Whenever lefties say something stupid about "renewable energy"

... Which is of course fairly frequently, I tell them flat out "no, it won't work".

They then get this look on their faces like I'm just being an obstructionist ass and indignantly shout something like:

"Why not. These guys tell me we could have 20% of our power needs met by renewables RIGHT NOW, if we only had the political will/government subsidies/laws to force everyone to do it etc... etc...  I bet you just hate the environment and love your SUV too much"

Well... it's a pickup truck, and yes, I do love it more than I love YOUR concept of what "the environment" is and/or should be (I LIVE in "the environment" you THINK you are talking about... I chose to move here specifically because of how it REALLY is... which has very little to do with how you THINK it is... but that's another story).

BUT...

No, that's not why it won't ever work.

"Ok... why not then, mr. pessimist".

Simple... Physics and Math.

...Not politics, not will, not lifestyle changes, not because we love our SUV's too much...

Just Physics and Math:

Now That's a Change

So, we just received the first electric bill for this house in our name (the lease originally had our landlord receiving the bill and then billing us, but that was inconvenient, so now we're getting billed directly).

Wow what a change!

Last year our bill from SRP from June 14 to July 13 added up to $540.68. Our current bill from Avista for June 15 to July 14 is... $184.30.

Just a little bit different.

The breakdown:

Time Period	July 2009	July 2010
kWh	4451	2264
Cost	$488.87	$179.70
Cost Per kWh	$.1098	$.0794
Monthly Basic Charge	$12.00	$4.60
City Tax	$8.26	none
County and State Tax	$31.56	none
Total	$540.68	$184.30

Yeah... the cost of living is a little lower here huh...

Oh, and though we don't have air conditioning in this house, the numbers here include the cost of running the hot tub 24/7 (1500 watt heater, plus pump).

And of course, without the ever increasing AC cost through the summer, our bill should be about the same for July (actually July 15th through August 14th), through September; vs. the $700 per month we paid last July, August, and last September (yes, our June-July bill was relatively LOW last year).

The savings from one summer month alone, is enough to buy heating oil and firewood for the whole winter.

Oh and now we have an idea of how much generator we need to buy for the inevitable winter blackouts.

Cross-posted to We Few

Eventually, with enough belaboring of the obvious...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
An Energy-Independent Future
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Maybe some of these people will understand, there is NO way to "get off oil" in the short term. At best we can reduce our INDIVIDUAL oil usage per capita.

Which in fact we have done, dramatically, over the years; primarily through more fuel efficient vehicles, more electrically efficient homes and appliances, more thermally efficient homes, and better coal fired electrical power plants.

Unfortunately, that's all been more offset by increased industrial use, use by the transportation industry in particular, increased use of other petroleum derived chemicals (plastics primarily), and by massive increases in population worldwide.

Oh and by the fact that we haven't been able to build a nuclear power plan in this country in over 30 years.

Hmmm... Interesting...

I wonder if this design will scale up well....

As it is, it's a bit small; though it seems a much better solution for a small multi-turbine array than most other small systems. Certainly much more efficient.

The list price for the "system" is $6k, but that includes interconnect, panel, inverter, wiring etc... which I wouldn't be using in my installation. All that would be handled at the central powerhouse, to match the solar, and backup generators into the battery bank, and grid tie.

According to Popular Mechanics, the turbine and mounting hardware only price, is $4500. That's something less than half what I was looking at for considerably larger conventional turbines of a similar capacity; and I'm guessing from the construction that they'll handle overspeed wind a lot better (no gear train to damage). Also, most conventional turbines have a startup speed of 6-9mph, and a cut off around 20-25mph of wind, this one has a 2mph startup, and cuts off at 42mph.

That's a hell of a lot more useful capacity on the average day. I just wish it was a bit higher capacity overall. In a class four wind region, more than 60% of the average day is spent at between 6 and 14mph windspeed; at which these turbines generate between 40 and 250 watts.

