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Fusion Power Plant Simulator

144 points by sam

by dale_glass

7 subcomments

A good addition would be the sales price per MWh, price for the power plant, and the loan interest rate.
Because IMO all that is extremely critical. I fully support the pursuit of fusion as a scientific endeavor, but given that we're probably at least 30 years away from having anything approaching commercial deployment (assuming ITER is built, works, is followed promptly by DEMO, it works, and is followed promptly by people building more reactors. That's a heck of an assumption), it's not at all a given that it'll ever make a profit. That's a lot of time to build a lot of very cheap renewables.
And there's also opportunity costs. I see a lot of hopes put on fusion and don't really understand this chasing of the perfect solution. Even best case, it's not happening in decades, and it'll take decades more to build fusion as anything more than one off multi-decade-long research projects. That's a lot of time for the world to get worse while waiting for fusion to happen, and we might as well just throw renewables at the problem now instead of waiting.
So opportunity costs would also make for an interesting thing to calculate. Given that fusion will likely not make a major difference climate/pollution-wise for half a century, what else could we build in that time, and how much and what effect would that have?

by leonidasrup

4 subcomments

For those interested not only in simplified energy balance of a fusion power plant as shown in Fusion Power Plant Simulator, but in more realistic engineering of heat extraction from a tokamak I recommend the following lecture by Dr. Dennis Whyte from MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center.
Fusion Reactor First Wall Cooling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHJyoqDO0zw
One of the designs uses 3D printed silicon carbide vacuum vessel cooled by a layer of molten lead and a layer of FLiBe (a molten salt made from a mixture of lithium fluoride (LiF) and beryllium fluoride (BeF2)).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLiBe
The lithium component of FLiBe is used for breeding of the radioactive isotope tritium, which will be extracted from the salt and used for making the deuterium-tritium fuel of the tokamak.

by FiatLuxDave

3 subcomments

I actually like the recirculation simulation. Although all kinds of cyclical engines have recirculation of power as part of their function, in fusion there is an important difference from what people are used to. In an internal combustion engine, the crankshaft and flywheel in a car recirculate power from the power stroke to the compression stroke, doing the same thing as the recirculated energy does in this simulation. But in fusion, this 'crankshaft' is very lossy. I suspect if you have a model in your head of how an internal combustion engine works, crankshaft losses are not a big thing. Teaching people that when they model fusion reactors that they need to include this because it's important, I think would help people develop better physical intuition. The 'lossy crankshaft' model was an important part of why I opted for partial direct conversion with the design I built back in the '90s. Set both eff sliders high to see how much this helps.
That said, one big missing thing (other than the economic stuff, mentioned by others) which would add a lot to this simulation would be more about 'where does Q come from?'. Obviously this could be too complicated for a little sim, but perhaps a few simple things could be added like showing how increasing the volume/surface ratio for tokomaks/sphereomaks can help, or how getting rid of certain types of instabilities can improve say mirror or pinch designs. This might help people to understand why certain design decisions (like building ITER so big) were made.

by derriz

2 subcomments

When people get excited about fusion as a source of energy, I’m always reminded of Henry Ford’s famous quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” although apparently he probably never said that.
Fusion is that faster horse - promising a cheaper to operate firebox which when attached to a stream engine attached to an alternator can produce electricity.
This approach to generating electricity has been superseded by new technologies - first by gas turbines which removed the steam engine and then by wind turbines which removed heat from the process and now by solar PV which has removed all the mechanics.
I just can’t see any circumstances under which steam engines are “coming back” and becoming competitive for electricity no matter how cheap the firebox fuel is.

by andrewla

1 subcomments

Apologies if I've missed something, but isn't this all just a fantasy? None of the current methods for getting fusion power are even close to being practical -- even the theoretical net output experiments require extensive and sensitive measurement setups just to establish whether or not they are positive energy.
We are not in a place where we expect fusion power to be incrementally achieved by the current systems. We need major breakthroughs that are both impossible to predict and may not even exist outside of stars or thermonuclear devices.
The idea that we'll get massive improvements in Qsci, while maintaining the same basic structure as existing fusion systems, is in the end a bit silly. What would we estimate our confidence to be that when someone invents the Fromboculator, that the Fromboculator will even have a heating system or "vacuum vessel" or a plasma system.
In the end, this looks like it's a steam engine simulator more than anything else, but with some fancy words thrown in.

by MisterTea

5 subcomments

No melt down? This game sucks.
On a serious note: I wonder how practical and safe it would be to build fusion pants close to city centers in order to harvest the excess heat for district heating. Would be a boon in e.g. NYC which already has a large district steam system. You can do cooling too, look up "steam absorption chiller."

by 0cf8612b2e1e

0 subcomment

Does anyone have a collection of these little simulator systems? I love playing with them.

by chris_va

1 subcomments

The recirculating power for the magnetics should be included (at least for pulsed), as the RTE there tends to drive the design.

by JumpCrisscross

1 subcomments

Something I've been asking my AIs to do when modelling with them is to ask for the algebra for the model so I may recreate it by hand. Including such a PDF with these links would be helpful because it succintly presents the logic in a denser form than an explainer article.

by ajmarsh

0 subcomment

Loved this game when it first came out.
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/three-mile-island-7mu

by NooneAtAll3

1 subcomments

For whatever reason the game doesn't load until I switch to the dark mode
If I enable advanced mode, the "exiting" in Heating Power (exiting) gets overlapped with corresponding numbers
Display menu doesn't allow switching to Energy mode

by caldis_chen

0 subcomment

I think the first thing I thought when every man opened this project was: how to make this thing explode.

by rao-v

0 subcomment

This would sell on Steam with a light Godot reskin

by logicallee

0 subcomment

Those who like playing with this sort of thing might like to play with this superconductor-coil-as-a-battery exploration where electricity just goes round as storage![1]
[1] https://stateofutopia.com/experiments/wheeeeeloop/wheeeeeloo...

by ck2

2 subcomments

fantastic PBS Space Time on what the last steps are going to be to finally make fusion possible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAJN1CrJsVE
(fusion is -always- just a decade away, perpetually, lol)

by johnea

0 subcomment

Great... Decades, and probably trillions of dollars later, we have a really cool fusion simulator.
That's awesome. Maybe we can fly it around the moon and take selfies with it!
Might as well roll all the high cost pseudo-science into one big instagram package...
p.s. Of course this is in contrast to using the giant fusion reaction that we have running, literally over our heads...

by stefantalpalaru

0 subcomment

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by Lapsa

0 subcomment

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