Fusion power, still the king of power?

[Albertgauss]

Is fusion power still considered to be the most powerful energy source possibly achievable of technology by mankind, or there is any other type of fuel that has passed it? I'm not looking for anything outrageous like a hurricane engine or a black hole engine, but some kind of reaction scientists speculate may be a good source of energy for a power-plant or engine that mankind could realistically use if everything worked out. For example, horsepower yields to coal steam engines yields to gas engines yields to nuclear fission power yields to fusion power (not yet, but the next thing) yields to (fill in the blank) maybe later with better technology. If fusion is still king of achievable high power and there is nothing foreseeable to supercede it right now, that is fine, too. This is mostly a status check.

 

[mfb]

Define "most powerful".
Energy released per fuel? Sure - but there are electricity production methods that don't use any fuel.
Power we could get if we build as many power plants as possible? Yes, but we don't have the possibility (or the demand) to cover the surface with power plants of any type anyway.
Possible size of power plants? Big dams produce more electricity per installation than a fusion power plant would probably do.
Price? Unclear.

 

[Albertgauss]

I think I was thinking of energy per fuel. I was only thinking of the next type of energy that would be within a single installation, like a power plant--but that doesn't cover the size of a whole country or something outrageous or that would need a million of them. I know hydroelectric dams, wind power, and solar power can produce a lot of electricity but need a ton of real estate--a hydroelectric dam by its size and wind or solar power for how many you need. None of these three basic methods would fit too neatly in a city block or would ever be used to power any kind of vehicle, whether an oil tanker or down to some kind of automobile. The price is no concern--I would assume that whatever would replace fusion would be would be commercially available after its research phase. If there is not anything more powerful than fusion within these kinds of limits, I am fine with thinking of "fusion as king" for right now. I just wasn't sure if something had surpassed fusion on the drawing board, theoretically achievable in a generation but not science fiction outright.

 

[FinalCatch]

For example, horsepower yields to coal steam engines yields to gas engines yields to nuclear fission power yields to fusion power (not yet, but the next thing) yields to (fill in the blank) maybe later with better technology.

Well everything you've mentioned with the exception of fission and fusion is energy collected in some way from the Sun. Oil, Water, Wind etc are all mainly generated by sun light.
Fusion is how the sun generates energy. So in a way fusion power is a step change. Its the first time we are producing energy independent from any sun. (Fission is kind of undoing the Fusion that has already happened a while before, in some larger sun or super nova. So let's leave that to one side.) In fusion we can convert more mass into energy than before so that's good, and H is very common so that's good.
Geothermal power is actually from energy from our planet left over from the formation of the solar system. The newish geothermal power plant in Iceland is really quite incredible it produces enough electrical energy to make hydroponics cost effective as a food source and also so much that they are thinking of exporting the electricity to the UK. However the difficulty is transporting the energy. The other problem with this power source is it only works in (shall I say) geologically special places on earth.
Going back to fusion the future might be that after fusion you have fusion-fusion-fusion. With larger and larger elements being fused.
However with both geothermal and fusion power you have the problem of transporting the energy. So smart new battery designs and interesting chemical methods of storing electricity may be the future. It is also presently a very interesting field.

 

[mfb]

Fusion (especially fusion of hydrogen) releases the most energy per fuel for everything that is around in relevant quantities. Antimatter-matter annihilation would beat it, but there are no relevant amounts of antimatter in nature, and there is no known way to produce it without putting as much energy in as you get out again (or, practically, orders of magnitude more due to low efficiencies).
Antimatter-matter annihilation could still become interesting for spacecraft as ultra compact energy storage.

Annihilation has the highest possible energy density - 100%.
Hydrogen to helium fusion releases about 0.4%, hydrogen to iron fusion would give 0.7%.
Fission releases 0.1%.
Chemical reactions release something of the order of 0.00000005% or 5*10^-10 (oxygen not included)
A hydro power plant with 100 meter height difference gives 10^-14.

