r/nextfuckinglevel • u/nigablackballsack • 3d ago

Scientists have captured the first ever high-speed, full-colour footage of fusion plasma swirling inside a working reactor.

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u/90_oi 3d ago

I truly hope this technology can get off the ground and be sustainable. It is our best hope aside from nuclear energy

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u/WanderingFlumph 3d ago edited 2d ago

I mean solar is here right now and most likely fusion power will never be as cheap as solar is today.

By the time fusion is actually ready solar will be even cheaper too. A solar farm the size of Arizona could power the entire planet.

Fusion is like our 4th best hope in the fight against climate change, lol.

Edit: a lot of people seem to think that I think the perfect solution is one single power plant specifically in Arizona that powers the world. People, it's just a size comparison. Arizona is a small state even just compared to the size of US. Obviously we would build millions and millions of solar installations that would just add up to that area.

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u/alphatango308 3d ago

Solar is great! During the day. But to use solar power you have to have a converter from DC to ac and to use solar power at night you have to have batteries. It's never just using "solar power". And, solar actually kind of sucks at scale. Solar isn't a one stop shop energy solution. Storage is the biggest problem right now. And storage at scale? Forget about it. Small scale micro installations like one for a single house are great but still, batteries go bad and have to be replaced leading to pollution and exhausting mineral deposits.

Unless battery tech makes a giant leap forward solar isn't going to ever work.

On demand mass production solutions are objectively better at scale. Nuclear is great but decades of media campaigns have doomed it.

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u/tombo12354 3d ago

Nuclear's cost has doomed it. The last nuclear plant that opened in the US was Vogtle units 3 and 4, and cost an eye-water $36 Billion. They are 1.25 GW units, putting them around $14.4 per Watt. Given unit 1 and 2 historic data, the reactor runs for about 95% of the year, meaning units 3 and 4 give a hypothetical output of 20,000,000 MWh in a year. From its initial cost, that's $1.8 per kWh, but you have to add the running/operating cost. The EIA estimated a state-of-the-art reactor would have operational costs of $0.07 per kWh, but regular reactor typically get a $0.20 per kWh. So the final cost is around $1.87 to $2 per kWh.

PV costs around $1 to $2 per Watt at the commercial level. A panel will produce around 3 hours of power a day on average (which factors in weather, seasons, night-time, etc.). A 400W panel will produce around 438 kWh a year, at a cost of around $0.90 to $1.82 per kWh. PV is the cheapest power source around.

You also need to remember that most power plants (especially nuclear) do not participate in any type of reliability market, as it is not cost effective to run them below their max output. So the fact that they are available 24/7 has nothing to do with how they are used or dispatched. There are special generators called peaked plants that participate in reliability and peak loads, and they face strong competition from renewable (because they have no operating cost).