretty brazenly into a future that will come to a fairly abrupt (relatively speaking) and painful crawl.

I honestly believe we can't rely on the jokers who run governments to solve this. IMHO, the future is in getting off the grid and generating one's own power thru a combination of means - solar, wind, etc. As you point out, energy storage and release will be a crucial part of this, and there seem to be no efficient means to do that in sight.

The other disaster looming on the horizon is potable water...
 
S

Stereodude

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:confused: I don't really think so. There's no shortage of water on the planet, and the process of removing the salt from ocean water isn't that hard for any remotely technologically capable society.
 
J

jtr1962

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Yeah, water basically recycles in the ecosystem, so we never really "use it up". We can get all the fresh water we want from desalizing seawater, provided we have an energy source to do so. That's really the crux of the problem-we don't have an abundant enough source to start desalinating enough water to meet the coming shortage. We're limited to naturally occurring souces, many of which are either drying out or polluted, while at the same time demand for fresh water grows with the population. Given this fact, it's not entirely unforeseable to see a war over Antarctica. Or maybe we'll start directing comets into Earth orbit.
 
S

Stereodude

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Uh, lets see, there's Nuclear (fission), Solar (thermal), Nuclear (fission), Solar (thermal), and Nuclear (fission) power. Anyone who thinks we're actually going to run out of water isn't thinking very hard.
 
Pradeep

Pradeep

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jtr1962 said:
Yeah, water basically recycles in the ecosystem, so we never really "use it up". We can get all the fresh water we want from desalizing seawater, provided we have an energy source to do so. That's really the crux of the problem-we don't have an abundant enough source to start desalinating enough water to meet the coming shortage. We're limited to naturally occurring souces, many of which are either drying out or polluted, while at the same time demand for fresh water grows with the population. Given this fact, it's not entirely unforeseable to see a war over Antarctica. Or maybe we'll start directing comets into Earth orbit.
Click to expand...

If you have the natural gas resources, water desalination is no problem:

http://www.power.mottmac.com/projects2/thermalanddesalinationprojects/hassyan/

120 million imperial gallons per day, running off steam from a 1,500 MW combined cycle gas power island.

Now is this feasible in the Sahara? Prob not.

*sips Fiji water transported 10,000 miles as 40% of Fijians struggle to find potable water*
 
G

Gilbo

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Tritium is easy to make. Anyone who uses Canada's fission reactor technology can produce nice amounts of it as a by product of the cooling & moderating liquid.


Personally, I think solar & wind are unsuitable for the world's future energy requirements. Modern fission reactor designs represent a tremendous opportunity to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

Certainly in Canada, at least, it makes sense to pursue fission given our tremendous supplies of deuterated water to use as moderator, and our uranium resources. In other countries the costs may be somewhat higher, but barring obscene government red tape they should be better than solar & wind, especially given the inefficiencies imposed by those technologies' inconstant availability.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

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Stereodude said:
Uh, lets see, there's Nuclear (fission), Solar (thermal), Nuclear (fission), Solar (thermal), and Nuclear (fission) power. Anyone who thinks we're actually going to run out of water isn't thinking very hard.
Click to expand...

The problem is, fresh water isn't where it needs to be. We're not going to run out, but going forward we're going to see logistical nightmares from population centers lacking the water they need. Bad things will come of this.
 
Howell

Howell

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This is really what I was looking for:

Graphite moderated, water-cooled, solid-fueled reactor designs can be susceptible to increases in reactivity with voids in their coolant (positive coolant void coefficient – if the reactor loses coolant, the reaction speeds up), making such designs unsafe. Unlike other reactors, however, in the single-fluid MSR, the fuel and the coolant are intimately mixed molten salts. So, if the MSR has an incident that causes voids in the coolant, this incident will also cause voids in the fuel, leading to cessation of the nuclear reaction. In addition, the coolant/fuel can be easily removed from the reactor within seconds by opening a valve below the reactor, and allowing gravity to push the molten salt into holding tanks set aside for this purpose, designed to store the salts in a non-critical configuration.
Click to expand...
 
sechs

sechs

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There's more than enough solar energy hitting the earth to fulfill all of our needs. It's just inconvenient.
 
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