 

[Albertgauss]

What mfb just posted is exactly what I was looking for. Matter/Antimatter is a real reaction in science with a lot more power/energy that feels like the next step after fusion (if ever achieved) but isn't feasible for a long time in civilization; but that it would power large vehicles or compact power plants in the future. I feel my question is answered and appreciate your help.

 

[russ_watters]

What mfb just posted is exactly what I was looking for. Matter/Antimatter is a real reaction in science with a lot more power/energy that feels like the next step after fusion (if ever achieved) but isn't feasible for a long time in civilization; but that it would power large vehicles or compact power plants in the future. I feel my question is answered and appreciate your help.

Just to expand on @mfb 's point about availability; matter-antimatter will never be a primary power source on which civilization can be run, unlike fusion (or fission, solar, coal, etc.). It will only ever be an energy carrier like a battery. But if you are only asking about space travel, then it fits, since we mostly use energy carriers in our chemical rockets, not primary energy sources. You might say all of our rockets are in effect battery powered.

 

[Albertgauss]

@russ_watters That's a good point and clarifies something I had not thought of. Excellent.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Fusion is how the sun generates energy.

Something that is often ignored here. Humans do not actually use H atoms, they use heavy isotopes of Hydrogen in any reactor because the yield of Deuterium and Tritium by fusion of Hydrogen is so very slow - we wouldn't have time to wait. So we have to 'cheat' and extract Deuterium and Tritium etc. from the available mix of isotopes before we can make a Fusion Reactor of any practical kind. The idea that the whole of the Oceans is available for a Hydrogen reactor is an overstatement. The situation in a Star is that there is all the time in the world to wait for the first step in the fusion process. Humans are in too much of a hurry.

 

[mfb]

The idea that the whole of the Oceans is available for a Hydrogen reactor is an overstatement.

To be fair, 1/7000 of the oceans (fraction of deuterium in the hydrogen) is still a humongous amount. With DD and DT fusion (using tritium produced in DD fusion) it would release about 1*10³¹ J, sufficient to satisfy today's worldwide energy demand for 10-20 billion years.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Oh yes. But we don’t do what a star does.
The supply would still be limitless in human terms, as you say.

 

[FinalCatch]

Its also possible, if we have working DD and DT fusion power plants and energy is no longer a problem, that in the future we could use particle accelerators to artificially make more Deuterium and Tritium from other elemental isotopes. This would take a lot of energy, however we would, potentially, make more energy back when we fused the Deuterium or Tritium.

 

[skiphis norboss]

Thorium reactors can become the king of energy sources for a few centuries. Chances are, thorium and solar will just be more compact reliable and simple. Places like Africa can deploy solar easier than fusion perhaps for all the millenium. Only fusion and fission are energies that can be seen in the observable universe. quantum fusion for example quarks can't make runaway reactions that are known or seen.

 

[mfb]

Its also possible, if we have working DD and DT fusion power plants and energy is no longer a problem, that in the future we could use particle accelerators to artificially make more Deuterium and Tritium from other elemental isotopes. This would take a lot of energy, however we would, potentially, make more energy back when we fused the Deuterium or Tritium.

Most reactions would cost more energy than you get out even at 100% efficiency, and I don't see any reaction that would work with more realistic efficiency values.

Places like Africa can deploy solar easier than fusion perhaps for all the millenium.

A prediction for 1000 years in advance? I wonder how this would have worked out in 1017...

Only fusion and fission are energies that can be seen in the observable universe.

I see wind, burning biomass, geothermal energy, flowing water, sunshine and so on around me. All these things don't naturally produce electricity but neither do fusion or fission. And natural fission processes are extremely rare.

quantum fusion for example quarks can't make runaway reactions that are known or seen.

That statement doesn't make sense.

 

[tech99]

Is fusion power still considered to be the most powerful energy source possibly achievable of technology by mankind, or there is any other type of fuel that has passed it? I'm not looking for anything outrageous like a hurricane engine or a black hole engine, but some kind of reaction scientists speculate may be a good source of energy for a power-plant or engine that mankind could realistically use if everything worked out. For example, horsepower yields to coal steam engines yields to gas engines yields to nuclear fission power yields to fusion power (not yet, but the next thing) yields to (fill in the blank) maybe later with better technology. If fusion is still king of achievable high power and there is nothing foreseeable to supercede it right now, that is fine, too. This is mostly a status check.