Even at 250 watts, that's only about 5% of our peak hour load (and a lot less than peak instantaneous, which may reach as high as 14kw when multiple AC units and refrigerators are kicking on). Of course we DO live in Arizona, in a poorly insulated house.

Long term, we're looking at living in a class 4 wind region (possibly a class 5 depending on the exact home site), and building towers above the treeline. Under those conditions, a turbine like that one would only realistically generate something like 2000-3000kwh per year; or an average of 160-240kwh per month (Honeywell says that in a class 3 zone it can do 2000kwh per year mounted on a house roof - about 75% less output than a class 4 above the treeline installation - so I figure my estimate is pretty realistic).

Although, we are looking at living in a net metering sellback region with a 100% tax credit after the federal 30% credit (capped at $20,000 total after federal). With that incentive program we could buy seven of them and the things could pay for themselves immediately; but it really would take something like seven of them, or more, to meet our power needs.

The average household in the U.S. currently consumes something like 12,000kwh per year; but about half that is the utilization of air conditioning in the sun belt states, or electric heat in the cold states. Outside the hot zone, and for households with gas or oil heat, the national average is more like 6000kwh.

Right now, living in Arizona, we use about three times the national average (or about six times the average someone in say, New Hampshire would use). We run from around 1500kwh in January to 5500kwh in August; and total around 35,000kwh per year, for which we pay almost $4000.

We once used 6500kwh in a single month (for which we were charged over $800), but that was with our pre-replacement 30 year old primary AC unit, plus a messed up air handler and heat exchanger, and running two large supplemental AC units 24x7 that entire month (not coincidentally, the month before the old unit died horribly).

We have what they call a "smart meter", which lets us see our spot utilization day by day, and hour by hour. Just for fun, we looked up how much power the house was using when we weren't even in it, for our vacation this past few weeks.

With us out of the house, the AC and all the lights and computers off, we used about 30kwh per day, just keeping the fridges and freezers cold etc...

Uhhh... that's almost the national average for people who are actually, you know, using their houses and AC and heat and computers and TVs etc... WTF?

For a little more masochistic fun with the smart meter, we averaged 50kwh per day in January, one of only two months this year when we didn't run the AC at all.

So... even on our best day, we're using about 1.5 times the national average juice, and about 3 times the average for a cold state; however, we are only using 20kwh more per day to run all our stuff than the house is using all by itself...

Ok that's screwed up right there.

Anyway, back to the cool stuff.

When we move, since we're planning on moving to a colder state, and not using electric heat; we expect to cut that excessive "3 times average" utilization down a lot, because of the dramatically reduced AC requirement. That still gives us a baseline of something like 12,000kwh per year however.

Any savings we make using hyperinsulation, and efficient lighting and appliances, we expect to more than offset with greater use of tools and power equipment (welders alone... oy).

Ideally, I'd like something that could generate more like 3 times that 2000-3000kwh per year, per turbine; and build an array of say, four of them, for total spot capacity, and for redundancy.

...But even as it is, with seven of them paid for entirely by tax credits (not including installation, and the towers of course) we could likely generate 14,000-21,000kwh per year...

That's pretty decent. Even when you account for losses in the storage battery system and inverters, that's probably most of the household power requirements at any given time (not include surge power when the welders are running, or the AC and fridges start up at the same time of course).

That would of course be in addition to solar, and micro-hydro if the property is capable of it; and back up diesel or propane generation for full capacity. Then of course there's all the storage batteries.... ooooh boy those are gonna cost.

Anyway, at that cost per turbine, if you've got enough land to set up six or seven of them (and we will) it's viable. Importantly, it's a LOT cheaper than an equivalent solar setup.

A solar system in the same region, with the same capacity, would cost about $120k. Of course you'd still get the 30% federal credit plus $20k from the state, for a $64k total cost to us, vs. a near zero cost to us (again, not including installation costs, just to keep it apples to apples).

