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New Advances Bring Fusion Closer to Reality
An anonymous reader writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports on new advances in nuclear fusion research. For years we've been waiting for the technical breakthroughs that would make cost-effective fusion energy a reality. Are we getting close, or are the problems insurmountable?"
"Nuclear Fusion has always been 15 years away, and always will be"
I built a cold fusion device that uses heavy water as its fuel, but my work is being supressed by the hot fusion cabal at Princeton.
One day I'll be famous.
Are we getting close, or are the problems insurmountable?
According to this documentary, we'll have fusion powering our homes and cars within 10 years.
While I believe that fusion will likely be the only sustainable energy source as our current supplies of oil and uranium eventually run out, nuclear fission is about the only 'safe' alternative in the meantime. Generating many orders of magnitude less radioactive waste than current fossil fuel plants, they are inherently better for the environment on a purely objective level.
What I object to, though, is the insinuation that we are the ones splitting the nuclei of the radioactive elements. These things are radioactive precisely because of their tendency to decay and in fact split themselves. They don't even split into other elements. You can't turn uranium into gold, for example, even though it ought to be a straightforward process of splitting off the required number of protons from each atom (if the "we're splitting atoms" camp claims are correct).
We use the heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements to fuel our generators. We do nothing like smashing atoms into smaller bits.
Just a pet peeve of mine whenever I see a nuclear power article.
Does this mean I'll finally be getting a Mr. Fusion to put on my Delorean?
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
It's not a theological magazine, it's an actual newspaper. The have World/US/Science/etc news.
r .html
http://www.csmonitor.com/aboutus/about_the_monito
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
No, "Christian Science Monitor". It's a newspaper, and a highly respected one at that. You know, newspapers? Those paper things that get delivered to your neighbors and your local library? You should turn off the computer once in a while and check that place out. You'd be surprised what you might learn!
Christian Science is different from Christianity. Plus, Christianity isn't anti-scientific.
"What will happen to the material that stops all those neutrons?"
Assuming you don't use aneutronic fusion, it will get mildly radioactive. So bury it in the middle of nowhere... who cares? We're not talking about 'hot' fission fuel here.
"What is the failure mode for a collapsed fusuion capable magnetic field?"
The confinement vessel warms up by about two degrees C, you fix the problem and restart it. You've been watching too many SF movies if you think that a confinement failure will cause a nuclear explosion.
"Fusuion power will NEVER be safe"
Fusion is extremely safe compared to fission: you appear to be just a typical ill-informed knee-jerk anti-nukleah.
"What is the failure mode for a collapsed fusuion capable magnetic field?"
The plasma disperses and the fusion stops. What do you think happens when they shut the field down now after their tests?
"Wow, these are bad, very very very bad also."
Really? Why?
"The folks that came to our little burg for a 'rah rah' meeting claimed that power would be so cheap, it wouldn't be metered."
And it would have been had the anti-nuclear nutters who stopped the whole thing in its tracks. Yes 3 mile island happened and then chernobyl. So what? When an airliner crashes 400 people die. Do we stop all flight? Tens of thousands of people die in car crashes every year. Do we ban cars? No.
"The situation with nuclear power has not changed just becuase we are looking at 'new and improved' fusion"
If the halfwitted political loudmouths of society can be convinced this new form is "better" than the old form (whether it is or not) then we may get somewhere with it. If it ever works that is.
...on the history of the Christian Science Monitor.
My understanding is that it is one of the oldest and longest running *actual* news sources that has remained rather committed to the *actual* scientific truth, not the false truth pushed by Born Again Christian Fundamentalists.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The article was so dumbed down it was actually harder to work out what it was saying, but I think it goes like this:
"We still intend to use a donut-shaped plasma contained in a magnetic field. But now we've got better scopes and the latest release of 'budget fluid-model XP' for our souped-up research PCs"
Perhaps the real point of the article is to announce that Christian HQ has finally decided that nuclear fusion isn't blasphemous (and God has presumably decided not to enforce her patents on the sun).
"However, those who worked on the years of clean up at three mile island know how bad these failure modes are."
Oh, and while we're on the subject, the new Chinese fission reactors are designed to be impossible to melt down, and are therefore extremely safe. The downside is that you still need to deal with the hot radioactive fuel afterwards.
Equally, plants powered by conventional fuels pump out a huge amount of radioactive crap into the atmosphere (e.g. coal often contains uranium which will be burnt and dispersed into the atmosphere) and if the 'global warming' nutters are correct then the consequences of continuing to burn conventional fuels would be far worse than those of a few fission reactor accidents.
What you yourself are insinuating is that we do not create any 'unnatural' elements in the proces.
I object: Pu for example is not a natural element - and quite wasteful.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Just because we can't do it right now doesn't mean we never will.
100 years ago we would never have dreamed space exploration would be possible. Why's this so different?
Summation 2
It is not a theological magazine. CSM has been known for decades as a solid newspaper, and has won several Pulitzers for its accurate reporting.
Is this an Ask Slashdot?
If so then my answer is yes! I mean no! err..What was the question again?
IANANE (I am not a nuclear engineer) but if I read that article correctly then it seems some of the many problems have theoretical solutions. In other words, it worked in the simulation. We need to get this thing built and do real tests before we can even think about being "close" to having fusion plants.
They can't even decide where to build it! Why can't I vote to spend my (US) tax money on putting one of these over here. Even as a test bed it will give the contry it's in some home field advantage.
You can use my back yard if you want! Don't listen to my whiney neighbors, they don't know what's good for them!
I don't think, Therefore I'm not.
" I'm sorry, we're looking at a theological magazine for technical articles?"
Let me get this straight... Christians can't invent things, or are ever involved in science?
Look around you. The vast majority of everything you take for granted was invented by someone who happened to be Christian, or was made possible by the FREEDOM to invent only possible with the democratic freedom invented by Christian dominated countries.
The Christian Sciene Monitor is not some church publication. But what if it were? The VATICAN even has scientific institutions, including one of the world's better astronomical observatories.
You know, and I will be modded to hell for suggesting this... But even as our governemnt and courts seem to move to FORCE secularization into all parts of public life and expression, our freedom to invent is being ever more threatened by new IP laws.
These laws are being proposed and imposed by a legally atheistic government, that is divorcing all decision from MORALITY finds no problem with granting multinational corporations intellectual property monopolies and the ability to crush individuals.
Corporatism != Free Market
"The confinement vessel warms up by about two degrees C, you fix the problem and restart it."
Also, due electromagnetic forces, the sudden absence of big magnetic field excerts a lot of torque to the torus. Not harming anyone, but I'd wager being near when 6-meter-high metal construction just "jumps" may be a bit startling.
And it would have been had the anti-nuclear nutters who stopped the whole thing in its tracks. Yes 3 mile island happened and then chernobyl. So what? When an airliner crashes 400 people die. Do we stop all flight? Tens of thousands of people die in car crashes every year. Do we ban cars? No.
Exactly. Everything has risk, and while we should and do try to reduce the risks, not doing something because it does pose a slight risk, where it could lead to huge benefits is beyond retarded. People just don't take the time to understand.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
that's how all the stars have been working till the beginning of time. and the H-bomb too. the only problem is that we can't make it happen in a controlled and effective way.
in nuclear fission, one atom break into two and spit out neutrons which further trigger other events. Material are inserted to slow the process down so it won't explode.
On the other hand, nuclear fusion merge two atom (hydrogen?) into one. Energy are input to accelerate the atoms as well as confining it. IF it does fail, the hydrogens will escape (from the chamber?) but there won't be further reaction. This won't lead to explosion in power failure.
They are cheaper than fission in the sense that hydrogen are easier to get than uranium. Furthermore, our current source would cease to exist one day and hydrogen are everywhere so they are a more common source of energy
I am harvesting funny/good quotes. Please help by putting them in your sigs
With observations like that in reputable news sources like the Economist it is no wonder that investment in fusion waxes and wanes. People want a return on investment before the next election, not 30 years from now.
use the suns fusion to grow biodiesel. A lot cheaper and it will clean the atmosphere. My understanding is that all carbon in plant is extracted from the atmosphere. Extracting the oil leaves carbon waste, so even dirty engines cannot put more carbon back into air then was extracted. :)
Although we may end up with oxygen pollution
biodiesel home page
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
What is the failure mode for a collapsed fusuion capable magnetic field?
The reaction stops. No, seriously, current fusion reactor designs require the magentic field to cause the fusion to happen. Thats why its currently so expensive, most of the time it takes more electricity to power the magnet than you can get from the fusion.
Current nuclear reactors have a GREAT track record, by any other industry standard. However, those who worked on the years of clean up at three mile island
Guess what, the reactor there wasn't a current design. In fact, I believe none of the reactors in operation in the US is a current design, since instead of replacing them with better designs that have been in use for almost a decade now, little "know it alls" like you complain and prevent new plants from being built to replace the old.
The situation with nuclear power has not changed just becuase we are looking at 'new and improved' fusion.
The situation with nuclear power changed decades ago with the invention of reactors that could burn fuel that would have otherwise been considered "spent", reducing the need for disposal. It changed years ago with the invention of better fission reactors that are resistant to meltdown in emergency situations, and it will change yet again with the invention of fusion reactors that operate by converting small atoms (Helium) into slightly larger ones, rather than using heavy metals like uranium and plutonium.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Yeah, I know I'm ill informed. It's true. I've never worked on a tokomak or any other nuclear facility. I do know that it takes more than two degree C from ambient to make fusion happen with known methods. And the product of twenty years of operation is not well understood, there is more than one person in the nuclear field (possibly informed, and/or just crazy) that wonders what happens to materials even if the neutrons are not 'hot'. The argument that nearby materials will not get dangerous appears to be based on statistics (of course because this is all you've got). So who is looking at real failure modes (versus the ones where things get two degrees out of wack and the confinement politly disipates into a safe cloud of well behaved plasma)? Take another look at the density goals for these operations, recalculate the energy moderation outside a confinement, then let me know if you still come up with only two degrees. (I'm also pretty bad at arithmetic, so I get exponents wrong all the time, just by one or two, but hey, a few degrees of magnitude make all the difference, don't they)
I'm sorry, we're looking at a theological magazine for technical articles?
I'm a total atheist, but the Christian Science Monitor is an extremely good publication, very independent.
It was apparently originally founded by a wealthy and religious woman about a century back. It is owned by a church, but you couldn't tell from the content. What you can tell is that it's not just another news organization for which profit is the all important thing.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I think we're getting closer to "cost-effective" fusion, if for no other reason than that the alternatives are getting more expensive. If the cost of fusion just stays constant, fusion will eventually win out. Other energy sources will simply become more expensive, leaving fusion the "bargain" energy source.
Non-belief in a god != Belief God doesn't exist. Atheism is not the same as a religion. How many times must this fallacy be repeated? Not being a football player does not make me an athlete. Not collecting stamps does not make me a hobbiest. Not writing a book does not make me an author. Get it? Not believing in a god/God does not make me religious.
There is such a thing as non-religious. And it has nothing to do with faith. Its called atheism.
That's right. All your base.
