U.S. Design New Nuclear Fusion Reactor Cost Lower than Coal-Fired Power Generation

U.S. Design New Nuclear Fusion Reactor Costs Less Than Coal-fired Power Generation

Fusion energy sounds incredibly good - zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, it is an almost unlimited supply of energy. The biggest obstacle to using fusion energy may be economics. Nuclear fusion power generation design is not yet cheap enough to replace existing systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. Engineers at the University of Washington hope to change this situation.

They designed a conceptual nuclear fusion reactor, but when it becomes the size of a large-scale power plant, it will be comparable to the cost of a coal-fired thermal power plant with similar electricity output. The research team's nuclear fusion reactor design and cost analysis study was published last spring and will be presented at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia on October 17th.

“So far, this design has enormous potential for generating very economical fusion power,” said Thomas Jarboe, professor of aeronautics and associate professor of physics at the University of Washington. The reactor named dynomak designed by the University of Washington research team began with the classroom project of a class that Jalber brought two years ago. At the end of the course, Jarber and his PhD student Derek Sutherland, who had previously worked on reactor design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, continued to develop and modify the concept.

This design is based on the prior art and creates a magnetic field in the enclosed space to ensure that the plasma stays long enough to initiate the production of nuclear fusion, allowing the hot plasma to react and burn. The reactor itself is primarily self-sustaining, which means it can continuously heat the plasma to maintain thermonuclear conditions. The heat generated by the reactor will heat the coolant used to spin the turbine and generate electricity, similar to the working principle of a typical atomic reactor.

There are several ways to create a magnetic field, which is essential to sustain the nuclear fusion reaction. The reactor design of the University of Washington is called the spherical mark Spheromak (a self-organized toroidal plasma form), which means that it can generate most of the magnetic field by driving a current into the plasma. This greatly reduces the amount of material needed, allowing researchers to reduce the overall size of the reactor.

Other designs, such as the experimental nuclear fusion reactor project currently being built in France, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), are much larger than the design of the University of Washington because it relies on superconducting coils that surround the outside of the device. Similar magnetic field. Compared with the concept of nuclear fusion reactor in France, the design cost of the University of Washington is much cheaper—about one-tenth that of ITER—but at the same time the energy generated is five times that of the former.

Researchers at the University of Washington calculated the cost of nuclear fusion reactor power plants built using their designs and compared them with the cost of building a coal-fired power plant. They use a metric called overnight funding cost, which includes all costs, especially initial infrastructure costs. Analysis shows that a nuclear fusion power plant needs to consume 2.7 billion U.S. dollars to generate 1 billion watts of electricity, and a coal-fired power plant needs to spend 2.8 billion dollars to generate the same electricity.

"If we invest in this type of nuclear fusion, we certainly can get a return, because this kind of commercial reactor looks very economic, which is really exciting." And now, the concept of the Washington University research team is only the actual product size and One-tenth of energy output, so there are many years to work hard. Current researchers tested the prototype's ability to efficiently maintain the plasma. As they continue to develop and expand the size of the device, they can upgrade to a higher temperature plasma and achieve greater nuclear fusion energy output.

The research team has applied for a patent on the concept of reactor design at the University of Washington Commercialization Center. They plan to continue to develop and expand the scale of the prototype. Other members of the research team include Kyle Morgan of physics; Eric Lavine of aerospace, Michal Hughes, George Marking Marklin), Chris Hansen, Brian Victor, Michael Pfaff, and Aaron Hossack; Brian Nielsen of Electrical Engineering (Brian Nelson) and former Yu Kamikawa and Phillip Andrist of Washington University. The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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