Energy Debate: Fusion, or Solar?

[Crispy]

There is a lot of talks about alternative energies other than fossil fuels. These mainly include green, renewable options rather than options that will just increase pollution.

I thought I might include these two as they are both energies of the future. Both are clean, both are renewable, and both produce, well, energy! Let us not forget that both have many years to go before they reach an economically viable solution. Solar is still a few years out, and the first self-sustaining Fusion Reactor is slated for an operational date sometime in 2018.

Solar uses the power of the sun to output energy, while fusion causes a reactor to undergo Fusion, usually Hydrogen Isotopes (Found in Seawater), and output energy.

So which do you like better?

Personally I like Fusion better. I think it has more potential. There is the possibility of Fusion powered rocket engines which provide high speed, and high acceleration. It seems as a more viable solution to power power grids as well. I would like to see a combination of both though. Use Fusion to power major systems and power grids, while solar helps with more simple things.

What do you think?

 

[homeforsummer]

I prefer fusion, but solar is more realistic in the short to mid-term.

That 2018 date sounds very optimistic to me. It's not out of the question for a test reactor, but every estimate I've heard over the last few years doesn't think we'll have fusion for another 30, 40 years or so.

Solar we can do now. It isn't perfect, and a few solar companies have disappeared recently when a market bubble burst, but solar's main advantage is that individuals can make use of it themselves.

You can't have a fusion reactor in the garage, but you can stick solar panels on the garage roof and take care of your own energy needs, which is actually quite an old-school thing to do but obviously has plenty of benefits. Not least the fact you can still power your home during shortages. And, after the initial outlay, that you're essentially freed from electricity bills. Contrary to popular belief, you can use them anywhere that has light too, even if it isn't particularly sunny. Though obviously you'll get more use from them in SoCal than you might in northern Scotland.

TL;DR: Fusion long term, solar short to mid-term, but also viable for self-sustaining power.

NB: If you're talking "clean" energy, there are other options too, of course. Plenty of places already get large amounts of their power from hydro energy, and many places are umming and ahhing over wind too. And Iceland powers itself entirely from geothermal energy, which is wonderfully clean as long as you don't mind living somewhere that may explode at some point in the future.

 

[XoravaX]

Fusion reactors will be better, because solar power plants are useful only in places where it's sunny for most of the time.
That would require placing them in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas in the US and in Spain, Greece and Southern Italy in the EU which would make the power grid too vulnerable - problems in a single area would cut power off the whole continent.

Since hydro plants aren't that powerful and they can't be built everywhere and biomass can't be grown fast enough, the only viable (albeit temporary) choice I see is nuclear reactors. Sure, they've got some drawbacks like the waste, but it can be either recycled in reprocessing plants or then dug deep in the bedrock. There are also some experimental reactor types which don't produce as much (or as dangerous) waste or don't have the meltdown danger - a thorium plant (radioactive thorium in a salt-water solution; letting it spill into the sea would quickly spread the thorium atoms so far apart that they wouldn't pose a serious threat, radiation levels fall quickly when radioactive matter is spread apart, it's only dangerous in high concentrations) would be safer in that aspect, although it's more expensive to build and there aren't many of them in use. AFAIK a B-52 was equipped with one as well as some experimental ships.

 

[niky]

Fusion is the holy grail of energy, but it's always been 50 years away.

We're close to "self-sustaining" reactors... but that still doesn't mean useable power. If a Fusion reactor only produces enough power to sustain itself, it's still much less useful than solar, which gives back more energy than put into it. And that's not counting the energy required to make the fuel needed for the reactor (typically tritium and deuterium... which aren't cheap or free).

We need a reactor that can produce over ten times more energy than it uses, and that can power pumps and stills that produce heavy water to fuel it. That's still about thirty to fifty years in our future. If it ever comes.

In the short and medium term, solar is more useful. Not very cost effective, but solar panels can last a long time. The only big issue, really, is the reliability of the electronics and battery storage attached to solar set-ups.

 

[Emptyone]

I think along with most others, it's solar in the short term, and fusion in the long term. For solar power the costs are always going down, and the efficiency is going up in incremental bursts, but it has limitations, such as the fact it gets dark at night. If you could somehow collect solar energy from a plant in space, that would be a whole different kettle of fish.

Fusion is years away from producing consistently more output than input energy. I think ITER starting up at the end of this decade is the next major project for fusion, designed to produce more energy than it needs to power itself. But this is just a test reactor. Beyond that in Europe anyway is DEMO, but that's not meant to start up for 20 years.