What is the failure mode for a collapsed fusuion capable magnetic field?
...we are looking at 'new and improved' fusion.
Leaves a burn on the rug.
Please stop waiting for fusion power to be our friend.
Who said anything about being friend? We master, fusion slave.
Try going back to the 50's and early 60's
Because, as we all know, science has not advanced one iota since then.
Well, we never had "fusion" as a viable power source (if you discount the sun, of course). You might want to lookup "fission" and then "fusion". Think of it as splitting the atom vs. merging the atoms... fusion gives you a lot more power and a lot less waste. Once we get fusion (if we ever do) fission will go the way of the steam engine and horse drawn cart.
I believe he said we didn't believe it would be possible...not just dreaming of it. Right now I think landing a human on Venus will never be possible just because of the environment. Maybe that will be proved wrong someday. Things are moving at an extremely rapid pace. The first jet engines used as a top secret venture during WW2 and seen over the skies of Germany was only about 60 years ago. Then..what...25-30 years later we land on the moon? That is impressive and I'm betting nobody would have dreamed we would have made leaps and bounds like that 100 years ago. I wanna see whats next!
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
IANANP (I am not a nuclear physicist) but a lot of people don't seem to know much about fusion so here are some links which explain a bit more about it:
l / fusion.html f usion
http://www.jet.efda.org/pages/content/fusion2.htm
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_
http://www.fusion.org.uk/
http://www.iter.org/
Sorry to be a nathering nabob of negativism, but...
Practical nuclear fusion would be the best thing that ever happened to our planet: we'd lose our dependence on the Middle East for energy, and dramatically cut pollution. If it were up to me, I'd launch a nuclear fusion program on the scale of the Manhattan Project.
However, the Bush family and that crowd will never allow nuclear fusion to become a reality - they make too darned much money on oil, and cash is all they understand.
The sun has that little advantage of mass to create the enormous pressure and heat needed for fusion.
In the absence of a similar free advantage I don't see why you assume we can create a sustainable fusion reactor.
Clear, Dark Skies
"Things would burn and melt and stuff."
Oh boy. Go back to watching your cartoons. This discussion is for grown ups.
"Scientists now say 100 million degrees C is not too hot to handle in this powerful energy-generating process." Correct me if I'm wrong here but we are trying to fuse hydrogen here not helium, nobody need be messing around with temperatures anywhere near 100 million celcius.
vampirical
I have a sneaking suspicion that the article meant to refer to SILICON carbide.
Silicon and Silicone are often confused.
OTOH, perhaps this will be the next big thing. Talk about too hot to handle...
-j
France's banning of religious items is really not a form of atheism. They also ban all sorts of aggressive clothing, obscene items and so on. These items that break their general uniform rules are now fitting into that catagory and are therefore banned also.
A religious item of clothing is little different from wearing some form of gang emblem afterall really, it's simply something to identify you as being a member of a particular group. What France wants to do is remove that identification so that whilst in school what you are is a student, no more, no less.
That's not to say I agree with it, though.
Also, people, don't forget that Atheism is no less a _religion_ than any other. Or that's what my philosophy professor (also doctored in physics) used to say. It is well established that you cannot prove the non-existance of god any more than you can prove his existance. You may only believe one way or another. If you want to be all politically correct and stuff you may say - "I don't know whether god exists or not, but I gonna respect people believing both ways". But the science does not have a lot to do with explaining the world but more to do with describing it - people from Newton (extremely cool guy), Pascal (very smart guy, read their articles, lots of fun!)), and Darwin to (supposedly) Einstein used to understand that pretty clearly, the fact that you figure out a formula describing a gravity force (seemingly right) and name the things ("force", "gravity") does not help explaining _why_ the hell things attract; to put it all in a primitive way. And as for cosmogonics - every story a tribe in African jungle would tell you about the world's creation IMO would be better than "there was _nothing_, it _exploded_, and everything came to be". But maybe it's just me.
BTW, me, I'm Christian (Orthodox).
Hmm, that's not going to help stop people feeling that way, nor do I think your distinction is terribly relevent, especially when you consider that most atheists would say they believe there is no god, and strong atheists would tend to say that it can be proven that there cannot be. That seems like belief in the nonexistance of God to most people. To say "No" in answer to the question "Do you believe in God" and to also say "No" in answer to "Do you believe there is no God" would surely make you an agnostic?
You are auite correct- it does take a lot more than 2 degrees C to initiate a fusion reaction. What the hell this has to do with fusion reactor failure I'm not sure. I think that the reference to 2 degrees temp rise in the parent was another way of saying "not a hell of a lot". If the containment field fails not a lot happens- the reaction stops. As for neutron irradiation, as a consequence of working with fission reactors for a long time now we know exactly what happens to structural materials when bombarded by neutrons. You get a some residual radioactivity and they are more prone to failure (they tend to become brittle). But ,like I say, we know all about this- it's not like you're the first person to think "hey there's neutrons coming out of that thing". By the way, I think they've actually had a few field failures at JET (ITER's precursor) with no dire conmsequences.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
E=mc^2
Fusion.
Conversion of matter to energy.
This isn't about burning H2, or about electrolysis.
Am I going too fast for you here?
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
You were oh so close on your post.
The first part was correct but then you had to provide a link to a creationist web site. A web site with the name 'Institute for Creation Research' as if the use of the word 'Institute' provides some legitimacy to the fantasy of Creationism.
So close yet so far.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Yep, my father quoted that one on his PhD thesis.
Granted, they do have fusion -- but not practical fusion.
But to prove his statement, he pointed out how expensive it is to generate tritium for the DT reaction, and how little there is.
If we're ever going to have practical fusion, it's going to be cold fusion. Use a molecule with an explosive bond that shoves two other molecules on a predefined pathway into a range where you get a 1% chance of reaction between two hydrogen nuclei, by tunnelling, and you could do it.
But that would take a pretty complicated and well-designed molecule.
There may be some ways of doing it once we have better molecular manufacturing, but as for right now, cold fusion is also dead.
For that matter, unless we're using it in space, I hope they don't get cold fusion.
To quote Don Lancaster (www.tinaja.com), if anyone finds a free energy source and manufactures it without also providing a free energy sink, they'll be the worst criminal in human history. Oh, and our planet will glow like a star too.
I think the proper solution to our energy problems needs to be wind and wave. Those take care of the energy source/sink problem. Sorry, just my two cents.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The Joint European Torus (JET) fusion lab in Culham, Oxfordshire, UK 'jumped' a few years ago. The plasma touched the wall of the reactor vessel and dissipated. The entire reactor 'jumped', and the event is visible on seismograph traces. (The reactor, in total, was quite heavy)
This is not good for the retaining magnets - the magnetic field quenches, and the energy goes into heating up the magnets. Even the superconducting (and therefore cooled) ones warm up - boiling off a lot of refrigerant, and possibly/prbably distorting/damaging the coils..
Afer this event, th reactor was shut down for a long period (I think months), while the coils were checked for damage and realigned.
As for the amount of energy in the plasma itself - it's relatively small. Although the temperature is high, the particle density is actually quite low, so the total energy contained is (relatively) small. It *won't* go up like a hydrogen bomb.
The core lining in JET was lithium. It gets mildly radioactive due to being bombarded by neutrons all the time, but this is not a big deal. The neutron activation of the concrete and steel rebar used in the construction of the core (it has to withstand high mechanical forces from the magnetic fields) is more of an issue.
The plasma isn't meant to touch the tokamak wall, as it causes long and expensive downtime, but it's not as catastophic as (say) setting light to an oil well.
You still need a source of hydrogen to convert to helium smart guy. That comes from water. You need to apply electricity to to water to get the hydrogen out. The technology is still basically a furnace. The reaction produces heat which is used to turn liquid water into steam which is used to turn a turbine. It isn't a simple as you'd like to think. Write back when you know what you're talking about.
If I can't have it now I don't want it, that's how I managed to give up crack.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I don't agree about atheistic govenments, if you mean the US Bushy govenment then you can think again because he's Born again boyo. no religon is about power over people with what ever lies will convince them to stay under heel.
Atheism denotes a person believes there is no God. In other words, this person has "faith" that there is no God. "Agnosticism" is more the "non-religious", "nothing to do with faith" thing...
If life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life, let's all get wasted and have the time of our lives.
I am a Nuclear Enginneer,and work in Britain on the Joint European Torus Fusion Device. Check it out... http://www.fusion.org.uk When we fuse together the hydrogen, the helium formed is more stable and highly energetic. The thing to consider here is potential energy too. Just as there is chemical potential energy in the gun powder of a bullet, which allows the weapon to be fully automatic, so there too is nuclear potential energy. For large enough plasmas it is possible to use the highly energetic helium to sustain the fusion reaction, in a process known as ignition, so more energy can be retrieved than was put in. If all energies are considered, no laws are violated. You are right about the electricity generating process. The use of steam pressure and turbines is limited by the laws of thermodynamics, namely the Carnot cycle, so can only ever be approximately 40% efficient. The next step is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). As the politicians couldn't decide whether to build it in Japan or France, Europe has declared its going to build it anyway, and we're now just waiting for people to take sides :)
What are the civilian applications?
[Grandparent]: When an airliner crashes 400 people die. Do we stop all flight? Tens of thousands of people die in car crashes every year. Do we ban cars? No.
[Parent]: Exactly. Everything has risk, and while we should and do try to reduce the risks, not doing something because it does pose a slight risk [...] is beyond retarded.
The problem is control. Yes, planes crash. If people are scared of that, they can simply not fly. If people are afraid of car crashes they can not drive. If people are afraid of a nuclear power plant melting down and spewing airborne radioactive ash over 2000 square miles, well, there's not a whole hell of a lot they can do about it. That is the problem. That is why it is meeting all this resistence. Society can get over fears which the really paranoid people can choose to avoid, however inconvenient. But when a "risk" comes along that can't be escaped from, well, then we need everyone to buy into it.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Don't get me wrong because I agree, but I am amazed when I see comments like this on a slashdot. This is the most liberal site I have ever seen in my life. Most on here voted for Kerry I would bet and don't even keep track of which party does the most to help things like this or hurt it. Most tree huggers are Democrats. The tree huggers are the ones trying to stop things like this. Bush has dedicated funds to this and I submitted the story in 2003 (rejected of course...was pro-Bush). Here is an html ver of the doc. here or the pdf if you prefer.
From the article: Friday, January 31, 2003By ROBERT STERNPLAINSBORO - After a five-year hiatus, the United States next month will rejoin internationalnegotiations to develop fusion energy as a commercial power source, U.S. Energy SecretarySpencer Abraham said yesterday.
5 year hiatas...who was in office then? Oh yeah democrats.
U.S. participation in construction of the $5 billion project would cost an estimated $500million in constant 2002 dollars over a 10-year period, according to the Department ofEnergy.
And people on here say Bush doesn't do anything to help with alternative fuel research all the time. Articles like this are rejected of course. From it you see:George Bush, an oilman, could wind up a sort of fuel-economy and alternative-fuel president.
