IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/epw/energy/v1y2021i5id7032.html

Electric Power Amplification in Fusion Power Plants

Author

Listed:
  • Robert L. Hirsch

    (Management Information Services Inc, USA)

Abstract

Fusion power concepts that are heated by electrical devices for the purpose of producing high levels of electrical output are in effect electric power amplifiers. Three systems are considered: A hypothetical electric power version of the ITER experiment, the ARIES-1 fusion reactor design, and a modified version of ARIES-1 with stainless steel structural material. We find that an ITER power plant with a reasonable electric power conversion system would produce no net electric power at its target energy amplification factor of 10. The ARIES-1 conceptual power plant, as conceived, would have an energy amplification of 22 and an electric amplification of 6. If stainless steel were substituted for the SiC composite material assumed, the ARIES-1 electric power amplification would drop to roughly 3. We conclude that practical fusion power plants will likely require a near-ignition operating mode and qualified high temperature materials as prerequisites for commercial viability.

Suggested Citation

Handle: RePEc:epw:energy:v:1:y:2021:i:5:id:7032
DOI: 10.24018/ejenergy.2021.1.5.32
as

Download full text from publisher

File URL: https://eu-opensci.org/index.php/ejenergy/article/view/7032
File Function: Abstract page
Download Restriction: no
File URL: https://eu-opensci.org/index.php/ejenergy/article/download/7032/1009
File Function: Full text
Download Restriction: no
File URL: https://libkey.io/10.24018/ejenergy.2021.1.5.32?utm_source=ideas
LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
---><---

More about this item

Keywords

;
;
;
;
;

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:epw:energy:v:1:y:2021:i:5:id:7032. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Support Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://eu-opensci.org/index.php/ejenergy .

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.