In the meantime, we just have to improve solar I guess.

 

[Callum B]

I'm sure I heard somewhere that there are plans to place solar panels into orbit so that they have constant light from the sun. I know they have them on the space station to power itself but I may just be getting confused with that.

 

[Emptyone]

I'm sure I heard somewhere that there are plans to place solar panels into orbit so that they have constant light from the sun. I know they have them on the space station to power itself but I may just be getting confused with that.

To be honest, aside from Asimov's The Last Question, I haven't really heard anything else about it. Trick would be transferring that much electricity wirelessly.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I kind of like the idea of Solar more, it takes energy that already exists and would otherwise be wasted - it's kind of brings an efficiency to situation, as with all renewable sources. However, I know that it just doesn't produce enough to be a main stream viable solution.

 

[homeforsummer]

but it has limitations, such as the fact it gets dark at night.

The solution to that is energy storage. It's sunny during the day (well, light - not necessarily sunny) but with more efficient means of storage - kinetic, chemical, whatever - then excess energy can be stored overnight. It's as important large-scale as it is on a smaller scale, but if anything it's actually easier on a smaller scale.

Funnily enough, one of the popular considerations is using depleted-capacity batteries from electric cars. 60-70% capacity of a Nissan Leaf battery may not be much use for getting anywhere, but that's still 15-17 kWh of power, or enough for half a day's electricity in the average house in the U.S. Half a day doesn't sound that much, but then you assume the other half is being provided by the daylight itself...

Trick would be transferring that much electricity wirelessly.

Funnily enough, I was watching some program on last night about it, though they were specifically referring to panels mounted on the moon. The scientists were suggesting transferring it using beams of microwave energy, which would apparently be quite efficient.

It said aircraft would be absolutely safe flying through the narrow beams of microwaves, but I do wonder how many birds it'd cook on its way down to the collector

 

[Emptyone]

The solution to that is energy storage. It's sunny during the day (well, light - not necessarily sunny) but with more efficient means of storage - kinetic, chemical, whatever - then excess energy can be stored overnight. It's as important large-scale as it is on a smaller scale, but if anything it's actually easier on a smaller scale.

Funnily enough, one of the popular considerations is using depleted-capacity batteries from electric cars. 60-70% capacity of a Nissan Leaf battery may not be much use for getting anywhere, but that's still 15-17 kWh of power, or enough for half a day's electricity in the average house in the U.S. Half a day doesn't sound that much, but then you assume the other half is being provided by the daylight itself...

That would make sense, it would be developing that further to make sure it's efficient. The quicker they implemented storage techniques, the faster the efficiency of the storage would grow.

Funnily enough, I was watching some program on last night about it, though they were specifically referring to panels mounted on the moon. The scientists were suggesting transferring it using beams of microwave energy, which would apparently be quite efficient.

It said aircraft would be absolutely safe flying through the narrow beams of microwaves, but I do wonder how many birds it'd cook on its way down to the collector

Ah, I was reading an article about Tesla's work the other day and I think he described this sort of transfer of energy, though obviously not with the moon in mind. Good shout 👍

Birds being cooked mid-air would be ... interesting

 

[Minty]

My big question for the moon thing is how long will that have to be running to make up for the energy needed to get all of that to the moon. Quite a bit of rocket fuel, let alone energy costs of building the panels and a microwave transmitter. Though being on the moon at least would be low-maintenance once it's set up, on account of the lack of atmosphere and all.

 

[homeforsummer]

My big question for the moon thing is how long will that have to be running to make up for the energy needed to get all of that to the moon. Quite a bit of rocket fuel, let alone energy costs of building the panels and a microwave transmitter. Though being on the moon at least would be low-maintenance once it's set up, on account of the lack of atmosphere and all.

Your last sentence is pretty much the idea. Short term energy and expense for long term gain.

Which, let's face it, is the entire basis the space program works on anyway. If anyone had looked at the up front cost back in the 60s we'd never have set foot on the moon in the first place...

That said, with regards to plonking stuff on the moon, much of the motivation is that it's potentially quite energy-rich in the first place, but lucrative if it all works.

It's eternally depressing for me that I'll likely never see anything like this happening in my own lifetime, but in theory, colonizing other planets could be very important in the next few centuries. Energy and resources are both major reasons for that.

