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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."
Not In My Back Pocket!!!!
Previous slashdot articles
Thursday January 20: Fusion Using Sonic Compression
Monday April 19 2004: Bubble Fusion Results Replicated by 4 Institutions
That's a cool idea, but what would be the efficiency of that process? Earlier experiments used a 14MeV neutron beam to generate microscopic nucleation points which sonoluminescent fusion expanded and collapsed, releasing 2.5 MeV neutrons. I'm not ready to say "bubble fusion" can't be used to generate power, but I think it's important to consider it an area for pure research at the moment without any immediate application. This problably will not lead to fusion power plants, unfortunately.
That doesn't, mean the subject should be ignored, just that folks shouldn't get their hopes up over this process. (Added for the benefit of clueless ACs who might have difficulty with reading and comprehension.)
Please remove your tinfoil hat.
I will give you a clue. Companies care about making money. I swear I wish the extreme left and the libertarians both would get a clue. A companies job is to make money. The governments job is to make laws to regulate companies for the common good. Consumers make the decision of how much the will spend for positive behavior. It is like the outcry about outsourcing. You do not want outsourced tech support? Then do not buy a $500 PC. The energy companies do not care if it is from oil, gas, coal, or burning tinklies. The reason that they do not push for small-scale wind, solar, and biomass production is frankly they suck. solar has limited value in many places. The northern area of North America is one. I would like to see more solar roofs in the south. I would like just a 100 watt panel tied to the grid be required on all new homes built in the south. Wind is noisy, ugly, and expensive. Biomass has some potential but will never be a major part of the energy picture in it's current state. Now that bio mass converter I read about a while ago if it works could be very cool.
As far as the big oil companies stopping this research no they are just not putting huge amounts of money into it. Even if they where stopping it in the western nations what about Japan? They have no national oil reserves at all. I doubt that Oil companies could stop Japan or China from developing those technologies if they where practical.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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