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Lightning Fusion And Other Hot News
DumbSwede writes "PhysOrg.com reports that according to calculations by B.M. Kuzhevsky, the head of the neutron research lab at Moscow State University, neutron levels far above normal background levels exist during lightning strikes. While only a small percentage of rainwater contains atoms of deuterium, the lightning still provides enough energy to create fusion events. Frequent Slashdot readers no doubt remember recent articles on Fusion induced by sonic compression and more recently by pyroelectric effect. Perhaps more controversially, and yet to be discussed on Slashdot, the NIF has possible plans for a hybrid fusion approach that uses not only deuterium and tritium, but uranium and plutonium as well in what amounts to a miniaturized version of how thermonuclear weapons achieve fusion. Fears are that this could lead directly to micro-H-bombs. This year has also seen the final selection of France for the ITER experimental Fusion Reactor site. With all the recent discoveries and developments in fusion research, my question for Slashdotters - are we on the verge of something big that will make fusion a practical reality in a much shorter time frame than the often quoted '30 years away, and always will be'?"
Is it worthwhile to limit the advances of potentially destructive sciences like this one or is it an inevitability?
It seems to be that the way to keep the world safe from nuclear (or something else we may now uncover) holocaust is not to limit the technology that will be used as tools, but to increase the quality of life of any civilization desperate enough to commit mass-murder in an organized way.
World Changing - News for Humans, Stuff about our planet
We really shouldn't spare any resources researching and developing fusion power. It has the potential to solve many of our environmental and energy-scarcity problems in one fell swoop.
The development of fusion is more important than just about any other scientific project, as the abundance of cheap energy would enable other projects. And yet how much are governments/energy companies devoting to it? Less than what we spend securing a limited oil supply in an unstable part of the world. I wish we had more far-sighted, responsible leaders who are interested in more than lining their own pockets or winning the next election (pretty much the same thing).
I wouldn't say enviromentalist per se, but more of the anti corporateist that took over the large envirmental groups years ago.
The founder of green peace is NOT anti nuclear. How ever he left as it becamme more about stopping corporation, and less about making them become enviromentally friendly. Which nuclear power is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Anything you focus a huge-ass amount of energy of any kind on a little-bitty tiny amount of pretty much anything, like, the shit blows up and it goes nukular."
[-patiently awaiting Nobel comittee letter-]
While only a small percentage of rainwater contains atoms of deuterium, the lightning still provides enough energy to create fusion events.
Of course, the next interesting thing to do would be creating artificial lightning in a heavy water atmosphere... maybe this even has practical (neutron generation) uses?
But someone must have done this already. I'm to lazy to google-research this. Are there any such experiments?
David: Yeah. How about Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
David: Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Fine.
*ducks*
The fair contest idea seems to have been picked up around that time by the X-Prize guys and taken to resounding success, for which we should all be grateful. The need for fusion prizes remains.
Seastead this.
For decades now there's been talk that the secret to cheap fusion might be ball lightning. This recent finding would seem to bear that out.
Why not tap the power of lightning directly?
Okay, there will be some engineering issues since pretty much anything that interacts with lightning gets burnt to a crisp, but fusion has some similar technical problems so this isn't totally left field.
(a) how much actual power does lightning provide over, say, the continentaly US?
(b) what kinds of structures could be built/flown to tap into the electric charges in clouds?
FTA:
the same mechanism should also work in the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter where thunderstorms are also frequent and sporadic neutron streams should arise there.
Accordly to wikipedia, water in the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter are far lower compared to Earth's levels (.002% for Venus and 0.1% for Jupiter), so maybe observations of neutron emissions are not so affected by the "thundery" neutrons like the article proposes.
Reading the article about deuterium at wikipedia, I found a bit strange that there's no known natural process to produce it... maybe some chemistry-geek could comment on that... the article says that there is 10^15 deuterium atoms per cubic centimeter on Earth's atmosphere, considering the 6800:1 ratio when compared to hydrogen...
Is only that 10^15 atoms per cm^3 seems like too much atoms without known origin for me... (other than the big-bang, like the wikipedia article says)
I assume you mean "Chernobyls". More than that, actually. Coal mine accidents killed about 6000 (six thousands) people in 2004, the enormous majority in China. China is also the main coal supplier of the USA. Is that why coal is considered "safer than nuclear"? Because only some Chinese die?
