Posted by
michael
on from the now-I'll-never-get-a-mr.-fusion dept.
Chuck1318 writes "The US is halting its national nuclear fusion energy project, FIRE, and pinning its hopes on the internation fusion research program ITER. However, ITER is stalled over a dispute on where to locate the facility. The dream of fusion power is getting no closer..."
Unfortunatly, many brilliant plasma physists are now out of work and have no income in Russia. Here is a link to one of the institutes that previously was funded laviously by the Soviet Union, but since its dissolvement, it now is a shadow of its former self.
A shame.
-- --sig fault--
Possible ITER sites
by
BubbaThePirate
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· Score: 5, Informative
Four possible candidates were: Clarington,Canada; Vandellòs, Spain; Cadarache, France; and Rokkasho-mura, Japan.
Clarington and Vandellòs were withdrawn. But by the rate they're going, Japan and France might be blown off as well.
-- "I'm not a religious man, but if you're up there, save me Superman..."
Re:Put it on the Moon.
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Informative
Third world country like... France or Japan, which are contesting for the site?
Re:Vested Interests
by
SillyNickName4me
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· Score: 2, Informative
> And furthermore, it seems to me that fusion research in the EU is never going to get decent levels of funding all the time that people here instinctively equate all nuclear power with dangerous, radioactive evil.
Just some small little sidenotes...
First of all, a substantial part of the electricity in EUrope is generated using nuclear power, especially in France.
Second, people here know quite well that fusion is not having the same issues with redioactive waste as more traditional forms of nuclear power
Third and last, people in EUrope have good reason to be wary of nuclear power. Have you seen and felt the effects of a big nuclear accident? most of Europe did, they KNOW what they fear, a nuclear accident is not an unlikely theoretical possibility, it has becoem reality in a rather prominent way already.
Then, just try to imagine what it is to take all the population of the USA, add soem 50% to it, and then sqeeze it onto a landmass 1/5th of the USA. You will get a lot closer to the population density that EUrope has to deal with, and with that population density, spots where you can put up a nuclear powerplant safely are rather limited really.
Re:This might be an unpopular opinion here ...
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jabberjaw
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· Score: 5, Informative
There is a reason that your opinion is unpopular. It is wrong.
It produces even more radioctive waste than fission, because you have to transform the all the neutreons and other radiation coming out from the reaction, to heat.
I strongly suggest that you read more about nuclear fusion.
The number one problem of humanity is that we are consuming too much natural resources. The availability of a power-source like fusion would increase our consumption even more instead of reducing it.
Why would it not reduce our consumption of resources? When fusion is realised, less coal, oil and natural gas would be required to produce power.
Please everybody stop dreaming of fusion and use your resources (intellectual and monetary) on techonlogies like solar power,....
I put my intellectual and monetary backing behind nuclear fusion, solar power does not spark my interest as I find that too much energy is reflected. This is a personal opinion of my own.
A bit of clarification...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Informative
1.) RTFA: FIRE is one of many fusion research projects in the U.S. This article gives the impression that we just 'gave up' on this whole crazy fusion thing. This is far from true...
3.) ITER is the next step towards a steady state or 'burning' plasma. This is (obviously) a critical part of building a production-class fusion reactor.
- Justin
Re:This might be an unpopular opinion here ...
by
Pius+II.
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· Score: 3, Informative
- the materials used for the fusion reactor are supposed to have a halflife of about 100 years, whereas the fission products have halflives in the 10,000 year range. Also, current designs are based on a lithium blanket "shielding" the reactor walls, at the same time producing new tritium for fueling the reaction.
- lithium as fusion fuel is available in abundance, unlike fossil fuels.
- technologies like solar power have their own, hidden costs, e.g. the energy cost of creating the cells. Also, for many areas of the world, the intensity of solar radiation is simply too low. Other techniques may be viable in those regions (wind power), but these, again, have their own pitfalls (noise, effects on wildlife, high servicing costs).
Re:Vested Interests
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EinarH
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· Score: 4, Informative
The big oil companies, those that really operate on a global basis, are "energy companies" per se but in reallity they are still mainly oil companies..
Remember that they have invested _billions_ each year in their oil business. They have paid (or the state has paid for them) insane amounts of money for all the production capasity, transportation, knowledge, contracts, refineries and all the other infrastructure. They know the oil business, the other people in the oil business and the customers in the oil business.
Most likly they conclude that with a status quo, they will continue to literarily print money.
The incentives for them to change the energy situation are few and elusive. In a world based more on renewable energy and distributed harvesting of the energy they are not guaranteed success. Such a situation would increase competition and make it harder for them to compete at what they are good at.
And you are incorrect about most of the oil ends up in automobiles etc. IIRC, USA uses about 40% of the oil for automobiles/transportation, 20% for power/heating/electro and 40% for industry/chem/stupid plastic toys.
--
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Re:Good news in a way
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Progman3K
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· Score: 2, Informative
Reads like it's them; same number of laser, all focused onto a tiny pellet...
