> The folks at Lawrence Livermore took a nice big step earlier this year

No they didn't. They used a timed implosion to improve their numbers. This caused a tiny part of the fuel to create net energy compared to the energy that reached it. Then put out a press release saying they hit break even.

So here's the problems. One is that the method used will not work for actual *ignition*, the I in NIF. It's a hack, demo ware intended to impress. Further, they carefully chose a definition of break even that no one in their right mind would ever agree with.

The events gave off between 13 and 17 kJ of energy.

The input into the fuel was somewhere between 150 and 250 kJ. That's not break even.

The input into the hologram was about 1 MJ. That's certainingly not break even.

The output from the laser was about 4 MJ. This isn't looking good...

The input to the lasers was over 400 MJ...

When you put in 400,000 and get back 17, you don't call that break even.

> Fusion don't suffer from safety related issues that fission plants suffer from

Bologna, you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

Tritium production, and to a lesser extend materials protection, requires massive amounts of lithium metal. This is normally in the form of a liquid "blanket" sandwiched between two metal container walls. Some modern designs use lithium trapped in a porous solid matrix, but this requires more lithium and eliminates online processing. Anyway, there's about a 1 meter width of this stuff, which adds up to hundreds of tonnes and billions of dollars, which is why no one is going to build one of these things.

So here's the thing, lithium is highly flammable. Just ask Tesla. And in the case of a fusion reactor, its filled with tritium. Tritium is extremely dangerous, it mimics hydrogen, so if its in a fire it combines with oxygen in the air to form T2O, which goes up into the air and falls back down as radioactive rain.

Now what could cause such a problem? Well, for one, the reactor volume is surrounded by extremely powerful magnets under ridiculous amounts of stress. If one were to fail it would effectively explode with the same sort of results as a compressor blade failure. If a chunk goes THAT way instead of THIS way, it cuts the reactor core in half and out goes all the lithium. Solid systems would definitely improve safely under this failure mode, but, as I said, only at the cost of serious capacity factor effects and the inability to perform online processing.

Yes yes, I'm perfectly aware of aneutronic solutions, but very basically, they don't work.

> There would no longer be shortages of energy because fuel is ubiquitous

LOLZ. Have you ever seen what you need to do to get D out of [H|D]2O? It's an enormous, massively expensive industrial plant that is an ecological disaster waiting to happen. The only major plant in north america, in Kinkardine, had to be shut down. They still refuse to allow anyone to use the land:

http://www.kincardinenews.com/2013/12/23/opg-seeks-final-approvals-to-clear-former-heavy-water-plant-site-for-reuse

> Therefore, the LHC is a boondoggle waste of money and a failure.

Yes. The LCH was built with the express intent of finding the Higgs. Why? Because we already found all the other particles in the SM. So, literally, they had nothing else to do.

We already all agree it exists, know all of its properties, and have narrowed down its possible mass to a small range. Literally all LCH will do is add decimal points to the mass.

Is that worth $10 billion? I don't think so.

> Generation IV nuclear reactor are much closer to comercialison

Given that fusion is infinity away from commercialization, you may wish to re-phrase your statement.

> There are 5 designs,( LFTR is one of them) and they all promise many advantages.

So did the Gen III designs. Yet when we actually try to build them, we ended up with massive cost and time overruns, just like the Gen II and Gen I reactors. Right now there are about a dozen Gen III's actually under construction

The industry has an astonishing ability to blame everyone else for it's problems. In spite of a 40 year string of failures, both technical and more commonly economic, it's never their fault. It's the greenies, or the government, or the bankers, or NIMBY. But it's never that the projects are so large and complex that no one really knows how to do construction planning for it. And it couldn't possibly be a problem that the main ingredient in the construction has gone up in price five times since 2000. Yet we still hear the claims that the *next* design will be the one that fixes everything.

> Well, since the whole purpose of fusion reactors is to make commercially useful power

Bingo. There are several definitions of work that you need to consider. One is "the thing does something". It's fair to say a car "works" if it can travel under its own power from one side of your yard to the other. But that's not *really* working, no one is going to buy a car that can only go 10 yards. To meet that definition of "working" it has to be able to drive around on roads at reasonable speeds for reasonable distances. But even then, the CEO of the company has yet another definition of "work", which means "it sells". For instance, the Edsel was a pretty advanced piece of engineering, which didn't sell. By any reasonable definition, it "didn't work".

Which brings us to:

http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/why-fusion-will-never-happen/

Single parts of a typical fusion reactor cost more than an entire wind turbine producing the same amount of power. Or natural gas turbine, or solar panels, or practically any other source of power being built today. We *know*, for a fact, that fusion will never be able to meet that last definition of "work". It is the Edsel of the energy world.

> Wow! Facts!

Sort of, I cut off the entire bottom of the post somehow. Here's the status of the other Gen III and similar systems that are not currently on the market:

GE/Hitachi ABWR:
The first Gen III design to be built.
Two successful starts in Japan, another four delayed. Very *very* bad startup CF due to problems on the turbine side, but suspect that will improve somewhat. It had better, or these will be cash disasters on the Darlington A scale. All turned off following Fukishima, not helping their CF at all.
Taiwan reactor hopelessly delayed.
US reactors delayed and then cancelled.
Further sales appear extremely unlikely.