He's already boosted mileage requirements for trucks 7%, to an average 22.2 miles per gallon for 2007 models. He's committed $1.7 billion to hydrogen-fuel research. And he has made decisions that helped the ethanol-fuel industry boost production to 3.4 billion gallons this year, double from when he took office.
In a second term, lobbyists and public policy veterans expect him to do even more for renewable fuels such as ethanol, reshape fuel-economy regulations in ways that could require even better mileage, and push a Republican Congress to pass an energy bill with generous tax credits for people who buy especially fuel-efficient vehicles.
So basically, the progress being made on fusion was funded in part by this administration and funding was cut by the previous. Anyone who mods this down is just a Bush basher and I plead to you now, don't hide the truth. The media already does that enough. I don't want a flamewar. I'm only talking about the last 2 administrations and the current topic of fusion.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
On a clear day, just look up. ;-)
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
otherwise you could just plug the thing into itself and have the equivilent of a perpetual motion machine. Not really because you would be consuming fuel. If you plugged it into itself it would run until the fuel was exhausted.
You can't get something for nothing is one of the fundamental laws of physics.
No, it's not - but things usually turn out that way.
Statements like hydrogen being a nearly limitless source of fuel fails to note that energy (electricity) needs to be applied to water to get the hydrogen out.
But you may be able to get out more than you put in - that's the whole point of the research. Note also that all energy generation schemes require an energy input.
Also, the statement in the article that the reaction would generate five times the amount of energy it consumes doesn't seem to square with the law of entropy -- otherwise you could just plug the thing into itself and have the equivilent of a perpetual motion machine.
You can plug the thing into itself. That is, use some of the energy out as the energy in to keep the reaction going. This is not a perpetual motion machine because, as you said, the fuel is nearly infinite, ie. not infinite.
Atheism denotes a person believes there is no God. In other words, this person has "faith" that there is no God. "Agnosticism" is more the "non-religious", "nothing to do with faith" thing...
Wrong. Athiesm denotes a person who LACKS a belief in god. It is an absence of a belief, not a "faith." You are spewing typical religious (not to mention logical fallacy) designed to dismiss a point of view you don't agree with. It is not only disingenuous, it is infantile.
Or does your disbelief in Santa Clause living at the North Pole imply "faith" or make you a child?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Everything we are so proud of in our western culture:
Democracy, a legal system with judges, defenders, juries. The whole scientific approach, academies. Parliaments, representative gouvernments, all this origins from pagan ancient Greece and Rome.
The Christian understanding of justice is a priest that condemns and a mob that stones. The Christian understanding of aquiring wisdom is sitting in the desert and letting the sun shine on your head.
Just read the Bible.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
Is Christian Science Monitor actually tied any religious institution? I have a hard time believing they are controlled by the Pope, but I could see some connections to various Lutheran organizations or even being a completely independent group of non-literal interpretation of the bible Christian journalists.
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
Does anyone else find it dissonant that the Christian Science Monitor, generally a fine paper, is primarily a journal for a community of Americans who shun medicine in favor of faith healing, yet reports other miraculous science like fusion without complaint?
--
make install -not war
You aren't getting something for nothing, you're using that wonderful E=MC^2 Every pair of atoms that fuse in a standard fusion reaction liberates an emormous amount of energy. Look at the atomic weights of Deuterium and Tritium, then at the atomic weight of a single neutron and at Helium. The difference between the two is being converted into energy. That's where the power's comming from. So yes, if you can break the 1:1 barrier then you can plug it into itself and it will keep running. Just like a power plant keeps running... as long as you provide fuel. In this case the fuel is hydrogen isotopes. The good news is that both isotopes are plentiful (or can be generated easly) on earth, thus the comment of nearly limitless inexpensive energy.
Why is this so difficult for you to understand? It takes X amount of energy to extract hydrogen from water. Fusion of this hydrogen produces Y energy, where Y>>X. There is a net energy gain, with a decrease in mass. I say bring on the antimatter... Total world energy consumption is around 4e20 joules/year, which is 4 tons of fuel :)
.. in the palm of my hand!
:)
Who's been watching too much Spider-Man, me or the Christian Science Monitor?
"Most on here voted for Kerry I would bet "
I didn't. I'm not american. Neither are lots of people on here. The "management" may or may not be liberal but the people who post have a whole spectrum of views AFAICS.
That should read "Fusion may be cleaner than fission..."
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I read once that Helium naturally bleeds out of the atmosphere and into space. The only reason that we have measurable quantities of Helium is alpha particle decay within the earth's mantle.
From what I understand, natural gas is the main source of Helium replentishment.
I'm sure there is a great sci-fi anime involving kids with strange powers in your post, but I'm too lazy to make it up just now...
I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
I think you are absolutely correct.
What will have to happen is that people will not PAY for the electricity, they will be allotted an amount based on their projected "need"; above which, the price per kilowatt-hour will be outrageous. This will provide the incentive to design/choose energy efficent houses (like what you'd build in Wisconsin). This will provide incentive to conserve electricity.
We need to do the same thing with fresh water, but I guess you could build a couple desalination plants on the coast, and LA would be just fine in the summer.
The fusion process stops releasing energy when you hit iron. All higher elements on the periodic table consume energy in their production; they do not yeild energy.
...with advances in materials science and computer power, a dollar spent on fusion now will outperform a dollar that was spent on fusion 10 years ago.
A sustained effort is better than impulse funding.
Gee, and didn't we just see an article last month about how much MORE efficient it is to electrolyze really HOT water (we call that steam, over here in the sciences)? Where, o where could we get some steam...?
:-)
Apples and oranges, chief. The amount of energy released from a fusion reaction is orders of magnitude higher than that generated from burning H2 or using it in a fuel cell. The amount of energy required to separate the H from the O is a (forgive me) drop in the bucket compared to what's being generated. Now, of course, you need deuterium and tritium for the fusion, so the effective efficiency of electrolysis goes down a bit (5000:1 or so), unless you electrolyze heavy water
I'll do the math for you: Electrolysis of 1 mole of (tap) water releases 1 mole of H2 gas, and requires 237.1 kJ. (this is without considering process efficiency - I'll do that later). That's two grams of hydrogen. You need to electrolyze about 2500 moles of water to get 1g of deuterium. That's 5.92x10^8 J - call it 6e8 J. The energy released from complete conversion of 1g of deuterium to energy is about 9e13 J. That means that complete conversion of 1g of deuterium releases 150,000 times more energy than required to separate it from water.
Of course, you can't expect to take a single gram of deuterium and convert all of it... but even if 1% of the deuterium is converted, and the electrolysis is only 25% efficient, and we can only recover 10% of the energy... we still get 37.5 times more energy out that we needed to electrolyze all that water in the first place. And if we can reuse the deuterium that DIDN'T get converted the first time...
Considering that the article predicts putting in 2e13 J to get out 9e13 J, the 6e8 - 6e11 J you're worried about from the electrolysis is chump change.
Might I suggest that imploring others to refrain from comment until they are sufficiently well-versed in the subject might be best accomplished if you were to lead by example?
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
Nuclear fission does split nucleii into fragments. U-235 fission absorbs thermal neutrons (room-temperature kinetic energy) and splits in half, P-239 fission absorbs fast (high-energy) neutrons and splits in half. The resultant atoms form an assymetric distribution called the 'Mae West' curve because it forms two big peaks (mapped # vs Z) that look like mammaries to lonely nuclear engineers that don't see nekkid women that often.
While Uranium/Plutonium do decay naturally (stability of a nucleus is determined by the Nuclear Shell empirical formula, which is a rough analog of the electron shell theory - everybody wants to be Iron Fe/26, the most stable nucleus), there's another form of decay that's an outcome of genuine nucleus splitting. That's is the decay of of these usually-radioactive fragments. This decay is important to the operation of a fission reactor, but only in determining the criticality of a nuclear pile. 'Critical' == exactly as many neutrons are released in any time period as are absorbed, meaning steady power output. Basically, over 99% of the neutrons necessary to keep a steady level of fission events come from 'prompt' neutrons - neutrons that are freed in the splitting of an atomic nucleus. You get one small chunk (which could very well be gold), one big chunk, and a couple free/fast neutrons.
If these 'prompt' neutrons were enough to sustain criticality, then the number of fission events would increase geometrically. Since the time between generations is about a millionth of a section, this means that a reactor core that's 'prompt-critical' would quickly escalate in temperature until the structural integrity of the core failed, and you have a molten slag of Uranium - which is exactly what happened at Chernobyl.
So the way to avoid this, you have to put in neutron-absorbing control rods to keep the number of 'prompt' neutrons below the number necessary to sustain the next generation of fission events. If 'prompt' neutrons were the only neutron source, your nuclear reactor would quickly cool down. But the decay of the fragments (which are ususally radioactive isotopes of stable elements) release additional neutrons. The 'art' of tuning a nuclear reactor is to insert the control rods just enough so that the reactor isn't prompt-critical, but the decay neutrons are just barely enough to make the pile critical.
One of the biggest problems with fusion in general is fuel. The easiest fusion reaction is deuterium-tritium. Deuterium is plentiful - the ocean is full of 'heavy water' where one of the hydrogen atoms in a water molecule has a proton and a neutron. Tritium, however, is radioactive with a pretty short halflife. You have to make tritium by getting Lithium to absorb a neutron, then decay.
Last time I was up-to-date on fusion research, there was only an estimated 300 years of Lithium to sustain the predicted energy needs of the world. However, with fission fast-breeder reactors like they use in France, there would be 5000 estimated years of power. Fission fast-breeder reactors can be built today - it's just that to make them passively safe, you need to use a liquid metal coolant like sodium, and any disaster like Chernobyl (from terrorists, for example) would be catastrophic. Liquid sodium will explode if it gets wet, so it's a huge engineering challenge. Argonne Nat'l Labs has reactor designs like this, but the US population is scared of nuclear power plants (plus, the cost overruns at plants made them economically unfeasible).
[I am a published principal author and presentor of a fusion reactor design (presented at the 8th Topical Meeting on the Topic of Fusion Energy in Salt Lake City), so I have a tiny bit of credibility. I got out of the field specifically because of the 15-year carrot-on-a-stick paradox.]
The standard counter argument has already been written, so I'll add the standard fun counter argument.
The difference between, say, a christian and an atheist is that the christian is atheist for just one ghod less...
That is, very few christians believe in the existence of Ganesh, Oden, Sam-the-god (from Son of Sam), etc, etc. There are literally hundreds of gods that the average christian (and atheist) doesn't believe exists.
The christian doesn't accept the existence of those weird gods because those crazy theories based only on internal feelings and indoctrination of young people at an early age.
The atheist just notes that the description is applicable to christianity, too.
To get religious people, you have to indoctrinate kids at an early age -- otherwise very few become religious. See e.g. Scandinavia. (As a Swede, I can add that most of those people that still go to some church seems a bit less than stable emotionally. They are ... to be kind, seekers.)
The atheist either lack the indoctrination at an early age (that's me) or has the integrity and strength to look beyond the indoctrination inflicted upon him/her.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Yes, nuclear waste lasts a long time. However, toxic metals in burnt coal ash last forever, they won't decay at all.
m /COAL_VS_N UCLEAR.html
It also takes land thousands of years to recover from strip mining.