 

[XoravaX]

The solution to that is energy storage. It's sunny during the day (well, light - not necessarily sunny) but with more efficient means of storage - kinetic, chemical, whatever - then excess energy can be stored overnight. It's as important large-scale as it is on a smaller scale, but if anything it's actually easier on a smaller scale.

What to do when the panels are snow covered for around three months during the winter, when the electricity consumption is at its peak here (about half of the year's energy consumption)?

It said aircraft would be absolutely safe flying through the narrow beams of microwaves, but I do wonder how many birds it'd cook on its way down to the collector

What about the people inside the planes? Of course the planes wouldn't be damaged since they've got no water in their structures, but people do. And water absorbs microwaves while heating up in the process.

If a microwave oven has less than 2kW power and will easily fry anything living, what would a transfer beam do? To meet any useful amounts of energy, they'd have to be really powerful.
It'd be interesting to see that though.

 

[homeforsummer]

What to do when the panels are snow covered for around three months during the winter, when the electricity consumption is at its peak here (about half of the year's energy consumption)?

There are two answers to this:

1) Who is suggesting that everyone uses solar? Naturally, some countries are better suited to it than others. But it makes sense for those best-suited to using alternative energy sources to actually use them.

2) That, or transfer energy between different countries. The UK already buys some of France's excess power when demand is at its highest, and I'd expect that some other countries use a similar system.

What about the people inside the planes? Of course the planes wouldn't be damaged since they've got no water in their structures, but people do. And water absorbs microwaves while heating up in the process.

If a microwave oven has less than 2kW power and will easily fry anything living, what would a transfer beam do? To meet any useful amounts of energy, they'd have to be really powerful.

This can also be answered in two parts:

1) Planes are made of metal. The microwaves can't penetrate this metal to any damaging degree.

2) Planes are quite fast. The microwave beams suggested on the program were a handful of meters across. Let's say 10m, and let's say the plane is cruising at 400mph.

You'd spend approximately 5 hundredths of a second travelling through the beam, if the plane didn't just miss the beam entirely.

Or to put it another way, next time you cook a microwave meal, put it outside the microwave and then switch on the microwave for 0.05 seconds. And see how cooked your food is

 

[PeterJB]

Fusion seems far more risky to me, and solar power is seemingly infinite, even if it produces less energy.

 

[Emptyone]

Fusion seems far more risky to me, and solar power is seemingly infinite, even if it produces less energy.

That road runs into trouble

Isaac Asimov's The Last Question

The solar output is also limited by how much we receive, even though that is huge! If we even began to tap into that much power, then we wouldn't need to worry about other energy sources.

Fusion also doesn't have the same risks as fission, insofar as if you stopped supplying energy into the current fusion reactors they just stop working, no runaway chain reaction.

 

[Dennisch]

I can see the tree huggers protesting against the square mile solar plants being setup all over the worlds sunny places.

We need to pour (and I mean a stream like the Mississippi or Amazon river) money into the research for fusion energy.

 

[Tornado]

That 2018 date sounds very optimistic to me. It's not out of the question for a test reactor, but every estimate I've heard over the last few years doesn't think we'll have fusion for another 30, 40 years or so.


Solar we can do now. It isn't perfect, and a few solar companies have disappeared recently when a market bubble burst, but solar's main advantage is that individuals can make use of it themselves.

You can't have a fusion reactor in the garage, but you can stick solar panels on the garage roof and take care of your own energy needs, which is actually quite an old-school thing to do but obviously has plenty of benefits.

Um...

That's only 3 years away. Plus, plutonium has been available in every corner drugstore for... like, 27 years now.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Without government subsidies there would be no solar energy in Canada nor anywhere else in the world I suspect. As far as I'm concerned, any industry that cannot survive of it's own accord, and depends entirely on government subsidies to exist, is nothing short of welfare and a complete waste of money.

In Essex County where I live, power is delivered to the citizenry, through a company owned jointly by several local municipalities. On the Board of this company of course are mostly local policitians and assorted prominent member of the community. They recently embarked on a large solar project to take advantage of provincial subsidies in the solar energy market. I worked out the numbers myself.

Over 20 years they will produce about $225,000 worth of solar electricity for local consumers.

Cost to provincial taxpayers over that 20 years: $5,000,000

All this in a province of 13,000,000 where the vast, vast majority of our energy is already either water generated, natural gas or nuclear, all of which are very clean sources of energy in terms of carbon emissions.

 

[Omnis]

Solar is less filling, but fusion tastes great.

