Prices of the electricity we use to charge

[Ghost1951]

I am ALL FOR using what low carbon energy we can and for saving fossil fuel energy by efficiency and lowering power demand.



I got 70.4 MPG in my Skoda Fabia yesterday on my 41 mile journey to Newcastle. I get that by driving at a moderate speed and using fuel saving techniques as well as having bought a super efficient vehicle.The long term average fuel consumption on this car for the last 1500 miles is 62mpg. I never use it for urban driving, except the last three miles of my journey.

In my personal consumption, I am EXTREMELY efficient. I burned 311.4 KWhrs of electricity, so far this year, and 2722 kwhrs of gas. In a whole year, I use no more than a hundred gallons of petrol. My personal emissions are at about a third of the average consumption of a UK person. I understand economic use of carbon and live a life that does it. I have not flown for a decade. I am well under 4 tonnes of co2 emissions including my food. Which compare VERY favourably with the average American at 18 tonnes, or the average Brit at 11.5 tonnes.

The point is - your carbon savings figures are tinkering around the margins of power production in the world at large.

The only way to really get rid of a lot of carbon emissions is to exterminate most of the people in the world. That would do it very well. People cause emissions, even when living a pre-industrial lifestyle. Atmospheric modeling suggests that the Romans emitted between 3,300 and 4,600 tons of lead to the atmosphere. We can find the lead pollution in the Greenland Ice Cores. In carbon emissions, a million citizens in Rome itself used 750,000 trees to build their homes and 250,000 trees a year to heat them.

It is PEOPLE who emit carbon emissions. If we want to turn rising co2 around we need to get rid of the people. There is no sign that anyone is considering this. If you don't do that, you are pi ssing into a force ten gale.


Take note of where the rising population is - it is not in Europe or the developed world.

 

[Ghost1951]

Indeed, the first predictions that peak oil had been past were in 1950. Since then we've discovered the reserves of the North Sea, Alaska, Mexican Gulf, Venezuela, Libya, Nigeria, Angola and many more, without even looking at Russia and its satellites.

And of course crude oil and even "town" gas can be produced from this planet's seemingly inexhaustible coal reserves, the former done by South Africa during the sanctions years and the latter by us during the 19th and 20th centuries.
.

Yes and as we know, major carbon producing and exploiting powers are VERY VERY interested in the Arctic these days. There are massive reserves of carbon fuels we have not even begun to look at. And so far, we mostly only took the low hanging fruit. There are vast amounts of oil shales and lower quality sources.

I am not recommending we exploit them all, but I doubt that our scruples will go down well in Russia or North America.

 

[Woosh]

The only way to really get rid of a lot of carbon emissions is to exterminate most of the people in the world.

Before you do that, do you know that nuclear fusion is now progressing at a much faster rate than at any other time? The key technology has moved from hardware (Tokamak, ITER) to software (Stellarators, just google Proxima Stellaris). Essentially, the software benefits from progress in AI. The cost of installed capacity would drop from $100 per Watt to 10 cents per Watt with stellarators.

Quote:

Fusion stands as a major competitor in the race to supply a significant fraction of the world’s future clean energy demands [9]. Economic studies for magnetic confinement extrapolate overnight capacity costs for future fusion power plants in the range of 1–10$/W [10], [11], [12], [13]. Resulting cost estimates for fusion energy range between 20–100 $/MWh [14], [15]. As more detailed cost estimates become available alongside greater maturity of the fusion ecosystem, there are indications that the price of fusion energy will be competitive even relatively early in fusion’s technological development [16]. The fuel for fusion is not subject to resource scarcity, as the reactants, deuterium and lithium-6 – as well as neutron multipliers such as Pb, Be, Ti, Mn, or Zr – are abundantly available on Earth, capable of providing virtually limitless resources for future generations. The promise of fusion technology is therefore of the highest relevance for providing human civilization with sustainable energy in the coming centuries.

 

[Ghost1951]

All my adult life - nearly sixty years blue sky thinkers have been fantasising about fusion being just a few years off.

It is INSANE to be speculating on that unless you are writing science fiction about warp drives, colonising planets in other solar systems and other lunatic stupidity.

In the real world the only fusion power we are likely to see in the next five hundred years is happening in the sun and the stars.

 

[Woosh]

All my adult life - nearly sixty years blue sky thinkers have been fantasising about fusion being just a few years off.

It is INSANE to be speculating on that unless you are writing science fiction about warp drives, colonising planets in other solar systems and other lunatic stupidity.

In the real world the only fusion power we are likely to see in the next five hundred years is happening in the sun and the stars.

Do you know the key differences between tokamaks and stellarators?

 

[Ghost1951]

Do you know the key differences between tokamaks and stellarators?

I know it is all boll ox mate. You and I will be long dead and people will still be going on about how we are six months from having endless free fusion power. I've heard it all my life, just like your earlier remark that oil is running out. We won't and it isn't.

If you want fusion power, set up a solar farm and when it is sunny you can have it.

Not great in England though. Nice on a sunny day to get some free electricity. I'm all for it as long as people don't exaggerate its marvellous abundance.

 

[Ghost1951]

If we stopped wasting money on trying to make fusion work on earth and concentrated on developing North Africa into the new Saudi with massive solar farms and Ultra High Voltage DC cables across the Mediterranean, we might all benefit from some fusion power.