Of course, as I said, we plan on having wind, solar, and generators (and would really love a property with micro-hydro capability) anyway. Ideally, we want to have a diversity of power sources, AND enough power even on cloudy days, or wind free days, to run whatever we need (again, short of the welders at full duty cycle etc...).

The great thing about combining wind and solar, is that when solar tends to be performing poorly, wind tends to be performing well; and vice verse.

Now if they would just get those cheap, relatively efficient, printable solar panels to market, we could do BOTH relatively cheaply.

Just how inefficient is my house

Ok, so I was just running the numbers on my electric power usage for the year and DAMN my house is inefficient.

Ok, the average residential power usage in this country, is 9000 kilowatt hours per year. Very efficient new construction averages between 3,000 and 5,000 kwh per year depending on wher ethey are located, what their heat and AC systems are etc... and a maximum efficiency, single person home can be as efficient as 1000-1200kwh per year.

My house was built in 1953; and is essentially uninsulated filled cinderblock (r value is between 5 and 9, but my AC guy estimated about 8). Theres some insulation in the roof and between some of the interior walls, but for the most part I'm just bare concrete here. Even better, I've got single pane windows, and huge air gaps all over the place.

Basically the only way my house could be more inefficient is if it ws made of overlapping sheets of tin bundled together with copper wire.

Anyway, that national average of 9,000kwh per year? Yeah I did that in August, September, and half of October.

In the nine months since we moved to this new house, we've used a grand total of 20,900kwh, with a peak usage of 3700kwh in september, and a minimum usage of 840kwh in March.

April was almsot exactly twice as much usage as March, because it was the end of march when the AC had to go on.

For this amazingly massive use of power I've paid about $2500; with another three months of relatively small ($120 a month or so) bills to go.

As I write that, I can hear my California readers weaping, because they pay something like 3-5 times what I do for power.

Ok, some allowances have to be made; this is Arizona after all, and summer is damn hot. The air conditioning is literally running 24 hours a day, seven days a week here from about June, until about September (and probably 12hr a day for april, may, and october), just to get the house down to between 74 and 78 .

Hell, It's December 6th, and we used our heat for the first time since March, just last week (we've got gas heat and hot water); and we had a sudden warm spell for a couple days here and used the AC for about an hour yesterday (it got up to 79 in the house).

That said though, the fact that my AC alone is taking up to 3,000 kwh a month is disconcerting.

Presuming 840kwh a month as our baseline usage, that puts us in jsut a bit over the national average, at about 10,000kwh per year; with the remaining 13,000-14,000kwh taken up just in air conditioning.

That's insane. That means I'm paying about $1400 a year in electric bills just to cool my house.

Now, I'm on an LTO arrangement here, so I don't own the house yet, but I'm planning on buying it. I've said before, the very first thing I'm doing when I buy is replacing the windows, and insulating the place.

I've only got 9 windows (Three large triple width casements, and 6 small casements), 2 entry doors, and 2 sliding glass doors in the house; it shouldn't be too expensive to replace the windows and doors with insulated models. The size I'm looking at would be about $600 a piece for the three big windows, and less than $200 each for the small ones. Then there's the $800-1200 each for the insulated sliding glass doors (why are they so damn expensive), and about $300 each for the entry doors.

Total on the windows and doors, about $5,000.

Next step, insulating the house.

First I go around plussing the holes, sealing and filling etc... Then I hit the roof. Roof insulation is cheap and relatively easy. I can revent the roof PROPERLY, and attic mat the whole place to r30 for about $1200.

I would guess that the $6000 or so dollars I'd spend on just those two things, would probably cut the cooling portion of my energy bills in half; so saving something like $750 to $1000 a year. Even being pessimistic I'd guess a minimum of $500 a year savings, so the costs would be recouped in as little as 6-7 years, and as many as 10-12 years.

Next step, we need a new oven, cook top and fridge. The ones I've got are from the late 70s to early 80s; and todays models are between 2 and 8 times as efficient. I dont expect a huge energy savings from those, but we need new ones anyway, and esepcially the fridge will make a big difference.