The trend seems to be that alternative energy continues to fall in price. Offshore wind is now coming in cheaper than nuclear in the UK. On top of this, battery technology is falling in price and is becoming practical for both homes and solar farms. The previous peaks in demand which occurred due to TV commercials have gone away, as people no longer watch broadcast TV. There are opportunities for smoothing peaks by switching things off, such as car charging and commercial freezers. The grid is becoming smart, and needs to change its design to suit local generation. We are now seeing occasional days where countries are running entirely on renewables.

 

[russ_watters]

The trend seems to be that alternative energy continues to fall in price. Offshore wind is now coming in cheaper than nuclear in the UK. On top of this, battery technology is falling in price and is becoming practical for both homes and solar farms.

Both of those have serious issues with energy density that will make continued price/power drops difficult...even if I were to agree with the current practicality of batteries, which I don't.

The previous peaks in demand which occurred due to TV commercials have gone away, as people no longer watch broadcast TV.

Huh? What does that mean? Are you saying TV commercials cause peaks in energy use? I can't fathom where you might have gotten such an idea.

We are now seeing occasional days where countries are running entirely on renewables.

And days when intermittent renewables provide nothing at all. That isn't going to change and no amount of "smart" grid adjustment is going to be able to deal with that. We'll need massive storage or backup capacity.

 

[DrGreg]

Are you saying TV commercials cause peaks in energy use? I can't fathom where you might have gotten such an idea.

During commercial breaks, people may go into another room, turn on lights and kettles, use water (causing electric pumps in the water supply system to operate), etc, all of which increases electricity demand. The effect is greater in Europe than in the US because of tighter ad regulation. Commercial breaks tend to be less frequent, but longer in duration, than in the US. For example here in the UK we get only 4 commercial breaks per hour, and, until a couple of decades ago, there were only two UK commercial TV stations with significant viewing figures (one -- ITV -- with much more than the other -- Channel 4) so the extra demand during ITV commercial breaks was significant. The National Grid supplying electricity consulted TV schedules to predict when peak demands would occur.

In recent years this is somewhat less of a problem to due decreases in viewing figures, both for TV as a whole and for anyone channel, as the number of channels has increased, although ITV still dominates in the commercial TV sector.

 

[russ_watters]

During commercial breaks, people may go into another room, turn on lights and kettles, use water (causing electric pumps in the water supply system to operate), etc, all of which increases electricity demand. The effect is greater in Europe than in the US because of tighter ad regulation. Commercial breaks tend to be less frequent, but longer in duration, than in the US. For example here in the UK we get only 4 commercial breaks per hour, and, until a couple of decades ago, there were only two UK commercial TV stations with significant viewing figures (one -- ITV -- with much more than the other -- Channel 4) so the extra demand during ITV commercial breaks was significant. The National Grid supplying electricity consulted TV schedules to predict when peak demands would occur.

Do you have a reference for this? It seems very hard to believe considering how little a few lights and a little bit of water use compared to an air conditioner.

 

[ISamson]

I think that annihilation will be someday used in rockets.

 

[mfb]

Concerning electricity demand spikes from TV: Wikipedia has an article.

 

[DrGreg]

Do you have a reference for this? It seems very hard to believe considering how little a few lights and a little bit of water use compared to an air conditioner.

You missed out the kettles.

The thing I could find most quickly is this, a University of Leeds press release from 2010:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/874/?quickLinks=1

The amount of electricity drawn from the national grid varies enormously at different times of day. It usually peaks in the early evening for a couple of hours after the mass exodus from school and work. Short-lived spikes are also common after major televised sporting events, during commercial breaks and in the morning hours.

In the UK, air conditioners in the home are quite rare.