I remember reading that a lot of the technological hurdles for that project come from the fact that most of the laser-amplification technology they plan to use doesn't exist at their scale (yet), and that that'll be the most interesting part of getting this working, developing these new technologies.
I'd hope we get the manufacture of certain materials in space going, because I think they'll need it (ultra-pure glass, perfectly-shaped focusing lenses, etc...).
Space is the place.
-- I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Re:Put it on the Moon.
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FireFury03
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· Score: 2, Informative
Getting rid of the moon would likely be pretty catestrophic too - we rely quite heavilly on the tidal forces.
The sad state of American science
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yog
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· Score: 5, Informative
The U.S. was once the mecca of science in the world. Students flocked here from many other countries to learn from the best teachers and to work in the best facilities. Great experiments were conducted into the nature of matter at places like the Berkeley physics lab, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT. Pioneering visionaries planned, funded, and executed great projects like the manned landings on the Moon. Nuclear energy was exploited, with all its pros and cons.
Today, the U.S. has retreated from its leadership role and now tries to participate in science on the cheap, by roping in questionable allies such as France and China to help pay for experiments such as ITER that once would have been a purely American sandbox. The already meagre space budget has been sapped by an irrelevant and compromised space station and the oversold space shuttle. The president has barred the funding of promising biological research using embryonic stem cells, thus driving stem cell researchers to other countries to continue their work, and communities across the country are forcing schools to teach "creationism" in biology courses. School kids avoid hard subjects like science and foreign graduate students in the sciences are now the majority--and will they want to stay after they graduate?
In my opinion, the U.S. should turn its attention to science once again and realize that it is in a race with Europe and east Asia to regain and retain the critical lead in science and technological development. The nationstates and alliances of nations which stay focused on scientific achievement will be the economic leaders of the 21st century, while the lazy others will fall behind and become irrelevant.
--
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Princeton
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Sam+Nitzberg
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· Score: 4, Informative
There is a hot fusion research facility in Princeton, NJ. My understanding is that the facility has done good work since its inception.
I would hate to see such efforts scrubbed. Whatever happens with fusion research, I would like to see such teams and facilities continue to advance their work and contribute towards their research.
In the back rooms of every country are the generals and paranoid politicians - nobody wants to see other countries acquire something as militarily useful as fusion, when it could be used against them.
Thermonuclear weapons already use fusion, and we had *thousands* of them. The soviets detonated a ~50 megaton bomb at one point (57Mton I think). What could *possibly* lead to bigger/better weapons from this research?
AFAIK making a 'bomb' is much easier than making fusion into a viable energy source.
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Re:We already have sustainable nuclear fusion
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JBMcB
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· Score: 2, Informative
Solar energy is not reliable, anything less than clear sky and the system isn't running efficently. Photovoltaic energy has expensive delicate solar panels you have to protect. Photothermal has huge arrays of mirrors you have to maintain and protect. Unless you are in a desert or Arizona there's not much hope for solar.
Geothermal is great as long as you live near a volcano or hot springs. Geothermal heat pumps work great, though expensive.
Tidal and wind farms kill fish and birds respectively, so you have Audobon, Greenspeace, etc etc after you.
What makes you think evildoers won't own any of these alternative energy sources? They have a vested interest in maintaining their position in the energy market, and if people swing towards alternative energy they are going to be involved.
-- My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Re:Good news in a way
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IronicCheese
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· Score: 4, Informative
Parent is right. For comparison: We're blowing about $4 billion a MONTH in Iraq.
The cost of war is high. The opportunity cost is staggering.
Re:Good news in a way
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jspaleta
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· Score: 5, Informative
I really have trouble believing that any sort of fusion project, especially one funded by the states, has a measly budget of 2 million a year.
Projects are done in stages. 2 million a year on a project still in essentially a design stage, before it reaches the engineer stage where actually prototypes of important physical systems are built and tested, isn't so far-fetched.
You have to take a look at hard far down the road FIRE is to put the cost in perspective. FIRE was just beginning to assess the cost of contruction of things like the magnetic field coils. If FIRE was still a priority, there are several rounds of additional funding that would have gone into the project as it met specific review criteria. These project don't get budgetted for the full project at the beginning. There are multiple phases, with reviews, that if successful mean more money when its needed to actually build things. You don't get the money to even build prototype of critical systems till there is a significant review process of the physics and engineering concerns.
-jef
Build your own!
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david.given
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· Score: 2, Informative
Magnetic containment fusion isn't the only way of doing it. Electrostatic containment fusion works very nicely indeed, and you can build one in your garage quite easily (for given values of easily; a skilled TV repairman could do it). Alas, the Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor can't really be scaled up and would appear to have theoretical problems that prevent it reaching break-even, but hot damn, you can fuse hydrogen on your kitchen table. Watch out for those neutrons.
More information, including plans, is available at Fusor.net.
Re:Put it on the Moon.
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Glog
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· Score: 2, Informative
Actually the two counties of choice are Japan and France.
Re:Vested Interests
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joib
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· Score: 1, Informative
Have you seen and felt the effects of a big nuclear accident? most of Europe did, they KNOW what they fear, a nuclear accident is not an unlikely theoretical possibility, it has becoem reality in a rather prominent way already.
