[TML] [Merchant Shipping] Some ideas I came up with to make merchant shipping more interesing

[Timothy Little]

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 09:48:51AM -0400, Tom B wrote:
> 200 MW *is* a larger plant! How many homes do you think that would
> supply?

Well, it's quite a bit smaller than most starship plants.  At current
energy use rates it should supply about 10,000 homes or so at peak
power usage - but I would expect power use per person to rise quite
significantly as costs dropped through the floor.  Call it 2000 - a
small suburb.


> That is neighborhood generation, but not true microgeneration.

That's all I've been arguing for.  What's I've been arguing against is
huge remote plants in a transcontinental (or transplanetary) power grid.


> But this ignores one reality: Possible issues of
> security/terrorism/threat posed by having nuclear plants all over
> the place.

They're fusion plants.  There is no criticality threshold where it is
possible for the reaction to become uncontrolled and self-sustaining,
even if someone deliberately modifies the reactor.  They appear to
operate by aneutronic p-p fusion, so unlikely to even cause other
materials to become radioactive.  What special terrorism threat do you
see them posing?

Or do you just mean as targets, terrorising the neighbourhood with the
threats of inconvenience and food spoilage?

Though I expect numerous households to also have at least a small
energy bank, 100 kW-hr or so.  They would be extremely useful for
quickly replenishing vehicle power, but would probably also function
as a household UPS as well as averaging power draw to reduce the need
for much more expensive power cabling.

Following up on that last point: Really, the total cost of cabling
almost certainly outweighs all the costs of the power plant itself
here.


> But do hundred GW plants have better efficiency than hundred MW
> plants?

Fuel efficiency is a non-issue, other efficiencies seem to be rather
minor.


- Tim