Here’s a recent paper by Eric Lerner with some interesting observations about achieving viable commercial fusion …
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pop/article/30 ... ion-energy
What are the fastest routes to fusion energy?
In recent years, the effort to develop practical fusion energy has rapidly evolved from a focus on only tokamak and laser inertial devices to include a wide array of approaches. We survey this increasingly diverse set of routes to fusion to assess what approaches are likely to lead to practical fusion with the least outlay of resources and thus are potentially the fastest routes. While a conclusive answer can only be determined once some approach actually succeeds in producing a practical fusion-energy generator, and the speed of advance depends on the allocation of resources, it is possible to arrive at tentative conclusions now. We find that basic, long-standing obstacles make the path to practical fusion more difficult, and more resource-intensive, for all approaches using deuterium fuels (DT, DHe3) as well as for approaches with low-density plasma.
In other words, he's questioning whether efforts like JET, ITER, KSTAR, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), and other tokamak type reactors can ever succeed in providing a viable, cost efficient, commercial fusion reactor. Regarding these efforts, he says this ...
Fusion research long emphasized deuterium–tritium (DT) fuel, as this fuel achieved significant fusion reaction rates at lower ion temperatures (Ti) than any other fuel. However, the DT reaction releases most of its energy in the form of a 14 MeV neutron. Since the early days of fusion energy work, researchers have been aware that this situation generates barriers to rapid deployment of any DT-based fusion generators and, conversely, puts a floor on the capital cost of such generators.
This is because there is no known way to convert neutron kinetic energy into electricity except by a conventional thermal generation system, as has been used in electric systems for well over a century. In existing fossil fuel generation plants, the energy conversion system, such as a steam turbine and generator, constitutes 80% or more of the capital cost. The conversion technology is by now extremely mature, and capital costs for these systems alone are in the area of $1–1.5/W of installed capacity.
These two considerations mean that it is practically impossible for any DT system to have capital costs less than existing fossil fuel plants. This, of course, does not mean that the delivered cost of electricity, which includes the fuel price, could not be less for DT fusion plants. However, it sets a floor on the minimum capital cost of a transition from fossil fuels to DT fusion generation.
Since about 50% of all energy use is for heating and would not necessarily require conversion to electricity, a complete conversion to DT fusion would require, at 2023 levels of energy consumption of 20 TW, a minimum of $10 trillion for energy conversion equipment alone. In itself, this is not a prohibitive amount over a 15-year transition period, as compared with fossil fuel costs in the area of $75 trillion over the same period at present prices.
In other words, he predicting there will be NO cheap electricity by this route ... as has been promised over and over during development of tokamak fusion reactors. In fact, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Straus, back in 1954, said that fusion would provide power “too cheap to meter”. And they are still promising “limitless” energy from it … effectively the same thing. Which means they are still LYING. Here are some examples …
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/0 ... rbon-free/
Last September, researchers at Commonwealth Fusion Systems slowly charged a 10-ton D-shaped magnet, pushing up the field strength until it surpassed 20 tesla—a record for a magnet of its kind. The company’s founders say the feat addressed the major engineering challenge required to develop a compact, inexpensive fusion reactor.
Fusion power has been a dream of physicists for decades. At temperatures well above 100 million degrees, as in the sun, atomic nuclei mash together, releasing a massive amount of energy in the process. If researchers can bring about these reactions in a controlled and sustained way here on Earth, it could provide a crucial source of cheap, always-on, carbon-free electricity, using nearly limitless fuel sources.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/busi ... nergy.html
David Harding, the founder of two investment management firms who has holdings worth an estimated £27 million, is one of Tokamak Energy’s key backers. He said that he had long been attracted to the idea of “cheap unlimited energy through scientific wizardry” but that now the “whole impetus of global warming makes it seem even more of a no-brainer.”
If Lerner is right, these folks are lying to us and potential investors.
Now regarding the alternatives, Lerner notes that
the approaches that combine hydrogen–boron (pB11) fuel with high-density plasma have an easier, less resource-intensive path. At present, only a few private companies have joined the government projects in actually publishing fusion yield results. However, so far these results reflect the basic advantages of high-plasma-density approaches.
He goes on to note that a
pB11-fueled generator would produce energy almost entirely in the form of either charged particle kinetic energy or x-rays. In both cases, several direct conversion schemes have been proposed or developed for other applications. These include photoelectric conversion for x-rays and both electrostatic and electromagnetic deceleration for charged particle beams. In the case of many of these technologies, no secure cost estimates can be obtained. However, an idea of the cost advantage over thermal conversion can be obtained by looking at one-of-a-kind or low-unit costs of direct energy conversion technologies such as gyrotrons, which convert electron beam energy into microwaves. One-of-a-kind or small numbers, <20, of 1 MW gyrotrons typically have prices of around $1/W. With reasonable scaling for mass production in thousands or millions of units that would be needed for a full transition to fusion, cost reductions to the area of $0.1/W are to be expected, reducing the minimum energy conversion costs for such a transition to the region of $1 trillion.
Other inherent aspects of DT devices also will increase cost and slow rollout. Neutron damage to structures, not present with pB11, will shorten generator lifetime and produce radioactive materials that will need to be disposed of. The essential tritium-breeding blanket is an additional cost not needed in pB11 devices. Thus, exclusive of the actual design of the fusion generators, a transition to DT fusion energy will require considerably more resources than one to pB11 fusion, or equivalently will take longer for a given level of investment.
Obviously, there may be some clear economic advantages of pB11, but as he point out ...
little or no government funding has been provided for approaches using this fuel.
Why do you think that is? I think it’s about CONTROL.
With just a few big reactors, the governments can easily control us.
But in a power grid with millions of units, that control will be much more difficult.