Whereas if 15 million viewers (over 20% of the UK population) are all watching the same TV channel (which used to happen until recently), and there are infrequent breaks, and, say, 5% of those all turn on their 3 kW kettles at the same time, that's quite a lot.
Edit: mfb has found a much better source (above) while I was typing this. According to which it's fridges rather than kettles that cause the most problems.

 

[ISamson]

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-fusion-energy.html

 

[russ_watters]

I'm having a lot of trouble accepting this as a real - or at least meaningful - thing. The energy users being cited just aren't that big. Even the teakettles, while at 3 kW, would use that energy for such a short time that they would have to be very well synchronized for it to matter. Boiling 1.5L of water (+80C)at 3 kW takes 500 J or 0.14 kWh and takes about 3 minutes. If half of people go to the bathroom before starting their kettles, grab a snack, go check the mail, find a sweater to put on or take an extra minute to get up from the couch, the peaks won't line-up well.

The power/energy required to flush a toilet or wash your hands (8L, 1 min, 4bar, 75% eff) is 0.28 kW or 0.005 kWh.

A refrigerator uses around 0.15 kW and if you open it so it has to run for the next half hour, that burns 0.075 kWh.

@mfb's link paints a picture of common but minor events, with the major events being rare, corresponding to special events that only happen every few years. They also seem to be getting less common, with a list of the top 30 in the past 35 years containing none in the last 5 years -- the most recent being the royal wedding in 2011, at 1600 MW. By comparison, today's grid demand varied from about 28,000-50,000 MW. In other words, the daily variation from peak is 44%, whereas the worst spike in recent history was 3%. And if you look closely at the daily data, there is a notable surge of about 5000MW over the course of an hour, when people are arriving home from work:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

To me this has the feel of a minor quirk that has gained a cult following (possibly with media help), embellishing it beyond what it really is...but it is interesting to know that it is at least real enough to name.

...googling it some, it has the feel of a national pride myth that people worked hard to make kind of true.

 

[mfb]

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-fusion-energy.html

That is an interesting approach, but it is a very early concept that might lead to an actual improvement of one subset of problems for one reactor component. Just to keep the perspective in mind.

@russ_watters: It is notable enough to be taken into account by the grid operators, and to have articles about it.

 

[russ_watters]

For information/comparison purposes, I couldn't easily find as good real-time data for the US as I found for the UK, but here's hourly data for the US as a whole (heavily matched to air conditioning load):
https://www.eia.gov/beta/realtime_grid/#/summary/demand?end=20160722&start=20160715

In the northeast there's no air conditioning load right now, so we have a profile closer to the UK's, including a 7% spike as people head home from work:
http://www.pjm.com/

 

[russ_watters]

@russ_watters: It is notable enough to be taken into account by the grid operators, and to have articles about it.

Sure: when your job is to spend all day, every day staring at minute by minute load data, you notice such minor things and make minor tweaks to accommodate them. But the "articles" are news articles, not technical articles. They use language that makes it sound like a big deal, but none of the actual information provided implies that it is.

The UK has *one* plant that could, on its own, handle such a surprise spike, going from 0-1800MW in *sixteen seconds*.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
And I have no doubt that the UK grid as a whole has enough spinning reserves to handle this (as they must, to be able to deal with a much larger and more rapid failure somewhere than what we're discussing).
[edit] Here's a demand response (voluntary/paid load shedding) capacity requirement: 1300MW, essentially instantaneous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_Reserve_Service

Other sources say the UK spinning reserves are down, but vary between about 4% and 17%.

This is always available, regardless of what is on TV.

 

[Bob 1i1]

Can someone please describe in more technical details the thermometry equipment used to measure ultra high temperatures, in the range of 20 Million degrees Celsius and higher - some fundamental math would be also much appreciated, or perhaps direct me to a more technical literature, I wasn't able to find much on the subject online, thank you in advance, Cheers!

 

[l0st]

Wait, what about the energy of gravitational collapse? If ever managed, it would be usable for actual energy generation, and not just storage (unlike antimatter), and also could produce just an order of magnitude less energy than matter-antimatter reaction (which will still be several orders of magnitude more, than fusion).

