Experts Urge U.S. To Continue Support for Nuclear Fusion Research

Re:Experts Urge U.S. To Continue Support for Nuclear Fusion ... by DennisP on Friday December 14, 2018 @07:46PM (#18686273)

Seems to me the obvious solution is to build wind/solar as fast as we can, while also building nuclear because by the time wind/solar reaches enough market penetration where variability is a problem, the nuclear will be ready.

We should also spend a lot of money working on storage solutions, but with the planet at stake it doesn't seem smart to put all our eggs in that basket.

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Re:Experts Urge U.S. To Continue Support for Nuclear Fusion ... by dv_dt on Friday December 14, 2018 @07:57PM (#18686310)

Grid scale storage solutions are already commercially viable in may areas power provisioning, and have a crossover market in auto battery development. Companies are already bidding projects with renewable+storage mixes at costs already even to lower than nuclear. There is no reason to wait - structuring for nuclear is just a huge financial drag.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/lightsource-sol...

https://www.energy-storage.news/news/jp-morgan-buys-into-10....

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Re:Experts Urge U.S. To Continue Support for Nuclear Fusion ... by DennisP on Friday December 14, 2018 @10:25PM (#18686856)

Those articles don't have numbers on how much energy they store. So far I haven't seen any that could get through a windless night. Recently I ran the numbers on Tesla's big battery project, and for that much storage it cost significantly more than nuclear.

Costs are going down, but MSRs look a lot cheaper than conventional nuclear too, so if we're going to look to the future let's do it with both.

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