The carbon dioxide (millions of tons of it per 500MW power plant) from burning coal is also more or less permanent, and it's a LOT harder to deal with than burying some hundreds of tons of nuclear waste someplace.
It's amazing that you are "satisfied" with the disposition of billions of tons of nasty crud from coal mining, processing, and burning, which is mostly disposed of in the common environment, but can't stand the thought of burying some hundreds of thousands of tons of nuclear waste underground in Nevada.
The world would be *far* better off if *every* coal plant was replaced with nuclear reactors.
More reading:
http://langmuir.nuc.berkeley.edu/~peter
What you're describing is an agnostic. An atheist is someone who believes there is no God. We're talking about semantics here, but I would ask, if the latter is not an atheist, then what is he?
It's not a problem with the law of thermodynamics (otherwise, go convince the Sun it can't shine :-)).
The thing is that hydrogen is turned into helium, another element. That produces a huge amount of energy - in fact, the same amount it would cost to split that helium back into hydrogen.
You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and burn that so it turns back into water, but the energy involved in that is much smaller than the energy in the fusion thing. So it's cost effective to use some energy to split water to make hydrogen, to gain a huge amount of energy turning it into helium.
If we can get it to work. It's unclear to me whether vanilla hydrogen will work or some heavier isotope is needed, and the magnets required use up some extreme amount of energy to keep all the stuff in the right place.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I thought he was calling himself an idiot for replying to flame bait. Yndrd1984
My wife's grandfather is still sharp as a tack and remembers pretty much everything (including the Hoover election as a kid) and was talking about this the other day.
He went from the family first getting a tractor instead of a horse to today. A little perspective can often be awe inspiring. If I live only as long as he has, I can't even imagine the changes that will happen.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
"Also, people, don't forget that Atheism is no less a _religion_ than any other."
Bullshit!
Why is it that you deny the existence of all the thousands of gods besides your "One True God (TM)"? Are you are simultaneously involved in all the religions which deny the existence of Baal, Zeus, Ganesh, Isis, Ra, the Rainbow Serpent etc?
An atheist just believes in one less god than you do.
And as for cosmogonics - every story a tribe in African jungle would tell you about the world's creation IMO would be better than "there was _nothing_, it _exploded_, and everything came to be".
We know pretty much exactly how and when 'the world' was 'created', but if you're talking about the universe as a whole, then it's spelled 'cosmology'. In that case I can't see how a lie can be better than 'we dunno (yet)'. Why do you think it is better to believe a lie than to be unsure?
Cthulhu loves you.
I agree that there are a good number of non-US citizens here. I think his point, however was that it appears that the majority of /.ers supported Kerry, based on comments from around election time, poll results, etc.
I agree with the grandparent (to this post), that Bush has done a fair bit to support these types of research, and is still painted as anti-environment/anti-progress.
I think the point of said post was that it is ironic that many people who seem to be liberal in their support for Kerry also seem to be supporting a position that has traditionally opposed to the pro-environment folks--that of nuclear power.
Here's my take--I honestly think that anyone who has taken the time to REALLY research the issues will see that despite all the froth, most scientists see nuclear power (fission or fusion) as a relatively safe method of producing electricity. It is less damaging to the environment, and CAN be cheaper. The only drawback to fission is the waste product, and I still maintain that we can safely store it in various locations until such a time as we learn how to decontaminate it/dispose of it.
In the mean time, we SHOULD be working on getting fusion to work. It is possible--all that remains to be seen is if the costs of the safeguards required to appease those who knee-jerk oppose it will be low enough to make it feasible.
Personally, I think that in the US this will first turn up as a new method of powering sub-marines or other naval vessels, where fission has been used for decades. It is VERY likely that this will turn up in military uses first, then specialized commercial settings, then finally as a method of powering electricity generators. Finally, we will get cars and other vehicles based on the technology.
Of course, the presumes that some nut-job out there doesn't get hold of a dirty bomb (or an honest to goodness nuke) and start a nuclear war before we can get all this working. I'd say we have about a 50% chance of getting fusion first.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
My original comment has been modded down as a troll, which gives some idea of which way the wind is blowing on Slashdot today.
However. I will stand by my statement that atheism is a belief system. Given that any god or gods are divine by definition, their existence is unlikely to be proven by physical science - therefore ANY statement about their existence or otherwise must be a leap of faith of some sort.
Personally I have no strong religious leanings and neither know nor care whether god exists or not. If there IS a god, then he/she/it/they would seem to be capricious and unkind, given the general evidence of the world around us - I'm quite happy muddling along without their approval or assistance, ta very much.
according to Alex Gabbard
For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. For the complete nuclear fuel cycle, from mining to reactor operation to waste disposal, the radiation dose is cited as 136 person-rem/year; the equivalent dose for coal use, from mining to power plant operation to waste disposal, is not listed in this report and is probably unknown.
For a large number of coal samples, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively
And a 1,000 megawatt plant uses 4 million tons of coal a year, resulting in the release of 5.2 tons of Uranium and 12.8 tones of thorium.
A 1000 megawatt light water nuclear plant of the type used in the USA uses about 25 tons of uranium a year.
If you're willing to use breeder reactors and their ilk, you can actually get more power out the the uranium in the ash than you got burning the coal!
I don't read AC A human right
There have been no real incentives to make fusion work. Twelve years ago, these guys has a chance and they blue it. The lawyers in congress refused to create sane incentives-and now are risking their own lives due to that failure. The world would be a very different-and imho better-place if viable fusion now existed. The middle east would not be a hotspot like it is now for example. The problem is that the kinds of people that run congress love centralization of power-more than they love life itself. In their eyes, the only suitable role for technical people is as obediant servants that like doing what they are told. What the last 20 years has shown, you just can't run a technological society that way.
"An atheist just believes in one less god than you do."
Note you used the word "believes." Atheism still requires an act of faith, because there is no way to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of any diety.
Someone, somewhere, imagined - this individual was promptly denounced by those who supposedly knew better, yet that someone got the idea across to others with imaginations, who said "What if...?" - more denouncing took place, some few are still in denial, yet the advances happened, and continue. As long as the masses want cheaper, more easily available and immediately applicable power and energy, we'll move forward.
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
We need to get this thing built and do real tests before we can even think about being "close" to having fusion plants.
I wonder if China will be holding a monopoly with their "build your own" fission reactors by then.
Are you saying that if fusion became practical, then everyone would build and operate their own personal reactor? Unless you are, your hypothesis makes no sense.
The Bushes have made a lot of money from selling energy. Although it happened to be in oil form, oil was never their core product. Any energy producer that wants to convert from oil-era millionaire to fusion-era billionaire will be selling off assets as fast as possible to raise money to build fusion plants all over the place.
If you think that ending the predominance of oil will bankrupt energy companies, then you're in for a surprise.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
wouldn't spinning something around (like those g machines astronauts train on) do the trick, or would they be not fast enough/consume more power than would be made?
Ah the wonders of a contextless statistic. Wow, America has spent more than $17 Billion on nuclear fusion in the last fifty years without producing a commercially viable reactor?! Damn those profligate scientists and their free-spending ways! We must put a stop to this before they bankrupt us!
Oh wait. $17 billion divided by 53 years is... $320 Million a year.
In Federal budgeting terms, $320,000,000 is LINE NOISE. It's more than the National Endowment for the Arts gets, but that's about the only thing I can think of that's smaller. In comparison, check out these fun numbers from Table S-3 of our current federal budget:
Department of Defense: $401,000,000,000 (that's FOUR HUNDRED BILLION, and please note that that specifically doesn't include any money we are spending in Iraq)
Department of Homeland Security: $68,200,000,000
Department of Housing and Urban Development: $31,000,000,000
Executive Office of the President: $300,000,000
Yeah, you read that right: the "keep the White House bathrooms stocked with toilet paper" budget is roughly the same as the fusion budget. Oh wait, maybe we haven't been breaking the bank on fusion research after all...
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
"he was confrontational about it and suggested that his work contradicted Catholicism and the Bible. "
No, he didn't contradict anything in the Bible, only the "work" of Aristotle, work that, for some reason, the Vatican accepted as part of Catholicism outside of the Bible.
Not to mention that he was supporting the findings of Copernicus, someone who did not take a "confrontational" view with the Church (being a member of the clergy himself and publishing only on his deathbed). After all, Galileo specifically got in trouble because he was supporting Copernicus' model.
"Second, the Catholic Church admits that it is not an expert or authority on science"
Except when it comes to contraception and/or preventing the spread of sexually transmitted disease? If the Church doesn't think its an expert or authority on science, where exactly does it get off telling us that condoms don't prevent the spread of AIDS?
"Third, the Church did not teach or hold pre-Gallilean notions until 1992."
So when did they stop?
Alright, maybe a different analogy will help clarify. My original point was a response to your assertion that belief in God and non-belief in God both require faith, cause you can't prove he exists, and you can't prove he doesn't. Try this: A: I believe in Foo, because I have faith in Foo.
B: I don't believe in Foo, because there is no evidence in Foo.
One of those viewpoints requires faith. The other doesn't.
That's right. All your base.
I assert that invisible unicorns don't exist. Does this statement require less, the same, or more faith than the statement that invisible unicorns exist?
That's right. All your base.
Why not develop and build the prototype here in the US?
We need a Home Grown "Killer Application" / National Project to jumpstart the US economy and help eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. The loss of jobs resulting from manufacturing and High Tech operations moving off-shore, and the outsourcing of both technical and non-technical services in recent years is killing the US economy. We need to get back on track and reverse this loss.
The whole project would probably cost less than 1 year of war with Iraq.
If we had endless fusion power, we could manufacturer as much hydrogen as we liked.
You're obviously not aware that standard, internal combustion engine automobiles can be cheaply adapted to burn hydrogen instead of gasoline. Currently, a very similar modification is available. Aftermarket installers will adapt your regular car to run on natural gas for two to three thousand dollars. Those costs would plummet if cars were built to hydrogen spec by the auto manufacturers. Building a car to exclusively burn hydrogen would likely make cars even cheaper. Because all those expensive components designed specifically to clean up gasoline emissions could be left out.
No, burning hydrogen in internal combustion engines is not as efficient as hydrogen fuel cells. But with an endless supply of hydrogen, it wouldn't matter so much. Fuel cells would eventually take over the market. But direct burning would allow for a relatively easy migration to the newer technologies.
Well said.
Perhaps I should have posted as an AC myself, as my original posting has been labelled a troll...
Never mind...
Christianity isn't anti-scientific.
Yeah: Raising Lazereth from the dead, Changing water to wine, walking on water, resurrection: All of these make perfect scientific sense.
Christian Science is an oxymoron.
Like Computer Jock,
Sanitary landfill,
and the Skinny Oprah.
Good point.
