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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.
How slow do they move over there? It's like they're in Arkansas or something.
BDR Gear
Outdoor gear, MREs, and more!
I'm sure Greenpeace is gonna Love this!!
"I drank WHAT?!"--Socrates
they've been duped
lightbulb?
Only one. He holds the lightbulb while the world revolves around him.?
I guess that wasn't funny enough by itself, so now we have this.
(how many frenchmen *is* it going to take to build a fusion reactor?)
This is where they'll produce the world's largest white flag.
Will this fusion plant usher in the foretold era of unlimited energy? I remember when those claims were made about nuclear power, about how it would be so cheap that it wouldn't be metered. That didn't happen with fission power, but perhaps it will happen with fusion power.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
- Gallic Wars
- Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian.
- Hundred Years War
- Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman." Sainted.
- Italian Wars
- Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars when fighting Italians.
- Wars of Religion
- France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots
- Thirty Years War
- France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.
- War of Revolution
- Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.
- The Dutch War
- Tied
- War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War
- Lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.
- American Revolution
- In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare; "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."
- French Revolution
- Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.
- The Napoleonic Wars
- Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer.
- The Franco-Prussian War
- Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.
- World War I
- Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.
- World War II
- Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song.
- War in Indochina
- Lost. French forces plead sickness; take to bed with the Dien Bien Flu
- Algerian Rebellion
- Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare; "We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese and Esquimaux.
- War on Terrorism
- France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald's.
The question for any country silly enough to count on the French should not be "Can we count on the French?", but rather "How long until France collapses?"
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. All you do is leave behind a lot of noisy baggage."
Or, better still, the quote from last week's Wall Street Journal: "They're there when they need you."
From TFA:
Greenpeace, for one, stated that "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."
I swear, I think Greenpeace is more concerned about making sure nobody builds any new powerplants than they are about protecting the environment.
They are against new coal plants with modern scrubber technology, they are against fission plants, now they are against this expiremental fusion plant. Do they realize that humanity needs energy to live and thrive? Do they realize that by not building new more efficient powerplants they are forcing people to rely on older, more polluting powerplants more heavily?
It seems counterintuitive to me, it's like they would rather stick their thumb in the eye of corporations than actually help the environment.
They should build these plants in less populated areas, like Africa. In addition to the research center, they can build a hotel, maybe create some jobs.
I hope the by-products from this nuclear plant, all the magnets, and the other uncountable changes won't ruin the soil or rain, and affect the quality of french wines. I keep hearing that next to Fermi Labs, there are now snakes with two heads and albino deer, all this stuff did not exists before they started their research.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
... is that "France surrenders to Fusion Plant Plans?"
Supports of France that are offended: its just a little joke, relax ya cheese eating.... err... I did it again, didn't I?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
In a era where we are in grave need of new energy sources, we decide to build it in a country with a 35-hour workweek. God help us.
If you subtract out every summer and figure a four-day workweek, how long will it actually take?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Of course, you'd want to be far away if a leak happened, in a remote control centre.
By the time France actaully make Fusion viable, they will probably have already lost another war and be occupied. Can we really deal with China getting there hands on this?
You make fun of France once and your Karma is never the same...
I would have prefered India, I've been a big fan of Indian Fusion for a long time. Who's ever heard of French Fusion anyway?
Great that this is finally happening, and not even the U.S.A. backed out.
We are French! Ahhhhhhh We surrender!
All of you arrogant, pig-headed Americans can stay quiet. Do you know why? France ... *FRANCE* ... is going to beat you to a true nuclear fusion reactor.
...
Hahahaha
to produce the 100-million-C conditions
I can do it for FREE!!
for (int i=0; i 100000000; i++) {
if (i == -1) { break; };
}
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.
It will be available just in time to power Longhorn on the latest Intel. Oh yeah, and maybe restore power to the undersea Internet link to Pakistan.
France had to threaten unilateral action to get this thing the way they wanted it. The Japanese participation was going to hinge on spending less money, given the location the French wanted. The French said they'd just build a group of participants who did see it their way and do it without those that were objecting because they knew it was the right thing to do, and it had to get started... um... huh. This sounds so oddly familiar. But I just know the French would only use such rhetoric if they didn't mind other people doing the same.
Still, as much as I like to rib the French, I'll cut them some slack just because they're so good at pissing off Greenpeace.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If we were to reduce the human population to a more sustainable level (say, a few hundred thousand) we could burn natural deadwood and buffalo chips for all the energy we need without causing unacceptable environmental damage.
Or at least that's the theory. For more detail read a Tom Clancy novel. Don't forget: shiny side out.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Somebody still has to keep those powerlines in good order. Unless they develop the household Mr. Fusion, then they'll just have to deliver Deuterium to your door.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
From TFA:
"If we can really make this work there will be enough electricity to last the world for the next 1,000 to 2,000 years."
Is this reactor suppose to power the world? What about distribution?
My vote would be to focus on a smaller project that can be duplicated in less than 50 years.
I have nothing against France (only some French), but I was warmly hoping that Japan gets the project. In my view, Japan is so perfectly suited, technology and mentality-wise, to pull this off.
Still, France is OK, because they are one of the countries with highest % of nuclear energy. So much so, in fact, that they make a lot of good money exporting it.
And get this: one of the largest importers (the largest?) offrench electric energy is Germany, who have outlawed and disbanded their nuclear plants due to Green misguided pressure, and are now
a) polluting themselves with coal plants, which actually produce more radioactive waste than nuclear plants of same energy output (not to mention other pollutants).
b) paying for el. energy to France, which is produced by nuclear plants which are close enough to Germany, that if a meltdown happened, they would be just as affected!
There is something humorous in all this.
Sigged!
With someone having to run the plant, the licensing required, the cleanups, pr, etc it costs money. And do you honestly think the energy companies are going to research themselves out of a paycheck? Hopefully fusion power will work, but we will still be charged. Hopefully it will be cheaper if it is truly clean. Hopefully it will be cheaper if the cost to create the energy is inexpensive. But there will always be a price...just hopefully it will stagger future price increases.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
This is it. This pretty much ends any intellectual respect that I had for the mainstream environmental movement. Michael Crichton is right. It is nothing more than a secular remapping of Judeo-Christian puritanism onto modern science.
