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
·
· 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Clarington and Vandellòs were withdrawn.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.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Third world country like... France or Japan, which are contesting for the site?
Re:This might be an unpopular opinion here ...
by
jabberjaw
·
· 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...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· 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.
·
· 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
by
EinarH
·
· 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.
The sad state of American science
by
yog
·
· 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
by
Sam+Nitzberg
·
· 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:Good news in a way
by
IronicCheese
·
· 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
by
jspaleta
·
· 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
Re:Solar power is still vastly underutilized
by
Phanatic1a
·
· 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:They should build it in...
by
sql*kitten
·
· 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).
Re:Exploiting the sun
by
ChrisMaple
·
· 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
FIRE is not the US's sole fusion program
by
daveschroeder
·
· 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.
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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).
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
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.