I already use a bunch of compact flourescents where I can, so there's not much to be saved there; and both Mel and I used laptops most of the time, so the desktop is in standby most of the time; and the other computers are all turned off unless we're directly using them.

We do have a little problem of habits as well.

Mel has this tendency to turn on every light in the house (no I'm not exaggerating, she turns on every single light), and she leaves them on all the time. She doesnt even notice. She also leaves the TV on all the time when she leaves the room or goes to bed, the stero, the computer etc...

No matter what I do, I can't seem to break her of this habit. She really just doesnt seem to notice what she's doing. She swears she's going to modify this behavior.

Ok, so then we've got two major problems left: the uninsulated walls, and the 20 year old air conditioner.

The AC unit I've got isn't actually all that bad, but it's too small for the house, and a newer more efficient model, combined with better ductwork (my ducts vent into uninsulated open dropped cieling space), and the better roof insulation should further cut the power usage for cooling a hell of a lot.

The unit I've got, is a Lennox, HS14-411V-6P; which for 1988 was one of the top 3 ton AC units, with an SEER of 15, and a 40,000 BTU per hour cooling rating.

The only problem is that this house as it's currently insulated needs something like a 50,000 btu per hour rating to maintain proper duty cycle; which is a bit over 4 tons. So, my AC unit is working too hard, all the time, and running inefficiently. These days, I can pick up a 4 ton unit, with an SEER of up to about 18, which means more cooling, for less juice used, more cooling overall, and more reliability.

My current 40,000 BTU unit operating at an SEER of 15, operating an average of about 4500 cooling hours a year (yes, that's really how much it's operating; about twice as much as a 4 ton unit in a well insulated house would) puts out about 180,000,000 btu of cooling a year; for an energy usage of about 12,000kwh; which after taxes and fees et all, costs me about $1200 a year.

That jibes with about how much juice I'm using currently... actually I think I'm using maybe 14,000kwh per year on cooling, or about $1400, but that's still pretty close.

With a cooling rating of 50,000 btu/hr, and a SEER of 17.8 (the trane 4 ton XL19i); a new high efficiency unit, should only have to run about 2200 cooling hours (given the new windows, doors, and insulation, maybe less) for about 110,000,000 btus, and about 6200kwh; which would cost me about $600 a year.

The problem is, one of those things aint cheap at about $5,000 for the compressor/condenser unti, and another $3000 for the air handler and assorted hardware; even saving us somewhere around $600-$800 per year.

Now we could go with a less efficient (15 SEER) 4 ton unit, for about $2,000 and still be running for less than half the time of the current 3 ton unit, at the same energy efficiency rating as currently, but with 25% more btus, thus saving about $300-400 a year instead of $600-$800 a year.

I figure between the windows and doors, the roof, new appliances, and new AC unit, we're looking at about $15,000 to $20,000 in costs; with a total of about $1000-$1200 a year in energy savings.

That means recouping the costs in about 15-20 years... Of course I don't plan on being in this house for 15 years... but the AC unit is coming up on 20 years old, the appliances are all about the same age etc... and the windows are original to the house, so they would all need replacing in the time we plan on living here anyway...

The value proposition is definitely there, but it sure does take a lot of cash up front to be energy efficient.

Ok folks, this one is going to be a big deal (eventually)

Electricity is expensive. It takes a lot of capital to build the ifnrastructure required to produce and distribute it, a lot of fuel to produce it, and a lot of time and (personal) energy to regulat, bill, and pay for it.

It's also the most useful form of energy we've got; and our modern wourld could not exist without it.

Over the years; there have been a hell of alot of attempts at ways to replace centralized fossil fuel, or nuclear electrical generation; but none of them are really practical on a large scale, because of their general costs and inefficiencies.

The most promising technology for providing off grid power for individuals is fuel cells; but they still require a uitlity connection (either startup electricity for the water cracker, or a natural gas line).