Here in Colorado, USA, we're getting a new coal fired electrical plant. Stick with proven technology, we always say.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
oh well it's just France.
This is very interesting. I thought Japan had this in the bag. Of the two groups vying for power in this scenario, EU/Russia/China vs. US/Japan/Korea, it appears that the "non-aligned" group has won. However I imagine Japan will still have a very substantial role in this.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
France actually *fought* for something?!
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Maybe we can figure out how to get cheap energy from fusion before oil production peaks in 3 to 5 years time.
See here and here
There are actually several french green politicians and activist who are pro nuclear fission (yes the old nukes!) because they see it as the only realistic way of cutting CO2 emissions in the short term.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Fusion is supposed to be much cleaner and safer. If the contaiment field fails, it just stops going. I think there is still the issue of the surrounding structures becoming radioactive themseves and then we would have to dispose of that. But the fusion process itself is very clean. Overall you take deuterium (a type of hidrogen where there are two neutrons instead of only one) and you make them smash hard enough to make a helium molecule (plus a bunch of other particles) that is lighter than the the two hydrogen molecules taken separate with the difference in weight becoming energy by the famous e=mc^2. This is so hot that they have to use a magnetic container to keep the walls from melting and the hydrogen from cooling. If the magnet fails then the reaction just stops. With a bang but nothing more destructive than say a rocket fuel factory going up?
From what I thought, the reason that the Sun can support fussion is because the massive gravity of all the hydrogen pulling together slams them into each other hard enough to fuse. (more or less) Small scale fusion plants obviously won't have enough gravity to sustain a fusion reaction, so you gotta slam the atoms together some other way.
:)
But what I don't get is when you fuse an atom, energy is released, but when you split an atom into two, energy is released as well. How is this not perpetual motion? If fusion energy was possible, couldn't you just take your nuclear waste from fission and split it back into uranium and whatever again.
Obviously fission works, so I'm guessing you'll never be able to get enough energy out of fusion than what you put into it.
Which actually brings up another question, where does gravity's energy come from that supports the suns fusion? What causes the force of gravity?
I'm just a computer programer though, I only took one college physics course, but still am rather curious as to how the universe works.
No, intolerable. If a source of energy emits no pollution, greenhouse gasses, or nuclear waste (etc.) then there's no reason not to use it. That would never do, now, would it? What would the protesters do?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
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.
maybe they shoulds spend a portion of the money on cold fusion research...
According to Sim City 2000, we don't get fusion power til 2050
First off, I am not a high energy physics person and I haven't looked into this too much, but from what I have read
0 7/1635251&tid=126&tid=14 to produce tritium as a fuel source would be a better fuel for fusion.
The start up power demand for this thing could be big. Separating Dueterium from the other isotopes of Hydrogen, heating things to 100 million degrees C, and the magnetic containment fields required for this research could use a lot of power in the years before it becomes a viable reality, assuming that they get practical fusion power.
I thought using neutrons from some idea like this one http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/
France is a very friendly nation for Japan and the Japs got some compensation for the deal.. .. everybody should be winning (including you rancorous yankees!), I don't see any problem..
They will manage the project and France will invest some money in another project located in Japan.
Overall it seems a fair deal for me
Can't wait until the singularity/transhumanism so we can get beyond these silly border struggles.
I didn't care which one they chose--just want the dang science to start!
Transcend Humanity. Please.
So are American politicians going to call this new energy "Freedom Fusion?"
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
Dear Fusion Plant Fools:
I have a mini-fusion reactor at home in my basement.
I will be releasing the assembly plans after the impeachment of "President" George W. Bush is announced this evening.
Thank for your support,
Kilgore Trout, CEO
isn't it about time France surrendered to Germany? What's it been, over 60 years now? Way overdue.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
1) why are you Americans so incredibly proud of your 40 hour week and miserable holiday entitlement?
2) I used to go out with a woman whose father had worked for the French atomic industry all his life (physics PHD) and he was emphatic that any proposed fusion reactor would produce just as much nuclear waste as a fission reactor if not more. I don't understand the details but just because the process in principle doesn't produce nuclear waste don't mean the practical application wont - or at least that appeared to be the thrust of his argument and he seemed to know what he was talking about. Remember the nuclear industry has lied to us and threatened our health consistently for 50 years.
3) I work in wind power and while I don't think they should be everywhere and blighting everyone's view, renewables combined with pump storage or compressed air storage or hydrogen storage, are more than capable of supplying the world's energy needs.
4) All us geeks like elegant solutions and fusion has always held out that promise but I think we all need to try to not mix up your personal fetishes with practical public policy issues.
Germany hasn't dismantled their nuclear power plants just yet. They have a law saying that the existing plants will be shut down after a shorter than expected lifetime (20 years instead of 30) and that no new plants will be built, but this is expected to be turned around by the next legislature way before a single plant is actually concerned. I don't know whether they export lots of electricity from France. France does a lot of business selling electricity to Spain and Italy though.
kW.h prices for individual households in France are close to the European average, but the effective price is somewhat lower since the monopoly electrical utility belongs to the state, and that the juicy profits it makes are that much tax that doesn't have to be paid.
And how do we know this isn't how the sun started in the first place...
Never confuse volume with power.
Just Frenchmen? Hook me up. I want work. Plus, I could stand to live in the south of France and improve my french from 'abysmal' to 'bad'. Jobs, anyone?
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
Just figure out a way for Christians to fight new-agers and we'll be happy.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
The whole point of having extreme organizations in culture is to remind us of certain points of view and moral obligations. When something rather crazy is happening, something most people don't tolerate, we support them. Most of the time they just chime in and let us know what they think.
It's the reason so many people are trashed on Slashdot. Gates has a vision, and a group behind him, RMS, the same - and so forth from McNealy to Jobs...
