OneWayTraffic wrote:Yes it's hard to imagine any current use for power that would be served by 1-10GW machines, that wouldn't be at least as well served by more, cheaper, 0.1-1GW machines.
What's the power consumption of an aluminum plant? Apparently large ones can, and do, consume over 1GW of power.
Assuming a sweet-spot of 100MW per reactor, how small of an area can one drop a GW of power?
A standard Aluminum pot line would run at about 300K Amps, with a voltage of close to 1200 volts. This would make it around 360MW per pot line, with lets say 4 pot line in one plant, that would be 1.5G Watts. That was the one I worked on the R&D development of it a few years ago (well maybe 3 decades ago
Would it be possible and reasonable to upgrade selected electrical substations with 100MW BFRs? Would the footprint of a 100MW BFR be comparable to an electrical substation? I guess one would need to incorporate all the old functions of the substation
into the BFR add-on. I see electrical substations all over the place, wouldn’t supplementing those with 100MW reactors help the overall health of “the grid?”
I suspect the reactor itself could probably fit comfortably in a typical substation yard, but I'm not as sure you could just replace the yard, at least in the short term. The grid is designed around them.
I think you could probably put a 100 MW BFR in a relatively small building and it could be attractive, maybe something like a local phone company office. You could distribute them if the economics look good. I would expect they will still tend to concentrate in large plants in areas of high population density, but they might very well go to a more distributed power grid in the "wide open spaces" out west, where long transmission lines are a loss problem.
In a country where electricity is a novel idea, you probably could use the "Edison model" of local, even neighborhood, power plants.
OneWayTraffic wrote:Yes it's hard to imagine any current use for power that would be served by 1-10GW machines, that wouldn't be at least as well served by more, cheaper, 0.1-1GW machines.
As for the practical limit: As long as it's well above the economic break even, who cares at this stage? I'm sure we'll find out in time.
Worrying about this too much when the results for WB7 aren't yet known to us is putting the cart before the horse, though it's fun to do.
Laser launched spaceships spring to mind. If I recall right the Lightcraft people were trying to push a 1kg mass 30km into the atmosphere with a 1 megwatt laser. Such a system could easily use gigawatts of power, though if heat is a problem 10 smaller, 100 megawatt reactors would be the way to go.
Anyway. I am hoping the total silence is a good thing. After all, if there was nothing to the Bussard reactor (No neutrons, etc) then someone would've said something by now.
jormungandr wrote:
... Anyway. I am hoping the total silence is a good thing. After all, if there was nothing to the Bussard reactor (No neutrons, etc) then someone would've said something by now.
Neutrons? I though he was checking th Wiffle Ball. I don't think Neutrons are even in the picture.
classicpenny wrote:With the DD reaction (which I presume is being used in the WB-7), neutrons can be used to determine whether or not fusion is happening.
Do we have any indication any neutron measurements were taken? I got the impression (from these boards) that The WB was the first hurdle and the one that was being checked. The team was using He4 to do the testing. If the WB doesn't work, then the whole thing is a red herring, and neutrons would only be an interesting footnote. I doubt they even went down the D-D trail. You can only do so much with a pittance of $1.8M, and I think they really wanted to characterize the Wiffle Ball confinement, not go for neutrons.
classicpenny wrote:With the DD reaction (which I presume is being used in the WB-7), neutrons can be used to determine whether or not fusion is happening.
Do we have any indication any neutron measurements were taken? I got the impression (from these boards) that The WB was the first hurdle and the one that was being checked. The team was using He4 to do the testing. If the WB doesn't work, then the whole thing is a red herring, and neutrons would only be an interesting footnote. I doubt they even went down the D-D trail. You can only do so much with a pittance of $1.8M, and I think they really wanted to characterize the Wiffle Ball confinement, not go for neutrons.
I assumed that the point of WB-7 was to see if the results of WB-6 could be duplicated.
I recall a post from Dr. Nebel:
I think the WB-6 neutrons are probably real. The measured neutron rate matches well against the expected rate if the plasma was operating in the wiffleball. But if we don't see them...
That suggests they're looking for neutrons. I could definitely be wrong though. It does happen. Perhaps the suspense is getting to me
Neutron production is a useful diagnostic, though it doesn't tell you everything you'd want to know about the reactor. Runs with helium can be useful in verifying that neutron counters aren't giving false counts, bake out to get a measure of how much hydrogen the structure is out gassing, and perhaps helpful with a few other instruments.
Would it be out of order if we got a listing of tests made and instruments used, even if the results aren't ready for release?
A space ship design of multi GW power out is dependent on using reaction mass for cooling.
Such a design is not economical for a terrestrial plant.
Due to operational considerations I would expect plants to be bunched at least in the beginning. Plants will not run untended until we get a lot more experience. Radio stations evolved that way. However, one operator might be able to handle 5 or 10 plants.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
OneWayTraffic wrote:Yes it's hard to imagine any current use for power that would be served by 1-10GW machines, that wouldn't be at least as well served by more, cheaper, 0.1-1GW machines.
As for the practical limit: As long as it's well above the economic break even, who cares at this stage? I'm sure we'll find out in time.
Worrying about this too much when the results for WB7 aren't yet known to us is putting the cart before the horse, though it's fun to do.
Laser launched spaceships spring to mind. If I recall right the Lightcraft people were trying to push a 1kg mass 30km into the atmosphere with a 1 megwatt laser. Such a system could easily use gigawatts of power, though if heat is a problem 10 smaller, 100 megawatt reactors would be the way to go.
Anyway. I am hoping the total silence is a good thing. After all, if there was nothing to the Bussard reactor (No neutrons, etc) then someone would've said something by now.
"Current."
And the total amount of power isn't important. One could easily power this from an array of smaller reactors.
