Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made from fusing atoms

Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by dreamcompiler on Thursday February 24, 2022 @01:44PM (#30458532)

Agreed that pumped hydro is the most efficient storage solution but it's limited by geography: You can only do it where there's an existing significant elevation change. Building a sufficiently elevated lake artifically by heaping thousands of cubic kilometers of dirt is not cost-effective. That is, the energy that would be required to build it would vastly exceed the total energy it could store integrated over its lifetime.

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Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by Someone on Friday February 25, 2022 @03:49AM (#30465064)

> That is, the energy that would be required to build it would vastly exceed the total energy it could store integrated over its lifetime.

Storage ‘buys’ energy when it’s cheap and ‘sells’ it when it’s expensive, where ‘cheap’ can even mean ‘free’ at times.

You would build it using averagely priced energy (using only cheap energy is impractical, as it would keep machines and personnel tied up waiting for prices to drop)

Also, having a large buffer can mean having to spend a lot less money on excess solar and wind farms. They wouldn’t have to meet all peaks in demand.

Those still could make it economically viable.

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Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by zardo on Thursday February 24, 2022 @02:57PM (#30459449)

Yeah building mountains is not a realistic solution. Thermal storage is probably the best replacement where pumped hydro isn't feasible.

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Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by ncmncm on Saturday February 26, 2022 @04:27PM (#30482124)

Inventing absurd versions of sound ideas just to have something to criticize is such a standard dishonest argument mode as to have been named.

We all know the name, but its main feature is its dishonesty.

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Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by zardo on Saturday February 26, 2022 @10:38PM (#30485169)

What's the sound idea for build pumped hydro storage on flat land?

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Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro... by ncmncm on Sunday February 27, 2022 @02:11AM (#30486114)

There is such a thing as a water tower, but that also is probably not practical utility-scale energy storage.

The sound idea is water stored up an existing hill. On flat land you store your energy some other way: underground hydrogen or compressed air, or iron-air batteries, or liquified air, or any of various other choices that are more expensive and less efficient than pumped hydro. Or just run a wire over to someplace that does have hills.

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