They all hit the mark from time to time, but other than that most people are just moving on in their own lives. But if they didn't offer their opinions then a lot of people wouldn't know what to think. Just like politics, science debate, whatever. Greenpeace isn't bad, they just miss the mark. A broken mouth piece shouts a few truths every few months.
Get your Unix fortune now!
And also even with their "out-of-nuclear energy" legislation, the German industry (Siemens, E.ON) has partnered with the French industry (Areva, GDF) to develop a next-generation nuclear reactor EPR, a prototype of which will be built in France, and I think the design has already been exported (Finland, something like that). So the German nuclear power industry is alive and kicking.
Not to troll - but didn't this article headline foxnews.com and google.com/news like 8 hours ago?
http://www.bobbarr2008.com/
I was the consortium luck. I'll just add, I remember reading 25 years ago how it would take at least another 25 years for magnetic confinement fusion to be commercially viable. Now it is 50 years. Big science like this rarely pays off.
an ill wind that blows no good
While the US debates such idiot topics as "creationism" and "intelligent design" and argues over abortion, the rest of the world is racing ahead in areas like stem cell research, nuclear power and computer science.
Bush and his fundamentalist neocon sycophants are ruining this country faster than any terrorist group...
--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?
we're trying to phase out coal. That technology never really panned out for us, even though we mine a lot of good coal here. Our Amish lobby is just too strong. We'll still sell it to Colorado, though.
We're going back to wood. The initial leading choice for the fuel is oak, since those are the biggest, oldest trees we have. When those are gone, the maple crop should be ready.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Don't worry: To offset the possibility that some Luddite whacko is going to blow up the french reactor, they're building a top-secret identical backup reactor hidden in a rugged Japanese coastal cliff.
Fusion, if feasible, could be the best thing since the fire was discovered - clean, virtually inexhaustible energy (well, not really, but close enough for now) - and the morons are fighting over who gets bragging rights?
That's unbeleivable.
Better France than any where else!
Sig? What Sig?
They could just build one of these..
http://jlnlabs.imars.com/mahg/tests/mahg2c.htm
with a measured 1500% efficiency..
-or-
one of these
http://jlnlabs.imars.com/vsg/index.htm
which has a measured COP of 3.46% and is acutally fusion..
it already exists.. just need a large scale version of it
my only question is did they forget poland?
youforgotpoland.com
You must be too young to remember the days of metered internet. They didn't say it would be free. Just not metered. you pay $20 a month and use how ever much you need.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
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".
No no... Mr. Fusion doesn't need dueterium. It runs on banana peels, and beer (it works best if you pour the beer out of the can, THEN drop the can in.), etc.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
That didn't happen with fission power, but perhaps it will happen with fusion power.
It won't happen with either, so long as oil remains absurdly profitable and we're not choking to death on carbon-dioxide.
What a horrible choice of words. Poor taste.
...as I understand it...
...so if it runs out of control we will be free of France and 60% of EU ??
ITER doesn't go "cladderadash" the first time it's fired up!
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Nice to see that on an interesting and scientific story about the possible solution to the world's energy problems the discussion decends into just slagging off the French. I thought this was a site for geeks interested in technology and science, not a playground for people to trade cheap insults.
And you Yanks are always accusing everyone of being anti-American, can you not see any hypocrisy?
For the record I am not French but I think the EU deserved to have this in their backyard - after all the EU is the major contributor. This is fantastic news, if this works then at a stroke the world will have access to what is essentially unlimited energy. No more greenhouse gasses, smog and you will be able to run a Pentium 7 without causing a blackout across the entire continent.
That worries me, though. The US is very good at backing out, when they don't get things their way. My guess is that the US will follow their alternative approach, which means they'll invade France, once the project produces workable fusion.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This should be modded +5 on the basis of your research alone!
Sure, if it were accurate
RATS infected by a brain-warping parasite develop a fatal attraction for cats, researchers have found.
To get into a cat and complete its life cycle, the organism changes the behavior of the rat so that it is more likely to be caught and eaten. Affected rats lose their fear of cats and are even drawn to feline smells, scientists say. They believe the one-cell parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, could also alter the personalities of humans it infects. About 22 per cent of the UK population carry the organism, which is transmitted through eating uncooked meat or contact with cat faeces. In France, it is carried by up to 87 per cent of residents. "We believe that these results may explain the reports of altered personality and IQ levels in some humans," said University of Oxford researcher Dr Manuel Berdoy, who conducted experiments to find the effect on cats. Research in Brazil has linked Toxoplasma gondii with hyperactivity in children.
The organism's main home is the gut of cats. Rats act as intermediary hosts, carrying the parasite in the form of dormant cysts which become lodged in the brain. Rats are super-cautious animals. They are highly neophobic , which means they have a fear of anything new and are terrified of cats. Co-researcher Dr Joanne Webster said: "The behavior of rats infected with this parasite is altered so that they are more likely to be predated." Dr Webster said it was not known how the parasite affected the brain, but it appeared to reduce anxiety in a similar way to valium. Toxoplasma gondii cysts sit in the brains of humans. Evidence suggests the cysts can affect human personalities, especially in people taking immuno-suppressant drugs. "Neurologists should really be looking at what this parasite is doing and where it's going in humans," she said.
http://www.webmesh.co.uk/rat3.htm
I, for one, welcome our new, cheese-eating overlords!
just yesterday or the day before they said here in the german news that we actually had a positive energy import/export ratio. i guess you are not informed very well
See pictures of tits
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.
I post this as a former fusion researcher and a former project manager for the Office of Fusion Energy (OFE) of the Department of Energy (DOE)
Many decades ago the international fusion community put all of its chips on the Tokamak. It has been a disaster.
Even if a Tokamak could produce break-even fusion ( getting more energy out than you put in) the engineering obstacles to creating an economically successful reactor are daunting.
Many years ago, the OFE sponsored a study, Project Aries, of the costs of a Tokamak reactor. Even using the usual optimistic assumptions, the cost came in way above solar and wind power, let alone fossil fuels.
