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France Will Be Home To Fusion Plant
ScentCone writes "After years of politicking, France has won the right to be the location for a $12 billion fusion research facility. The plant will use deuterium-from-seawater and a huge electromagnetic ring to produce the 100-million-C conditions in which researchers hope to produce viable fusion. The debate over whether this is even possible continues to rage. The ITER project started in 1985, and there has been a running fight over money and location since. France indicated that if Japan (one of the holdouts) didn't see it their way, they'd build a coalition of the willing and do it anyway. With financing and contracting agreements in place, the 10-year construction can begin." Coverage also available at MSNBC, the NYTimes, CNN, and the BBC.
I'm sure Greenpeace is gonna Love this!!
Specifically, Greenpeace (real quote), said: " At a time when it is universally recognized that we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Greenpeace considers it ridiculous to use resources and billions of euros on this project"
You know, because it would be horrible to have this as an emmissions-free source of energy. Incredible.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Specifically, Greenpeace (real quote), said: " At a time when it is universally recognized that we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Greenpeace considers it ridiculous to use resources and billions of euros on this project"
You know, because it would be horrible to have this as an emmissions-free source of energy. Incredible.
Green Peacers have never been the type to use calm logic. It is nuclear, therefore it is bad.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
At least the French and British decided to stand up against a dictator rather then only joining in to defend personal interests ...
Of course, you'd want to be far away if a leak happened, in a remote control centre.
Funny if they don't like this, as there are actually very few risks to Fusion recations. There is no waste by-product that is harmful to the area (like plutonium, for instance), there are few risks of "meltdown", the process uses only non-lethal fuels (seawater may suck to drink, but it isn't deadly to fish), and magnetic fields can be contained. Fusion != Fission. Remember that.
I believe he was refering to this:
With financing and contracting agreements in place, the 10-year construction can begin
I can actually see their point, yet this doesn't mean i agree with them...
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Came flying low.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
care to source that "real quote"?
the greenpeace press release on the fusion plant in question is here. i didn't see your quote in it anywhere.
i would further suggest that, if you are actually intetested in following greenpeace's position on this and similar matters, that you monitor to report and publication section of greenpeace eu. it's here.
2 1337 4 u!
For those of you who don't know what fusion is exactly, read at Wikipedia:
Fusion Power
Some interesting quotes:
"The natural product of the fusion reaction is a small amount of helium, which is completely harmless to life and does not contribute to global warming. "
"The half-life of the radioisotopes produced by fusion tend to be less than those from fission, so that the inventory decreases more rapidly. Furthermore, there are fewer different species, and they tend to be non-volatile and biologically less active. As opposed to nuclear fission, where there is hardly any possibility to influence the spectrum of fission products, the problems can be further reduced by careful choice of the materials used."
"Although fusion power uses nuclear technology, the overlap with nuclear weapons technology is small. "
A "fusion plant" is not the same thing as a "research facility." A misleading headline, in this case implying production-level fusion capacity, does nobody any good.
care to source that "real quote"?
I'm guessing you don't consider Reuters to be trustworthy? Well, anyway: here's a run of the article as seen on Yahoo where you can read the quote verbatim.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Actually, they do both. From Wikipedia
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Need a used Sprint charger?
Also, IIRC Greenpeace grudgingly supports nuclear technology because it's the lesser evil.
Actually, the word they use in reference to this particular project is "madness." Here is an article discussing their condemnation of this project.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
All of Greenpeace may not be against it. One of the founders, Patrick Moore, had an article about his supporting nuclear power in the June 2005 issue of Nuclear News (traditional fission power, fusion not mentioned). I think it was a transcript of testimony in front of one of the numerous energy committees in the House back in April if you don't have access to this periodical. But he makes the case for nuclear being the only rational option for long term energy production. So if not all of Greenpeace is made of the "anti-human," "environmental extremists" (his words) then perhaps they might start to make the case, en masse, that nuclear is a better option than fossil fuels (of course everyone in the nuclear industry is saying "duh" at this point)
Fission plants produce material that can be used in weapons or remains hazardous for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. I can understand why Greenpeace is opposed to them.
Fusion power plants have neither of these problems. They use water for fuel and produce material that isn't fissionable and is safe after about 50 years.