System 80+
Not really a Gen III design according to some, but on the list for completeness. Three S80's (not the 80+) built at Palo Verde. No further sales prospects. Team and design purchased by GE, Combustion Engineering left the industry.

Mitsubishi APWR:
Built to compete with ABWR in Japan and US. No sales, effort cancelled. Misubishi is likely out of the industry, but who knows now.

AECL EC-6 and ACR-1000:
Only real sales prospect was for a ACR-1000 at Darlington B. Rumors of a second plant for industrial steam for oil sand production turned out to be a mistake. Darlington cancelled in 2013 after price came in way higher than the government could afford ($26 billion was the low estimate).
AECL was immediately broken up and the reactor design department sold off to a Quebec engineering firm for a few million dollars, along with a massive tax write-down that was more than they paid for the company.

Siemens:
Out of the industry. Part of EPR, but managed to avoid that nightmare just in time.

B&W mPower:
B&W has essentially closed their reactor division.

All of UK:
Out of the industry. Considering purchase of EPR for Hinkley, but given their experiences with that design it's anyone's guess what will happen.

> It is also why Entergy decommissioned Vermont Yankee this year.

That an Hydro Quebec practically giving away power.

Did you know there's half a year of Canada's entire electrical use stored in Grande Baliene as I write this? HALF a YEAR.

> The major reason for the large capital expenditure of nuclear power is that a lot
> of reactors are quite large and need expensive containment.

Too true.

> There are proposals to build modular reactors

Proposals. When someone bends metal, let be know.

> Hydropower also is a large capital expenditure

Not even close. Excluding China for the simple reason that I don't believe either their accounting or their exchange rates, the last two hydro super-projects were Itaipu and La Grande, which both came in just over $1 a watt, ~$1.20 for Itaipu and a little less for La Grande. This is no small feat considering the locations of both. Of course they were built before concrete doubled in price, but even considering that they would be *far far* less expensive than any Gen III reactor. Grand Inga is budgeted at $80 billion, around $2/W, based on the latest materials costs.

> It is uncompetitive to manufacture steel in Germany at current prices

It is uncompetitive to manufacture steel anywhere that has any sort of realistic exchange rates.

What, you didn't notice that steel companies in the US, Canada, England, France and Japan are also shutting down?

We ALL do.

> we really should have built new cheaper and safer reactors

Newer designs are not cheaper. In fact, in spite of herculean efforts on the part of the industry, they're generally more expensive.

There are basically three "newer" designs that are actually available on the market, the EPR, AP1000 and ABWR. Other designs like the APWR, ACR-1000 and similar are dead, while others like the VVER are unlikely to be sold outside Russian client states, who get them basically for free.

Here's a current report on all of the ones that are still standing:

EPR, four under construction, one approved for short-term:
Olkiluoto's EPR is currently billed at E8.5 billion, about three times the original estimate. Construction is halted.
Flamanville's EPR has gone even higher.
Taishan's EPR's are both at least two years behind schedule (they were supposed to be on the grid last year, now they're scheduled for next year). I don't know what that does on the cost side in China.
Hinkley Point C is, well, no one really knows what's going on any more

AP1000, four under construction in China, four in the US, several others approved:
Summer's two AP1000s are both delayed at least 18 months, leading to a credit rating drop for the companies involved.
Vogtle's two AP1000 reactors are already billions over budget, and have just announced another series of delays. Delays cost $2 million a day.
Sanmen and Haiyang are both at least a year behind schedule. Haiyang 1 was last updated to begin operation in May,
Levy County's two AP1000 last accounting put it over $11 a Watt, at which point Duke gave up and kept everyone's money.

That's not to say this is universal, nor the fault of the designs. Spiralling material costs account for much of this. But having your costs controlled by time of construction on one hand and materials costs on the other is a bad place to be, they often conflict. If you want to get the materials cheaper you have to wait, which drives up soft costs, if you try to get it quicker to help there you drive up materials costs. And when interest rates are at historical lows and materials costs are skyrocketing, these sorts of things are going to happen.

> I consider my an environmentalists, but a sane one.

Perhaps you might want to stop referring to yourself in the multiple when telling us how sane you are.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

It is if the cost of the raw materials has doubled in the last couple of years.

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/WPU132?data_tool=XGtable
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/WPU1321?data_tool=XGtable
http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/copper/all/

> While nuclear isn't perfect, the paranoia about potential nuclear accidents means it isn't commercially viable.

That, or maybe...

1) the $7.60/W CAPEX, which is over seven times that of wind or natural gas
2) the multi-year lead times which means significant economic risk in an era of they-can-only-go-up interest rates
3) construction costs that invariably go very very wrong and leave the investors holding the bag
4) banks which have been watching all of this for 40 years and consider it to be a toxic investment

Yeah, or maybe it's a bunch of patchouli scented long-hairs that are keeping the industry down. Like they way they kept down hi way construction, urban sprawl and whale hunting. Its a sad comment on an industry who's own supporters claim it's been brought to its knees by a group that can't get a job at Starbucks.