UK plans first nuclear fusion power plant

UK plans first nuclear fusion power plant

From the UK Times Online

"BRITISH scientists have drawn up plans to build the world’s first nuclear fusion power station. They say it could be pouring electricity into the National Grid within 20 years.

Nuclear fusion, the power that lies at the heart of the sun, offers the prospect of clean, safe, carbon-free power with a minimum of radioactive waste. But despite decades of research the technical problems have seemed insurmountable."

I read this with interest and wonder whether this will become a reality within the time period stated? Would this form of energy solve all our problems, satisfy the environmentalists (who object to nuclear) and actually work?

Regards

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[edit on 21/2/2010 by ArMaP]

Well its definitely an ether process as far as I'm concerned.
I thought endless power was discovered years ago.
Sort of Earth to Ionosphere stuff but the Ionosphere has gone away I suppose.

Efficient nuclear fusion has not been produced yet. While there is progress, somewhat, it will not be available for quite some time yet.

Excellent. But until they have figured out the dynamics of the way it should work, I 'd hope Scotty from Startek fame shows up and needs a whale tank. The we might be getting somewhere.

reply to post by TeslaandLyne


No. Your entire post is nonsense.

Not that I am an expert on this subject, or any other for that matter, I thought that once efficient nuclear fusion was achieved it would negate the need for any other energy source.

The theory is that very small nuclear fusion machines could supply all the electricity etc for buildings, cars or almost anything that requires energy.

I could easily be wrong and would appreciate if some of the more technical informed members could advise.

reply to post by Freeborn



That sounds about right to me, but i think cold fusion is the pinnacle to solving the problems.
Maybe.

Cold fusion used an amalgam for a Hydrogen process that hit the papers
years ago. A strictly ether process that only got an extra four watts
output.

reply to post by TeslaandLyne


Yeah, from what i understand cold fusion is nowhere near advanced as nuclear fusion and at this point not possible. Whereas places like JET, ITER, NIF and KSTAR (to name 4) are actually making serious headway in the nuclear department using different techniques.
So while this may seem like a pipe dream at first 20years is a nice round number to aim for.

[edit on 24-2-2010 by pazcat]

I don't see why the environmentalists would object....

Fusion = Clean

Fission = Radioactive waste....

Just letting everyone know here we have been able to produce nuclear fusion for a long long time. Hot fusion that is...... takes more energy to make the atoms fuse than the reaction puts out so hot fusion is a forever science project. I am not really sure how they would produce working reproducible cold fusion. I have only heard rumors of success followed by inability to recreate the experiment. Still just rumors........

I know some people are making a lot of headway, but really, I don't think 20 years is a reachable goal at this point save of course for a major breakthrough.

Using unproven science & technology sure sounds crazy and it will probably turn out to be a very expensive white elephant. It's more likely, it'll suck down more power from the electricity grid than it ever will produce.

One hundred years later and still no energy output. At least cold fusion managed 4 watts

en.wikipedia.org...

On March 10, NIF broke a world record for a laser fusion facility as its array consumed 1.1 million joules of electricity, most likely generated by a coal-fired or a nuclear fission plant somewhere in the distance.

Nevermind input, we want energy output.

newenergytimes.com...

reply to post by kindred


But that's just cold fusion you have linked. Nobody is really excited about that side of things at the moment. I only mentioned it as it would seem to be an even better alternative than the nuclear if possible.
Its the big international joint efforts that are trying to create nuclear fusion and having limited success that are of interest. Not really something to laugh at.
As the article says 'in 20 years' if things keep moving forward the UK are wanting to make provisions to enable it. Sure lost of cash involved here too, but it would soon pay for itself.



[edit on 24-2-2010 by pazcat]

your kind do make me laugh,

cold-fusion is actually the 'cleanest' form of fusion your people have come to comprehend at the moment,

it is not 'less' than the other kind of fusion, it would essentially give you something from near enough nothing, using relatively no energy, which is why it is an impossibility,

Anyhow, good on the U.K for announcing plans, as we all know, when you people publicly announce something, it is more likely to manifest than something which stays in the shadows.

And its about time you people stopped relying on fossil fuels,
for a race of people as technologically advanced as you are, you do indeed rely on such primitive fuel sorces

reply to post by AmmonSeth


You people huh? Interesting.
So cold fusion works does it?
There are fully functional methods to get a reliable energy source from cold fusion? If you know something that many others don't it would be great if you could share.

Prior to this article (what has now been taken down), all previous estimates that I had read indicated that fusion was likely to only be commercialized after 2050. Now all of a sudden it's under 20 years, or before 2030. Why the change? This leads me to believe that this either...:

A. Won't happen.

or

B. Will be a small scale research plant similar to ITER (etc) with a minor secondary role of producing electricity.


Advanced Nuclear fission has practically all the advantages of fusion, only it can be implemented earlier...

[edit on 25/2/2010 by C0bzz]

I agree with C0bzz. Our only option and safest bet is nuclear fission powerplants. It's no good pinning our hopes on nuclear or cold fusion and come 25 years time, there's still no break through, as that would mean we are completely screwed. It's too much of a risk. The money should be spent on new nuclear Power plants and finding safer & cleaner ways to dispose of the waste.