Another symptom of the problem is that three times in a row, projects to build larger Tokamak have collapsed in the design stage. That is, even before anything was build, none could come up with a working design. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the latest attempt, collapsed as the price tag spiraled above $20 billion, but now is resurrected. I assume that they found some technical advances, or just "cooked the books" space-station style to justify it.
The whole OFE degenerated into a "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" process where the lab directories divvied up the pie. All non-Tokamak ideas were cut off, including the one I worked on.( more below).Congress cut the OFE budget almost in half a 10 years ago in response to this.
Now for a blatant plug. In the 70s I worked on a small project at the University of Miami, the Trisops project, which was defunded. The amount of money was not an issues ( our request was quite small), but the non-Tokamak nature, and the nerve of the principal investigator, Dan Wells, to point out that the Tokamac was unworkable.
Last decade the Trisops machine was moved from the University of Miami, to Lanham Md, with a small NASA grant, but there is not money to run it. You can see a report on it.
Another interesting project, the Plasmak(TM) project that is being run by Paul Koloc ( out of his garage!!).
The holy grail on fusion research is a stable plasma structure. The Trisops project achieved it one way. Paul has noted that ball lightning, which has been known for millennia, is a stable plasma structure. He has machine that produces ball lightning, and is measuring it. He gets no DOE funding of course.
This is a update of an earlier post Don't sell your Exxon Stock
At least last time I checked... Therefore it will never be unlimited, infinite, or free.
http://www.bobbarr2008.com/
One thing that may be of interest to the slashdot community: ITER will likely be using Linux heavily. The plasma control system for ITER (the system the controls the plasma shape in real-time) was developed at General Atomic's DIII-D reactor in San Deigo. It runs Linux. The DIII-D contribution (main one anyway) to the ITER project will be the plasma control system.
So RT Linux will end up in another interesting role.
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
I guess ITER's list of needed things looks like this. Sea water billions of greenbacks (preferably American) worlds greatest scientists lots of room second fusion reactor to jumpstart first fusion reactor
Interesting that this garbage got modded "funny" should have been modded OFFTOPIC garbage. Way to promote hate towards a nation that was eager to help the cause of American liberty in its early stages. Here's a clue for you backwards, McDonalds-brained "Americans"; take your Statue of Liberty and ship it back from where it came; it no longer stands as an adequate symbol for your country anyway.
Not quite, Hans.. I think it's just a case of believing your own media's bullshit.
"After years of politicking, France has won the right to be the location for a $12 billion fusion research facility."
Exactly my point. If you have 50-500 billion just lying around, there are SOOO many better things you can use it on, rather than shovel rockets into orbit to block out the sun.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Might as well add PETA to the list.
So has hot fusion actually produced surplus energy?
That when it comes to Greenpeace, France has their wackos as well.
/me pats himself on the back.
P.S. Is this the first video.googel.com link that's on topic outside of the announcement?
put the what in the where?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Who knows?
This is an expirimental reactor.
Oh, and the people dissing Greenpeace? See previous statement.
Yea I like cute volunteer chicks like that. "I wish everybody would stop fighting and polluting the environment. It'd make me feel much safer and secure."
They're just dying to find a nice highly-paid computer programmer like me. Then they can afford a hybrid car and go out to lunch with all their cute volunteer friends. And when I come home she'll tell me about all of the important volunteer activities she did that day. And I'll tell her about my day. About how my ideas are helping my huge company become more profitable and expand their energy-hunry operations. But she'll feel all cozy and safe and secure knowing that I've got a good job allowing her to do her volunteer work with Greenpeace.
This is a research reactor.
You could build it in greenland, and still the best in the field on the world would want to research there, just because its the best place to be if you are in the field.
Its like TESLA, or LHC. The facility doesnt come to the people, the people come to the facility.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
In my view, Japan is so perfectly suited, technology and mentality-wise, to pull this off.
In my view, France is as suited as Japan for that, even more perhaps. One of the reasons that makes me think so is that France is the only country (with usa) that currently operates the technology to treat nuclear waste. Japan doesn't have it and is sending its to France. Sure, Japan could have it too, but they didn't invest in nuclear as much as France did. Another good point for France, is the CRNS (french-based institute with massive international participation and worldwide recognition for its atomic and subatomic research.)
Sometimes, you just gotta shut up and build the damn thing. The problem with fusion is not that it is impractical or environmentally unfriendly, but rather that the fusion researchers seem to be spending time and money in writing papers, rather than actually producing something.
I would be willing to bet that, if the American Government passed a law stating that all non-fusion powerplants were to be shut down (in stages) over the next ten years, we'd have fusion power before the time was up.
How can I be so confident? Because necessity is the mother of all invention, and because those fusion researchers won't get their papers published if there's no power to run the printing presses. You can't expect people to solve such complex problems overnight, but you CAN expect people to become a whole lot more focussed, if it was made very clear that their personal future depended on it, rather than some abstract "future" sometime long after they're dead.
If you want fusion even quicker, get the scientists involved up into Alaska, then provide power in winter only on those days they move forward on the science or technology. Give them the materials and funding they need, but give them some good reasons to do so.
Better yet, if you want fusion power in five years or less, move the top 100 richest people, along with Congress and the US Civil Service into Alaska, and not provide power in winter, except on those days they get the scientists to move forward. Then we'd see some dramatic improvement in the sciences.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Count me in, I'd be happy to help build a fusion power plant, or even a testing facility. While I'm not such a great physicist, I am an excellent systems administrator!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
66% of your electricity cost is infrastrucure. The remainder is the cost of the fuel.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
So it took 20 years for ITER to make a decision? That would make even Washington D.C. bureaucrats proud...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Okay, FYI - _nobody_ knows when oil will peak. Here's why:
1) The information used to determine this depends on all known sources of oil remaining constant. Guess what - they're still finding (some major) new sources of oil.
a) They're also developing technology to extract previously-unextractable oil (oil sands, oil shale, etc.)