It should also be noted that coal's carbon structure is a natural trap for heavy elements, especially uranides (thorium mostly), which is why you register a significant radiation level downwind from a coal-burning powered plant. You can wash the combustion output, but then you have to dispose acidic, radioactive sludge. Naaah. See this article.
But most of the pollution is not even coming from coal-burning plants, as explained in this article.. Excerpt: According to Stracher's forthcoming article in the "International Journal of Coal Geology," scientists have determined that coal fires in China consume up to 200 million tons of coal per year. For comparison, coal consumption in the United States during 2000 was just over one billion tons, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Since CO2 is formed by binding two oxygen atoms (molar wight 16) on each carbon atom (molar w. 12), 200 million tons of coal at 80% carbon form about 200* 0.8 * 16 * 2/ 12 = 427 million tons CO2. So when I hear well-meaning but clueless environmentalists worrying about cow farts while ignoring this huge problem, I know that whoever feeds them this disinformation has an agenda.
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
If you wanted to put it that way, a lightning bolt alone has more power than 1.21 Gigawatts.
Seeing as heat, electricity, etc is all measured in watts, thru the amount of heat (second law of thermodynamics) one lightning bolt, (which apparently one bolt of lightning can power NYC for almost one year solid at max consumption) and you assume that per year each household uses approx.
Assume (by most estimates) that each household uses on average ~20 KW per month (with pools, or other power-consuming, lossy devices that may be installed in a house.) Let's do that by NYC's population and estimated power consumption.
NYC population : 8 Million"
20 KW/month per household * 12 Mths/Yr = 240 KWatts per household per year....
240 KWatts per year per household * 8,000,000 (approximately by census) people = 1,920,000,000 KW, which equates to 1,920,000,000,000 watts (1.92 TERAWATTS)
You're kinda far off, there.... by about a thousand times plus. And that's what a lightning bolt is rated at, around 1/3 of it's lowest potential. We've had far worse lightning strikes in other areas of the world.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Popular Science Magazine, which states that the average household consumes on average 14 KW per month..... I made a larger estimate based upon our standardly-used electronics.
My houehold, according to our power company, uses approximately 16 KW per month (That's assuming you don't run everything 24/7 like most geeks would, I actually turn off my lights/computer/stove/TV/microwave/mini-fridge when not in use.)
In my particular case, my estimate, according to MLGW (Memphis Light, Gas, & Water, which is powered by TVA, a hydroelectric plant, which may make electricity FAR CHEARPER than the region you live in) is still accurate, and Memphis doesn't consume nearly as much power as a heavy metropolitan area such as New York City.
My estimates are still feasible, by the lowest energy-consumption standards in the US. Even among Amish people, whom I've lived among for 14 months. They still use power, they just don't use technology.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Financier Roger Babson had a chat with Edison, in which he observed that most of Edison's inventions grew out of Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, and posed the question, what area of science did Edison think would be next to yield important technological developments. Edison's answer was, Einstein's theory of gravitation. So Babson founded an institute to encourage research in gravitation (which is still around) (by which I mean the institute; of course gravitation is still around).
At this point it's plain to see Edison was wrong. But if you look at what was known at the time, it was an insightful guess. It's just that, as progress marched on, people discovered reasons why it's going to be very hard to make handy widgets that work based on Einstein's gravity theory -- the primary reason being that, in practical terms, it's so much weaker than EM.
Everyone in my household turns off everything when not in use (this includes our office computer (400 W/Hr usage by power supply draw) our mini fridges (which usually hold nothing at all to begin with, except for me, who freezes drives in a mere silly attempt to make them work again {which, out of the six drives I have frozen, 3 worked, 3 went to hell in a handbasket, not like they weren't already there, but...})
Our actual usage, being careful, resourceful, and knowledgeable (We do run about 10% of our power from solar [water heater, air conditioner VIA a swamp cooler, etc.}) is probably a very small fraction higher than I'm estimating, since our power bill keeps rising every month. However, we're still paying about 1/2 as much as other richer households within 500 feet of our house, and they complain because we get a lower rate (because we use solar power to put energy back into the grid, instead of continually drawing it out.)
