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New 700MW nuclear plant in Gujarat, India, begins running at full capacity
(www.power-technology.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Fusion reactors might be hundreds of years away, if they are possible at all.
But nuclear power is perfect for bridging such long times. This unit took 16 years from planning to full operation. So we won't be done soon, if we go this route.
We've had several net positive fusion tests. I believe they're possible. The science is there. How long it takes is another matter.
Mathematically net positive. As calculating the fusion's released energy versus what was needed to get it there. As far as I know there is no technology yet on how to utilize and extract that energy. So zero kWh produced for now.
Then you still have loss in the generators or turbines. And then it needs to be able to run 24/7 instead of split seconds, which brings the problem of how to add fuel constantly and how to remove the fusion's results.
It might be possible but I doubt we are somewhat near.
ITER will adress almost all of your concerns and is the capstone of international fusion collaboration. It's also well on its way to being completed. It is still a research reactor, so it won't actually be generating for the grid. It is expected to achieve long pulse fusion with Q=10 where the majority of heating to sustain the reaction comes from the fusion.
They will spend a while testing the plasma conditions and very low fusion amounts to test shielding before moving on to full power fusion runs. If the full power fusion runs work as designed, that should provide enough data to prove out commercial generating designs. ITER should be the final plasma dynamics research tokamak needed. Demonstration plants should be simpler, and hence faster and cheaper to build than ITER.
Full power runs will generate 500MW from 50MW input power. That's plenty of efficiency to still produce meaningful power after collection and generating inefficiencies.
I'm not denying the science, it is mathematically possible and I actually love the science behind it and reading about it.
I just say we are not yet near fusion power, I think. ITER will start experiments probably this decade. After that they plan to build DEMO, a follow up project which will deliver a little power.
Keep in mind that these reactors are very difficult to built, still. It takes decades to build even without delays.
Fusion is a beautiful source of energy, but it'll still take time. I don't think for example that fusion will play a major role in the transition away from fossil fuels as that needs to happen much faster.