Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

Re:Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ trig... by hellohntoday on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @04:05PM (#28844420)

OP doesn't bring up the different temperature and pressure differential of heat sources. That's a huge red flag. For all we know the CTO role at that company was entirely focused on keeping the staff laptops running and is largely disconnected from the fundamentals of heat to electricity generation. Why the hell would she (or he) ask here when (s)he has current or former colleagues in the industry to ask.

My BS detector went off immediately.

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Re:Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ trig... by rfrey on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @10:42PM (#28847639)

I said several time in this discussion that waste heat sources are typically ~600C with flow rates of ~80-100kg/s. Do the math and that's about 100MW of energy in a stack. Off the shelf Organic Rankine Cycle engines can convert heat energy at that temperature at about 20% efficiency.

Of course that varies by ambient temperature and pressure, but not significantly for the purposes of this discussion. A good rule of thumb is that for a given delta-T, current OTC tech can get you about half of Carnot efficiency at the optimal spot on the cost-efficiency curve.

I wouldn't know how to fix a laptop if you offered me a yacht to do it. What I asked about was not waste heat to power tech, but fusion power economics, which I know nothing about.

You don't seem nice.

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Re:Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ trig... by tuatoru on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @07:02PM (#28846180)

Please bring better data or logic to the discussion, not ad hominem attacks.

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