 

[cjmpe]

There is a physicist in the US running a blog about energy use and he has some very interesting things to say about the economics of all of the energy alternatives out there. This is a link:

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/

 

[Dan_]

[ Wall of text ]
Solar energy is clean, readily available and with the decrease in manufacturing costs over the last decade, became a true alternative power source option. When I say alternative I really mean it, because there is no way for a solar power station to be the main energy source in a power grid, or even a significantly relevant one. The area would have to be immense, the costs would be huge and the maintenance costs would be off scale. Solar is a nice way to have a small and clean contribution to your power grid, not much else.

With that put off the way, I must say that Fusion, as pictured in the mainstream media is a bed of roses. It isn't. D-T Fusion reactions (Deuterium-Tritium) are very intensive in neutron production, these pose a real hazard to the reactor itself and amongst many other technical challenges are still yet unsolved. How do you build a reactor chamber that can withstand neutronic forces which can radiologically activate the reactor structure itself? Even ITER hasn't answered that question yet.

The true holy grail is the much anticipated aneutronic fusion, as the name implies it doesn't release neutrons after fusion has taken place. Truth is, it still does but it implies that the neutrons released cannot be more than 1% of the released energy. This is still sci-fi at the moment, there is ongoing research but it might take 50 years after commercial D-T fusion is achieved to start scratching the surface of AF.

[ /Wall of text ]

Fusion is the way to go, in the mid and long term is the only option to power our ever growing society and our ambitions of leaving our humble solar system. If ITER is successful, we might see the first commercial nuclear fusion reactor in the 2050s to 2060s.

If allowed, I'd like to add a third option in the thread title: Nuclear Fission.

Advancements are being made in order to adress many issues, and after the Fukushima-Daichi disaster the big manufacturers are reviewing their technology and engineering new solutions for safer and more efficient reactors. In 20 years, we'll see the fourth generation fission power that is safer and more efficient, why not consider it too? It's a current technology and very efficient as well. Imagine how would be France without it's massive power stations, would they burn coal and oil to ensure meeting of it's energetic demands?

Fission has been demonized over here by environmentalists, but in my honest opinion is far cleaner and environmentally friendly than the immense dams we're building in the mid of the amazon rainforest, which suffice to say, devastate forests, ravages natural habitats and cause massive rellocation of indigenous people and small producers that live on those areas. Not to mention the construction of the power lines (with their associated roads for maintenance) that rip the country from end to end. Why bring energy from the unhabited north when we can produce it right there at our shores?

Just my honest two cents.

 

[Crispy]

The only problem I see with Fission is that it produces a good amount of Nuclear Waste that can be used in Nuclear weapons. Sometimes this enriched Uranium gets into the wrong hands. I am a huge proponent to Nuclear Fission. In the short term until we get proper Fusion Plants, Fission should be the main source of power.

 

[Zenith]

Solar is less filling, but fusion tastes great.

When was the last time you posted anything relevant to the thread?

 

[niky]

It's opinion zen. Succint and to the point.

There is a physicist in the US running a blog about energy use and he has some very interesting things to say about the economics of all of the energy alternatives out there. This is a link:

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/

I've been reading his blog for a year. Great stuff. And a good illustration of how difficult it will be. Simply put, we don't have the resources to replace all of that oil consumption, even if we dedicate the entire GDP of the world (if we're talking the globe, it's all domestic) to any particular solution.

-

Large scale solar installations over the past few decades have been money negative, but with the lower prices of panels, thanks to the Chinese glut, you can have one that's above break-even. Replacing part of our consumption on the household level with solar is now possible.

-

Nuclear Fission is a good idea. Too bad hysteria over nuclear wastes has been overblown. And new generation reactors can extend the life of the fuel supply. But that fuel supply is finite, as with anything else. Best estimates are fission could supply global demand for energy for thirty years or less.

-

The sad part about the "Last Question" is that we don't seem anywhere close to building an actual AI capable of understanding the question.

 

[Emptyone]

If allowed, I'd like to add a third option in the thread title: Nuclear Fission.

Advancements are being made in order to adress many issues, and after the Fukushima-Daichi disaster the big manufacturers are reviewing their technology and engineering new solutions for safer and more efficient reactors. In 20 years, we'll see the fourth generation fission power that is safer and more efficient, why not consider it too? It's a current technology and very efficient as well. Imagine how would be France without it's massive power stations, would they burn coal and oil to ensure meeting of it's energetic demands?

