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U.S. and China Join Fusion Project
Garp writes "According to the BBC News website, the U.S. has finally decided to join the international Fusion project, Iter, along with China, with the aim of building the worlds first commercially viable Fusion reactor. Fusion is one of the cleanest forms of energy conversion, excluding renewable natural sources, like wind farms, tidal generators, and solar cells."
The hideously low efficiency of solar cells makes them a waste of -other- natural resources to manufacture, transport, purchase, install, and maintain.
That is, you burn more fossil fuel energy deploying photovoltaic arrays than you regain during their (short) usable lifetime. That doesn't make them any less-convenient for remote off-grid applications, but they're not going to replace other power sources anytime soon.
Solar energy is still viable for heating (obvious) as well as power generation using mirror concentrators.
And if everyone monitored every news site, /. would be less than useless. But, we don't, so it's not. I found the article very interesting.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
That's why a lot of us like the prospect of aneutronic reactions, like B11-p. Vessel activation isn't really an issue anyways, if you build your reactor vessel with the correct materials (I wasn't aware steel was the only structural material around). Activation is not a long term problem in fusion. Doing self-sustaining fusion is. BTW, I am not a fan of ITER. It is pronounced "Eater", by the way, as in "it ate my budget". Fusion will never be economical using current 'build big = better' methods. We need to learn how to do self-sustaining fusion at smaller scales. 1000 small experiments net more knowledge than one humongous one. Yes, IAFP. Yes, these views are heretical. Yes, I've already pissed off most of the fusion community. Particle physics has its small science proponents (they tend to live on mountaintops), why don't we?