I consider myself to be an agnostic atheist. Strictly speaking the two aren't incompatible. I am an atheist because no religion I have encountered has a plausible, non-circular, non-paradoxical definition of god, and therefore, I don't believe any of them can actually plausibly exist (that's the atheist part). However, I concede that I cannot prove that some kind of greater being or beings we might call gods do not exist. I can only say that I think it is extremely unlikely that they do, and I can also say with some certainty that if such beings do exist, they are a hell of lot different from the fairy tales told to us by religion to make us feel better (that's the agnostic part).
Perhaps it is all semantics, but when your religious neighbor that you were on friendly terms with starts calling you a devil worshipper, and all kinds of other other untrue things, and isn't interested at all in learning anything about what you believe because you are either "with them or against them," its hard not to get bent out of shape over such things.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
[I am a published principal author and presentor of a fusion reactor design (presented at the 8th Topical Meeting on the Topic of Fusion Energy in Salt Lake City), so I have a tiny bit of credibility. I got out of the field specifically because of the 15-year carrot-on-a-stick paradox.]
What exactly is that?!
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Interesting... Everything you are referring too either happened in the Old Testament and was done by the Jews, or happened in the New Testament and was done either by the Jews or by the Romans themselves. "Christians" by definition beleive that CHRIST (Jesus) was the Son of God, Jews do not. Therefore Jew Christian. Thusly everything you just heaped on "Christians" is actually Jewish behavior, NOT "Christian". I don't find anything in my bible about Jesus gathering a mob together to stone someone, quite the opposite in fact. I _do_ find quite a few instances of Jews doing that though. Please note that I am not making any value judgements on religion or people, neither is my comment Anti-Semitic in nature. This was a point of clarification for the poster only.
A nuclear explosion without them having to waste the money on buying a dirty nuke....
And just think what the terrosists could do if they manage to capture a whole bottle of fusion fuel. THEY MIGHT EVEN BE ABLE TO MAKE WATER!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Bahhh, I should have used the preview button. Doggone default HTML formatting...
Sorry for the hard to read post.
Is your username a cold fusion pun?
BTW, I work on the opposite side of the pond as a technician on the 'other' fusion here: http://www.lle.rochester.edu/. Friendly competition and all that. cheers!
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
I believe the point the poster was making is that once the magnetic field fails, the plasma touches the wall of the container. This causes the temperature of the plasma to drop considerably, to a point where it is no longer stable. The heat transfer to the wall of the vessel is small, lets say about 2 degrees C.
Français:
J'ai doit le reacteur le plus de Japan! Japan est trop petite et en plus ils ont les yeux le bizzare. En va dire que France a les grandes egos, mais ego est une mot d'allemange et Freud. Les personnes français n'ont pas un ego.
Japaneese:
Give us a break you over-brearing French bastards!
Japan should get the reactor because of its neutrality in all of this matter to Britain, US, Germany, etc. France (M. Jaques Chirac) wants to create a new power to challenge the United States called the European Union... the only problem is that in his vision, France IS the king and lord of the EU.
You are splitting hairs. The coal was buried underground to begin with.
It squares just fine.
Yes it theoretically could produce 5 time the energy going in, but your forgetting the fuel source.
A fusion reactor is no different than any other reactor. It takes some energy + fuel and generates more energy.
~X~
~X~
Agreed. Nuclear fusion would probably be one of the safest ways to get energy.
It takes precise conditions just to get fusion to occur. The minute those conditions fail, the reaction stops.
The plasma densities aren't high enough to cause any damage.
~X~
~X~
I hate when people say oil isn't a renewable resource. Of course it is, if you just wait long enough.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Isn't the Carnot efficiency e = 1-Tc/Th ? In this case, we have a hot reservoir of 100 million K, and a cold reservoir at atmospheric temperatures ~300 K, so an efficiency of almost 100% should be possible. I realize that real electricity generation doesn't use the Carnot cycle, but very high efficiencies should still be possible with these temperature differences.
I would rather be killed by a terrorist than enslaved by my government.
If i remember right, they would make helium. Also blow you off the face of Earth in the process. Without much radioactive pollution.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Regardless, christians can be scientists, but only so far as they know how to separate their "beliefs" from the scientific process... heck even Isaac Newton believed in astrology... but he also knew not to base his physics or calculus on the positions of stars...
For example, in the article DOE Warms to Cold Fusion, Physics Today, look at the comment by chemist Allen Bard:
Isn't this basically a smoking gun? New fundamentl physics is often revealed by results that differ by as little as one part in a million from preditictions of current theory, or one part in whatever. If there is any discrepancy, whatsoever, within the statistical and systematic errors, that is enough. Your old theory is incorrect. This is completely bonkers. He is saying that consistent excess heat production is not enough, unless it is bigger than before.
Personally I suspsect the writer of this article, Toni Feder, intentionally tricked Dr. Bard into revealing this on the record. That last bit -- about phenomena that you can't just "explain away" -- seems as though Dr. Bard thinks he is speaking to a member of the group that is sympatico to repressing cold fusion research, doesn't it?
There is known to have been disputes between editorial staff and management at Physics Today over the coverage given to less mainstream areas of research. The following exerpt from a letter to the American Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics Today, protests the treatment suffered by a past editor, Jeff Scmidt:
By the way, Jeff Schmidt is the author of Disciplined Minds [disciplined-minds.com], and I think this book includes more coverage of this editorial dispute at Physics Today.
Back to the question of how anomalous the results have to be, we move from the comments of scientists to the behavior of the reporters, in this case Gary Taubes, with What If Cold Fusion Is Real?, Wired, November 1998:
> Write back when you know what you're talking
> about.
He does. You don't.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I think what he means by this is that the general consensus is "15 years from now, we'll have the technology to do such-and-such" and 15 years later people are saying the exact same thing. 15 years ago, everyone thought we'd have fusion down by now. Obviously not the case. I'd bet we figure it out during our lifetimes, however, anyone reading this might end up old and gray before it happens. I'm not gonna argue with this guy though, cause he either knows a lot more about this than me or is a much better bullshitter than I, so I'll buck the trend on slashdot and not make a fool of myself.
A: I believe in Foo, because I have faith in Foo.
B: I don't believe in Foo, because there is no evidence in Foo.
This is beeing agnostic, not atheist.
rm -rf /home/leia
Everyone (except the far-left, and the RIAA) knows that you'll make far more money by embracing and investing in new technology then by trying to suppress it.
I don't reply to ACs
Since the time between generations is about a millionth of a section, this means that a reactor core that's 'prompt-critical' would quickly escalate in temperature until the structural integrity of the core failed, and you have a molten slag of Uranium - which is exactly what happened at Chernobyl.
What you're describing here is a "meltdown," sometimes known as a China Syndrome. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I was under the impression that Chernobyl did not experience a meltdown. An explosion and fire occured at Chernobyl due to operators disconnecting various safety systems, but I don't recall any problems with a meltdown, critical mass slag, or failure of the reactor vessel due to some sort thermal event. Meltdowns don't cause explosions (witness that Three Mile Island, which underwent a partial meltdown, didn't blow up) but an explosion is exactly what happened at Chernobyl.
Now, if an actual meltdown ever occurs, it's highly probable the critical mass would sink right down through the floor, through the ground, and eventually hit the water table in a catastrophic explosion of steam. This, however, has never happened in human history as far as I'm aware.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The parent post says nothing whatsoever about the Bush family being the root of all evil, nor does it say anything in regard to Clinton, etc.
It simply suggests that the Bush family and their buddies are in the oil business, are extraordinarily greedy, and play hardball. All of these things are perfectly consistent with history.
What we see in SnarfQuest's response is the typical fringe-right tactic of attempting to refute reality by somehow changing the topic to something that they can attack. How utterly unhelpful.
I find it amusing that you end your post with a quote from a movie that features the explosion of a big fusion reactor.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
However, with fission fast-breeder reactors like they use in France, there would be 5000 estimated years of power.
I'm afraid the only fast-breeder reactor (Superphenix) has been shutdown definitively, because of anti-nuclear lobbying.
We don't need a term like agnosticism just so we can cover the prevalent misunderstandings of what the term atheism means!
It's a-theism, not anti-theism, for a reason.
An excellent source on this topic is wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
"The literal meaning of the term is therefore "lack of belief in a god"." In other words, atheists lack a belief in god, they do not believe there is no god. Also, they do not believe there could or couldn't be a god, "because we don't know".
These are all very different things.
Now, granted some atheists may claim they actually believe there is no god, much like you may find a republican that really wants to balance the budget.;-) The Wikipedia definition refers to that as positive or strong atheism. But according to the root of the word *a*theism, it really should correspond to "weak" or negative position as defined by Wikipedia, namely the absence of a god-belief.
Correct me if I'm wrong here
correction
"Scientists, meanwhile, are chafing to loose the bulldozers."
/. so many times, at first that sentence made no sense to me. Finally, somebody got it right!
I've seen "lose" spelled incorrectly on
Depends very much on what you mean by "fusion."
Fusion in the sun has happened for 15 billion years.
Controlled nuclear fusion has been around since the 50's, in the H-bomb.
Controlled laboratory fusion has been around since the 70s(?)
Laboratory fusion that has more than breakeven power generation has been demonstrated in the 90s (??)
ITER will provide another step toward demonstrating nuclear fusion above break-even on a commercial scale.
There are many steps still remaining:
- demonstrating commercial-scale electric power extraction using a fusion reactor vessel
- commercial-scale nuclear fusion that can be sustained for the life of a power plant (decades)
- commercial scale support for the nuclear fuel and nuclear waste issues for fusion
It is quite optimistic to claim that in 15 years we would be able to build a commercial-scale fusion power plant which would have better return on capital than a coal-, gas-, or fission-fired power plant. *That* is what is far away. ITER will not change the commercial reality, just the technological knowledge; i.e., knowing how to build a power plant does not make it commercially viable.
You really believe that within 15 years one could plug a computer into a home wall socket and be running on fusion-supplied electricity for the same or less cost than gas- or coal-fired electricity?
When we fuse together the hydrogen, the helium formed is more stable and highly energetic.
Wait a minute...helium!? Oh no, everyone in the world will have squeaky voices! Think of the chiilllllldren! Protest now!
Yes, theist means having a diety (more literally: with god), atheist means not having a diety (not with god). Like the words moral and amoral:
Amoral: Not admitting of moral distinctions or judgments; neither moral nor immoral.
According to the original definitions, agnostics are a subset of atheists, though 'athiest' has been moving toward your definition. If a person is using the original definition, I could see them getting quite frustrated with you. :)
Believing that a god(s) do not exist is an act of faith.
That just seems odd to me. Do I need to have faith the believe that hobbits (chakras, dragons, hobbits, invisible pink whatevers) don't exist? Then everyone has faith in the non-existance of a great number of things, even things they have never heard of before!
Do you believe that aliens will attack tomorrow? You can't say you know for sure that they won't, but you aren't ready to pack up survival gear and head for the hills (just in case the do), either. So you really aren't completely 'without knowledge'.
Note that there are some faith-based athiests (just like most theists, it's the way they were raised), I just think most of them (the other 90%) aren't basing their beliefs on faith.
The same is true for theists, but I think the percentages are reversed.
Yndrd1984
OMG! That's precisely what's happening. For example, the common by-products of splitting Uranium-235 atoms are Iodine, Caesium, Strontium, Xeon and Barium.