Ah, you mean the 32 people that so far have died because of the Chernobyl accident? As opposed to the estimated 100000 people in Europe that die prematurely every year due to inhaling fossil fuel exhaust?
Yep, we really can put things into the proper perspective here in Europe, as opposed to those rednecks on the other side of the pond.
Coal Fire Is Worse
by
ink
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· Score: 2, Informative
Third and last, people in EUrope have good reason to be wary of nuclear power. Have you seen and felt the effects of a big nuclear accident? most of Europe did, they KNOW what they fear, a nuclear accident is not an unlikely theoretical possibility, it has becoem reality in a rather prominent way already.
Regardless, even accounting for all the tragic deaths from CHernobyl, EUrope (FRance, in particular) still has cleaner power than the primary power source in AMerica. I would gladly trade the coal fire plant nearby for a nuclear plant; the waste is much easier to contain, even if it is more dangerous. Fusion reactors would be much better, of course -- but many malign nuclear power and install designs that are much more harmful to the environment. Also, "clean" natural gas power plants don't seem so clean when we have to go to war to fuel them.
Summary: Many, many, many more people have died for non-nuclear power supplies, than in nuclear disasters. The environment has been much more damaged by non-nuclear power supplies as well.
Second, people here know quite well that fusion is not having the same issues with redioactive waste as more traditional forms of nuclear power
That's a myth. Most of the energy in a fusion reaction comes out as fast neutrons; these gradually mess up the structure of the reactor vessel and make it radioactive.
Secondly, most or all of the possible ways to catch the fast neutrons create secondary nuclear waste.
The idea that fusion power is 'clean' is not backed up by the facts.
--
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
Re:Solar power is still vastly underutilized
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Phanatic1a
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· Score: 3, Informative
Fact is less than 25% of all oil is consumed to fuel our cars and power our homes.
FSVO 'fact.'
In the real world, upwards of 40% of a given barrel of oil ends up as gasoline, and maybe up to 60%. Gasoline. That's used in cars, military vehicles, and small planes. It's not used to power or heat our homes.
The other 75% goes directly to manufacturing, and thus demand will not be significantly reduced by simply adding solar.
Wrong. Plastics and other manufacturing concerns consume the minority of each barrel of crude. Now, granted, if we stop using the lighter fractions of crude to drive our cars, that doesn't mean we can magically turn the whole barrel into heavier stuff suitable for plastics feedstocks, but your numbers are way off.
We have solar panels today nearing the theoretical maximum effeciecy of the substrate used to convert it.
Yeah, and? Next step is to make them cheaper. Or more durable, which basically amounts to the same thing.
Besides, we've already got the technology to move beyond fossil fuels, it's as safe or safer than burning coal, pollutes a helluva lot less, and has enough fuel sitting around to last us practically forever: fission. The only thing lacking is the political will, and the only problem is that people are stupid.
Re:Vested Interests
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semafour
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· Score: 2, Informative
Most likly they conclude that with a status quo, they will continue to literarily print money
Why is it that people insist on using the word "literally" when they mean figuratively?
how clean is fusion power?
by
peter303
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· Score: 2, Informative
There is some debate about potential fusion accidents and radiactive byproducts in a fairly balanced article here.
I remember similar claims about "cheap and clean" fission energy in the 1950s which turned out to be neither in practice. I'm not a Luddite, but we do have to anticipate problems.
Re:how clean is fusion power?
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Strontium-90
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· Score: 2, Informative
Yes, there is the potential for accidents at a fusion power plant, but the scale of the damage/danger is much less than you're probably thinking. The article you linked mentions tritium leaks, lithium fires, and release of "magnetic energy". Tritium leaks can easily be contained if the building is properly designed. Lithium fires would damage the reactor, but not result in danger to the surrounding community. As for the "accidental release of magnetic energy," I can only assume they're talking about what happens when a plasma dies abruptly. If I remember correctly, the sudden absence of the plasma's magnetic field causes the tokomak to "jump" and can potentially cause electrical damage. So this would also only affect the reactor and not the surrounding community.
Basically, the difference (safety-wise) between fission and fusion is that fission is a runaway process, whereas fusion requires a large amount of energy/control/effort to keep it going. The easiest way to stop a fusion reaction is to cut off its fuel. A fusion reactor requires constant addition of deuterium/tritium to keep the reaction going. By simply cutting off the source of fuel, the reaction would naturally stop. You don't have to worry about the power plant exploding or having a nuclear meltdown when dealing with fusion.
Re:They should build it in...
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sql*kitten
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· Score: 4, Informative
That way if it goes boom, not as many people need to translocate.
Fusion reactors don't explode. The fusion reaction itself is extremely delicate. If anything goes wrong, it simply stops. Sure you now have some hot plasma/gas, but not very much, and it'll cool by itself if left alone. Remember that your reactor is wrapped in cooling systems anyway, since that's how you get the power out of it (at least until we recover sufficient He3 that the power can be extracted magnetically).