If you want to be off the grid entirely; without relying on fuels which either runout, or require a centralized distribution system; you rbest option is solar.

The problem again though, is cost, and efficiency.

Up 'til today, the general run of photovoltaic cells (solar cells), has been about 6-8% efficient; with some super efficient, super expensive cells going to 12-14 or even 16-18%, and some ourageously expensive (100 times the cost of the 8% efficient cells), miracle, nearly unproducable ones all the way up at 24% (or even 30%, but those are pretty much only used by NASA for sattelites and the like, and they're even MORE expensive than the 24% efficient cells).

What that means, is for every 100 watts of sunlight it recieved (between 125 and 375 watts per sq meter average during daylight hours over a day; up to 1000watt per sq m at noon in high summer), a photovoltaic cell would produce between 8 and 30 watts.

Now, 24% efficiency isn't too bad. That's about the same energy efficiency the best internal combustion engines can do (most are below 15%); but it isn't enough to make converting to solar energy on a large scale very practical.

The breakeven point for solar (presuming a resonable cost per cell, and a reasonable cell lifetime), is generally reckoned at around 40% efficiency.

In practical terms, what's that mean?

Well, a typical household will use about 9000 kilowatt hours per year; and a super efficient house can (in moderate climates), get down to as low as about 1000 kilowatt hour. Without too much work, a typical family in a temperate climate could reduce their consumption down to 3000-5000 kilowatt hours for example. Obviously Alaska and Arizona are the outliers here; and older homes and appliances in general arent very efficient.

Okay so like I was saying, the average power use in the US is 9000 kilowatt hours; and the average power bill according to several net sources, in the US is about $3600 a year... hich seems awfully high to me, because the average cost of electricity is about 6 cents a killowatt hour, with fees and charges and taxes usually about doubling that. That cost may include heating, cooling, cooking, and general electric (so gas, oil, and electric) though.

With an 8% efficient cell, at 125watts per square meter, you get about 10 watts per square meter; for on average 220 days per year; and an average of 10 hours per day. That gives you 22 kilowatt hours per sq meter, per year.

These are worst case numbers by the way, because you don't plan power consumption on anything other than worst case; unless you feel like brownouts.

Anyway, with that low a power output; we're talking about a household needing 410sq meters of cells to meet their power needs; and that's assuming a uniform output, and a uniform demand, with a 100% efficient power storage system; none of which are actually possible.

Now, my house is about 52ft long, and 56 ft wide, in an L shape; so about 25% of that area is part of my driveway. It's a fairly typical house, with about 1800 sq ft of usable space; but I've got a porch, a covered parking area etc... so my total roof sq footage is probably about 2500 sq ft. 1sq ft is 0.0929 sq meters; so my roof has about 232sq meters of surface area.

So, to meet our entire energy needs with solar; we'd need to have a minimum of about twice our roof area.

Oh, and did I mention that it would cost at least $250 per sq. meter (that's including tax credits and environmental rebates etc... currently a 1sq meter panel can run as high as $2400 for the 18% efficient cells, and at a minimum run about $500), with an expected lifespan of about 25 years; and adding in an additional 20% for the wiring and battery cost. Would you like to spend $125,000 on your electric bill over 25 years? That's about $420 a month. Now I dunno about you, but my electric bill is a about $3000 a year.

Even if we best case it to 375 watts, and 300 sunny days a year for an average 10 hours per day (which even in Arizona is a bit unrealistic), and we presume a 3000 kwh per year home (which would be difficult given AC costs here, but with really good insulation could be achievable); we're still looking 90kwh per sq meter, and looking at needing 40sq meters of cells.

Let's be totally unscientific and split the difference. Say we need the whole 232sq meters of my roof; and we manage to get the costs downs to the $250 per sq meter I mentioned; then add about 20% for the associated hardware and storage costs (like huge battery and inverter banks). That's still about $70,000 for my house, and amortized over 25 years, it's just about breakeven; but agian that assumes a uniform demand, 100% efficient storage, and the ability to completely cover my roof with solar cells.

