A new generation of 10 tesla uperconductors could make Tokamak style nuclear fusion reactors work. It could make them affordable, smaller, maintainable and remove the plasma problems. The development time could be greatly reduced from 50 years to 10 to 20 years. A new design would also switch to FLIBE molten salt for lower costs.
The overnight cost of a fission power plant is ~ $4/W ($2/W for China).
• First of kind fusion plants at least $10-20/W
• Which implies that developing fusion reactors at ~GWe scale requires 10-20 G$ “per try” e.g. ITER
• Chance of fusion development significantly improved if net thermal/electrical power produced at ~5-10 x smaller i.e. ~ 500 MW thermal
It would be good to have a more reasonable Tokamak fusion option.
I still like John Slough’s fusion reactor designs more. He could have net gain this year or next year. It looks even cheaper and faster to develop.
The Lawrenceville Plasma Physics dense plasma focus fusion also seems to have chance to lower energy costs by ten times while Tokomaks are trying to not be two to ten times more expensive.
General fusion also seems more promising.
Also, any nuclear fusion option needs to be better than improved nuclear fission.
Molten salt nuclear fission looks to greatly reduce the waste and have improved costs.
Canadian David LeBlanc is developing the Integral Molten Salt Reactor, or IMSR. The goal is to commercialize the Terrestrial reactor by 2021. It should have initial costs of $3.5/W and could have costs that are $1/W.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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