However, they do give an excuse for governments, corporations and people to not move toward a safe, clean energy grid made up of wind, solar, biofuels and maybe fusion. From this reasoning I can understand why Greenpeace would have trepidation.
Or they could not understand what nuclear fusion is and have a knee-jerk reaction.
Either way, criticizing them as anti-progress is wrong. I was at one of their mercury testing events where they served coffee that was brewed with solar power. They're nice people, and the chicks were really cute.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
i do. however, i do take umbrage with the parent poster's complete lack of context! for reference, the paragraphs in question are:
Environmental campaign group Greenpeace estimates that if the project yields any results at all, it will not be until the second half of this century.
"At a time when it is universally recognized that we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Greenpeace considers it ridiculous to use resources and billions of euros on this project," it said.
what this says to me is that greenpeace is saying the fusion project will probably not make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions for fifty years and we should be using that 10 billion euros to convert our polluting power sources to current solutions, such as they are.
2 1337 4 u!
Bullshit. This stupid thing spread around way too damn much, hell it wouldn't be too hard to write something up like this for any country.
Ever wonder why there are so many words of French origin in the English language? Familiar with that time period when France de facto dominated England, and all people of culture/nobility in England spoke French? Did you know, in fact, that the origin of swear words (such as "shit") were that they were used by the lower classes (and are more authentic english) while classier ways of saying these things (such as "manure") were used by the upper classes (and are thus French).
France, like every other country in Europe, has won, lost, invaded, and been invaded countless times. So stop with this nonsense already.
Patrick Moore is no longer with GreenPeace, and in fact is one if its harshest critiques. He runs a site called GreenSpirit, which at first glance appears to be "environmentalism for those who aren't brain dead".
Even today, production is only about half the cost of electricity (at least here in France): transporting it is NOT free. And the cost of a given electric line depends on the power you want it to have, so consuming twice as much power would definitely have an impact on the price you pay.
Another factor is that a fusion reactor is much more costly today than a fission reactor, so you would probably build less of them, so you would likely have to transport your energy farther away, increasing the transport costs. Bottom line, yes you'd pay quite a bit less, but there will simply a shift so that production costs less and transport costs more: a bit like today's microprocessors, where calculations are virtually immediate but transporting data from one end of the circuit to the other end takes a long time.
Cambridge had a working magnetic field reactor that was able to sustain fusion for 2 weeks. It not only powered the university but also added to the local power grid. Problem with fusion is if the necessary high-pressure conditions for fusion are lost for fraction of a second the whole process stops. This makes for good safeguards (no melt-downs), but it is very difficult to initiate the fusion process.
So fusion has been achieved via magnetic fields in the past. This is the first long-term, large-scale, commercial fusion reactor project that will produce enough power for several countries.
IANAP (I am not a physicist), but here's how I understand it. Nature loves middle-weight neuclei. Extremely light neuclei (e.g. Hydrogen) and extremely heavy ones (e.g. Plutonium) are less stable.
In both cases, you release energy by moving towards middle-weight elements. If I recall correctly, Iron has the most stable neucleus of all. The raw materials for fission, such as Uranium and Plutonium, are much heavier than Iron. By breaking up the neuclei into lighter elements, you move closer to the ideal middle-weight stable elements, thus releasing energy. Likewise, the raw materials for fission, such as Hydrogen, are much lighter than Iron. By fusing their nuclei, into heavier elements, you move closer to the ideal middle-weight elements, so you release energy.
There's no perpetual motion involved. You can't get energy back by reversing either type of reaction. For example, you'd have to put energy IN, if you wanted to fission Helium back into Hydrogen, because you'd be moving further away from the ideal middle-weigh neuclei.
So, if someone asks you to invest in their iron-fuelled nuclear power plant, your money is probably best invested elsewhere!
Fundamentally, it is because of human desire for progress. Virtually all progress involves decreasing local entropy for some purpose, whether it is to manufacture a product or send an ordered byte stream. All reductions of local entropy - that is, movement away from thermodynamic equilibrium, require an expenditure of energy. Thus progress - indeed, all of human civilization - I guess even all of life - requires energy input. We require more because we desire to decrease our local entropy.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
The bay of Fundy moves more water in and out every 13 hours than .