Who's the pettiest?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Informative
The real problem is that the Cadarache site HAD been voted to be the place, but after France decided not to send any troops in Irak, the US suddenly changed their mind in favor of the japanese site (oh, just after japan sent troops...)
I was interested in fusion power for a school work with a friend, and I know that because this friend of mine has a relative who is project leader on tore-supra, in cadarache, and they were quite angry with such petty behavior...
Re:Vested Interests
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CrimsonAvenger
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· Score: 2, Informative
It seems to me that fusion research in the US is never going to get decent levels of funding all the time that the Whitehouse is full of people with millions of dollars invested in oil companies.
White House types (and Congressional types as well) have the dubious privilege of putting their assets into a blind trust, which must basically sell it all off and put it elsewhere, without telling the principal just where it is invested (hence "blind"). This is to prevent that particular form of corruption.
Far more dangerous is Oil Companies (or Software companies, Disney, Media companies, etc) making direct political contributions to elected officials. Which they all do, to all candidates.
Except Nader, maybe. Not sure who is making contributions to him, but I expect they all have political axes to grind...
--
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Re:Exploiting the sun
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EllisDees
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· Score: 2, Informative
>For one it's extremely expensive to build miles of solar panels. Not only that, the technology is improving all the time - we probably had something like 2.5% efficiency 15 years ago, now we have 10-15% and we'll be up into the low 20's hopefully soon.
>To add to all that, the problem of getting the supply anywhere is very hard. You can produce megawatts of the stuff, but it's all coming out as low voltage DC when everyone needs high voltage AC. That means you need huge inverters, which are very inefficient.
True, especially in the context of the parent post, but if everyone had these high-efficiency solar cells mounted on their roofs it would be less a problem.
-- --
Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Re:Exploiting the sun
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ChrisMaple
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· Score: 3, Informative
Silicon photovoltaics (solar cells) have been at about 23% efficiency (for premium grade devices) for more than 30 years. This is a theoretical limitation of silicon and they're not going to get significantly better by themselves. The much more expensive gallium-arsenide, or combined silicon gallium-arsenide devices get into the 30s.
Individual cells are low voltage DC, but they are easily combined in series to obtain higher voltages. DC is superior for transmission. Inverters can be very efficient, 90% would be considered bad efficiency at megawatt power levels.
-- Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Re:Put it on the Moon.
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grumpygrodyguy
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· Score: 2, Informative
Oh, and also, if it goes out of control and creates a small black hole that slowly starts consuming everything
We've already got that. It's called the Hubbert Peak
Those of us who haven't seen Farenheit 911 might wonder who would benefit most from $7/gallon gas prices...and who they have on thier payroll. Cancelling projects like these is one way to keep them happy.
-- The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
FIRE is not the US's sole fusion program
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daveschroeder
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· Score: 4, Informative
Huge misconceptions seem to abound here. FIRE does not represent the whole of US fusion research. There are dozens of other projects and laboratories around the country, most in academia and the national labs.
$2M/year is just for this ONE project.
The summary is extremely poorly written, and apparently the submitter thinks that the US is "canceling" all of its fusion programs, when in reality, ONE project of many is being canceled. The whole reason FIRE came about is because the US pulled out of ITER. Now we're back in, and FIRE could serve as a backup project potentially, but ITER is the focus in this particular line of research. But there are still many, many federally funded fusion research programs, projects, and laboratories around the US! We've spent $5 billion on projects like the National Ignition Facility (NIF) alone (only to be crucified by the Left...I guess you can't win).
Jeez. Wake the fuck up, or at least learn something.
Re:Would it be simpler in natural vacuum?
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dtfusion
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· Score: 2, Informative
The vacuum in space is much much better than the best laboratory plasmas and the surface of the moon is comparable to lab plasmas.( 1 particle per cubic cm for space, 10^6 to 10^5 for the the moon, and 10^5 to 10^4 for the lab) or in atmospheres ( 10^-20, 10^-13 to 10^-15, 10^-12 to 10^-15 ) source:http://hypertextbook.com/physics/matter/pre ssure/
The real problem is that you still need a plasma facing surface and to generate a magnetic field. All that mass is expensive to get to the moon, and the constraint on the physical size of the magnets (bigger is more expensive) and the need to protect them from the plasma would result in a very similar vessel being constructed on the moon. So there would be very little direct benefit. There is the remote possibility of using the exotic D-He3 fusion reaction - one that is much more difficult to create, but that is essentially neutron free. Since He3 is only found in any concentration in the surface of the moon where it is deposited by the solar wind.
Re:Put it on the Moon.
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
You don't really get what black holes do, do you?
Re:Put it on the Moon.
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YU+Nicks+NE+Way
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· Score: 2, Informative
According to Steven Hawking, they don't actually exist -- the singularity never forms in a quantum mechanical universe.
Bear in mind that a black hole with lunar mass would have a tiny event horizon. Given the amount of thermal noise in the solar center, it would be very hard for anything to "fall in" without being bumped out first. In time, the hole might consume the sun, but my back of the envelope calculations suggest that it's far more likely that the pseudo-singularity would decay in a burst of Hawking radiation long before it consumed anything.
Yes, but then it would suffer pretty badly from Hawking Radiation. Anyone know how to calculate how quickly a black hole the mass of the moon would radiate away?
Far, far longer than the present age of the universe.
Same answer if you have a black hole with the mass of an asteroid.
Only very low-mass holes radiate brightly enough to shed mass at any reasonable rate.
ITER is stalled? HA!
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0, Informative
Fascinating how USians dont know shit about things going on in international affairs once again. It was well over a year ago when i read reports about the US suddenly pushing the Japan site after the French site had almost been agreed upon by all parties. The reason, obviously, was that France had to be punished, pfft. Apparently people take only that much of this kind of shit. It was mentioned at that time already some (euro) countries might prefer doing a smaller project on their own than give way to the US. Seems to me the US announced retreating from ITER expecting everyone to fall over, now they are coming back? Ooh, it's soo great watching the 'worlds only hyperpower' doing international politics. Up yours.
Re:There will be no fusion power
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b-baggins
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· Score: 2, Informative
Yeah, and pebble bed fission reactors can't melt down either. Do you see any of them being built?
Um, you are aware that high-energy neutrons CREATE radioactive isotopes, right? You block them by letting them slam into stuff (usually water, where they make Deuterium and Tritium and lots of other fun isotopes from the dissolved salts and organics in the water).
ANY time you're dealing with nuclear reactions, you're going to get nuclear isotopes and radioactive waste. It's the nature of the beast, and environmentalists will be quick to point this out, and the nuclear hysteria that runs rampant in our society will ensure that no fusion reactor ever gets built in the U.S.
-- You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Re:Put it on the Moon.
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Rei
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· Score: 2, Informative
Well, I found a formula. The lifetime of a black hole of M solar masses is approximately 10e71 * M^3 seconds. The moon is 7.35e22 kg. The sun is 1.99e30 kg. That means that the moon is 3.69e-8 solar masses. That works out to 5e49 seconds to radiate away, which is about 1.6e42 years. So, yes, it wouldn't be disappearing very quickly. Now, given that e=mc^2, the moon has an energy of 6.61e39 joules, so *on average* the moon would radiate away 1.3e-10 watts (yes, I know that the average can be misleading here, but it'd be hard to get any other number). It's tiny, but would at least be detectable.
Lets pick a random asteroid - say, Eros. It is about 3.36e-15 solar masses. That comes out to about 1.2e21 years. Still no short time, mind you, but it will radiate a lot more - just over 15 kw on average.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunatly, many brilliant plasma physists are now out of work and have no income in Russia. Here is a link to one of the institutes that previously was funded laviously by the Soviet Union, but since its dissolvement, it now is a shadow of its former self.
A shame.
--sig fault--
Clarington,Canada; Vandellòs, Spain; Cadarache, France; and Rokkasho-mura, Japan.
Clarington and Vandellòs were withdrawn. But by the rate they're going, Japan and France might be blown off as well.
More info from ITER's site.
-- "I'm not a religious man, but if you're up there, save me Superman..."
Third world country like... France or Japan, which are contesting for the site?
> And furthermore, it seems to me that fusion research in the EU is never going to get decent levels of funding all the time that people here instinctively equate all nuclear power with dangerous, radioactive evil.
Just some small little sidenotes...
First of all, a substantial part of the electricity in EUrope is generated using nuclear power, especially in France.
Second, people here know quite well that fusion is not having the same issues with redioactive waste as more traditional forms of nuclear power
Third and last, people in EUrope have good reason to be wary of nuclear power. Have you seen and felt the effects of a big nuclear accident? most of Europe did, they KNOW what they fear, a nuclear accident is not an unlikely theoretical possibility, it has becoem reality in a rather prominent way already.
Then, just try to imagine what it is to take all the population of the USA, add soem 50% to it, and then sqeeze it onto a landmass 1/5th of the USA. You will get a lot closer to the population density that EUrope has to deal with, and with that population density, spots where you can put up a nuclear powerplant safely are rather limited really.
It produces even more radioctive waste than fission, because you have to transform the all the neutreons and other radiation coming out from the reaction, to heat.
I strongly suggest that you read more about nuclear fusion.
The number one problem of humanity is that we are consuming too much natural resources. The availability of a power-source like fusion would increase our consumption even more instead of reducing it.
Why would it not reduce our consumption of resources? When fusion is realised, less coal, oil and natural gas would be required to produce power.
Please everybody stop dreaming of fusion and use your resources (intellectual and monetary) on techonlogies like solar power, ....
I put my intellectual and monetary backing behind nuclear fusion, solar power does not spark my interest as I find that too much energy is reflected. This is a personal opinion of my own.
1.) RTFA: FIRE is one of many fusion research projects in the U.S. This article gives the impression that we just 'gave up' on this whole crazy fusion thing. This is far from true...
2.) Fusion is NOT LIKE IN SPIDERMAN 2. Go read this: Fusion Basics at PPPL
3.) ITER is the next step towards a steady state or 'burning' plasma. This is (obviously) a critical part of building a production-class fusion reactor.
