Jag Levak
Smack-Fu Master, in training
1m
20
Yesterday at 8:14 PM
#104
violaceous said:
It's a bad idea due to one and only one reason:
Solid/liquid radioactive waste pollution stream
We have no where to put that crap!

Do you think this is an issue which is merely not presently solved, or one which cannot be solved?
Do you reject all options that have wastes?
Do you oppose the development of kinds of nuclear which could consume the spent fuel we already have?
If waste is contained, is it really pollution?
If there are fission products we can find uses for, would those still count as waste?

We did launch nuclear power before we had a real plan for what to do with the spent fuel, but because we didn't wait we also got some benefits, like:
nearly 2 million people avoided choking deaths, millions more avoided serious illness, many hundreds of billions in health care costs were avoided; around 60 billion tons of CO2 were displaced, thousands of tons of mercury and other heavy metal poisons were not released; and our power plants gave us the means to destroy the fuel from 20,000 nuclear warheads. And in exchange for all those benefits, we now have some spent fuel which has never killed anyone. Do you feel that was a bad trade? //

JohnDeL
Ars Praefectus
7y
4,952
Yesterday at 4:40 PM
#93
ranthog said:
Fusion plants may be practical for several reasons.

They can help displace coal and natural gas faster than just building wind and solar.

Let's check that, shall we?

Right now, the US has approximately 360 coal-fired plants with a total nominal capacity of 260 GW. And in this year alone, there will be about 27 GW of solar or wind power added to the US grid. So, even if the pace of solar and wind power plant building doesn't increase (and there is every reason to think that it will), renewables will be able to completely replace coal in under a decade.

Any bets on fusion being ready for commercial-style plants in a decade?

There is roughly three times as much power produced from natural gas-fired plants in the US, so it would take another three decades at the current rate of adoption for solar and wind to replace natural gas.

Will fusion be ready in four decades? Maybe?

Should we keep researching into fusion power? Heck, yeah. If nothing else, fusion is the best way to move around the solar system. But count on it as an alternative to solar and wind? Heck, no. Not unless there are a lot of advances in a very short time - but I wouldn't bet on that happening.