.
.
.
.
.
.
0 3080222.htm
all the water of all the rivers in the world combined
If we could figure out a way to harness it, we would be good on
power for a VERY long time indeed
http://www.valleyweb.com/fundytides/
The 3 gorges damn is huge, the world's largest dam at present time,
but the power generation possible at fundy is just staggering
I think underwater screened turbines would prevent sea life
from being churned up, and prevent silting like the 'dam'type
hydro electric tidal generators built in france
Some under sea power turbines are being deployed near malaysia
Also in the fusion arena, I think the bubble fusion principle
makes alot more sense economically, and has already demonstrated
that it will work
Keep in mind it is not cold fusion, it is high temp based
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/03/0403
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Another former non-tokamak fusion researcher here.
I agree. The biggest problem with the large tokomak designs is the scale, and hence price tag, required for a self-sustaining reaction. The large price tag and long construction times mean that prototyping is essentially a decades-long process subject both to political whims and the need to be used for years after it is built just to make the building of it worthwhile.
Imagine how fast computer science would advance if each new motherboard required an act of Congress.
The real need in fusion is not for more money. The big money has been squeezing out the small money for my entire lifetime. We need smaller, easier prototyped designs that take at most a year and $1 million to build. It's the only way the art will advance.
I remember emailing back and forth with Paul Koloc back in the early nineties and commiserating about how DOE just wasn't interested in non-tokamak designs. I thought that things got better after the Bussard letter (hey, where's Baldrson at?), but I guess not. Paul is probably the world expert on ball lightning, but I'm still not sure that ball lightning is a good means of producing fusion. Should he be funded? Hell, yeah! His programme is magnitudes cheaper than ITER, and we'd definitely get our money's worth of science out of it.
A professor of mine told me "Fringe scientists are important and necessary to science. But they're still fringe scientists."
They seem to have a huge number of support seeking websites, yet only one actual research paper that I could find. Furthermore, the research paper's references were mostly conference conversations, and the author's own publications. I didn't specifically check, but it doesn't appear the paper is actually published in any journal.
I also can't seem to find any support from any other scientists outside of his team. Though an article on sciscoop says they have support from MIT.
Now that's all very rare. I would wager that any plasma physicists he's told his theory to has written him off as insane. Now, there is a chance that we have another enstein here, but there's a larger chance that we have a dud.
sorry.
Nitpick: The longer the half-life, the fewer decays per unit time. Stuff that's dangerous for a couple of days is far, far more dangerous than the basically stable elements you mentioned.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
To be fair, Bush sided on Japan's side for the sole purpose of blocking Europe from being the host site, that was seen back then (2003), as a retaliation, mainly against France, for not supporting the war. It's true that France, through Chirac, said they would support an extra financial burden to by-pass the US support and get moving with this project. Like it or not, France showed some leadership, got this project involving top science moving, while the US stepped back and did nothing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You make it sound like the process of moving towards a middle-weight stable element somehow magically causes "energy release" because nature likes it.
It's clearer by just saying:
The extra energy comes from the destruction of matter which is converted to energy.
For example, in a fusion reaction, the reactants (usually deuterium and/or tritium) have a greater mass than what's left behind (helium and neutrons). Since e=mc^2, you get a huge amount of energy for a small amount of lost mass.
In heavy nuclei, you have the repulsive electrical force between the protons barely held in check by the attractive nuclear force in a shallow potential well. When you push the energy of the nucleus over the edge of the potential well, you release all the electric force. In light nuclei, you have the nuclear force dominating and particles in the nucleus are held at the bottom of a deep potential well. Pushing energetic particles past the shallow slope of the electric potential pulls them into the deep nuclear force potential well, releasing energy.
I remember when those claims were made about nuclear power, about how it would be so cheap that it wouldn't be metered.
It was originally expected that "fast breeder reactors" would be used to recycle and re-enrich the spent fuel rods that came out of power plants. Instead, Carter used execuitive order to put a blanket ban on those types of plants. Fast breeder reactors would drastically cut hte amount of high level radioactive waste that comes out of power plants and cut the costs of operating a plant. Consider the nuclear version of recycling.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars