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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.
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 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.
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.
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".
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"
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.