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Sandia Labs Takes First Steps Toward Fusion
robosmall writes "Sandia Labs has successfully demostrated the emission of neutrons (a side effect of thermonuclear fusion) from a BB-sized capsule of deuterium using using their venerable Z-Machine (eye-candy!). With this achievement they enter the race to create sustained fusion reactions."
Fusion seems to be the ultimate goal for energy. Offering a
clean and abundant power supply that could potentially alter our
entire power production system. One of the problems with the
transition to a hydrogen based economy has been that energy is
required to extract the hydrogen from known reserves (petroleum,
water, etc). The most common solution offered seems to be solar
powered systems, however fusion could offer a great alternative
which in the long run may prove more viable and more extensively
useable than solar, hydro-electric, or wind power individually,
maybe even collectively.
It's particularly encouraging to see the scientists questioned
their results and tested for extraneous sources before
publishing preliminary findings.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
The first is when large-scale fusion reactors become viable. This will largely replace fission and fossil fuel power plants. The main effect will be to produce power for the transmission grid safer and cleaner.
Phase two is the real kicker though. This is when a fusion reactor is designed that is relatively small in size. Then the real effects of the fusion revolution will become apparent. Hopefully it will follow the path of electronics in that smaller and smaller versions will be designed. i.e. First airfares will go way down when fuel is replaced by an onboard fusion reactor. Then fusion powered cars will eliminate the need for refueling (except one in a lifetime). Eventually handheld electronics could be fusion powered. Once this happens power consumption is basically a moot point. Who knows what will be developed to make use of this? Only the future can tell...
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
IIRC, President Bush mentioned in his recent State of the Union address funding research into alternative energy sources in general and fusion in particular. Now that Sandia has made some new headway, will we start seeing more money flowing into the DoE and Sandia?
I personally can't wait until the Middle East once again becomes a red herring...
Harnessing energy release is what all generators are about. It's not the release of energy that is difficult, but the efficient release and harness. :)
Coal/oil/gas generators all generally heat water, turning it into steam, spinning a turbine to produce mechanical energy which is converted to electricity through induction.
Fission also releases massive amounts of heat energy which is absorbed by water and turns a turbine.
The majority of energy in these fusion reactions (Inertial confinement fusion (laser driven), magnetic confinement fusion (in a tokamak), electrically pulsed like in this article) leaves the system in the kinetic energy of the resulting particles. For example, Deuterium and Tritium are often fused yielding normal Helium and a neutron. Both are moving very fast after the fusion. This velocity is where most of the energy of fusion is. You can capture this again by letting the fast particles transfer their energy to a big resorvoir which would heat up from this energy transfer and again heat water to steam to turn a turbine.
With matter-antimatter collisions, the gamma rays would have to be absorbed by some matter, which energizes the matter, either thermally or electrically (that's how solar cells work - by liberating electrons by light interaction) or some other means I can't think of.
But you have to find the antimatter first
-Leo
5% not a big deal? well it depends on how much you make. a person making 25,000 a year would save about 100 dollors a month...that is huge for a person making that much money, that means they can actualy save that and have some sort of nest egg or if they are irresponsable tehy could spend 100 dollors more a month.
now to some schlub making 500k and living under his/her means by 25%, of cource that is not going to be a big deal to them they can already pay their bills and eat regularly.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
That picture is definately going on my desktop background..
Actually, it's already there! SOOO COOL!!
BEGIN RANT
You just made my foes list due to your extreme lack of understanding. I don't know who your friends are, but they have been feeding you FUD!
This sounds just like the same sort of drivel that comes from the eco-morons when they start talking about how microwave ovens are bad for you because of the *nuculer* rays they emit, and go on about how irradiated food is radioactive. BLAH BLAH BLAH
Just FYI. I was raised in a volkswagon microbus and still have hair down to my butt, however I am also graduate student in physics. Please get a real education before spouting off with inane drivel!
END RANT
There are certain fusion reactions that can take place with *no* hard radiation. So you cannot just toss all fusion reactions into the same generalization. Further, as someone pointed out below the half life of irradiated neutron shielding can be very low, on the order of years rather than tens of thousands of years. As such it does not pose the same environmental hazard as spent fission fuel.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
hmmm, well I don't think I'd claim that there isn't a problem with some long lived wastes.. pdf.
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/FTI/pdf/fdm1155
Looks like there can be some long lived(+100year halflives) radioactive byproducts, high level waste (HLW) to use the terminology.
So the bad news is... HLW exists in fusion reactors, long-lived radioactive product can be produced by that wacky little excited neutron....10% of the waste by volume, if I read the report right.
The good news is...it looks like the fusion reactors themselves might be used to burn/transmure a good chunk of those HLW elements via more neutron interactions, though the report is very vague on the technology that would need to be used to seperate the low level waste from the high level waste, to do the burn/trasmuting...and even then there could easily be long lived isotopes with small nuclear cross-sections that can not be cleaned up in this manner...well not in the 40 year lifetime of the reactor.
But, this really needs to be tested in a next step reactor design...inertial or magnetic confinement, either one...a reactor design that actually produces enough neutrons to test this trasmutation cleanup idea. Now that ITER looks to be going forward, finally...I'd imagine these sorts of long term reactor design/process issues will have a large role in the experimental ITER program.
-jef"as long as this fusion idea hangs around just long enough so I can make a career out of it"spaleta
I wouldn't consider 100 year helf lifes to be "long". I would term that intermediate at worst. Long is 240,000 year half lifes. We can actually contain stuff for a few hundred years until it decays.
just my $.02
I really doubt that they could make fusion generated power as expensive as oil for one obvious reason: competition. There is very little competition in the oil supply market because the nations that are blessed with huge oil reserves would have it no other way. There is no way that a similiar fusion cartel could be created because anyone can make their own reactor once the technology is mature enough.
WTF are you talking about? If CorpGovMedia develops fusion power, it may very well be very cheap to generate. Fine...
But CorpGovMedia has lots of guns and stuff, and so if they want to sell it to Americans at the same price as oil, who will stop them? American citizens? Puh-leeze!
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Here's a possible flaw:
Sea water is, well, for the lack of a better word:
CORROSIVE. Well, it certainly ain't super friendly to a great many things... I mean, like, dude: BARNACLES.
C//
I recall one paper mentioning that a asteroid contains more rare metals than anything that has been mined off the face of the earth in the history of mankind.
will explain a bit more slowly: it doesn't matter all that much if we do develop fusion power b/c it will be completely under the control of CorpGovMedia. Why should they offer fusion power cheaper than its primary competitor, oil?
Can you name me any technology that hasn't gotten cheaper over time? CD players? Microwave ovens? Cars? Cell phones? Wristwatches? Calculators? Even electricity itself is getting cheaper and cheaper every year, allowing for inflation.
I'm afraid it is you who needs the slow explanation. New technologies always supplant old, and there's nothing that anyone can do about it. I can imagine people like you trying to explain that the car would never replace the horse, or that airliners would never replace steam trains.
THis is because we have no control over CorpGovMedia....
You are correct, people like you with no understanding of technology or economics have no control over anything. Fortunately for the rest of us, you don't matter.