As I know you know, a tiny part of the Sahara could generate more electric power than the whole planet uses right now.

 

[sjpt]

Quote: ...
The promise of fusion technology is therefore of the highest relevance for providing human civilization with sustainable energy ....

I think the most important part of Woosh's quote is the last four words: 'in the coming centuries'

 

[Woosh]

M

If we stopped wasting money on trying to make fusion work on earth and concentrated on developing North Africa into the new Saudi with massive solar farms and Ultra High Voltage DC cables across the Mediterranean, we might all benefit from some fusion power.

As I know you know, a tiny part of the Sahara could generate more electric power than the whole planet uses right now.

We invest something like $3 trillion dollars a year on solar. Fusion is still sometimes off but you should still get your head around what AI can do for humanity as it is proven in Wendelstein 7X, built in Germany 2015 for about a billion dollars in cost or half that if produced in quantity of 10. It currently is the most advanced of its kind, capable of holding the plasma for 30 minutes at a time, thanks to AI.
Wendelstein 7-X - Wikipedia
We may, just about, live to see the 40s where something like this may be built, based on current state of development:


Fusion Power Output:

• Thermal fusion power: 1 to 3 GW (gigawatts)
• Electric power output (after conversion): ~500 to 1,000 MW

This matches the output of a typical large fission or coal power plant.


Key Assumptions:

1. Plasma volume scaled up by a factor of ~5–10 over W7-X.
2. Use of deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel for high fusion yield.
3. Optimized magnetic geometry and energy confinement (Q ≥ 10).
4. Efficient blanket system for neutron capture and tritium breeding.
5. Superconducting coils allowing continuous 24/7 operation.

Efficiency Factors:

Step	Efficiency
Fusion (thermal)	100% of produced energy
Heat to steam (blanket system)	~40–50%
Turbine/electric conversion	~30–40%
Net electric output	~30–35% of fusion thermal power

So from 2 GW of thermal fusion power, you'd get around 700 MW of usable electricity.


Outlook

If successful, such stellarators could power entire cities with:

• Zero CO₂ emissions
• No long-lived radioactive waste
• Virtually limitless fuel supply

 

[Ghost1951]

Show me one of these that has worked for an hour and produced more heat than the energy put into it for an hour and I might agree that in the next twenty years we might have some useful output.

ALL of these experiments have involved

vast expenditure
vast waste of money
negligible difference between input power and output.
VERY brief operation

Fusion inside stars involves incomprehensibly vast amounts of pressure - typically 10 to the 16th Pascals, leading to temperatures of 16 million degrees C.

THat pressure as best I can work out is around 140,000,000,000,000 PSI.

Trying to do it at 200 atm - around 30,000 psi, is probably why it doesn't work.

At least nuclear fission works. We should do that if we need nuclear power.

 

[Woosh]

Show me one of these that has worked for an hour and produced more heat than the energy put into it for an hour and I might agree that in the next twenty years we might have some useful output.

You don't look carefully at the key differences between tokamak designs and stellarators. Stellarators are simple to build, just a set of superconducting magnets and a toroidal vacuum tube, about 6M in diameter in the Wendenstein 7X, 12M-16M in the projected power station that ChatGPT built for me. AI makes adjustments to the current in the superconducting magnets (70 coils in the Wendelstein 7X). So, the time that AI can maintain the plasma is directly proportional to the power of the AI computer. Next factor: power in AI chips goes up every year, whichever way you measure that, by 1 million times on average every 10 years. In 20 years, that would be 1 trillion times better than now. The mind boggles by that estimate.
If AI can now holds the plasma for 30 minutes, AI will not have any problem maintaining stability of the plasma beam at 130 million Kelvin indefinitely. All we have to do is wait for the AI chips.

 

[Ghost1951]

You don't look carefully at the key differences between tokamak designs and stellarators. Stellarators are simple to build, just a set of superconducting magnets and a toroidal vacuum tube, about 6M in diameter in the Wendenstein 7X, 12M-16M in the projected power station that ChatGPT built for me. AI makes adjustments to the current in the superconducting magnets (70 coils in the Wendelstein 7X). So, the time that AI can maintain the plasma is directly proportional to the power of the AI computer. Next factor: power in AI chips goes up every year, whichever way you measure that, by 1 million times on average every 10 years. In 20 years, that would be 1 trillion times better than now. The mind boggles by that estimate.
If AI can now holds the plasma for 30 minutes, AI will not have any problem maintaining stability of the plasma beam at 130 million Kelvin indefinitely. All we have to do is wait for the AI chips.

Yes - I asked Chatgpt about who was working on this and it made me this image.

 

[Ghost1951]

Yes - I asked Chatgpt about who was working on this and it made me this image.

View attachment 63425

Might make a good avatar that.

 

[Woosh]

seriously, ai changes a lot of things and speeds up scientific research no end. I have a student working here this summer. A bright kid studying law at Southampton uni. I asked him if they use AI. Yes, all the time. Some even use AI to do their assignments.

 

[Ghost1951]

Here is another good image for you and saneagle.

A little present from Chat Gpt



It's a hub motor too especially for Saneagle. Sorry it is a front one though. I don't like to ask again for a revision. It uses too much power and releases co2.

 

[Ghost1951]

This one is for Lenny and his fires thread