Fusion of course makes mass.
This is a Sun process.
The Sun increases in mass to give off radiation.
1935-08-18: Expanding Sun Will Explode Someday Tesla Predicts
found at this site:
tesla.hu...
So looks like finding the Suns fusion process by Tesla didn't
cause much of a stir but who knows now.

So can't say what the scientist are going to handle that problem.

The cold fusion process was used to make hydrogen more economical
but what the extra heat did was help to make mono atomic hydrogen
for a hydrogen process that provides phenomenal heat as the
hydrogen becomes diatomic again.
So heat separated the diatomic Hydrogen and more heat is given off
in the recombination. Yes against the conservation of energy.
The non Relativistic theory goes that the separate Hydrogen takes
on extra energy that goes off when force to recombine by an atomic
process.

Electricity can be made by ions produced by radioactivity.
Also heard of a generator with a 5 mile or 50 mile coil made by
Tesla that hearsay says works.
Thats the sort of Tesla conspiracy stories one might find.

ED: There is the Papp plasma engine that seemed promising.
Yet tptb already have the technology and the Papp is nothing
put youtube video.
There is also the science dictatorship to deal with:




[edit on 2/26/2010 by TeslaandLyne]

It's unfair if we waiting for at least 50-100 years just for solving Energy crisis and other problems in the world

Originally posted by C0bzz
Prior to this article (what has now been taken down), all previous estimates that I had read indicated that fusion was likely to only be commercialized after 2050. Now all of a sudden it's under 20 years, or before 2030. Why the change? This leads me to believe that this either...:

A. Won't happen.

or

B. Will be a small scale research plant similar to ITER (etc) with a minor secondary role of producing electricity.


Advanced Nuclear fission has practically all the advantages of fusion, only it can be implemented earlier...

[edit on 25/2/2010 by C0bzz]

For the drawbacks of the primitive fission methods it is not worth it as the waste and cost damages would vastly outweigh the small amounts of power provided.

For future's sakes you people need to rapidly invest in fusion methods and a method which you have yet to come across

For the drawbacks of the primitive fission methods it is not worth

You must be incredibly ignorant to believe that nuclear fission is a primitive source of electricity. It is among the newest, and it, unlike fusion, has actually been demonstrated to work. Currently Nuclear generates 806.2 billion kilowatt-hours per year of electricity in the US alone, and plenty of advanced nuclear concepts have had working demonstrators (e.g. MSRE in the 1960s). And yet not a single nuclear fusion plant exists that puts out more energy than it consumes. That is decades away. Again, as stated previously, advanced nuclear fission concepts are far more achievable than fusion concepts.

it as the waste

Waste from current plants is easily stored in dry-casks for up to a few decades, and then can be transferred into geologically stable places for practically forever. Given the minimal amount of radiation released into the environment, especially compared to coal fly-ash, it is obvious that storing waste is not a massive technical problem. Furthermore, advanced nuclear concepts such as the IFR / LFTR, can possibly burn existing spent-fuel, leaving waste that only needs to be managed for a few hundred years, which is very very very easy to achieve. If you're against nuclear waste then you should encourage these advanced nuclear fission concepts such as IFR / LFTR.

cost damages

What's a "cost damage"? Given fusion needs tens of billions of dollars, and many decades to develop, I think you have this reversed.

would vastly outweigh the small amounts of power provided.

It's really difficult to respond to your posts because they're so inane. No evidence, no proof, no explanation. Nuclear fission provides more than an infinite number of times the electricity that fusion ever has. It provides approximately 2,658 TWh of electricity per year. Only 1000kg of the incredibly abundant Thorium is required to run a 1 gigawatt LFTR at full power for a year.

The benefits of LFTR's

1. The LFTR is an extremely safe reactor design.

2. The thorium fuel cycle is efficient.

3. Elimination of the problem of nuclear waste.

4. Lowest fuel cycle costs coupled with very high fuel safety.

5. Lower manufacturing, construction and siting costs coupled with great manufacturing time efficiencies.

6. Liquid core reactors can be used to dispose of existing stocks of nuclear waste.

nucleargreen.blogspot.com...

Reactor similar to LFTR was demonstrated 1960's. It has some technical hurdles that need to be overcome before it is implemented.

Kirsch summarises the key advantages of IFR as follows:

1. It can be fueled entirely with material recovered from today’s used nuclear fuel.

2. It consumes virtually all the long-lived radioactive isotopes that worry people who are concerned about the “nuclear waste problem,” reducing the needed isolation time to less than 500 years.

3. It could provide all the energy needed for centuries (perhaps as many as 50,000 years), feeding only on the uranium that has already been mined.

4. It uses uranium resources with 100 to 300 times the efficiency of today’s reactors.

5. It does not require enrichment of uranium.

6. It has less proliferation potential than the reprocessing method now used in several countries.

7. It’s 24×7 baseline power.

8. It can be built anywhere there is water.

9. The power is very inexpensive (some estimates are as low as 2 cents/kWh to produce).

10. Safe from melt down because if something goes wrong, the reactor naturally shuts down rather than blows up.

11. And, of course, it emits no greenhouse gases.

bravenewclimate.com...

IFR was cancelled in 1990s for political reasons. Similar concepts are being developed in many parts of the world. Very similar reactor is currently running in Russia right now... (BN-600)

[edit on 5/3/2010 by C0bzz]