Comments

• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  i mean, they can run the plasma through some magnetic fields…

  But it’s less efficient that boiling water.

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  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    why not do both? get both efficiencies

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    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That’s the most common proposal for MHD generators - once it goes thru the MHD proper you use the waste heat to drive a conventional powerplant. Unfortunately MHD requires the production of plasma to be effective, and plasma just does not like to exist, so the engineering practicalities make it… unlikely to ever be even remotely viable outside of incredibly niche applications (non-plasma MHD has been studied, and I believe there are even some human trials, to power implants in the body like pacemakers)

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    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Well, not an engineer myself, either, but generally speaking that would greatly increase the systems complexity, which generally increases maintenance costs, down time, and the initial cost of the system.

      You might be able to eke out a bit more power, but there’s more to the decision than total output and how efficient it is.

      What I would imagine were a fusion-powered MHD being useful would be as a front end to fusion-based plasma propulsion. (Basically something like the VSIMR, Hall effect or whatever plasma thruster, where the fusion reaction generates both some power to create the thrust and its exhaust plasma is also the reaction mass.(I mentioned I’m not an engineer… right? Just an incorrigible nerd who likes sci-fi.)

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  • bss03@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    www.darpa.mil/research/programs/rads-watts too.

    But yeah, steam turbines are remarkably efficient and if you are designing a reactor today, you definitely assume one of them will be used.

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• j4yc33@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  image

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  • bort@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    except for solar and wind, i guess. also the thingy where you catch electrons directly from nuclear decay.

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    • j4yc33@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      There are also some chemical modes of electricity generation (Alkalai batteries, etc). Also using flowing water to move Turbines like dams.

      But then the meme isn’t as fun here, and those are such a small minority of how we generate powers.

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    • Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Seebeck generators

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• Warl0k3@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  There’s also direct energy conversion of the charged particles, radiophotovoltaics and Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, but none of those are practical for large scales…

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• fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  We never left steam engines really.

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  • tetris11@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Image

    Am I a joke to you?

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    • fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      To me, and apparently the Greeks!

      It is not known whether the aeolipile was put to any practical use in ancient times, and if it was seen as a pragmatic device, a whimsical novelty, an object of reverence, or some other thing.

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• Collatz_problem@hexbear.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  We live in a steampunk timeline, everything must boil water.

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• pulsewidth@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Make alternator spin. Is only way.

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  • ByteJunk@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?

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    • morbidcactus@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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    • 0tan0d@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?

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    • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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• psoul@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If they make an artificial sun inside a donut why don’t they line the donut with solar panels? Are they stupid?

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  • ByteJunk@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    But you’d have to allow the sun to leak out of the donut, which may not be OSHA approved.

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    • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      donuts?
      Image

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  • Warl0k3@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Real answer: The sheer amount of neutron radiation thrown off by fusion erodes the materials. This is why the Lockheed Martin fusion reactor they claimed to have built is complete BS - their design ignored the requirement to shield their superconductors from the neutron radiation, allowing them to be placed far closer to the reaction (and thus vastly lower the power requirements). While it could have theoretically worked briefly, it would have eaten itself into radioactive dust astoundingly quickly.

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• Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It melts salt, isn’t it?

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  • kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If you mean molten salt reactors, guess what they do with the molten salt to make electricity…

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    • ByteJunk@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      …they found a clever way to induce a current using temperature differentials between the molten salt and some sort of coolant mass?

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    • Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      🤭🤫yess

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• realitista@lemmus.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Finally a challenger has emerged

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  • verstra@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Let’s separate CO2 from atmosphere and use it to run such generators. Win win. But don’t ask physics about this top much

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    • verstra@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Actually, I remember that on iceland they were injecting CO2 into rock, and it was shipped to them from … Swicerland, I think, in shipping tanks. It was captured from concrete manufacturing plants, which apparently produce a ton if it. So there you go - cheap CO2 is not a problem

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    • realitista@lemmus.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I doubt the amount used in what I presume is a closed system like this will be significant on a atmosphere level, but it could certainly be the source.

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• mbp@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Wow, that’s the first time I’ve seen the source of the bald meme

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  • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That’s just the effect of fusion. It regrows hair.

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• taccihcysp@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Couldn’t you just put some solar panels next to it? I mean, the sun is basically just a massive fusion reactor (just very far away and kind of inefficient), right? Imagine we built our own sun, right here on earth, that would make solar panels a lot more effective, no?

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  • johnyreeferseed@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    the power of the sun in the palm of my hand

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  • Flyberius@hexbear.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    All depends on the frequency of the radiation it is giving off and the intensity I guess. Probably not the same as what we get from the sun, so I’m guessing solar panels aren’t suitable

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  • OatPotato@hexbear.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    My guess is: it’s more efficient to convert boiling water movement to electricity than to convert photons emission to electricity.

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    • how_we_burned@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Stars are a lot cooler then fusion reactors.

      It’s in their outer layers that they produce a shit ton of photons.

      Fusion reactors are way hotter (like 100m Celsius) and although they make photons most are very high energy (think gamma, xrays etc).

      So what would be emitted as visible light would never be enough to generate enough power via pvc to pay back the cost of generating the fusion reaction in the first place much less the cost of building the plant.

      Also pvc is like at best 22%~ efficient. You’re losing a lot compared to say steam powered generators which, using ultra super critical hot steam made by a fusion reactor could maybe hit 60% (I believe that is high as you can go).

      Asianonmetry has a great lecture on steam powered generators

      youtu.be/suCEKLCCgzw

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  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    We can’t make it so large that its own gravity will contain the reaction mass, so it has to be kept inside a very strong magnetic field created by huge magnets. You can’t put solar panels inside the reaction chamber, they would get destroyed.

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  • Warl0k3@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yep! And fun fact, all online encryption relies on exactly this technology. Radiophotovoltaic batteries provide uninterrupted current, which is used to ensure that encryption keys (stored in highly volatile memory for security) are not lost due to a brief power flicker.

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• rayyy@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Don’t sell steam power short or water for drinking.

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• ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Yeah, water is fuckin’ sick. Thermohydraulics is awesome.

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  • Zink@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If phase changes weren’t so badass we would be so fucked, lol.

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• ekZepp@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  💨Efficency💨🔁

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• NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  boring

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• Alberat@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  all my homies boil water

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