2) The information put out by various companies and countries is _highly_ suspect, if not downright fraudulent, in many cases. When countries routinely use the same numbers for how much oil they think they've got left, year after year, this becomes a little obvious.
The peak may have already been reached, according to some. According to others, it'll be a few years, to some, in 20+, or in the far future.
Either way, I wouldn't be expecting some universal concensus on when the oil peak has or will come. I'd be much more concerned with superbugs or global warming (whether caused entirely or partially by human activity or not), than with the question of peak oil.
Imagine if we had spent $180 billion on it in 2003 in a manhattan project style research program instead of fighting the Iraq war? We'd probably have limitless energy already.
They got money!
My pet project didnt!
This sucks!
(and i wouldnt want money to be given to some ball-lighning gurus either....)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Other than a few Europeons and the fruits and nuts of California, does anyone take this group of Luddites seriously?
I have a website. It's about Macs.
The actual numbers are (I'm not parent poster)
for 2003:
Produced: 560 billion kWh
Consumed: 519.5 billion kWh
exported: 53.8 kWh
imported: 45.8 kWh
so that's a lot of importing, but more exporting, as you say
by comparison the US in 2002
produced: 3.839 trillion kWh
consumed: 3.66 trillion kWh
exported: 13.36 billion kWh
imported: 36.23 billion kWh
yes, I'd have expected high-tech stuff to be in Japan too, but Japan is a geologically unstable country - a fusion reactor is an expensive bit of kit, and if it can be located in a less unstable country then yay! It'll reduce the costs of building an earthquake-proof building for it too.
iirc Japan currently has difficulty supplying itself with power and until it's producing power (somewhere near the end of the project, I suspect) it's gonna need a good source of power to guzzle from - France (and, if necessary, the power infrastructure of the rest of Western Europe - Japan being an island next to China and the back end of Russia)
Oh, and it'll be closer to CERN for access to clever particle physicist boffin types.
But most importantly, it'll be close enough to the UK for education establishments here to organise visits
FGD 135
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"
If you follow the road next to Coor's stream towards its source, you will come across a hippy selling jerky on the side of the road next to the stream. Miles from civilization. I've often wondered where he relieves himself during breaks.
So next time you have a Coors, remember it's got just a hint of jerky selling hippy in every can for that authentic Rocky Mountain experience.
Ok, the guy showed his ignorance. Know what, I wasn't aware of that fact too, so what?
He actually took the facts he knows, did a 2+2, and arrived at an apparent contradiction. Good thinking! I am ashamed that I didn't arrive at same conclusion without knowing about the iron's stability. I'd dare to say that that's the way of thinking that advances science.
So, OK, he asked a question, and you happen to know the answer. Does not make him stupid. I know this is Slashdot and all, but he really gave you no reason to bash him.
Germans are so efficient.
Now the French will be their power-producing, cheese-eating, wine-drinking thralls.
Why doesn't the U.N. do something?
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
There are three types of hydrogen:
Protium, or the most common one, and the one we often associate with Hydrogen, has only a proton in it's nucleus.
Deuterium has one neutron in the nucleus, as well as one proton. It is found in "Heavy Water".
Tritium has two neutrons and one proton in the nucleus, and is radioactive.
Ah, you found me!
Read what gid said:
"From what I thought"
"But what I don't get"
"I'm just a computer programer though, I only took one college physics course. but still am rather curious as to how the universe works."
He's just being conversational and curious and admitting he doesn't know and then parent here, FUCKNUT that he us comes in with his "PLEASE, OH PLEASE". What a DICK.
Mod parent down, he's the arrogant twat in the physics class that thinks because he understands it well that it's perfectly acceptable to laugh at those who do not. I mean, what kind of person are you to LAUGH at someone who is asking a genuine QUESTION.
Sure there are no dumb questions but a lot of inquisitive idiots. But his question was pertinent to the topic and hardly out of order considering he flagged over and over again that he didn't know, but wanted to.
I am praying to the Mods that you get given bad karma, because if ever there was something that deserved bad karma it's what you just did.
P.S.
oh, and learn to spell "Fusing 2 lighte" FUCKNUT.
"dont say it couldnt" use apostrophes, FUCKNUT.
MODS DO NOT READ PAST THIS SENTENCE THIS IS FOR IMSABBEL'S EYES ONLY, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
And your explanation of the physics, while correct, sucks the maggoty shit out of a rotting corpse's ass you hooked out of the river next to the filthy cave you call your home. Best eat you had since your mum died I bet.
I believe the coal contains trace amounts of radioactive elements, which are released into the atmosphere when it is burned.
Just google nukeular er nuclear vs. coal or something like that.
Sounds like "Super Collider II: This time, we're going to finish it!"
Both bottom ash and fly ash would be low level radioactive waste if it was'nt explicitly excluded from the regulations.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I would have been worried about their level in maths if that ratio were negative...
The radioactivity of the container is no real problem. The radioactivity is relatively weak and decays to acceptable levels in a few decades. Then the containter is reusable in the plant.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
[INSERT NAME OF ORGANIZATION, GOVERNMENT, POLITICAL PARTY, OR RELIGION HERE] to be predominantly made up of people who don't think for themselves and have an psychological need to "get even."
I don't join organizations because I am anti-social (it's beside the point), I don't because; like Treebeard, they are not on my side.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
You lost me there.
Every Tokamak is a stable plasma structure. It is just not hot enough to reach energy breakeven.
A florescent bulb is a stable plasma structure.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I Surrender!!
I'm probably just showing that I'm not an EE, but doesn't this equation have to balance:
energy produced + energy imported = energy consumed + energy exported
With these numbers where did the excess go? ~200 billion kWh is a lot of energy to jsut disappear.
is this really better than spending the money to cover a few hundred square miles of otherwise useless sunny land with solar collectors? What's the percentage of bright sunny days in the Sahara desert?
If the French eat enough garlic, they could hold the US forces off indefinitely.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
France has a very impressive engineering history and a strong scientific community. For technology, just look at Concord and Airbus. There are good reasons why France got this project against the wishes of Japan and the USA, and it is not only the French arrogance and stubborness.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And get this: one of the largest importers (the largest?) offrench electric energy is Germany, who have outlawed and disbanded their nuclear plants due to Green misguided pressure, and are now
;).