Know I'm not too up on this, but...
- Iodine gets absorbed into your thyroid (nasty), and if it's radioactive, then you're probably in a bad place
- Caesium exists naturally in sea water
- Strontium is chemically similar to Calcium, and thus ends up in your bones and will probably give you Leuikemia
- Xenon is a noble gas, so trace amounts of radioactive isotopes probably aren't harmful
- Barium is highly reactive, and most of it's isotopes have very short half-lifes. Don't know what the biological consequences are of Barium waste.
You can't turn uranium into gold, for exampleUranium-238 and Uranium-235 naturally turn into lead
A few years ago I saw a decay chain from Uranium to Gold, but I can't remember the isotopes involved.
We use the heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements to fuel our generators. We do nothing like smashing atoms into smaller bits.
Radioactivity is spontaneous and considered genuinely random. You can't control it, you can't create a chain "decay" reaction etc. Radioactivity and fission/fusion are related because they are both topics of nuclear physics (or chemistry), and because fission/fusion reactions often involve radioactive isotopes. That is not necessarily the case... combining two Deuterium atoms into Helium atom involves no radioactivity.
The mass of a nucleus is less than the mass of it's parts, and the difference is the "binding energy". For example, the mass of two protons and two neutrons is greater than the mass of a He nucleus that contains two protons and two neutrons. Iron has the "smallest" mass per proton/neutron, and thus the least binding energy.
When you split a Uranium nucleus into two smaller nuclei, the mass of those two nuclei is always less than the mass of the original Uranium nucleous. Mass is not conserved in this reaction. The difference in mass is converted into energy according to Einstein's well known formula: e=mc2.
The heat generated from a controlled fission reaction is used to boil water that turns a generator.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Sorry, that was an incredibly dumb movie, but I just couldn't resist.
We /were/ doing this, decades ago. But something like 80% of the money that was budgeted for it got "misdirected" onto other projects and the US effort languished to death. Now it is up to someone else to finish what we could not, rather /would not/ do. :(
Currently we are gladly letting other spend the money now and as of just this year, completely dismantled plans for any more US based research in this area, even though we are one of, if not the, worlds largest energy user.
I hope they really kicks our ass on it too. With something like 20 years of a head start, the hobbling of the US fusion research effort by the all too political "Energy" department is yet another of our great shames.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
I believe I have misunderstood this statement. You say that you are getting out more energy than you put in and then say when all is considered you aren't breaking any laws.
From what I understand what you say isn't entirely accurate. Not only do you not get more energy out of reality, but there is a tax on converting energy that sees to you not getting even. Were you talking about the potential nuclear energy in the atoms involved? Is that where the extra bump of energy is coming from?
My shorthand to thermodynamics:
-It has all been done.
-No such thing as a free lunch.
-Everything freezes in the end.
What do you use to remember?
Christianity (or any other religion for that matter) is not anti-scientific. Gregor Mendel is a perfect example of clergy who were also capable, rational scientists. In the Catholic Church, Pope Pius XII stated back in 1950, that evolutionary theory does not contradict Christian beliefs. Back in 1996, Pope John Paul II, reiterated this, and stated that evolution is more than a hypotheis. Just because there are a number of redneck, poorly educated, dumbasses that think the world is only 5000 years old and dinosaur bones are God's way of testing the faithful, doesn't mean that all religious people are idiots.
You just don't hear about them as often as you hear about the red faced screaming "for Jesus" types that are so commonly heard from these days.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
It's my understanding that reactors are designed so that if the reactive material melts it will drain off into a multitude of paths, so that no path will have sufficient material to maintain a high level reaction. No melting through the ground until it meets the water table.
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Catholicism or Secular Humanism cover enough ground to be 'belief systems', but I have trouble calling something a 'system' when it can be completely described by a single sentence.
ANY statement about their existence or otherwise must be a leap of faith of some sort.
What if the intelligent design creationists are right, and we can prove that the complexity of the universe requires that a 'higher power' exits? That wouldn't exactly be faith, would it?
Just so you know, I don't think you should have been modded as a troll. I just don't quite understand where you're coming from, as you're using word in ways that are new to me. :)
Yndrd1984
Landing a human on Venus is not terribly difficult. The problem is keeping him alive after he reaches the surface, and the very difficult task of getting him back off the planet again.
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is the graph at he end of the article labeled "How Fusion Works." Apparently we just need to find a way to combine some little grey and black billiard balls into a bundle and we've solved the energy problem! I guess plasma physics ain't rocket science.
Burning hydrogen in air won't stop the production of oxides of nitrogen.
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The amount of pressure you need to initiate fusion is orders of magnitude greater than those super anvils they use to make artificial diamonds.
Remember - the sun is driven by a process where gravity is crushing atoms - nothing made out of atoms could survive such pressure.
The way the experimental reactors work is to use a combination of magnetic fields and high power lasers to create the pressure needed for a few milliseconds. The problem is that the energy required to create the lasers and fields is greater than the energy produced by the momentary fusion reaction they create.
Clear, Dark Skies
That explains why railroads own all the airlines. Oh, wait ... nevermind.
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Actually, the biggest problem isn't creating pressures (via magnetic bottles and lasers primarily), but maintaining the high temperatures. If the plasma is allowed to interact with the walls of the containment vessel, it cools down too much for the reaction to continue.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
These things are radioactive precisely because of their tendency to decay and in fact split themselves. They don't even split into other elements.
Incorrect.
Radioactive elements do turn into other elements. Radon is formed by the decay of other radioactive elements.
You can't turn uranium into gold, for example, even though it ought to be a straightforward process of splitting off the required number of protons from each atom (if the "we're splitting atoms" camp claims are correct).
Uranium naturally decays into lead, and you can transmute lead into gold in a particle accelerator. It has been done before.
You're not going to make any money by doing that though due to the amount of energy required.
Since 1951, America alone has devoted more than $17 billion (see chart) to working out how to fuse atomic nuclei so as to generate an inexhaustible supply of clean, safe power.
The US spends more than a billion dollars a day on fossil fuels. Oil alone is 20 million barrels. And that's not counting subsidies and hidden costs.
If you spent some time on the Energy Information Agency's site I'm sure you could come up with a number on how much we've spent on fossil fuels since 1951, corrected for inflation. I'm sure the number would be staggering - I'm just not sure how many orders of magnitude higher than $17G it would be.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You appear to believe that environmental change is always for the worse.
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Does personal electric rail really require new power sources? I can't see how transmission losses would lower power plant efficiency down below the inefficiency of current gasoline engines (perhaps down below diesel efficiencies...)
Not really, but I imagine that we'd need a few more (preferably clean) power plants if we started putting the pod system practically into people's garages.
I was mostly thinking of systems that would change the way we do business if power became uber-cheap. Ideas like hydroponic farms slipped my mind.
I like the rest of your idea. I don't particularly care for driving myself. It's fun sometimes, but during the north dakota wintertime, I'd love to be moving by a system that doesn't happily let you slide into various things...
I don't read AC A human right
True, but it doesn't eject all of that into the atmosphere. At least, not if something doesn't go horribly wrong. ;-)
Some of the sources said that a gigawatt light water plant only produces 1 ton of high level radioactive waste a year. That takes up so little room that nuclear plants are able to store thirty years of waste onsite.
And actually, breeders do use Uranium, but one of the side products is Plutonium, which is also used as a fuel in the system, which helps to explain why they're so efficient. Also, you can burn plutonium in them, making them usefull for getting rid of nuclear bomb material.
I don't read AC A human right
The nuclear fusion plans I've seen rely on feeding a stream of fuel into the reaction, much like feeding diesel fuel into an engine. The potential for a nuclear explosion just isn't there. Any terrorist attacking such a plant would probably do less damage and cause less loss of life than if he attacked a shopping mall or a dam.
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I am just curious how long all the Limbaugh devotees are going to keep urinating all over themselves about the Clintons.
They are out of the White House.
Hve been for years.
Grow up.
He wasn't referring to Americans, but Christian Scientists.
Atheism is as much a religion as baldness is a hair color or not stamp collecting is a hobby.
Bush is an incredibly short term thinker, in case you haven't noticed.
Oil = $$$ now.
Fusion = $$$ future???
It's that simple, really.
It was the first thing that came to mind, although I can't think of what to say :)
But I was hoping that the 'advances' in the title was the construction of four actuators that are impervious to heat and magnetism and are to be used to control fusion.
I find it dissonant that a poster who obviously is shooting off their mouth about "christians" as a whole, despite the narrow focus of my post on *Christian Scientists* and their contradictory beliefs about *science*, is so full of HATE. Christians are compassionate, focused on forgiveness, and look for opportunities to understand their fellow humans. You just call yourself "christian" to be part of a "majority" that would make Jesus work overtime. Hypocrite.
--
make install -not war
include $sig;
1;
I don't know, extremely safe compared to a process that has provided 20% of our electricity for 50 years and never killed anyone in the US? That's pretty safe.
However, be a little careful claiming that a fusion reactor is completely safe, considering that nobody has yet to build one. That's the same thing the fission guys said, and if a fission reactor is constructed carefully, it is safe, but there have always been careless and stupid people around. I'm not really sure what your rationale for claiming a fusion reactor cannot explode is, as a fusion reactor appears to me (a mere physics major admittedly, not a nuclear physicist) to have both very low thermal inertia, and also a very strong positive feedback with increasing temperature. I'm not claiming that a fusion reactor could go all mushroom cloud, but "catastrophic power surge" similar to the one that destroyed Chyrnoble (spelling, I know), seems well within the realm of possibility.
Fission reactors are primarily safe because they are not critical on propmt neutrons alone, so the "cycle time" between each generation of reactions is on the order of seconds, long enough that mechanical control systems and passive safety can come into play. The cycle time between generations in a fusion reaction seems to be on the order of microseconds to me, so a catastrophic power surge could spin out of control long before the plasma could dissipate, on those timescales the inertia alone of the plasma could act as sufficient containment to maintain the reaction if the reactor isn't designed carefully.
If there are a literally infinite number of possible theories about something, to believe in a given possibility -- without better reason than Son of Sam had -- is a religion.
What I as an atheist say is that the possibility of one of a small subset (out of the infinite number possible ways that reality can be) to be true is so close to zero that I round of the trivial possibility to be the same as the chance of a pink invisible unicorn reading this over my shoulder. Dismissible.
You might argue that I use sloppy language and I will answer that after you discuss the self contradictions among those theories.
I get your trivial point, please answer mine if you answer -- or I'll think you deserved the Troll mods...
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
"If these 'prompt' neutrons were enough to sustain criticality, then the number of fission events would increase geometrically. Since the time between generations is about a millionth of a section, this means that a reactor core that's 'prompt-critical' would quickly escalate in temperature until the structural integrity of the core failed, and you have a molten slag of Uranium - which is exactly what happened at Chernobyl. "
I doubt Chernobyl went prompt critical. The power output surged to more than 100 times the rated capacity when the Xenon burned off, but it still didn't go prompt critical, it just had a "catastrophic power surge". If it had gone prompt critical it would probably have been a multi-kiloton explosion, at least.
