Question for the designers on 2300AD-Fission core lifetimes

Which leaves us with the Chinese and North Koreans, currently, since a lot of regimes are coming to the conclusion no one will mess with someone with an existing nuclear deterrence.

Fusion reactors, are only a decade away.
 
They used to be two decades away.... so they're getting closer. If you follow the curve, we might have them by 2100, maybe.
 
Ubiquitous cheap energy erodes the power of totalitarian regimes. It blurs the line between haves and have nots. Fusion won't be here until the PTBs have no other choice.
 
Mini reactors are being proposed, presumably sealed.

Costs probably will come down, due to economies of scale, in terms of numbers, and less costs for construction, in terms of material and time.
 
I have a prediction, no matter how cheap they can make the SMRs and eventually fusion (if ever) the cost of electricity to the consumer will never achieve that utopian dream of trivial consumer cost...
 
Sigtrygg said:
I have a prediction, no matter how cheap they can make the SMRs and eventually fusion (if ever) the cost of electricity to the consumer will never achieve that utopian dream of trivial consumer cost...

As long as money is the driving force in human society, a post-scarcity society is just not possible. You cannot have a post-scarcity economy, if your entire economic model is based off of scarcity (supply and demand)
 
MasterGwydion said:
Sigtrygg said:
I have a prediction, no matter how cheap they can make the SMRs and eventually fusion (if ever) the cost of electricity to the consumer will never achieve that utopian dream of trivial consumer cost...

As long as money is the driving force in human society, a post-scarcity society is just not possible. You cannot have a post-scarcity economy, if your entire economic model is based off of scarcity (supply and demand)
Post scarcity requires room temperature superconductors or fusion and the means of production in the "hands" of robots. Once all menial jobs can be done by semi-automatons, supply and demand economies break down. Until then, nothing else works as well to improve standards of living.
 
Arkathan said:
MasterGwydion said:
Sigtrygg said:
I have a prediction, no matter how cheap they can make the SMRs and eventually fusion (if ever) the cost of electricity to the consumer will never achieve that utopian dream of trivial consumer cost...

As long as money is the driving force in human society, a post-scarcity society is just not possible. You cannot have a post-scarcity economy, if your entire economic model is based off of scarcity (supply and demand)
Post scarcity requires room temperature superconductors or fusion and the means of production in the "hands" of robots. Once all menial jobs can be done by semi-automatons, supply and demand economies break down. Until then, nothing else works as well to improve standards of living.

That is all handled by TL-10
 
We have all the technology now, today, in the real world to build a 'post scarcity society'.

It can never happen.

Human nature is such that it is impossible to overcome greed, avarice, envy, intolerance, corruption, nepotism, hierarchy and elitism. To name but a few of the true base traits of human society.

To bring this back to a 2300 theme I was always a big fan of the provolutionists.
 
Sigtrygg said:
We have all the technology now, today, in the real world to build a 'post scarcity society'.

It can never happen.

Human nature is such that it is impossible to overcome greed, avarice, envy, intolerance, corruption, nepotism, hierarchy and elitism. To name but a few of the true base traits of human society.

To bring this back to a 2300 theme I was always a big fan of the provolutionists.

As I said. Money
 
In Traveller terms, once you have early fusion, the cost of energy becomes dirt cheap.

The other side of the coin, whether you have access to it.
 
Condottiere said:
In Traveller terms, once you have early fusion, the cost of energy becomes dirt cheap.

The other side of the coin, whether you have access to it.

and once energy becomes cheap, everything becomes cheaper. Between Gravitics, Fusion+, and robotics, there is no reason other than mental deficiency why a society wouldn't be post-scarcity. I kind of understand the Zhodani's point...lol...
 
One tonne early fusion reactor is ten power points, which would power how many households?

One tonne of hydrogen is hundred percent, which is forty weeks.

At default, that's a semimegastarbux capital outlay, and assuming refined fuel, one starbux and seventy nine centimes per day fuel cost.

Forty year mortgage would be twenty five thousand starbux per annum, maintenance five hundred per annum.
 
Condottiere said:
One tonne early fusion reactor is ten power points, which would power how many households?

One tonne of hydrogen is hundred percent, which is forty weeks.

At default, that's a semimegastarbux capital outlay, and assuming refined fuel, one starbux and seventy nine centimes per day fuel cost.

Forty year mortgage would be twenty five thousand starbux per annum, maintenance five hundred per annum.

I am guessing that one Power Point is about 3 Megawatts. I converted from FFS to MgT2 using some of the ship weapons common to both systems. So 30MW is a lot of power. Roughly 25,000 homes powered for 1,200Cr/year.
 
Let's say six hundred and sixty starbux of hydrogen per annum, twenty five kilostarbux mortgage, five hundred maintenance, that twenty six thousand, one hundred sixty per annum.

Let's say seventy one starbux and sixty eight centimes per day, not accounting for administrative overhead, infrastructure and taxation.

That's about 2.39 starbux per megawatt per day.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Capital_costs

Divide that by five for conversion.
 
Condottiere said:
Let's say six hundred and sixty starbux of hydrogen per annum, twenty five kilostarbux mortgage, five hundred maintenance, that twenty six thousand, one hundred sixty per annum.

Let's say seventy one starbux and sixty eight centimes per day, not accounting for administrative overhead, infrastructure and taxation.

That's about 2.39 starbux per megawatt per day.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Capital_costs

Divide that by five for conversion.

Fusion + has no infrastructure, each individual thing that needs power and is the size of a Stateroom or larger has no need for transmission towers, nor generating plants.

What is being taxed? You are not buying power from anyone. You are putting water in your own generator.

and again, what is the administrative overhead for you running a tankless hotwater heater, the closest logistical equivalent in Our modern world to Fusion +

Most vehicle size Fusion + power plants are big enough to power a home and they are relatively cheap. So you do not even need to use Starship power plant prices. You can use vehicle power plant prices.

I'm not sure what I was supposed to discover from your link. It seems to give how much it costs now to build different types of power plants, "Capital Costs", per KW/hour. I am not sure what bearing those figures have on this discussion since how much something costs to build is dependent on TL. The number that chart uses for Nuclear is for a giant fission power plant. How is that in any way applicable to a Fusion or a Fusion + plant. I am confused.
 
Fusion+ is a science fantasy invention of T4 ported to T5.

The universe of T2300 does not have fusion+
 
That said, there are quite a few esoteric fusion mechanisms that are know to science but even more of an engineering challenge.

The one sci fi breakthrough of 2300 is a much greater understanding of "quantum tunneling" (don't get me started on how the underlying science assumptions of the original authors were completely wrong and that even the current handwave is totally disconnected from anything but pop science quantum woo).

But let's assume that the same tech that allows us to move entire objects also allows us to move atoms around - fusion reactions already require quantum tunneling to explain the observed rates of fusion in stars, so if by 2300 they have a much greater understanding perhaps fusion+ makes more sense in 2300 than it does in Traveller.
 
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