Ok, so let's assume we shell out the bucks for a much more expensive, and much more efficient cell. GE has a cell that they claim will put out 110 watts per sq meter on a 1000 watt day (about 11% efficient); it costs appx $600 per sq meter in bulk, and is warranted for 35 years.

Presuming again, a 100% efficient storage system, an even load, 300 completely sunny days a year for 10 hours a day (all completely pie in the sky); and that average of 375 watts per hour, thats 124kwh per year per meter; so we'd need about 73sq meters of cells. Again, let's split the difference between the minimum and maximum efficiency and say we really need 150sq meters at $800 per meter; and lets assume 20% additional cost for the wiring and battery network; for a total of about $145,000, or about $4,000 per year.

Still, a lot more up front cost than almost anyone would be willing to pay.

Today, the DOE has announced they have a new 40.7% efficient solar cell; at what they call a cost of $3 per watt (assuming a 1000w/sqm solstice noon). That's 407 watts per sq meter, or a cost of $1220 per sq meter.

Ok, so what does that do to our numbers?

Assuming the 375 watt maximum average, over 300 sunny days 10 hours per day, and 40.7% efficiency; to meet our 9000 kwh households electrical needs, we would only need 20sq meters of cells, at $1220 per meter; for a total of $24,000 without the supporting infrastructure.

Even assuming the worst case, of 125 watts per hour average, over 200 sunny days, 10 hours per day; you only need about 88sqm of cells, for about $110,000.

Again, we split the difference, and get about 55sqm, for about $67,000. Adding in 40% (because the cell cost is so much less than other designs) for the cost of the supporting infrastructure, and we still get $95,000. Amortized over 35 years, thats about $2700 per year; or about $225 a month.

That's quite a lot less than I pay for power right now; and I live in one of those areas where you really do get 300 plus watts of sunlight average; and I would only need to cover between 1/5 and 1/3 of my roof.

If we went and got all efficient about things with appliances and insulation, we could cut that down to 3000kwh per year, for between 10, and 30 sqm of cells (plus about $20k for the infrastructure) and between about $35,000 and $60,000; again amortized over 35 years, for $1000 to $1700 a year in power costs; or $85 to $140 a month for power.

And that folks; is when people start ponying up the extra on the front end. 15 or 20 percent more up front cost, for a house that will never have a power bill? Yeah I'd do that.

Fusion, will it ever happen

Someone brought up some alternative energy articles at the nation of riflemen forum, and it broguht me over to SDB's archive at uss clueless which got me to thinking again about fusion, and more specifically how terrestrial fusion isnt going to be a viable solution for a hell of a long itme if ever.

Anyway I wrote this a while back, and I'm updating it here because it's something I want to talk about with "my audience".

I said above, IF fusion is ever going to be viable, meaning that I think there are some reasons that's going to be tough. There's a few BIG issues here on the fusion topic:

More in the extended entry...

1. Touch off point/break even point.

This is the amount of energy and reactive mass (which are ultimately the same thing but that's another topic) required to produce a self sustaining reaction that outputs more energy then it sucks in. Basically how do we get the damned thing primed. Thus far we have been mostly unsuccessful in reaching the breakeven point. The few times it was MAYBE achieved it didn't last long and it was uncontrolled which brings up point two.

2. Controllability

We have no idea how to control a self sustaining fusion reaction, or if it is even possible to control. the best ideas so far involve massive torroidal field generators which control plasma flow. Small problem, what happens when the energy of the fusion reaction vastly exceeds the energy of the fields controlling that reaction? Oh and assuming we contain the reaction how do we throttle it without dropping below the touchoff point? Because the natural tendency of the reaction is to grow til the point where it is either fuel exhausted, too unstable to continue, or otherwise self limiting for various reasons.