The last nuclear reactor is currently[1] scheduled to be shut down in about 27 years. Sorry, they're neither outlawed nor disbanded, there're just no new ones to be built (Apropos "disbanded": in 2003 nuclear energy accounted for 27% of germany's electricity production, while regenerative energies amount for about 9% compared to ~5% in 1991). At least we try.
Oh, and by the way: In 2003Germany had an export surplus of 8 billion MWh. High imports from France are mostly due to it being "routed" through Germany towards the Netherlands and Italy.
a) polluting themselves with coal plants, which actually produce more radioactive waste than nuclear plants of same energy output (not to mention other pollutants).
Maybe. According to this site Germany has reduced its CO2-Emissions by 19% between 1990-2002 while France decreased theirs by 1.9%. This may or may not have anything to do with coal plants but was the first thing I found on google - so anyway
b) paying for el. energy to France, which is produced by nuclear plants which are close enough to Germany, that if a meltdown happened, they would be just as affected!
Ever heard of something called "leading by example"? Also, do you think that you (wherever you live) would be unaffected by a major nuclear meltdown?
[1] currently meaning that after the next election these plans will probably be scrapped by the conservatives.
It's not true. What the OP means is: a coal plant normally releases more radioactivity into the environment than the equivalent nuclear plant. Which is true as long as nothing ever goes wrong with the nuclear plant or the handling of its wastes.
The nuclear plant still generates orders of magnitude more radioactivity than the coal plant.
In fact the main french "green" political party is clearly against nuclear power:
http://lesverts.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=60
If you follow cold fusion research, the list of countries that participate in the annual International Conference on Cold Fusion includes France, Japan, and other countries that don't have a lot of natural resources such as coal and oil.
Since the US has coal and oil, we don't have as strong a motivation to look into fusion.
Very funny. Enron, perhaps?
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
To these groups, any given tree or platypus has more of a right to be where it is than we, the humans, have to put in yet another road for our SUVs People like you live in scifi phantasy land, where you actually think that we can make tradeoffs between more environment or more technology. But we can't. Our current level of population, our current resource consumption, and our current environmental destruction aren't sustainable. The longer we continue, the harder the eventual crash will be. It doesn't matter how much technology we throw at the problem. So, worrying about platypuses and trees isn't about "values" or "rights", it's about long-term survival of our own species.
Don't worry. The joint resolution clearly spells out that Japan will get to host the next step, the prototype for a commercial plant ("DEMO"). After that (2050 at earliest, though!) the commercial plants can be built anywhere and actually generate electricity for the paying customer.
Treebeard IS on your side.
It was all a misunderstanding.
He's still waiting for you to join him.
I grew up in a "no-nukes" family and it took many years before I realized I was being fed fairy-tales.
I have nothing against France (only some French), but I was warmly hoping that Japan gets the project. In my view, Japan is so perfectly suited, technology and mentality-wise, to pull this off.
Either country would have been fine; the reasons are of course political (as in people-related - "politcal" is not a negative), not technical.
That said, the French have a huge amount of experience with nuclear power. You might also want to take a look at the accident statistics of the Japanese nuclear industry; it's not encouraging reading.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You forgot the addendum: "in spite of their shortsighted government".
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I believe that most power plants are not highly adjustable. Even if they are "adjustable", the cost of adjusting them up and down exceeds that of just letting them overproduce. Since under-producing means lost revenue and angry customers, most utilities tend to overproduce.
Atanamis
I think the main reason americans and french dislike another is because they are so similar to each other.
If you are american or french, really think through why you hate usa/france. Congratulations, now you know the reasons the rest of the world is getting fed up with you as well.
Actually it was pretty amazing; the childish utterly over-the-top hissy-fits of the americans in the wake of the Iraq debacle ("freedom fries"? Come on!) was probably the only thing that could actually make the rest of the EU to actually overcome the dislike of the posterior-orifice attitude of the french political class.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
If you think THAT way of thinking (not knowing basic facts,not bothering to get to know WHY everything else seems to not care about that "obvious" misstake, but jumping to conclusions ("doesnt work")) helps science, then welcome to the dark age.
Its all in the spin of the post.
And he DIDNT ask a question. He spread FUD. His main message wasnt "how does it work?". It was "that is nonsense that cant work how stupid those dumb d00des are..."
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
use them to split water and feed home powering fuel cells.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
When they started building fission nuclear plants in the 1950s, it was said that energy would be nearly unlimited and nearly free. Lots costs overlooked then and overlooked now for fusion.
OK, I know about the Elmer Fudd option but didn't know that Google spoke George W Bush.
why not make a maser and use a laser pulse to smash the atoms together?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
This is wonderful news. I even heard that some scientist named Otto Octavius is going to run the program!
I'm just sad that the article messed up the conversion.
It said "100 million Celsius (180 million F)"
When it should have said "100 million Celsius (180 million +32 F)"
Science reporting these days.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Most fusion reactions generate surplus neutrons which have to go someone. The wall materials of fusion reactors will gradually turn radioactive. The slight advantage is that these radioactive substances tend to have shorter half-lives than U/Pu fission products. Fusion waste will have to be shielded and displosed of like fission waste.
There is radioactive material in the coal, which is released into the atmosphere both during mining and processing, as well as during the burning.
The quantity of such material is about twice as much as in the case of nuclear plants, per watt-hour of energy. And we have not even talked about the other (non-radioactive) pollutants.
My physics teacher from high school used to say that he'd much rather live on top of a nuclear plant rather than 1 Km from a coal plant of same energy output. Much helathier.
Sigged!
Not again.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Good points, but if geological stability was a factor, I wish theytook Finland (home sweet home) as an option: Finland has the most geologically stable territory by FAR in Europe. Basically, Finland would be better off to offer any of the E*U countries to send their nuclear waste here and bury it, because the risk of an earthquake is so low that the nuclear waste will have a long and safe life here, unlike anywhere else in Europe, and then the pollution would eventually arrive to Finland as well.