Anyway, good response, though I think a lot of liquid metal reactors would want to use Lead as well.
And it never occurred to you that the dark ages were caused by the fall of Rome?
Sheesh. It was the collapse of society that brought about isolationism, and subsequent knowledge was lost such that Christianity and everybody else in the region descended into that same superstition and fear of the unknown. The germanic barbarian tribes weren't any more advanced for their lack of Christianity.
Does anybody else find it interesting that here on slashdot, this post was moderated flamebait? And that if it had been anti-Christian and pro-whatever-the-majority-of-you-godless-but-fello w-geeks-are-for then it would have been moderated insightful? It has nothing to do with the logic or structure here: it's entirely a function of what point of view somebody's espousing.
It is E=mc^2 as everybody else has pointed out, but it might be more helpful to address the thermodynamics argument directly.
All energy comes from taking something at a higher energy state and going to a lower one. Like water falling in a hydroelectric dam, or fossil fuels giving up the energy in their chemical bonds in combustion and consequently releasing a lot of heat.
That's the same idea with fusion. The mass-energy of two deuterium atoms is greater than the mass-energy of a helium atom. It's similar to the chemical stuff, in that the nuclear configuration/separation of nucleons (protons, neutrons) is just in a lower state. E=mc^2 comes in right there, as the difference in mass comes off as energy (two gamma-rays, which are high energy photons).
Those end up bumping into other atoms, which makes them a lot hotter. And then we can use straight thermodynamics as those particles are cooled by water to turn turbines.
So, yes, you're technically right that it isn't free energy or a perpetual motion machine. Thermodynamics still have to be taken into account. It's just that, considering the universe is *almost* 100% hydrogen, worrying about running out of fuel is kind of silly.
- Israel is the outpost of "freedom and democracy in the middle east"?
- Zionists control the middle east US foreign policy?
- The US needs middle east oil?
Or do you deny the US is any more involved in that local dispute than it is in any other dispute?PS: If you read the letter from Bussard at the provide link you would see the erroneous fusion energy policy of attempting to get a big Apollo or Manhatten style government program going extends at least to the early 1970s.
Seastead this.
Oh, and uh, on the electrolysis question, it's pretty simple. Let's say you're running electrolysis as 2.5 volts. Now, that isn't a lot, but it'll serve our purposes. Electrons accelerated under an electrical potential of 2.5 volts are said to have an energy of 2.5 electron-volts. We measure a lot of energy in electron-volts. And we even measure mass in electron-volts/c^2. It's really cool, that you can describe the mass of an object in terms of its energy divided by the c^2 constant.
:) Not so much energy as it releases, but you're dealing with all sorts of loss, containment issues, etc., that make break-even difficult.
So we're put-putting along, breaking the H20 chemical bonds with our little electrolysis set-up, a constant 2.5 volts. (Eh, I'm not sure if that's enough to really do it, I don't think so, but we'll just stick with it for an order of magnitude comparison). The electrons are getting excited, and things are even heating up a bit.
We then collect the hydrogen atoms, and we fuse them together. Each fusion produces 2.5 mega-electron-volts (MeV). Well, really, that's D+D -> He4 + 2.5 MeV (gammas). But this little exercise helps us get in the right ballpark/order-of-magnitude. And we see that the amount of energy required to break those chemical bonds in water is about a million times smaller than the energy put out by fusing hydrogen.
The only problem is that it requires so much energy to get them to fuse.
No, the formulae are more like this:
Oil=ability to constrain supply, jacking up profits, pass money under the table between cronies to keep everyone on the same page. Invade or subvert countries (Iraq, Iran, Venezuela) whose leaders nationalize the oil industry, and go against the cronies' wishes.
Fusion=anyone can build a fusion reactor, therefore it will do to the Energy Industry what Open Source Software can do to the IT industry.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Fusion. Nuclear Fusion. Conversion of matter to energy. It's even in the headline. Yes, he's talking about the potential nuclear energy.
He's talking about converting some small fraction of a collection of matter into energy, and then that energy helps convert MORE of that same matter into energy, thus making it a self-sustaining reaction.
In other words, instead of using a bunch of huge-assed lasers to initiate fusion in a glass pellet infused with deuterium and then collecting the resultant energy, you spank (in some unspecified manner, probably lasers) the hell out of a conglomeration of some isotope of hydrogen (suspended in a toroidal magnetic field) so that some of the hydrogen fuses into REALLY FUCKING HOT helium, which then helps to heat up more of the hydrogen, which then fuses into more REALLY FUCKING HOT helium, and so on until you run out of hydrogen. Along the way, you convert a small amount of that hot helium into cooler helium, and the heat is used to generate electricity in a steam turbine.
The ultimate net cost of this electricity is (as is referenced elsewhere; see my recent posting history) the electrolysis of a small amount of water into a small amount of hydrogen, which process requires a smaller amount of electricity than is being produced by the fusion. More energy out than in; no laws are broken. Why? Because we're converting "matter" into "energy".
We do lose some matter, though. By my back-of-the-envelope (literally!) calculations, completely converting the hydrogen in 1/2 gram of water will release energy equivalent to 4.5x10^7 kW-hr of electricity (which is the units we buy it in around here). How much of that we can actually capture and convert is another story, but grandparent poster suggests 40% - that's approximately 5 metric fuckloads of power. And we have a lot more water where that gram came from.
By the way, you misspelled "arrakis".
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
"If you're willing to settle for a gravity-containment reactor burning protons, with 1 AU inverse-square shielding, fusion power has gone far beyond proof-of-concept and into commercial production in many fields."
-Conrad Hodson on rec.arts.sf.written
Perhaps better project engineering is required.
Energy is never released when a bond is broken. Energy is released when bonds _form_. Energy is released by a reaction when the amount of energy required to break the bonds in the reactants is less than the amout of energy released when the bonds in the products form.
and this
The phrase "the fuel rods began to melt" is not the same thing as "the fuel rods melted and formed a critical mass which caused the reactor vessel to fail." The latter is the accepted definition of a meltdown, so clearly Chernobyl did not experience a catastrophic meltdown as outlined in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article.
This may seem pedantic, but the distinction is important. Claiming something underwent a "meltdown" means something much different than "the reactor sustained internal thermal damage." Most critically, the reactor vessel was not ruptured due to thermal events (as in a meltdown) but due to a buildup of steam pressure beyond containment structural limits. A meltdown also results in a critical mass of slag literally burning its way through the floor of the reactor vessel, building foundation, and everything else on its way down to the water table. This did not occur, so Chernobyl did not, in fact, experience a catastrophic meltdown. Three Mile Island came closer to this than Chernobyl did, but due to Chernobyl's inferior design (or TMI's superior design, whichever) it blew up before it could meltdown.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.
Where did you get this quote? Just curious.
As an addendum, I will say that if the Chernobyl reactor had not blown up, it most likely would have melted down catastrophically, as it was generating significantly more power during the accident than it was rated for and had lost the capacity to cool or control the reaction.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Working with a highly experimental technology, and after seeing what happens when a fission reactor goes wrong, isn't it perhaps a better idea for European scientists to suggest it be put it on a large Island, far, far away from home?
I'm surprised they're not fighting over where it's *not* going to be put.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
They're already seen Fission. I say we give it to the french. If something catastrophic happens, nobody will feel bad about it. Well. Except the French.
And it would have been had the anti-nuclear nutters who stopped the whole thing in its tracks.
Maybe, just maybe anti-nuke people are the ultimate utilization of FUD techniques.
Ack. Wrote one thing, typed another. That should be 1.25x10^7 kW-hr, not 4.5x10^7 kW-hr of electricity. That's only about 1.38 metric fuckloads of power.
Sorry for the confusion.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
No, agnostic would be "I don't if know Foo exists of not".
That's right. All your base.
You can't prove invisible unicorns exist. Does it take faith to say they don't? No, it is a perfectly reasonable and logical statement:
1) There is no proof that invisible unicorns exist.
2) There is no evidence that invisble unicorns exist.
3) Assuming invisible unicorns exist adds nothing information wise to the existing understanding of the universe.
It doesn't take faith to state they don't exist. Assuming invisible unicorns exist requires faith, and if they did exist, they are inconsequential, because they change nothing. Why believe they exist, other than wishy-washy fantasy or self-delusion?
That's right. All your base.
Operate your own Tokamak reactor
As far as putting it on an island, it's supposed to be the first commercial plant. IE, net positive energy, long running, so that they can sell the power from it. You stick it on an island you wouldn't be able to sell all the power.
Besides, a fusion plant doesn't have enough hydrogen at any one point to penetrate the containment.
And properly designed fission plants aren't that dangerous.
I don't read AC A human right
The curve for natural U is continuous with a bump at low (thermal) energies and another bump at high (fast) energies. Bohr figured out this was caused by two isotopes, one that absorbs neutrons only at thermal and fast (> 1MeV) energies (U238), and another that absorbs all neutrons (U235).
U238 does not fission when it absorbs the thermal neutrons, only when it absorbs fast neutrons. U235 will fission when it absorbs any neutron (due to some strange dynamics caused by an odd number of nucleons -- note Pu239 is also odd.) 235 absorbs better at lower energies.
Neutrons released by U fission are mostly in the thermal absorption range of U238, so a chain cannot occur in natural uranium: too many neutrons get absorbed to sustain the reaction and it has no critical mass.
In pure U235, all neutrons released can cause other fissions, it has a critical mass.
Reactor fission is accomplished by using a moderator to slow enough neutrons out of the U238 absorpion range so they can fission the U235. US PWR reactors use water (the H in the H20) as a moderator. H actually absorbs some of the neutrons so a sustained reaction won't occur unless the percentage of 235 is increased (enrichment). CANDU reactors that use the D in D20 leave more neutrons in play so no enrichment is needed.
Of possible interest, D/T fission releases 15 MeV (!) neutrons, in some fission bombs these are used to fission natural U (the so-called fission/fusion/fission reaction). In the Mike shot (10.5 MT), most of the energy came from the U shell, not the fission part of the bomb.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
sorry but you're wrong. this melted down enough for you? How about this? Perhaps this is molten enough for you to deem worthy of "meltdown" status? THE CHERNOBYL CORE MELTED DOWN. end of story.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
In a melting reactor even without the control rods, even with enriched U, the material just doesn't stay packed in tightly enough for long enough to explode nuclear-wise. A chemical explosion is another matter.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
"The new method involves running electricity through water that has a very high temperature. As the water molecule breaks up, a ceramic sieve separates the oxygen from the hydrogen. The resulting hydrogen has about half the energy value of the energy put into the process, the developers say. Such losses may be acceptable, or even desirable, because hydrogen for a nuclear reactor can be substituted for oil, which is imported and expensive, and because the basic fuel, uranium, is plentiful.
w .discover.com/issues/jul-04/features/any thing-into-oil
7 /6 900038_SolarHydrogen/ (http://www.pureenergysystems.com)
The idea is to build a reactor that would heat the cooling medium in the nuclear core, in this case helium gas, to about 1,000 degrees Celsius, or more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The existing generation of reactors, used exclusively for electric generation, use water for cooling and heat it to only about 300 degrees Celsius.