 

[mfb]

Wait, what about the energy of gravitational collapse? If ever managed, it would be usable for actual energy generation, and not just storage (unlike antimatter), and also could produce just an order of magnitude less energy than matter-antimatter reaction (which will still be several orders of magnitude more, than fusion).

That only works on the scale of planets to stars. Stars are convenient fusion reactors, and we use one already.

@Bob 1i1: Measure the thermal emission spectrum, but I think this is off-topic here.

 

[l0st]

That only works on the scale of planets to stars. Stars are convenient fusion reactors, and we use one already.

Correction: we do not know any other way to make it work currently. Fusion was though to be like that at some point. Also, we don't really have a good theory for small black holes.

 

[russ_watters]

Correction: we do not know any other way to make it work currently. Fusion was though to be like that at some point.

I'm not sure this is true. With fusion it has essentially always been known (since discovery) that if you bring two nuclei together, they will fuse. There are several methods, with only gravitational collapse known in nature, but I doubt anyone ever doubted you could do it with an explosion, considering how short it went from nothing to a working device.

Gravitational collapse energy harnessing, by name, requires gravitational collapse. And while it may be possible to create a black hole with a supercollider, I'm not sure that counts as "gravitational collapse" and it is an exothermic process, so I see no reason to believe such a [vaguely described] device would be a primary source and not a battery.

 

[Bob 1i1]

Sorry @mfb: I understand... and appreciate your answer, thanks.

 

[anorlunda]

You can watch real time data, not just averages here http://www.nyiso.com/public/markets_operations/market_data/graphs/index.jsp
for New York State & NYC. The daily variation, spikes, and deviation between actual and forecast (dotted line) are all shown. Here's a shot of the most current data, Those little wiggles around 1510-1540 are probably related to cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

As far as grid operators "taking spikes into account", we do not plan for those brief spikes in advance. It's pretty futile. The magnitude of load change in Manhattan due to a TV event is smaller than the change of load when a cloud passes overhead on a sunny day. We certainly can't predict individual clouds. Rather, the automatic generation control (AGC) reacts to them. See the PF Insights Article What Happens When You Flip the Light Switch? for an explanation of how we react.

We do plan for weather events. For example, if severe thunderstorms are forecast for tomorrow afternoon, we increase the power reserve margins and reduce the quantity of energy transmitted long distances. Weather forecasts, plus historical records form the basis of the load forecast.

 

[GTrax]

Can someone please describe in more technical details the thermometry equipment used to measure ultra high temperatures, in the range of 20 Million degrees Celsius and higher - some fundamental math would be also much appreciated, or perhaps direct me to a more technical literature, I wasn't able to find much on the subject online, thank you in advance, Cheers!

Bob has such a good question, and I hoped there would be some answers.

Lacking that, I speculate, in the full knowledge that whatever I think of could easily be shown as neophyte musings among the more experienced engineering folk, but anyway..
20 million degrees is going to be bright! Even so, the kit that records it need not suffer much, and the fact we can find YouTube and other videos of tokomak plasmas up to 100 million K means that the first surface window, likely at some distance away, for the path to the camera (quartz or something) did not melt.

Pyrometry of a high order perhaps. I think maybe a highly attenuated sample, contrived via a low efficiency reflection, perhaps with wavelength specific dichroic filters, maybe throw in neutral density filters, finally arriving at a semiconductor-based or other bolometer, just might do it.

We already have low-cost radiation-based temperature measuring devices available right now. I have one I use for indicating the temperature of heat-sinks. These measure infra-red, but other wavelengths can be sensed with similar technology. One can find robust UV and X-ray photodiode sensors using silicon or silicon carbide.

Regrettably, I cannot provide any fundamental math, but I think the technologies are mature enough to to find some, likely also on this site.
Wikipedia has lots of references for photodiode.

 

[BWV]

Well probably 95% of all power used by humans comes from fusion, so it is the most important current energy source