The trouble with that giant fireball at 8 minutes-light away from the planet is that the energy density that reaches the surface of the planet, provided no clouds, is of only 1000W per m^2.... that's full power, IR, visible, UV and all other radiation bands.
Solar Heating systems use the IR part of that energy, with typical efficiency ratios of less than 70%, you get something like 700W for each m^2. 700W of heating power.... not bad, huh? Of course, unless you combine quite a few of such heaters, you'll never reach temperatures high enough to run a turbine, but they can be more than enough to heat water at a standard house... sadly, it's not enough for a 5 stories apartment block.
But if you want electricity, it doesn't look so nice.
Standard efficiency of a photovoltaic amorphous silicon panel (these are the cheapest) is of only some 10%, so you get 100W per m^2... that's enough to power a 100W light bulb, or one standard laptop... but, as soon as the sun sets, you get no more power.
Which brings us to the next big problem of solar power... no sun at night. Power storage... a whole huge deck of cards.
Just think of how much pollution is generated to manufacture one battery... And to dispose of dead batteries... It's a mess.
Magnetically confined, or this laser induced fusion is a step in the right direction to reduce mankind's reliance of fossil fuels.
It can run throughout the day.
It produces almost no by-products. Certainly, no greenhouse gasses and no long lasting radiation emitting materials (keyword: long lasting - some materials do get activated and take a few tens of years to reduce their radiation to acceptable levels, when they can be put back in the fusion reactor!
)
It does require "mining" seawater for deuterium and the worldwide reserves of deuterium are calculated to be around 2000 years worth of fusion power... but we'll have to get all the deuterium out of all the water on the planet, so let's aim for a realistic 1000 years.
Superconducting coils require something to keep them supercool. ( <1K ).. something called liquid helium, and this is the major problem of the technology. The next experimental fusion reactor being built in France will use something like half the world's reserves of helium, just for cooling. Of course, provided very few leaks, it should still be there at the end of the experiment, ready to be used on other fusion devices focused on providing electricity.
It will also produce helium.... the fusion reaction being targeted combines a deuterium nucleus and a tritium nucleus, resulting in a helium nucleus and an extra neutron that's expected to hit the wall and heat it up, while also hitting a Lithium sheet thus producing a new tritium nucleus. The heat in the wall should then be extracted through a closed circuit water pipe which goes through a turbine, and gives us electricity!
Solar Heating systems use the IR part of that energy, with typical efficiency ratios of less than 70%, you get something like 700W for each m^2. 700W of heating power.... not bad, huh? Of course, unless you combine quite a few of such heaters, you'll never reach temperatures high enough to run a turbine, but they can be more than enough to heat water at a standard house... sadly, it's not enough for a 5 stories apartment block.
But if you want electricity, it doesn't look so nice.
Standard efficiency of a photovoltaic amorphous silicon panel (these are the cheapest) is of only some 10%, so you get 100W per m^2... that's enough to power a 100W light bulb, or one standard laptop... but, as soon as the sun sets, you get no more power.
Which brings us to the next big problem of solar power... no sun at night. Power storage... a whole huge deck of cards.
Just think of how much pollution is generated to manufacture one battery... And to dispose of dead batteries... It's a mess.
Magnetically confined, or this laser induced fusion is a step in the right direction to reduce mankind's reliance of fossil fuels.
It can run throughout the day.
It produces almost no by-products. Certainly, no greenhouse gasses and no long lasting radiation emitting materials (keyword: long lasting - some materials do get activated and take a few tens of years to reduce their radiation to acceptable levels, when they can be put back in the fusion reactor!
)It does require "mining" seawater for deuterium and the worldwide reserves of deuterium are calculated to be around 2000 years worth of fusion power... but we'll have to get all the deuterium out of all the water on the planet, so let's aim for a realistic 1000 years.
Superconducting coils require something to keep them supercool. ( <1K ).. something called liquid helium, and this is the major problem of the technology. The next experimental fusion reactor being built in France will use something like half the world's reserves of helium, just for cooling. Of course, provided very few leaks, it should still be there at the end of the experiment, ready to be used on other fusion devices focused on providing electricity.
It will also produce helium.... the fusion reaction being targeted combines a deuterium nucleus and a tritium nucleus, resulting in a helium nucleus and an extra neutron that's expected to hit the wall and heat it up, while also hitting a Lithium sheet thus producing a new tritium nucleus. The heat in the wall should then be extracted through a closed circuit water pipe which goes through a turbine, and gives us electricity!
