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Yet Another Method Of Achieving Nuclear Fusion
deglr6328 writes "Recent research has seen the use of the pyroelectric effect, the compression of bubbles using ultrasound and gas jet irradiation for producing nuclear fusion on small tabletop-scales. Yet another method can now be added to the list which uses ultraintense laser irradiation striking a borated plastic target to heat a plasma to billion kelvin temperatures and achieves aneutronic (clean) proton-boron fusion. (The PRL paper can be read online.) Though, like the other recently discovered exotic methods of attaining fusion, it does not look like a method which can be scaled up to ignition or even anywhere near break even, it still may have important use in the laboratory for the examination of such incredibly high temperature plasmas."
With the rapid increases in solar and wind and geothermal and hot fractured rock and wave/water energy anyone searching for fusion as a way to provide power is just searching for a solution without a problem.
Really? Have you done the equations for how powerful those methods are? Geothermal is probably the most promising, but the others simply don't generate that much juice. For example, the most powerful windmill in existence can climb to about 10 megawatts. In comparison, we've got quite a few nuclear plants up in the Gigawatt range.
Basically, none of these "alternate energy technologies" has sufficient power density to be a replacement for existing powerplant technologies. I realize that many people are wowed by the impressive size of some of the solar and wind farms, but it's very important to put them into perspective. As power density goes, they suck in comparison to a real powerplant. As power production goes, they simply don't have enough power generation area to produce an output similar to that of existing plants.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"Tabletop fusion isn't going to happen"
The parent comment sounds similar to a lot of other myopic things people have said that turned out to be wrong, (i.e.: We can't fly, the world is flat, the sound barrier can't be broken, etc). Nobody remembers the names of the idiots who said these things.
If there is anything an education in science has taught me, it is that we humans have a pretty tentative grip on how things work, and there sure is a lot that we have to learn. Speaking of the strong nuclear force as though it were some insurmountable obstacle is ignorant.
Today's insoluble riddle will be tomorrow's household appliance.
When you're talking about billions of degrees the temperature scale is pretty irrelevant.
> And windmills are fun.
There are hundreds of remote towns in australia who are finding that wind generated power can be installed just to supply only the town's energy needs.
The wind generating power pylons can be installed and run just for the cost of maintenance of the power carriage coming into the town from more populated (and well powered) areas.
modern things in general do use less resources (as people would rather buy things that cost less to run).
One i know of is modern toilets, they use a hell of a lot less water than they used to.
Electric showers (vs the boiler)
home insulation (subsidised by british gas in the UK, iirc)
Either convince everybody they didn't really like that whole electricity lark anyway, or find a way to make more energy. The point of nuclear fussion is that its perfectly clean, and renewable.
I donn't know if you've just stumbled onto this line of reasoning, but you've just participated in the greatest debate raging today. On one side you have the Bob Dole's of the world who believe the only way to keep living on earth for another 100 years is to stop all birth, and all economic growth until the population of earth has receeded to about a billion people and then conserve energy until we've exhausted what we have. Then we all die. On the other side we have the technologists, who believe that any level of growth can be maintained by the continuous application of science. CO2 from coal plants can be pumped underground. Nuclear waste from fission plants can be safely processed. Fusion is viable and the pollution can be delt with. To me, the fact that both sides at least recognise there is a problem is progress. But I can't really say I'm for cowering in the dark with a candle in my hand just because we can do that for a really long time.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yeah, because hydrogen bombs require so much more energy than they put out. Not.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
"Let us assume for the sake of argument, that we have implemented a form of nuclear energy production that leaves something relatively harmless behind, such as helium. When this process is put into practice the world over, the effect on our environment could be Very Bad"
Uhhhhhh......why? I really think the new agey "everything humans do besides sitting in a ditch poking berries up thier noses is UNNATURAL AND THEREFORE EEEEEVILL AND BAAAAAD" nonsense is really dangerous magical thinking. We can't go back to the stone age just to make sure every last chipmunk lives a happy healthy full life and its just ludicrous to think so. Just because something is not cuddlyfuzzycute doesn't mean that it MUST somehow harm the planet. Helium is not a greenhouse gas, it is not an ozone depleting gas and it is TOTALLY inert. There is a reason its called a noble gas. I think we CAN manage Earth's resources wisely and we CAN produce the vast energies that will be required for the next stage of human civilization on Earth and we CAN do it without destroying the planet if we just use our heads and rigorously apply the scientific method.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Talk about hyperbole! Jeez glass houses an' all that. I find it funny and sad that responses to my post automatically assume that I must be some Rush Limbaugh loving anti-environmentalism dittohead jackass because I posted from a skeptical viewpoint and attacked illogical/fuzzyheaded magical thinking. Hint, I voted for Kerry (albiet grudgingly since I am more libertarian than democrat). I am fully for the reasoned and rational conservation and management of the environment so long as it is dictated very strictly by scientific knowledge and inquiry. What irritates me is when some unscientific Mother Gaia worshipping dolt goes on about how any technological progress beyond what we already have now is bad and wrong! :(
As a skeptic and a liberal I think it is sad that justified attacks on irrationality and anti-science nonsense are immediately seen as being synonymous with "an attack on the left". I hope it is not the case that "the left" has become so inextricably associated with the emptyheaded irrational brand of environmentalism that this is how it is seen by all other political groups, though judging from posts here, I fear this may indeed be the case.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"