So odds are, you *ARE* using (maybe not 60X the electricity, but perhaps 10X {if you used 60x the electricity, in an area like NYC, you'd be broke unless you had millions of dollars}) more electricity than I'm using. Of course, I'm also using solar-powered chargers (Lots of things we have are battery-powered, like wireless headphones, wireless keyboard/mouse, a couple of speakers thanks to a couple batteries and a transceiver, guitar pedals [9 volts each] and more...)
Hell, I get on average 70 MPG with a greascar kit. Start with regular petroleum in diesel form, combust, use heat exchanger from engine to veggie oil tank, heat up veggie oil to make thin enough for combustion, get hellacious gas mileage in comparison to running pure diesel.
This is what the Radical Faeries are all about, man. And I'm one of them. Make way, or drown in the oil you're so dependent upon.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We've had one meltdown in the commercial reactors in the US that was due to not following procedure and about ~30 something things going wrong simultaniously. Radiation released to the public was about the amount you'd get on a couple cross country flights. We don't have a problem with this in the US.
No, we have not had any meltdowns in the US. A meltdown is when the reactor core overheats, and you get molten fissile material burning a hole through the bottom of the reactor.
Three Mile Island was not a meltdown, it was a fairly small (intentional) release of radioactive gas*, done to avoid the possibility of an explosion of hydrogen that operators thought might have been generated by high-temperature steam that was released through a series of other problems and errors. Even if the operators hadn't released that gas, and there had been an explosion, it almost certainly still would not have lead to a meltdown. Unlike reactors designed by Soviet communist fools, American reactors do not operate in or near a regime with positive feedback. Canadian CANDU reactors are even safer, as the moderator required for the reaction to happen (heavy water, or D2O) is also the coolant. If something goes wrong, it boils off, and the reaction stops before anything gets too out of hand. Pebble bed reactors are even safer--as I understand it, they operate in a regime where Doppler broadening at high temperatures decreases the neutron capture cross-section enough to stop the reaction. The point is that Three Mile Island wasn't actually a very dangerous failure, and that it wasn't close to being a meltdown. It was bad, but probably also a worst case for a US reactor.
As others have pointed out, it is true that nuclear is more expensive than natural gas-generated power, however the cost of natural gas power depends primarily on the cost of natural gas (whereas uranium is a small portion of the cost with nuclear power). If you also include a reasonable carbon tax, nuclear can start looking pretty good. It's the only serious non-CO2 producing candidate for baseline electricity production. Wind and solar can effectively be used supplementally, but as a baseline source, you'd have to factor in the cost of storing power for use at night or during cloudy or calm periods, and that's going to be extremely expensive. Most reasonable proponents of wind power will tell you it's not ever going to make up more than 10 or 15% of US power, even in a best case. With solar, you can do some simple calculations based on the solar radiation flux and realize that the land area required for it to replace most or all of our energy needs would be absurd (as in, by a couple decades from now, we'd have to cover an area larger than California with solar). Hydro is great, but there are a fixed number of rivers around to dam, and it's very hard politically. There's no way, for instance, that Hetch Hetchy could be dammed today--in fact, that dam may eventually get removed for environmental reasons.
*the amount of radioactive material released during the Three Mile Island incident was such that, if you were standing immediately outside the power plant's outer fence during the whole thing, you would have received a dose equal to a normal year's worth of background radiation in the US, or about 3 months' worth of background in France. Background radiation varies subtantially by geographic region due to naturally occuring radioactive elements in the soil.
One more thing for the spelling Nazis who were picking on someone for spelling Chernobyl as "Chernoble": since Russia and the Ukraine use a different alphabet than we do, English translations of place names are just transliterations. For some names (such as Chebychev, aka Chebyshev, aka Tchebychev), there are several common English spellings. It may well be the case that Chernoble is simply a less common transliteration. I don't know, and I suspect you don't, either, so give the guy a break.
There are numberous models for development of alternatives to the current system of fueling things. Some involve dramatic jumps in efficiency. Others involve recovery of system waste. Other models involve outside sourcing of the energy from "conventional sources" while still others involve unique technologies for using energy in the structure of matter and the universe. Probably improving efficiency is the front line for action at this time. All other methodologies probably take too long for immediate results.