- Justin
- the materials used for the fusion reactor are supposed to have a halflife of about 100 years, whereas the fission products have halflives in the 10,000 year range. Also, current designs are based on a lithium blanket "shielding" the reactor walls, at the same time producing new tritium for fueling the reaction.
- lithium as fusion fuel is available in abundance, unlike fossil fuels.
- technologies like solar power have their own, hidden costs, e.g. the energy cost of creating the cells. Also, for many areas of the world, the intensity of solar radiation is simply too low.
Other techniques may be viable in those regions (wind power), but these, again, have their own pitfalls (noise, effects on wildlife, high servicing costs).
Remember that they have invested _billions_ each year in their oil business. They have paid (or the state has paid for them) insane amounts of money for all the production capasity, transportation, knowledge, contracts, refineries and all the other infrastructure. They know the oil business, the other people in the oil business and the customers in the oil business.
Most likly they conclude that with a status quo, they will continue to literarily print money.
The incentives for them to change the energy situation are few and elusive. In a world based more on renewable energy and distributed harvesting of the energy they are not guaranteed success. Such a situation would increase competition and make it harder for them to compete at what they are good at.
And you are incorrect about most of the oil ends up in automobiles etc. IIRC, USA uses about 40% of the oil for automobiles/transportation, 20% for power/heating/electro and 40% for industry/chem/stupid plastic toys.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Reads like it's them; same number of laser, all focused onto a tiny pellet...
I remember reading that a lot of the technological hurdles for that project come from the fact that most of the laser-amplification technology they plan to use doesn't exist at their scale (yet), and that that'll be the most interesting part of getting this working, developing these new technologies.
I'd hope we get the manufacture of certain materials in space going, because I think they'll need it (ultra-pure glass, perfectly-shaped focusing lenses, etc...).
Space is the place.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Getting rid of the moon would likely be pretty catestrophic too - we rely quite heavilly on the tidal forces.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
The U.S. was once the mecca of science in the world. Students flocked here from many other countries to learn from the best teachers and to work in the best facilities. Great experiments were conducted into the nature of matter at places like the Berkeley physics lab, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT. Pioneering visionaries planned, funded, and executed great projects like the manned landings on the Moon. Nuclear energy was exploited, with all its pros and cons.
Today, the U.S. has retreated from its leadership role and now tries to participate in science on the cheap, by roping in questionable allies such as France and China to help pay for experiments such as ITER that once would have been a purely American sandbox. The already meagre space budget has been sapped by an irrelevant and compromised space station and the oversold space shuttle. The president has barred the funding of promising biological research using embryonic stem cells, thus driving stem cell researchers to other countries to continue their work, and communities across the country are forcing schools to teach "creationism" in biology courses. School kids avoid hard subjects like science and foreign graduate students in the sciences are now the majority--and will they want to stay after they graduate?
In my opinion, the U.S. should turn its attention to science once again and realize that it is in a race with Europe and east Asia to regain and retain the critical lead in science and technological development. The nationstates and alliances of nations which stay focused on scientific achievement will be the economic leaders of the 21st century, while the lazy others will fall behind and become irrelevant.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
There is a hot fusion research facility in Princeton, NJ. My understanding is that the facility has done good work since its inception.
I would hate to see such efforts scrubbed. Whatever happens with fusion research, I would like to see such teams and facilities continue to advance their work and contribute towards their research.
Sam Nitzberg
In the back rooms of every country are the generals and paranoid politicians - nobody wants to see other countries acquire something as militarily useful as fusion, when it could be used against them.
Thermonuclear weapons already use fusion, and we had *thousands* of them. The soviets detonated a ~50 megaton bomb at one point (57Mton I think). What could *possibly* lead to bigger/better weapons from this research?
AFAIK making a 'bomb' is much easier than making fusion into a viable energy source.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Solar energy is not reliable, anything less than clear sky and the system isn't running efficently. Photovoltaic energy has expensive delicate solar panels you have to protect. Photothermal has huge arrays of mirrors you have to maintain and protect. Unless you are in a desert or Arizona there's not much hope for solar.
Geothermal is great as long as you live near a volcano or hot springs. Geothermal heat pumps work great, though expensive.
Tidal and wind farms kill fish and birds respectively, so you have Audobon, Greenspeace, etc etc after you.
What makes you think evildoers won't own any of these alternative energy sources? They have a vested interest in maintaining their position in the energy market, and if people swing towards alternative energy they are going to be involved.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Parent is right. For comparison:
We're blowing about $4 billion a MONTH in Iraq.
The cost of war is high.
The opportunity cost is staggering.
I really have trouble believing that any sort of fusion project, especially one funded by the states, has a measly budget of 2 million a year.
Projects are done in stages. 2 million a year on a project still in essentially a design stage, before it reaches the engineer stage where actually prototypes of important physical systems are built and tested, isn't so far-fetched.
