Renewables

[iancampbell]

Regarding fusion in small (as in smaller than a ten-storey building) units, it looks to me (I have a science degree but I'm no engineer) that DPF (dense plasma focus) fusion shows more promise than any of the Polywell variants. It looks as if the units might be as small as a large domestic fridge and cost maybe $50k, to start - of course, if production ramps up they will get cheaper and may get smaller.

$50,000 and smaller than a fridge? What's the estimated power output on a thing like that? Like with most things fusion sounds too good to be true. I don't have the expertise to judge whether or not DPF is promising (I've read a few articles and seen a few videos) but I'm skeptical on the grounds that we've been chasing this dream for the better part of a century and we're still not beyond lab prototypes. I'm not dismissing fusion power itself but if anything it's shown itself to be entirely non-trivial, so much so that I tend to rule it out in discussions of future energy production in the mid-future (decades).

Estimated power output at that size is 5MW or thereabouts. And I am not at all sure whether the stated size is just for the reaction chamber without all the ancillary stuff - it probably is.

One more thing about DPF is that the proposed reaction (proton/B11) puts out most of its energy in fast alpha particles - which is a very good thing, because it means non-thermal methods of energy extraction can be used giving very good efficiency.

And one more thing - if one wants to be purist about it, proton/B11 should probably be described as fission.