According to everything we know (which I'll admit isn't a hell of a lot) these self limiting points are far greater than we can currently handle, or even have any concept of how we might handle them in the future.

If you don't believe me think about this. The largest fusion reactions we as humans are able to produce are in the gigaton range, the largest we can control are in the several molecule range (yes I know there's no basis for dimensional analysis here because the units are incompatible). These gigaton reactions are not inherently self limiting in the pure sense, though because of the methods used to initiate the fusion as well as the materials used in the devices and produced during the reaction (primarily tritium and helium which tend to absorb neutron flux) they actually are.

5. Neutron flux and hard alpha

Guess what folks, fusion reactions aren't 'clean' in that they do produce massive amounts of radiation that is harmful to carbon based life forms.Primarily these are in the form of neutron flux and alpha particle radiation.

Neutron flux is one of the primary sources of background radiation in the universe, all that nice radio noise, microwave radiation through space etc... But that's at light-years distance. At anything less than half an AU it starts getting more dangerous.

Hard alpha is the emission of high energy alpha particles. These nasty little buggers can at most cause the disintegration of your molecular structure (not atomic structure, molecular structure) and at the least cause genetic defects in a few cells. It's kind of like shooting marbles with your molecules, cept the relatively large molecules that make up much of our bodies are like 1" aggies and the little alpha particle is a BB some asshole just shot at them.

Yes, all of these are shieldable... the massive magnetic fields used to control the reaction, and the multiple layers of heavy shielding in the reactors... Though they wear out eventually, and if the magnetic fields were to collapse while the fusion reaction was going on...

.. That would be bad...

6. Fuel

So far the best success we've had with fusion comes from using hydrogen isotopes (some blend of tritium and deuterium) as the reactive mass. There's three problems with this. First, too little tritium and deuterium and the reaction starves out. Second, too much and the reaction absorbs itself because tritium and deuterium absorb the neutron flux that is generated by and sustains the reaction. Third, tritium is literally the most expensive commercially available substance on the planet. The amount of tritium in a high quality watch is far less than a milligram and yet costs in the neighbourhood of $10. By comparison a gram of .999 fine commodity gold is also about $10. Doing the math out that means tritium is at least a thousand times more expensive than gold.

Also we still haven't figured out a way to produce tritium on a large scale that doesn't involve nuclear fission reactors, and there is no way to store it for long periods of time because tritium has this irritating tendency to decay into other substances (deuterium, helium, and hydrogen).

7. Usability

Okay so lets assume we have a controlled self sustaining reaction that doesn't explode massively, instantaneously burn all matter on the planet, or emit so much hard alpha and neutron flux that we all dissolve into flaming little puddles of semi organic goo that glow like light sticks. Let us further assume that we have figured out how to fuel these reactions without bankrupting national economies.

Big assumptions those.

But let's say we do get past these issues, and I am sure that eventually we will if we research enough, what do we do with this fusion reaction?

The instinctive gut response is "use the energy". Ok, how? The most widespread way we as a species have come up with to put energy to use is electricity. Alright so we turn it into electricity.

How?

In the past three hundred years we have come up with precisely four ways for generating practical amounts of electricity (and a couple of interesting but impractical things too, but I won't get into them here): Interesting chemical reactions (this includes solar), smashing crystals, rubbing dissimilar materials together, and moving magnets near each other.

How is it that we will use the fusion reaction to do one of these things?

Okay how do we use the energy form a fission reaction to generate electricity? Well primarily we use the waste heat of the reaction to boil water, which then builds into high pressure vapor, which can be forced through a turbine.

That process will use what, a millionth of a percent of the energy released in the fusion reaction, a billionth? And of course the rest will be waste.

That much waste heat will be at minimum interesting to deal with.

Oh if only there were direct conversion. Of course then we wouldn't need fusion in the first place, or rather we wouldn't need terrestrial fusion, because all of our energy needs would be supplied by direct conversion of sunlight (instead of the now 10% or so maximum conversion efficiency we have with photovoltaic cells).