You have to take a look at hard far down the road FIRE is to put the cost in perspective. FIRE was just beginning to assess the cost of contruction of things like the magnetic field coils. If FIRE was still a priority, there are several rounds of additional funding that would have gone into the project as it met specific review criteria. These project don't get budgetted for the full project at the beginning. There are multiple phases, with reviews, that if successful mean more money when its needed to actually build things. You don't get the money to even build prototype of critical systems till there is a significant review process of the physics and engineering concerns.
-jef
More information, including plans, is available at Fusor.net.
Actually the two counties of choice are Japan and France.
Have you seen and felt the effects of a big nuclear accident? most of Europe did, they KNOW what they fear, a nuclear accident is not an unlikely theoretical possibility, it has becoem reality in a rather prominent way already.
Ah, you mean the 32 people that so far have died because of the Chernobyl accident? As opposed to the estimated 100000 people in Europe that die prematurely every year due to inhaling fossil fuel exhaust?
Yep, we really can put things into the proper perspective here in Europe, as opposed to those rednecks on the other side of the pond.
Regardless, even accounting for all the tragic deaths from CHernobyl, EUrope (FRance, in particular) still has cleaner power than the primary power source in AMerica. I would gladly trade the coal fire plant nearby for a nuclear plant; the waste is much easier to contain, even if it is more dangerous. Fusion reactors would be much better, of course -- but many malign nuclear power and install designs that are much more harmful to the environment. Also, "clean" natural gas power plants don't seem so clean when we have to go to war to fuel them.
Summary: Many, many, many more people have died for non-nuclear power supplies, than in nuclear disasters. The environment has been much more damaged by non-nuclear power supplies as well.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
That's a myth. Most of the energy in a fusion reaction comes out as fast neutrons; these gradually mess up the structure of the reactor vessel and make it radioactive.
Secondly, most or all of the possible ways to catch the fast neutrons create secondary nuclear waste.
The idea that fusion power is 'clean' is not backed up by the facts.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Fact is less than 25% of all oil is consumed to fuel our cars and power our homes.
FSVO 'fact.'
In the real world, upwards of 40% of a given barrel of oil ends up as gasoline, and maybe up to 60%. Gasoline. That's used in cars, military vehicles, and small planes. It's not used to power or heat our homes.
The other 75% goes directly to manufacturing, and thus demand will not be significantly reduced by simply adding solar.
Wrong. Plastics and other manufacturing concerns consume the minority of each barrel of crude. Now, granted, if we stop using the lighter fractions of crude to drive our cars, that doesn't mean we can magically turn the whole barrel into heavier stuff suitable for plastics feedstocks, but your numbers are way off.
We have solar panels today nearing the theoretical maximum effeciecy of the substrate used to convert it.
Yeah, and? Next step is to make them cheaper. Or more durable, which basically amounts to the same thing.
Besides, we've already got the technology to move beyond fossil fuels, it's as safe or safer than burning coal, pollutes a helluva lot less, and has enough fuel sitting around to last us practically forever: fission. The only thing lacking is the political will, and the only problem is that people are stupid.
Most likly they conclude that with a status quo, they will continue to literarily print money
Why is it that people insist on using the word "literally" when they mean figuratively?
There is some debate about potential fusion accidents and radiactive byproducts in a fairly balanced article here. I remember similar claims about "cheap and clean" fission energy in the 1950s which turned out to be neither in practice. I'm not a Luddite, but we do have to anticipate problems.
That way if it goes boom, not as many people need to translocate.
Fusion reactors don't explode. The fusion reaction itself is extremely delicate. If anything goes wrong, it simply stops. Sure you now have some hot plasma/gas, but not very much, and it'll cool by itself if left alone. Remember that your reactor is wrapped in cooling systems anyway, since that's how you get the power out of it (at least until we recover sufficient He3 that the power can be extracted magnetically).
The real problem is that the Cadarache site HAD been voted to be the place, but after France decided not to send any troops in Irak, the US suddenly changed their mind in favor of the japanese site (oh, just after japan sent troops...)
I was interested in fusion power for a school work with a friend, and I know that because this friend of mine has a relative who is project leader on tore-supra, in cadarache, and they were quite angry with such petty behavior...
White House types (and Congressional types as well) have the dubious privilege of putting their assets into a blind trust, which must basically sell it all off and put it elsewhere, without telling the principal just where it is invested (hence "blind"). This is to prevent that particular form of corruption.
Far more dangerous is Oil Companies (or Software companies, Disney, Media companies, etc) making direct political contributions to elected officials. Which they all do, to all candidates.
Except Nader, maybe. Not sure who is making contributions to him, but I expect they all have political axes to grind...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
>For one it's extremely expensive to build miles of solar panels. Not only that, the technology is improving all the time - we probably had something like 2.5% efficiency 15 years ago, now we have 10-15% and we'll be up into the low 20's hopefully soon.
Actually, it looks like it could be 50% soon..
>To add to all that, the problem of getting the supply anywhere is very hard. You can produce megawatts of the stuff, but it's all coming out as low voltage DC when everyone needs high voltage AC. That means you need huge inverters, which are very inefficient.
