You’re telling me that Humanity is able to understand what goes on at the heart of stars, and is on the brink of being able to harness that power (“Soon TM”), and the best we can come up with is a big tea kettle? I’m not buying it.
There’s got to be a better way of capturing all that energy - like, solar panels but for other types of radiation? Or if that’s not possible because wavelengths or something , maybe make something glow and use normal panels? Or like, can’t we take a particle accelerator and flip it around and pull energy from the particles that go zooming?
I’m sure there’s a reason why all of that is hard, but surely not impossible?
We’ve gotten really, really good at extracting energy from steam, steam turbines can be incredibly efficient, I can’t recall exact figures but Wikipedia cites 90% as the top end.
True, but that’s just one part of the process. Compared to actual chemical energy in the source fuel, most plants
If nothing else, there’s an absolute efficiency limit from Carnot’s theorem.
Even for the most modern and efficient gas plants, the limit seems to be ~60%, and for nuclear or coal, it’s much lower at around 30-40%.
You identified the solution. Use a solar panel and let the reactor in the center of our system do the work. Add a batteries to make up for being blocked. Today, solar AND batteries are cheaper than fission reactors. Fusion has promise, but why over invest in a maybe when you can use the technology we have today? Is it because It has an end game where you don’t infinity extract resources? Who would want that?
I believe there is a generator with functional prototypes in the US and China that uses supercritical CO2? I mean its basically a steam engine but using a different medium and potentially even more efficient.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I refuse to believe this.
You’re telling me that Humanity is able to understand what goes on at the heart of stars, and is on the brink of being able to harness that power (“Soon TM”), and the best we can come up with is a big tea kettle? I’m not buying it.
There’s got to be a better way of capturing all that energy - like, solar panels but for other types of radiation? Or if that’s not possible because wavelengths or something , maybe make something glow and use normal panels? Or like, can’t we take a particle accelerator and flip it around and pull energy from the particles that go zooming?
I’m sure there’s a reason why all of that is hard, but surely not impossible?
morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
We’ve gotten really, really good at extracting energy from steam, steam turbines can be incredibly efficient, I can’t recall exact figures but Wikipedia cites 90% as the top end.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 1 month ago
True, but that’s just one part of the process. Compared to actual chemical energy in the source fuel, most plants
If nothing else, there’s an absolute efficiency limit from Carnot’s theorem. Even for the most modern and efficient gas plants, the limit seems to be ~60%, and for nuclear or coal, it’s much lower at around 30-40%.
0tan0d@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You identified the solution. Use a solar panel and let the reactor in the center of our system do the work. Add a batteries to make up for being blocked. Today, solar AND batteries are cheaper than fission reactors. Fusion has promise, but why over invest in a maybe when you can use the technology we have today? Is it because It has an end game where you don’t infinity extract resources? Who would want that?
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I believe there is a generator with functional prototypes in the US and China that uses supercritical CO2? I mean its basically a steam engine but using a different medium and potentially even more efficient.