Talk-Polywell.org

From the update they gave last year at this time (https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default ... 9_GOTA.pdf)
They were targeting: Ti keV ~1–2 and Te keV ~0.2–1

Looks like they are within both ranges, which is good, though one more than the other.

Michl Binderbauer from TAE Technologies gave the talk Progress and Next Steps at TAE at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Fusion Power Associates.
http://firefusionpower.org/FPA18_TAE_Binderbauer.pdf

New Forbes article on TAE including 44 minute video discussion of TAE status. Predicting breakeven in two years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmaho ... b130671d4a

This is excellent news and will be a great boost to fusion research and fusion companies that are looking for funding. Once one entity has achieved break even, the stigma will be broken and money will start to flow.

rschaffer8 wrote:New Forbes article on TAE including 44 minute video discussion of TAE status. Predicting breakeven in two years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmaho ... b130671d4a

Clarification: The headline on this story originally began, “Energy From Fusion In Two Years.” Two days after the story was published, Binderbauer backed away from that statement through a spokesperson, who said, “While Michl said a ‘couple years,’ he meant a small number of years. Not literally two.”

Still, he seemed pretty confident they will be ready for commercialization in five.

I thought it was interesting that they have a panel of experts that come in and do peer review every 6 months and report the results to the board. I wonder if the other fusion projects do a similar thing.

Also interesting that their target for initial plants is mega cities in developing countries as it seems they think it won’t be as cost competitive with other alternatives in the developed world.

I would rather think that the problem with developing nations is the support staff expertise and parts. Fossil systems can be quite simple or drop in packages. At some point though the Fusion plants will be boilerplated so to speak.

Commercialization is one thing, proof of science is another. Proof of science is the blockbuster milestone for most of the dark horse projects such as TAE, General Fusion, Polywell, LM, and Helion. ITER has huge issues (so to speak), but not proof of science.

Also the fusion plants can power 24 hour life, industry, require power systems. Solar is just fine for rural, daylight rise and shine life.

General Fusion also publishes their research. Both TAE & GF are impressive operations.

TAE said, I forgot to state the key point I wanted to really make , and that is that they said the science will be demonstrated with Norman in 2019 (that is their target). C2-U was their make or break machine, crunch time for TAE, and that was successful. That is not to imply that Norman is not a critical machine, they are after all planning to fuse Boron.

Maui wrote: I thought it was interesting that they have a panel of experts that come in and do peer review every 6 months and report the results to the board. I wonder if the other fusion projects do a similar thing.

When EMC2 was funded by the Navy then they had regular reviews by an external panel. Two of the review reports on EMC2 were published by Brian Wang. Also LPPF has described that they have been reviewed by external experts at least a few times. I would guess that most of the other fusion companies ask for external reviews at least when they need to raise new funding from investors.

The scale of the TAE Technologies devices is becoming impressive. Norman is about 30 m long, Copernicus is planned to be more than 45 m long and the power plant plan is for a device almost 110 m long. These are linear devices and that gives of course a lot ot benefits, but they will still be rather big. It will take serious money to build those machines.

A modern coal fired plant has pulverizers, primary air fans, forced and induced draft fans, SCR's, SO2 scrubbers with limestone pulverizers pumps etc., precipitators, a coal field, stacker/ reclaimer coal handling systems, boiler which can be 200 ft tall, not to mention the 500 foot tall stacks to get the gas up there.... and that is just to make steam.

Granted, a fusion reactor will have auxiliary systems too, but the scale and capital is not worse, it just can't be!

Gas fired boilers are simpler, less capital, but gas is always going to be more expensive. And gas turbines are really high maintenance and likely will be best in a combined cycle with a gas fired boiler, but developing countries will likely be capital constrained.

Well, if your goal is to be competitive with coal, you are in trouble because coal power is dead. I’d have to go back and hear their numbers again, but they implied that with current gas prices, they’d have a hard time competing in the US with their initial plants.

I think solar + battery is going to be the main competitor. Prices for panels keep dropping and prices for batteries keep dropping. They suggested, though, that the real estate for solar will simply not exist in mega cities, plus the growth of demand will be so fast in the developing world, that existing plants won’t be able to provide the stable backbone power that will exist in developed/stable markets.

Solar? Got trees, snow, you get feet of snow and need heat? On your roof maintenance for suburb, and for cities not enough roof space, and for industry not enough power density or 24 your supply? LOL

Imaginary power source. I get a kick out of the so called green proponents.

Maui wrote:Well, if your goal is to be competitive with coal, you are in trouble because coal power is dead. I’d have to go back and hear their numbers again, but they implied that with current gas prices, they’d have a hard time competing in the US with their initial plants.
.

Fixed costs combined with lower running hours are devastating for coal power economics. The capital and fixed operations and maintenance (FOM) costs associated with keeping units online or compliant with environmental regulation can only be justified if operating hours are maintained.
Whether the energy source is fossil fuel-based, nuclear or renewable, the cost of operation and maintenance (O&M) forms an important part of a power plant’s business case.
O&M costs vary widely between different forms of power generation, and the O&M burden often plays a varying role in the basic cost analysis of different power plants – high maintenance costs are often offset by advantages in other areas, and vice versa.
the cheapest coal subcritical plants coming in at $43 per kW, the cost rising steadily through the more efficient supercritical and modern ultrasupercritical coal combustion technologies before arriving at $88 per kW in the case of the less-polluting and carbon capture-ready integrated gasification combined cycle plants(clean coal).
Operation and maintenance costs at onshore wind power sites now rival the simplest coal technologies at $46 per kW
Large-scale hydroelectric power is currently has an average yearly O&M cost of $53 per kW
For Nuclear power every kilowatt generated there is an average of $198 spent on O&M cooling pools and the high standards needed to maintain a plant and it byproduct drive O&M though the roof decommissioning cost just as much as building the plant. Nuclear energy’s other advantages – reliability, lack of emissions, low fuel prices keep it in the game.


Gas-fired power generation is known for having relatively low O&M costs when compared to other generation methods, average annual O&M cost of just $20 per kilowatt (kW) produced, making this technology the cheapest O&M option in the industry.
Solar PV is closely behind this as well at $28 per kilowatt but solar thermal is at a whopping $290 per kilowatt
so in summary It looks like the goal to beat in coal in as far as operation and maintenance cost. gas turbines are just too effective to be used as a bookmark to compare too. And you now can see why the explosion of gas turbine power generation is happening today.
I wonder what the costs of a polywell reactor or any fusion reactor will be in the grand scale of things
disclaimer These numbers are from http://www.power-technology.com october 2014

mvanwink5 wrote:Solar? Got trees, snow, you get feet of snow and need heat? On your roof maintenance for suburb, and for cities not enough roof space, and for industry not enough power density or 24 your supply? LOL

Imaginary power source. I get a kick out of the so called green proponents.

Solar cogeneration is a very viable power production plan for homeowners and off grid application that can and do surpass commercial generation in cost and value. It can and is becoming a part of our energy structure. solar is also now a solution where needs are small and infrastructure does not exist. third world countries and the Sub-Saharan Africa areas
But and it is a BIG BUT, city and industry can never be supported on any current solar plant or anything planned in the future. Storage is just too big of a jump to be overcome with our present technology or any foreseeable plan in the future. If a viable storage solution could be found we could support the majority of our non commercial power / energy usage off of solar. leaving heavy industry with gas generation / nuclear / fusion options