True, especially in the context of the parent post, but if everyone had these high-efficiency solar cells mounted on their roofs it would be less a problem.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Individual cells are low voltage DC, but they are easily combined in series to obtain higher voltages. DC is superior for transmission. Inverters can be very efficient, 90% would be considered bad efficiency at megawatt power levels.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Oh, and also, if it goes out of control and creates a small black hole that slowly starts consuming everything
We've already got that. It's called the Hubbert Peak
Those of us who haven't seen Farenheit 911 might wonder who would benefit most from $7/gallon gas prices...and who they have on thier payroll. Cancelling projects like these is one way to keep them happy.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Huge misconceptions seem to abound here. FIRE does not represent the whole of US fusion research. There are dozens of other projects and laboratories around the country, most in academia and the national labs.
$2M/year is just for this ONE project.
The summary is extremely poorly written, and apparently the submitter thinks that the US is "canceling" all of its fusion programs, when in reality, ONE project of many is being canceled. The whole reason FIRE came about is because the US pulled out of ITER. Now we're back in, and FIRE could serve as a backup project potentially, but ITER is the focus in this particular line of research. But there are still many, many federally funded fusion research programs, projects, and laboratories around the US! We've spent $5 billion on projects like the National Ignition Facility (NIF) alone (only to be crucified by the Left...I guess you can't win).
Jeez. Wake the fuck up, or at least learn something.
The vacuum in space is much much better than the best laboratory plasmas and the surface of the moon is comparable to lab plasmas.( 1 particle per cubic cm for space, 10^6 to 10^5 for the the moon, and 10^5 to 10^4 for the lab) or in atmospheres ( 10^-20, 10^-13 to 10^-15, 10^-12 to 10^-15 ) source:http://hypertextbook.com/physics/matter/pre ssure/
The real problem is that you still need a plasma facing surface and to generate a magnetic field. All that mass is expensive to get to the moon, and the constraint on the physical size of the magnets (bigger is more expensive) and the need to protect them from the plasma would result in a very similar vessel being constructed on the moon. So there would be very little direct benefit. There is the remote possibility of using the exotic D-He3 fusion reaction - one that is much more difficult to create, but that is essentially neutron free. Since He3 is only found in any concentration in the surface of the moon where it is deposited by the solar wind.
You don't really get what black holes do, do you?
According to Steven Hawking, they don't actually exist -- the singularity never forms in a quantum mechanical universe.
Bear in mind that a black hole with lunar mass would have a tiny event horizon. Given the amount of thermal noise in the solar center, it would be very hard for anything to "fall in" without being bumped out first. In time, the hole might consume the sun, but my back of the envelope calculations suggest that it's far more likely that the pseudo-singularity would decay in a burst of Hawking radiation long before it consumed anything.
Yes, but then it would suffer pretty badly from Hawking Radiation. Anyone know how to calculate how quickly a black hole the mass of the moon would radiate away?
Far, far longer than the present age of the universe.
Same answer if you have a black hole with the mass of an asteroid.
Only very low-mass holes radiate brightly enough to shed mass at any reasonable rate.
Fascinating how USians dont know shit about things going on in international affairs once again. It was well over a year ago when i read reports about the US suddenly pushing the Japan site after the French site had almost been agreed upon by all parties. The reason, obviously, was that France had to be punished, pfft. Apparently people take only that much of this kind of shit. It was mentioned at that time already some (euro) countries might prefer doing a smaller project on their own than give way to the US. Seems to me the US announced retreating from ITER expecting everyone to fall over, now they are coming back? Ooh, it's soo great watching the 'worlds only hyperpower' doing international politics. Up yours.
Yeah, and pebble bed fission reactors can't melt down either. Do you see any of them being built?
Um, you are aware that high-energy neutrons CREATE radioactive isotopes, right? You block them by letting them slam into stuff (usually water, where they make Deuterium and Tritium and lots of other fun isotopes from the dissolved salts and organics in the water).
ANY time you're dealing with nuclear reactions, you're going to get nuclear isotopes and radioactive waste. It's the nature of the beast, and environmentalists will be quick to point this out, and the nuclear hysteria that runs rampant in our society will ensure that no fusion reactor ever gets built in the U.S.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Well, I found a formula. The lifetime of a black hole of M solar masses is approximately 10e71 * M^3 seconds. The moon is 7.35e22 kg. The sun is 1.99e30 kg. That means that the moon is 3.69e-8 solar masses. That works out to 5e49 seconds to radiate away, which is about 1.6e42 years. So, yes, it wouldn't be disappearing very quickly. Now, given that e=mc^2, the moon has an energy of 6.61e39 joules, so *on average* the moon would radiate away 1.3e-10 watts (yes, I know that the average can be misleading here, but it'd be hard to get any other number). It's tiny, but would at least be detectable.
Lets pick a random asteroid - say, Eros. It is about 3.36e-15 solar masses. That comes out to about 1.2e21 years. Still no short time, mind you, but it will radiate a lot more - just over 15 kw on average.
Rock Us, Dukakis.