The hot gas would be used two ways. It would spin a turbine to make electricity, which could be run through the water being separated. And it would heat that water, to 800 degrees Celsius. But if electricity demand on the power grid ran extremely high, the hydrogen production could easily be shut down for a few hours, and all of the energy could be converted to electricity, designers say.
The goal is to create a reactor that could produce about 300 megawatts of electricity for the grid, enough to run about 300,000 window air-conditioners, or produce about 2.5 kilos of hydrogen per second. When burned, a kilo of hydrogen has about the same energy value as a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline. But fuel cells, which work without burning, get about twice as much work out of each unit of fuel. So if used in automotive fuel cells, the reactor might replace more than 400,000 gallons of gasoline per day."
- http://www.ceramatec.com/
But, we can get the high heat for hydrogen from TCP,
http://www.changingworldtech.com
http://ww
Not sure how close ceramatec.com is? They seem closer than
http://www.pureenergysystems.com/news/2004/08/2
Who are working on the same kind of thing, using ceramics to get hydrogen.
So, is the Thermal Conversion process a workable alternative?
What if it does? How much effort do you expend in actively disbelieving the Tooth Fairy? That's about how much effort I put into disbelieving any of the other mythological entities, and I fail to see how that can qualify as a religion.
Maybe it's just that the religious attach a lot more significance to the word 'faith' than others. I think it's a fairly meaningless concept, even in the positive sense. To say that lack of belief in something requires faith is just silly IMHO. I don't believe in any deities in exactly the same way that I don't believe some guy in Nigeria has $10,000,000 to transfer to my bank account.
Cthulhu loves you.
Atheists (note the latin form of the word implies opposit of theist IE the negative, not the absense of ie nullification): these believe that deities do not exist
You have your languages mixed up. The word is Greek in origin. theos is Greek for 'god'. The 'a' is the alpha privativum, expressing 'want' or 'absence', like Latin in-. See your Liddel & Scott.We use the heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements to fuel our generators. We do nothing like smashing atoms into smaller bits.
Nonsense. In spontaneous radioactive decay, a large nucleus (say of Radium or Uranium), spontaneously emits a particle of some sort. The emission of an alpha particle (two protons and two neutrons) reduces the weight of a nucleus by 4. The emission of a beta particle converts one neutron into a proton, thus changing one element into the other. For example, a common natural decay chain for Uranium-235 goes: U-238 (emit alpha) -> Thorium-231 (emit beta) -> Protactinium-231 (emit alpha) -> Actinium 227 (emit alpha) -> Thorium 227 etc., eventually leading to Lead-207, which is stable.
In nuclear fission, by contrast, the emission is NOT spontaneous, but is induced by the impact of a moderately high-energy neutron into the atomic nucleus. This disrupts the nucleus causing it to break into smaller nuclei called fission products. The fission products of Uranium-235 generally include isotopes of Iodine, Cesium, Strontium, Xenon, and Barium, none of which appear in the natural decay chain of U-235.
So, you are in fact 100% incorrect. In a fission reactor, the capture of neutrons by nuclei does in fact "split atoms", and those reactors are most definitely not fueled by "the decay of radioactive elements", if by decay you mean natural decay. It is an induced chain reaction, and is a very different
process with very different products.
A power source which generates energy from the heat produced by radioactive decay is called a radioisotope thermal generator and is a very different beast from a fission reactor. They are commonly used on spacecraft, and are generally fairly small.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Take a look at some of the research and data on how much naturally radioactive particles are released into the atmosphere through burning of fossil fuels, you'll probably be surprised. I believe it's a few orders of magnitude more than the amount generated in current fission plants.
That comparison makes an assumption: That the radioactive waste leaked by the plant DURING its operation is the ONLY radioactive waste that will be released as a RESULT of its operation. That the other stuff will be contained until it is no longer radioactive.
Now consider how much radioactivity was released by the Chernobyl incident alone. How many coal plants operating for how long producing how many megawatthours would it take to match just that one?
Then there's the waste dump in the Former Soviet Union (TM) that had a chemical explosion blasting much of its radioactive crud into the air.
Then there's the stuff that's leaked out of various other nuclear sites already. And the stuff that's working its way through the bottoms of the tanks in Washington state. And that English reactor that released the radioiodine all over Gernsey(?). I could go on.
And the ones that I missed.
And the ones that none of us have heard about because they haven't happened. Yet.
Yes, much of it is overblown. (Like Three Mile Island, which didn't let all THAT much out.) And reactor technology is getting much better. And waste disposal and/or recycling may be getting better - and has lots of opportunities for further improvement.
But when you're comparing Nuclear and Fossil Fuel plants let's be fair about it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'll be gentle in my response considering the quality of the annoying material that inspired your post. You misuse the term "ignorant".
You note the lack of Tritium, and the long range problem of using lithium - what about Helium3? Last I heard there was like 1.1 million tons of the crap on the moon, which would last us all about 25,000 years or so.
I think that's why the Bush Junta is interested in a moonbase - to start mining the He3...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
"How much effort do you expend in actively disbelieving the Tooth Fairy?"
The agnostic troll in me wants to point out that there's little empirical evidence catagorically disproving the existance of a tooth fairy.
Of course what I meant was about 70 generations (I just looked it up and the accurate number is about 82). There would be n^81 fissions where n is the average number of neutrons produced per fission that cause other fissions (around 2 in a bomb) and you get about 180 MeV energy released per fission to the environment. 2^81*180 Mev gives about 20 kT.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Why not develop and build the prototype here in the Germany?
We need a Home Grown "Killer Application" / National Project to jumpstart the German economy and help eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. The loss of jobs resulting from manufacturing and High Tech operations moving off-shore, and the outsourcing of both technical and non-technical services in recent years is killing the German economy. We need to get back on track and reverse this loss.
Yep, and there's absolutely no evidence disproving the idea that my dog created the universe last Wednesday. But that doesn't mean the idea has any greater or lesser basis in reality than Tooth Fairies or Jehovahs.
Cthulhu loves you.
Feeling a bit snippy this morning? Jeez. A simple link without the attitude would've sufficed. I've never seen these pictures, and all the info to date I've heard led me to believe the core did not suffer a meltdown. I thank you for pointing this info out to me. Now go be a jerk to someone else if it makes you feel better.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I will point out, however, that even if the fuel rods did melt, the floor of the reactor vessel did not fail, which means Chernobyl didn't "meltdown" any more than Three Mile Island did, and TMI most certainly didn't meltdown. It experienced a partial meltdown, where fuel rods and other internal reactor components got hot enough to melt, but the reactor vessel never experienced thermal failure. TMI successfully shut down. Chernobyl's pressure vessel failed due to excess steam pressure, a consequence of its inferior design. Neither accident resulted in a critical mass of fuel rod debris burning a hole in the reactor vessel.
Getting back to the original poster, he described a catastrophic meltdown. Neither Chernobyl or TMI fit that description.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heh. We have endless fission power, if we had the desire and capacity to build it. However, we don't. Why do you think that we would suddenly build enough plants or that what plants we build will be capable of producing energy that is endless? Keep in mind that 'endless' is the idealist talking, and cost is what is looked at in the real world. Supply and Demand.
But that's ok.
Meh, the military use part is EASY--most new tech (in the US) goes there first if it can possibly be used for such (with a few exceptions).
At some point, however, there will be a use for fusion reactors in a mobile setting. Most likely, that will be in a sub or other naval vessel. Possibly spacecraft, but most likely naval.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Actually, from the studies I've read, school funding actually has no to negative correlation with how well the school does. Believe it or not, you don't often need the latest textbook to teach a subject. A math textbook from the '60s is as good today as it was back then. They usually contain harder problems, too.
What really affects the quality of education? Parental involvement.
There are far, far more students that *need* grants than there are grants to get.
I haven't seen it. I've seen scholarships go unfilled because of lack of applications. Then you go and say Did you actually mean public colleges? These are mostly run by the town/cities, and are free or very close to it.
I'm in a track where I get a two year degree. Then I can apply those credits straight to a four year degree. Many of the courses transfer. Prove you can handle the two year college, do well, and you'll be able to get grants. Or at least loans.
I don't read AC A human right
According to the Uranium Institute, known resources of economically recoverable U-235 are "enough to last for some 50 years" at today's rate of consumption. If prices go up significantly, we could mine other sources, but even so, "all conventional resources are considered - 14.4 million tonnes, ... is over 200 years' supply at today's rate of consumption"
Today, fission supplies 16% of the world's electricity. If we converted the world to using nuclear power for all our electricity, we would use up the uranium six times faster, so all known supplies would last somewhere around 35 years.
To go beyond this, we would need to resort to more exotic technology, such as breeder reactors or extracting uranium from seawater and phosphate deposits.
Long before fusion becomes a practical source of electric power or steam, it will be a source of energetic neutrons. My worry is less about any accident with a fusion reactor than the ability of anyone having a fusion reactor to have gobs of neutrons to transmute whatever they want and generate the raw materials, plutonium and tritium, for nuclear bombs of various kinds.
Two cents more. II Peter 3:7 But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, by being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. OT? I don't think so. Wind and wave are derivative from solar, so why not "focus" on PV (photovoltaic) and skip one layer of energy conversion? We need to spend as much on PV efficiency research as we do on, oh say, catfood. Then put an array on every roof. We're way late on this.
So why choose such a name then? Could confuse some people into believing they're a bunch of fools who thinks religion and science are somehow on the same level, or something.
That was something one of my professors mentioned as well - the He3 supply on the moon is enormous, based on samples brought back. Getting enough materials to the moon (up the gravity well) to build a base would be prodigiously expensive, though.
And all the corrections others pointed out are valid - I hadn't checked on the shutdown of the fast breeder program. There was an interesting link I came across recently that said Jimmy Carter banned US reprocessing of spent uranium fuel because the amount of plutonium in it was only statistically predictable, and so it would be too easy for terrorists/rogue nations to skim off enough to make a bomb. He hoped that other nations would follow suit, which evidently happened.
The passively-safe liquid sodium design was something Argonne Nat'l labs was working on a while back, but was also never implemented commercially. The liquid sodium could absorb enough heat from a runaway reaction so that the core wouldn't lose structural integrity. But the operator-induced incident at Chernobyl showed that while intelligence is finite, stupidity has no upper limit.
Thank you for the example. Another factor to consider in producing the energy is the level of energy needed to start the sustaining reaction. This can be regained after the reaction begins, but you still need to invest it to get started.
Arakis doesn't refer to Arrakis. Arakis refers to me, and I'm nice enough to have let an energy concern use the name in the past.
Thank you again for your consideration.
have you noticed that hot glowing orb in the sky then?
The reason wind and wave are better, is because the energy collectors are huge (all your land mass, and all your water surface area) and free (preexisting).
In other words, Wind power *is* solar power, with the entire surface of the continent being your collector. Wave power *is* wind power, with a giant turbine collector the size of the ocean.
Yeah, the collection efficiency is terrible, but the cost efficiency is great.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's