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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
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
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.
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
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.