Do a google search for "superconducting super collider" and check out how big the superconducting magnets they use are.
How much do they cost?
I would guess that measured by weight, the bulk of working superconductors in the world right now are involved in high power applications in physics.
So what? You won't be running a superconducting wire to your house anytime soon. In particular, never. Those applications in physics are highly specialized. Applications elsewhere are also highly specialized. All attempts to apply the technology in power transfer have failed.
In addition, superconductors have a current density limitation, not a "watt per unit cross section" limitation.
Why not try to understand a more advanced concept rather than trot out great expectations from 1993.
The whole reason that the SSC is built with superconducting magnets is because of the extremely high currents that can be run through a relatively small region without excessive heat production.
The SSC isn't built and won't be. Further, the SSC couldn't have been built according to the original specs for the reasons you are denying. Superconductors mitigate the amp turn heat generation, but the B field intensity is so great that it blows the conductors into pieces. This problem hasn't really been solved and it was one of the concerns Weinberg had which was being swept under the rug by big physics a la Texas.
With sufficiently high voltage, the power transmitted can be tremendous.
You forget the trade-offs. Why not ask one of your references why when the voltage applied rises linearly that at the same amp flow, temperature rises and does so differentially with the result that resistance rises exponentially. As a function of distance the heating becomes so critical that the wire melts.
I'm not saying that superconductors are going to make it, the real issue with long distance power transmission is cooling, just that your physics is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Please compute the cost to run a superconductor power line 500 miles. Just the cost of the wire, please. Are you proposing that a water jacket is used to disperse heat? If there is an intractable problem, it means the strategy has failed. |