A dramatic jump in thermal efficiency of heat engines associated with power generation in cars etc is really quite easy. Modern triple recovery turbines produce 65% thermal efficiency. Fuel Reformer/Fuel Cell technology has the same efficiency. This is compared to the approximately 18% from modern car engines. This is a case of changing engines. Fuel Reformer/Fuel Cell technology has the advantage here of being nearly infinitely throttleable. Its problem is the core cost of the factories to build it. (This needs a change in tax policy -- Read pass the Fair Tax. www.fairtax.org) Turbine technology applies better to hybrid or to extreme steady uses like long haul trucking. Both of these technologies have an advantage of being able to adapt to a wide range of fuel sources.
Sourcing outside of conventional sources is also quite easy. A Standard "Heat Pump" could be used to drive a sterling cycle engine and would have a COP over 3. There is a lot of discussion of magnetic devices that essentially do with solid state the same process. Cold fusion which is clearly a normal natural lightning process has great potential. I have witnessed 5 seconds of sustained entirely natural fusion from a lightning bolt. (REALLY SCARY STUFF -- a 30 foot diameter ball lightning popping and smapping off small balls etc) There is talk of many such devices in many areas. They all seem to work and all seem to tick off the physics community who tries to deny that they exist.
I know of several persons who have done very spectacular work in the field of energy improvements. These range from storage devices to actual development of new energy sources. Almost all of these have come to nothing in the face of a banking system wedded to the Oil Industry. Having run a small business myself and having left the industry because of bankers preventing the prospects of rational growth in order to protect other investments of theirs, I understand this completely. For those who think you can offer energy and profits and get a job, join the line behind those with better mouse traps. It just isn't so that a working invention equals success.
Out of kindness to some readers I will note that I owned a millwork business and apartments. I left the millwork business because even with perfect credit and large equity to assure payment, I could not get loans to be able to grow. The tax laws prevent equity funding. The bankers were protecting their friends from competition! In the Apartment business I for profit and paying all bills 100% on time found my credit cut off during the S&L disaster as they funded people who didn't pay and broke their institutions. Never say this stuff about "Free Enterprise" is real. The whole system is very much rigged and your money cannot buy it. The inventors of good new technology run into the fact that 80% or more of all investment in the world is in Energy Technology that will be obsolete if they accomplish their goal. Freeing Mankind by a benevolent energy methodology is absolutely against the value of these investments of our world financial institutions.
This isn't troll its just the facts. I spent 3 years recently researching Hybrid Vehicle technology. Frankly there is lots of working new stuff out there (generally no the hybrids). The problem is the financial people who stand to lose trillions of dollars to human success. Look at the USA right now (9/23/2005). The country is hobbled by two hurricanes hitting the oil infrastructure. Why hasn't new stuff been built and spread out so it cannot be volunerable? (This banking stuff!)
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Some years back, a physicist from India published a journal paper on this topic. He measured a few excess neutrons occurring during large lightning strikes, calculated the rates ( I think it was related to the naturally occurring amount of deuterium in rainwater ( a VERY tiny amount)). That paper made the point that while a lightning strike might make a few fusions, it's such a small amount that it's main benefit is the paper published about the phenomena. The paper was a letter to Nature, if memory serves.
Unless, of course, fusion reactions occur in the upper end of atom speeds when the mean is at 4 million Kelvins. I presume so, because otherwise the Sun would burn all of it's core hydrogen nearly instantaneously (every time two atoms collide - happens quite often at those speeds) and would consequently blow apart from the huge energy burst, and whatever remains would then go out because no hydrogen remained. Since Sun is still shining, I consider my interpretation likely.
In any case, fusion can occur in any temperature, because quantum uncertainty can always make two nucleus to appear close enough each other for strong nuclear force to bind them. Coming to think of it, what would happen if you froze hydrogen atoms near absolute zero - since the speed of the atoms would be very well known (close to zero, deviating less and less the lower the temperature gets) their position should become very uncertain, to the point of essentially occupying the same space; would this lead to fusion ? Would it be easier to cool a hydrogen pellet to low enough temperature to ignite fusion than to heat it up ? Would it get overclokcers processor cooling equipment outlawed as weapons of mass destruction ?-)
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.