Fission has been demonized over here by environmentalists, but in my honest opinion is far cleaner and environmentally friendly than the immense dams we're building in the mid of the amazon rainforest, which suffice to say, devastate forests, ravages natural habitats and cause massive rellocation of indigenous people and small producers that live on those areas. Not to mention the construction of the power lines (with their associated roads for maintenance) that rip the country from end to end. Why bring energy from the unhabited north when we can produce it right there at our shores?

Just my honest two cents.

👍

The only problem I see with Fission is that it produces a good amount of Nuclear Waste that can be used in Nuclear weapons. Sometimes this enriched Uranium gets into the wrong hands. I am a huge proponent to Nuclear Fission. In the short term until we get proper Fusion Plants, Fission should be the main source of power.

We could solve the uranium problem, if we used thorium instead, as you can't build bombs on that. In the 1950's they had a choice between Uranium and Thorium reactors in the USA for example, and I think the military had a say in which one they chose India is sitting in a massive amount of Thorium, hence they're actively trying to make reactors with it work. Problem with that is that Uranium fission reactors are 60 years in, and much simpler to choose.

Nuclear Fission is a good idea. Too bad hysteria over nuclear wastes has been overblown. And new generation reactors can extend the life of the fuel supply. But that fuel supply is finite, as with anything else. Best estimates are fission could supply global demand for energy for thirty years or less.

That could be partly solved with Thorium, but the resources are still finite in any case. It's just postponing an energy crisis.

The sad part about the "Last Question" is that we don't seem anywhere close to building an actual AI capable of understanding the question.

That's true, we don't have AI like that. Even if we did, people would probably be scared about it taking over, the Matrix has an influence! But as a thought experiment it's a nice short story.

 

[arora]

Here is how energy consumption has been going in the U.S.

​

Is it still true that nitrogen trifluoride is used in solar panel production? Would hate to upset the greenies on here but is it not considered to emit gases considered 17,000 times stronger then carbon dioxide if you're counting global warming points?

Here are a few articles worth a read related to how polluting solar is.

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/03/the-ugly-side-o.html
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2085



Anyway... solar is no answer imo, it's cool to have though, especially if you can run your house with a forklift battery.

 

[niky]

Apparently, emissions during production are high only if you use old methods of production, so it can be minimized.

Still, there's no indication that we have anywhere near the industrial capacity to produce enough panels to cover 100% of our current energy needs, anyway.

 

[XoravaX]

There are two answers to this:

1) Who is suggesting that everyone uses solar? Naturally, some countries are better suited to it than others. But it makes sense for those best-suited to using alternative energy sources to actually use them.

Hence why I mentioned nuclear power there. Solar power can never become an universal energy source in a way fusion power could.

This can also be answered in two parts:

1) Planes are made of metal. The microwaves can't penetrate this metal to any damaging degree.

2) Planes are quite fast. The microwave beams suggested on the program were a handful of meters across. Let's say 10m, and let's say the plane is cruising at 400mph.

You'd spend approximately 5 hundredths of a second travelling through the beam, if the plane didn't just miss the beam entirely.

Or to put it another way, next time you cook a microwave meal, put it outside the microwave and then switch on the microwave for 0.05 seconds. And see how cooked your food is

Oh, I completely forgot that it doesn't penetrate metal. But microwaves don't penetrate the atmosphere well either because of the air humidity. That is the primary problem of such means of energy transportation.

---

Fusion power works everywhere (like fossile fuels, biomass and nuclear (fission) power), while solar power only where it's sunny for most of the time. Solar power, hydro power and wind power are also subject to geopolitical tensions as they can't be built everywhere, and in a country where they can, has control over to whose they do give access to the power to.

 

[homeforsummer]

and in a country where they can, has control over to whose they do give access to the power to.

That's a bigger problem than most of the others.

Essentially, it's a problem more akin to the exact issue we have at the moment with fossil fuels. Much of the energy is controlled by a few, small, politically dubious nations.

Theoretically, a large array in the Sahara could power all of Europe and North Africa...

However, what you're then doing is giving a potentially unstable North African country - Libya, Algeria, Chad, Niger, Egypt, the Sudan - a monopoly on all of Europe's power. That would make me rather uneasy...

No, my preferred solution for solar is home-mounted panels. Again, not everyone is geographically placed to make best use of it and something like fusion would still be a better aim globally, but it's certainly an option for a lot of people.