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Wait, isn't the byproduct of fusion helium anyway?


Yeah but you'd power a city for a year for 100 kg of helium.


Fusion produces much, much less helium than that. D-T fusion that produces 100kg of He-4 would produce something like 25PJ of net primary energy. If you managed to turn 20% of that into electricity, you'd have 5PJ. This is within an order of magnitude of the yearly electricity consumption of the entire world.


I do actually have receipts. For example numbers I picked Washington DC, which has 700k people that each use an average of 600 kWh per month. That's 5 TWh / year, which I rounded up to 10 TWh. This yields 475 m^3 of helium, which is 85 kg. I rounded up to 100. DC is a modest city and all of humanity uses 15000 TWh / year (of heat). This "100 kg / city / year" estimate is even on the lower end since I started with electric consumption and never put in the factor of 3 to convert to thermal.

Your mass-energy conversion number is within error of mine, but your estimate of how much power we use is much lower.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%2810+TWh%29+%2F+%2817....


5PJ is not that large, only 1.4 TWh.


In contrast, world primary energy consumption is at a rate of around 20 TW, or five orders of magnitude more than that per year.


For anyone else wondering about the five orders of magnitude:

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

Yearly total energy consumption 160 PWh (~18 TW of power)

114285 times more than 1.4 TWh


A single MRI needs around 1000 liters, 1L is roughly 130g. For those who wonder prices vary between $15-35 per liter. Recent MRIs have recycling systems that reduce refill needs by 90% when they work properly.


So about $15k for 100 kg?




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