Sigged!
I figured any power other than hydroelectric in SC2K was a waste of money.
Wind is more expensive (in terms of space and $).
Anything else has to be rebuilt every 50 years.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
"The tree huggers . . . go crazy"
Too late. Already there.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?
What greenpeace is saying is that they'd have used the 10b for windmills now (actually they didn't count the service costs over the years), where it'd supply 7.5 million households with energy (bbc source).
:).
Now consider the fact that this 10b is coming from virtually any big country in the world and it is poo in comparison with other projects. 7.5 million people is not quite a dent of the world population either.
The real fuss (and that it has been for the past 10 years (an bigger design was proposed years ago)), was that Japan wanted to become the center of fusion research, but so did Europe. After years of debate by Worldwide comissions and comittees (which together must have cost more than 10b over the years).
I for one am glad this research is to be set in France. Actually, my teacher in nuclear fusion was none less than prof. Cardozo, head of the european research team. Trust me, I'm proud
b.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Tom Clancy's book "Rainbow Six" involves a radical environmental group which conspires to knock the human population back to less than six figures by means of a biological agent.
HBH
"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
imagine a beowulf cluster of these babies...
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I now know what it feels like to be a sim in SimCity. We have to make sure they run enough water pipes to the reactor or no one will wanna work there.
It's not like getting modded down is going to affect my karma worth mentioning. Just enjoy the show -- it's all comedy anyway.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"Would stopping someone like that from operating, saving countless lives as a result, and getting to watch those people have actual elections also rate below a "science project?""
;-)
If that would involve an illegal war, killing countless lives as a result, and getting to watch those people have an occupying foreign military force and continious chaos and violence: yes.
"I was referring, of course, to the French attitude about the "unilateral" US position on cheese tariffs."
What? The US wanted to form a coalition of the willing cheese-eaters too?
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
You wanna show us some links?
Always has.
Always will be.
"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. "
I for one welcome our high-pitched French-speaking overlords.
Give us humans a rational cause (global warming etc.) and we'll ignore it.
Give us a 'direct' feeling (evil enemy in (cold) war, money for gasoline), and we'll react promptly.
Give us humans a cause that occurs so slowly that no one will notice it if they haven't been observing for a hundred years or that requires a PHD to understand the nuances of (global warming etc.) and we'll ignore it.
Give us a 'direct' feeling that is right in front of our noses, we can actively see over the course of a month or year or two (evil enemy [we can see and feel] in (cold) war, money for gasoline), and we'll react promptly.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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
But what I don't get is when you fuse an atom, energy is released, but when you split an atom into two, energy is released as well. How is this not perpetual motion? If fusion energy was possible, couldn't you just take your nuclear waste from fission and split it back into uranium and whatever again. :)
Hehe... I think this was the concept in Star-Wars and it will always remain science fiction. The production of ultra-heavy elements (such as Uranium) does not occur naturally in solar fusion because not even that gravity or heat is enough to overcome the energy barriers required to fuse the nuclei into such heavy compositions. To create such elements, a supernova is required. Conversely, these ultra-heavy elements are reasonably unstable and are therefore somewhat easy (comparitively) to split. Splitting lighter elements is never discussed because imparting the energy required to do such a thing is beyond our means.
Fusion is practical, today, from Hydrogen on up to Tritium-Boron. I believe that the Tokamak at Princeton was able to achieve over unity in controlled tests all the way up to boron-tritium fusion, but was never funded to the level required to make it commercially viable.
One must appreciate the fact that even the new French reactor does not appear to be planned to be a commercial plant. It looks to be an experimental reactor in the same vein as the Tokamak. These torroidal plasma reactors are really for much more than the study of fusion as well; They are very much for the study of high-temperature plasmas and extremely strong magnetic fields (including the elusive torsion fields). Such conditions provide a rich experimental environment for physical phenemona much more exotic than fusion (e.g. gravity research).
For straightforward energy generation, my bet is on focus fusion, but politics are an issue. Focus fusion uses various plasma-guide geometries to force plasma to compress at a point at very high energy producing super-high temperatures where boron-tritium fusion occurs. The resultant fusion highly ionizes and accelerates the plasma linearly where a particle decellerator can directly convert the accelerated charge into current through induction. Focus fusion holds the promise of hand-held fusion for energy production, plasma rifles and extremely efficient propulsion (all a direct result of the accellerated high-energy plasma). But with all such high energy production technologies that could be mass produced, the politics of the big energy companies loosing control of their revenue stream tends to punish funding for research.
While we are on the subject of exotic physics, some of you might find this interesting...
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Great. Give a major engineering problem to a bunch of people who will try to invent a new screw.....because the screw was not invented by the french. Good idea. It will never work. I suppose this is good news for the other guys in some small lab that will solve the problem without trying to build a star in the lab.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Not sure--but it seems logical enough--there are periods when not enough energy is produced (brownouts, blackouts, etc) so there are periods when too much energy is produced--i guess it just dissipates? too bad...
I must point out that George Bush's government is spending at least 5.8 billion(US) dollars a month. I heard today that is currently at least 8 billion(US). We could have lots of whiz-bang science for that kind of money, to say nothing of world hunger or AIDS.
United Press International
November 18, 2004
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is spending more than $5.8 billion a month on the war in Iraq, according to the military's top generals.
That is nearly a 50 percent increase above the $4 billion-a-month benchmark the Pentagon has used to estimate the cost of the war so far.
Source:
United Press International
November 18, 2004
The Army alone is spending $4.7 million a month while the Air Force is spending $800 million a month transporting soldiers and flying combat missions. The Marine Corps is spending $300 million a month, the four service chiefs told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday.
That's exactly what i thought it was. Just wondering which company it referred to is all.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
they are not dropping 50 b notes onto this in one year...
if it takes 10 years to be built its only 5 billion a year....
if it takes 50 years... well then we have a different situation on our hands..LOL
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
I for one cheered when Mr. Burns impersonated a hippy and sank their ship. It was great!
