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19 million Amps

Posted by Hemos on from the coursing-thru-their-veins dept.

deblau writes "On July 27, scientists at the National Nuclear Security Administration's Nevada Test Site said they generated a current equal to about four times all the electrical current on Earth. During the few millionths of a second that it operated, the 650-ton Atlas pulsed-power generator discharged about 19 million amps of current through an aluminum cylindrical shell about the size of a tuna can. Official news release is available from the DOE (PDF)."

7 of 457 comments (clear)

  1. What? by callipygian-showsyst · · Score: 5, Informative
    ...Test Site said they generated a current equal to about four times all the electrical power on Earth.

    ...

    During the few millionths of a second that it operated, the 650-ton Atlas pulsed-power generator discharged about 19 million amps

    Um....unless things have changed in the 25+ years since I took a college physics class, we measure POWER in WATTS, and CURRENT in AMPS. So the number you quoted in AMPS that you claims is eqaual to four times the POWER in amps doesn't make any sense. Of course, that never stopped our /. Editors before!

    --
    Best Buy can have you arrested
  2. Two points by TildeMan · · Score: 3, Informative

    1. Current != power. Power = I^2 R, or any equivalent formula.

    2. They did this on Earth, so it was actually only 80% of the electrical power (or insert appropriate noun here, see point 1) on Earth. Assuming it was four times the normal power levels without this extra current.

  3. Re:current == power? by stinerman · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sure.

    I = V/R
    If R->0, I->INF.

    Its certainly possible.

  4. Exploding apples with capacitors by Cyclotron_Boy · · Score: 4, Informative
    This is a fun project. I was able to get about 18kA repeatably through a variety of objects from a small cap bank using low inductance leads and vacuum triggered spark gap. Lots of people do fun projects like this at home in their garages

    For example
    Bert Hickman's coin shrinking
    Thaltech's capacitor experiments
    Sam Barros's Power Labs page
    Bill Beaty's webpage
    and many others...

  5. Re:current == power? by InvalidError · · Score: 5, Informative

    From later in TFA: "During the few milionths of a second that it operates, Atlas generates electrical energy roughly four times the Earth's entire energy production."

    This is almost technically right except for "Atlas generates"... Atlas is only a huge capacitor bank, it does not magically "generate" energy, it only stores existing energy.

    Now, if worldwide production is something like 25GW and the pulse lasts 10us, we have 25GW * 4 * 10us = 1MJ, a balievable finite quantity.

  6. Power Calculation by superstick58 · · Score: 4, Informative
    If we consider the resistivity of Aluminum as 2.82x10^-8 Ohm-meters and the dimension of a soup can is .2159m length by .0889m diameter, we can calculate the approximate resistance of the aluminum and therefore the power.

    resistance = resistivity*length/area

    It turns out that the resistance is near 1 ohm at .981 Ohms. This means that the power would be found with the following equation.

    P = I^2*R

    Therefore we can estimate the total power to be a huuuuuge amount, 354.14x10^12 Watts.

  7. 19 million Amperes is chicken feed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    My home electric stove+oven has 2x 50A circuit breakers; my electric water heater, 2x 40A; my electric clothes dryer, 2x 30A (all 230V service in US). There are at least 15 million houses in the US with similar electrical service. Some industrial plating baths use 6000 Amperes at less than 3V. So 19 million amps is a serious underestimate of the current being used in the world.