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Bubble Fusion Results Replicated
Anonymous Coward writes "Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Purdue University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) stating that they have replicated and extended previous experimental results that indicated the occurrence of nuclear fusion using a novel approach for plasma confinement. Interesting stuff, read about it
here."
While these results are fascinating, and the research is worthwhile in its own right as pure science, I wonder if this is at all useful for generating power. Is there any way to capture the energy released? I'd imagine most of the energy produced would be wasted and difficult to extract.
Not to unduly don a tinfoil hat, but will it be surpressed by oil companies until there's a worldwide oil shortage? And if so, it wouldn't be so "cheap" when they released it.
Tinfoil hats aside, I doubt something like this will get the funding it deserves.
I talk about stuff.
Good Lord, I hope you're not actually as gullible as that post makes you seem.
Oil companies like to be known as "energy" companies because it diffuses the appearance of their nearly-exclusive association with oil production. So, it's for PR purposes first off.
Much more important, investments in wind, solar, fuel cell and other alternative energy fields allow the oil companies some degree of control over the research in those areas (it happens fast, slowly, or not at all at their say-so).
Such investments give the oil companies control over people with extensive (and often unique) theoretical and applied knowledge in the field, and control of both developing processes and established patents.
Just as Microsoft "innovates" by buying up new entrants into the fields Microsoft considers its own, the oil giants' purchases and investments in alternative energy are their means to influence, if not dictate, the rate of "innovation" in global energy use patterns.
Finally, when oil eventually does become uneconomic as fuel, the oil companies will have long ago bought a lock on the now-essential alternative sources of energy, and will be able to maintain their revenue streams right on past the end of the Oil Age.
Slightly offtopic in that it's more about electricity than oil, but I think one can gauge oil companies' commitment to the public good WRT alternative energy by the degree to which they support decentralization of energy production (so far, little to not at all). Synfuels and wind and solar farms are being developed in an industrial mode that cements the importance of heavily-capitalized players, despite the greatest economic gains to the public being available in widely-distributed small-scale wind, solar and biomass production.
The press release linked doesn't mention it, but nature has an implementation of this phenomenon called the Snapping Shrimp. This tiny bugger creates a cavitation buble with a claw that actually stuns prey with the shockwave generated. I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I first saw video of this.
Maybe we will see the rise of genetically engineered shrimp that can live in the reactor and keep the system up for peanuts?
Here is a link on the shrimp How Snapping Shrimp Snap
The government's "job" is to represent the will of the people. Only in Corporate America can you "consumers" be so brainwashed into believing the government exists to regulate the companies.
Wind turbines are quieter and more beautiful than a coal fired power plant, and less expensive than nuclear. The only people complaining about wind power are those with a NIMBY complex. I say stick a coal fired power plant in their backyard and see what they think about wind turbines then.