In real life, the French actually did sink Greenpeace's flagship, The Rainbow Warrior.
The bombs were probably planted by divers, but they must have infiltrated the organization as well, in order to plan the operation.
Yes, cat got my tongue.
Choosing to quote only references that support your thesis, given that there are good arguments against it, is quite dishonest. This criticizes the 'proof' you mention, showing that it is not nearly as general as you would have us believe.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
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 should go to some industry shows for the chemical, oil and coal industries. They'll serve you coffee brewed with electricity generated at a coal plant. The reps will be very nice people to you, and the chicks in the booth will be really cute.
the anwer to that is simple: high voltage and superconductors. as we all know, power = I^2 * r. really high voltage is going to make I go really low. Super conductors have 0 r. so basically the power wasted in transfer is 0.
"Although fusion power uses nuclear technology, the overlap with nuclear weapons technology is small. " First, any country that can produce a working energy-producing fusion reactor can easily produce any kind of ordinary nuclear weapon it wants to produce. Second, there isn't a direct overlap with nuclear weapons technology, but a fusion reactor will produce a great neutron flux, which could be used to breed plutonium from U-238. U-238 is easily available, so U-238 + fusion reactor = lots of weapons-ready plutonium. But it's a moot point because fusion is so much more advanced than nuclear weapons. We've had nuclear weapons for the past sixty years, and we're still fifty years away from commercial fusion.
http://www.kbb.com/kbbmedia/index.asp?pg=release&y ear=2005&date=6-27
...is cable losses. 93 million miles, you do the math.
</deadpan>
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Fuel re-processing and breeders are independent things.
Re-processing splits a used fuel rod into a small amount of highly radioactive waste (fission products) a larger amount of medium-level waste (things like fuel rod coatings that have been in the heart of the reactor and got pretty active) and a lot of uranium and plutonium that can be used as fuel.
It sound like a great idea, but there are some issues in practice: you produce and separate plutonium, from which it's loads easier to make bombs that from uranium; the process is quite hard to do safely and economically, you need acids and heat and heavy machinery, all remotely operated and rad-hardenened; you make lots more low-level waste from the used materials, plant and equipment.
Breeder reactors are nuclear reactors are "tuned" to turn U238, which is 99+ percent of natural uranium and not directly usable as fuel, into plutonium, which can be used. Together with a reprocessing plant you get a cycle that effectively burns U238, and produces small amounts of high level waste plus lots of medium and low-level waster. Which is nice, but it's not cheap or simple.
Somehow I think that irony will be little comfort years from now, should history show that the French acted unilaterally to ensure the progress of mankind, while the US acted unilaterally to horde resources for themselves.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Yes, it's Chinese and Russian stubborness.
Huh? Germany still has lots of nuclear plants. There is *talk* about shutting them down within the next *30 years* or so; saying that they already have been "outlawed and disbanded" is so blatantly false that it's quite hard to even attempt to attribute your statement to naivity and stupidity instead of labelling you as a troll.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Good movie, and book.
It's from (T) transmission losses.
G = Power plant A produces X MW
C = Consumption = Total energy uses at the meter.
G - C = T
G - C - E (export) + I(Import) = T
Comment removed based on user account deletion
VA Linux (remember them?) at peak had a bigger market cap than the ITER will cost.
My fascist chemistry teacher told me the same story about another place 18 years ago in Austria. Just google for oxygen-dihydride and you see the same story over and over.
If your local greens really fell for that, they are the dumbest greens ever. E.g., the greens in Austria usually have chemists and other scientists in the parliament and EU parliament. (They have dumb people too though.)
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
This is factually incorrect. The direct waste product of fusion is helium. Indirect waste products may include materials from the reactor that will become mildly radioactive over time due to neutron flux from the fusion reactions. Yet this nimrod from Greenpeace equates the amount and type of waste produced by fusion to the amount and type of waste produced by fission, and then goes on (incredibly) to bring up the specter of nuclear proliferation.
How a fusion reactor could possibly lead to nuclear proliferation is beyond me. Indeed, how can you portably weaponize the technology used for generating power from fusion reactions? We already have fusion bombs, but they are nothing like the tech needed for sustainable fusion reactions.
This is the worst kind of FUD -- it's based entirely on misinformation and outright ignorance, and preys upon the ignorance of the common man. It's idiocy like this that makes me question much beloved institutions such as freedom of speech. Individuals have the protection of laws which limit speech (e.g., laws against defamation, slander, and libel), but nothing prevents people from making wildly absurd claims that can torpedo funding for a project that will benefit humanity.
Thank you, but shouldn't transmission loss be considered when one is considering consumption? I can see G, C, and E being clearly metered in large facilities, but trasmission loss can happen between the metering and consumption of the electricity. Or is that little bit considered insignificent?
You do realize that Japan still is involved, do you? It's an international project, they just chose to build the reactor in France rather than Japan (which makes sense, considering the population density of Japan vs France).
It's a billing isue building "huge" power plants let's the power company be more effecent in some ways but the furter that power goes the more transmission losses they get so they need to seperate the generation of power from the people using it so they know where to expand capasity for the best bang for the buck as it where.
Also if a power plant in New York is selling power to DC where they set the meter will change the useage picture so they look at supply as how much power is going to be supplyed to a specific location. The simple fact is the grid seperates the use of power from the generation of power to such an extent that you realy can't tell how much of any one plant's power is lost from transmission isues.
There are basicly 3 players in power the guys that make it the guys that send it around and the guys who use it and somone might do a little of all three they can generate 500MW buy 500MW use 300MW sell 650MW and lose 50MW but they guy selling the power does not care if he is losing that 50MW and the guys useing that 650MW don't care so he hase to eat the cost. By seperating the generation from useage they can get an accurate picture of what's going on and so they can say to the generation people I will pay you 9.801c per MW at location A and 9.701c per MW at location B.
Sources? or did you just pull that figure out of your ass?
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.