Welcome to the Future where we don't want some crumby nuclear reactor, we want fusion and MIT is pushing hard to make it happen. (Science Daily: New record for fusion: Giant leap in pursuit of clean energy)
The problem to solve for the Rock City is what to do with all the heat which winds up in the water system, primarily driven by trying to cool the nuclear reactor. The principle behind everything in the Rock City is we mustn't waste anything. The heat is a resource and it needs to be returned to the system in that form or another.
The question is how much heat a fusion reactor makes since the gigantic magnets must require huge forces to drive them and that usually means heat. It may be that we break even on the cooling but the deal is worth it because it's a clean process which generates huge amounts of electricity.
We may need a ruling from the RCPC (i.e. Rock City Planning Commission) on whether we can get a pass on the heat byproduct from a fusion reactor but it's already sounding dodgy on the pass simply from the fact of the existence of the question.
Note: do check the article if this excerpt gets you giddy.
Alcator C-Mod is also similar in size and cost to nontokamak magnetic fusion options being pursued by private fusion companies, though it can achieve pressures 50 times higher. "Compact, high-field tokamaks provide another exciting opportunity for accelerating fusion energy development, so that it's available soon enough to make a difference to problems like climate change and the future of clean energy -- goals I think we all share," says Dennis Whyte, the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT.
The problem to solve for the Rock City is what to do with all the heat which winds up in the water system, primarily driven by trying to cool the nuclear reactor. The principle behind everything in the Rock City is we mustn't waste anything. The heat is a resource and it needs to be returned to the system in that form or another.
The question is how much heat a fusion reactor makes since the gigantic magnets must require huge forces to drive them and that usually means heat. It may be that we break even on the cooling but the deal is worth it because it's a clean process which generates huge amounts of electricity.
We may need a ruling from the RCPC (i.e. Rock City Planning Commission) on whether we can get a pass on the heat byproduct from a fusion reactor but it's already sounding dodgy on the pass simply from the fact of the existence of the question.
Note: do check the article if this excerpt gets you giddy.
Alcator C-Mod is also similar in size and cost to nontokamak magnetic fusion options being pursued by private fusion companies, though it can achieve pressures 50 times higher. "Compact, high-field tokamaks provide another exciting opportunity for accelerating fusion energy development, so that it's available soon enough to make a difference to problems like climate change and the future of clean energy -- goals I think we all share," says Dennis Whyte, the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT.
- Science Daily
Note: France is building a tokamak eight hundred times bigger in volume than the one in MIT. Meanwhile, MIT research is at the whim of Congress which routinely slashes relatively low-cost projects such as this while sparing no expense for the military. Complete the editorial as you will.
In the general topic of heat management, there's some additional research into conductance of heat over 2D surfaces since heat conducts differently in the plane of some materials than it does out of it. (Science Daily: How to tune thermal conductivity of 2D materials)
The thinking is we can use some type of coating of this nature to draw heat from our heated water and conduct it elsewhere such that the water can be released back to Nature and we will find some application for this heat. The first problem is to cool the water or we can't return it because heated water will kill agriculture and will also not have any good effect on rivers.
We want to convert the heat into electricity and usually that means spinning turbines so it seems the solution is just about there but still needs a piece for that conversion.
No comments:
Post a Comment