Slashdot Mirror
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'?"
If we were supposed to have invented a good process for fusion reactors, Doc would have showed up by now and shown us his MrFusion plans!
There are always a decent number of promising looking new strains of scientific research, in every field. The trouble is that all of these have a huge washout rate. Each will be developed into usable products over thirty years, if we can discover how to apply what we've learned today in a practical way. The trouble is that the application will always require a whole host of other discoveries, and plenty of tedious implementation research - and if anything goes wrong along the way, the idea will wash out.
All the past discoveries looked just as promising as anything you see today. They didn't pan out yet. Today's look good today. They're worth following up on. But nobody can just tell you if these things will be workable in the end - that's what the years of research are for.
"Why, yes, we are 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', and we always will be!"
From now on, whenever there is a thunderstorm; I am going to refer to it as a neutron storm. That just sounds so cool.
Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
Dr. Emmett Brown: No no no, this sucker's electrical, but it requires a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.
So... what the article is saying is that Dr. Brown used the electricity from the lightning strike, instead of plutonium, to generate the nuclear reaction to generate the electricity to power the fluxcapacitor?
It all makes sense now?
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
Now 'ol george is gonna commit to a war against the wheather
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).
*Now* I understand why we needed to steal Plutonium from the Libyans...
And my answer for you, Zonk, as it frequently is for giant world-changing questions like these, is, "How the hell should I know? I'm a freakin' sysadmin."
Causation can cause correlation
(How's that for a trollish Subject line!!)
The theory goes like this:
Environmental lobyists successfully made nuclear power unpopular. They did this by beating up the dangers of accidents, and the difficulties of storing the waste products until we work out what to do with them. 200 years at the outside, not the x million year half-life. By so doing, they stifled the development that would have lead to much safer, more efficient systems. As an example, the pebble bed systems being developed in China.
With nuclear power out of the equation, we had to turn to other areas. This meant the only viable scheme for baseload power generation: Fossil fuels. Mainly coal. No, do not talk about renewables. Solar is far too expensive and inefficient, wind would require so many turbines it would cause climate change, and, while hydro power has proved succesfull in countries that are geographically suitable, just you try damming a river these days!
Replacing nuclear with coal was thought to be a win, as it would be a decade or so before they gathered enough evidence to prove the Greenhouse Effect. So, we continue to mine, ship and burn coal, a procedure which, incidentally, kills Chernobles of miners every year. (maybe I exagerate: figures, anyone?)
So we reach today. CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere by the gigatonne, the temperature inexorably rising, and the nuclear solution still a dirty word. Well done, Greenpeace!!
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Frequent Slashdot readers no doubt remember recent articles on Fusion induced by sonic compression and more recently by pyroelectric effect.
This obviously excludes the editors.
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.
NZ doesnt need fission reactors if the lake levels are managed correctly. Theres room for more wind turbines, and more exploitation of the geothermal fields.
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)
Isn't asking about nuclear fusion on an IT site kind of like asking for formula one driving tips on, well, an IT site? The only correct answer you'll get is "I have no goddam idea."
If you'd known guys like the guys I've known who've built and operated nuclear plants, you'd realize how lucky we've been there haven't been numerous meltdowns. And nuclear waste disposal is a problem; looked around Hanford lately? But it was simple economics that stalled the nuclear power program. Hydro is cheap. Coal is cheap. And most especially virtually all new power plants built in the past couple decades in the US have been natural gas -- because we've put in a whole bunch of new wells and it has been both cheap and relatively clean-burning (although extraction can really ruin water resources in, say, Wyoming). Nuclear plants can be built more safely now than in the 50s and 60s, but up until just now they haven't been economically competitive with natural gas-fired plants. Industry makes its investments where it can make the best return.
The destruction of natural gas wells and pipelines in the Gulf has now changed that. Yes, there could have been more nuclear plants built meanwhile, if nobody had cared about safety (which is expensive to build in), either in terms of potential catastrophe or radioactive releases. You can call the people who care about standards for such things "environmentalists" -- although in reality most of the restrictions are put there by our government because it by law covers the insurance for nuclear plants, and it doesn't want to be over-exposed to catastrophic loss (either to the plants, or cities downwind). Of course, if the government were sane it would have invested more in levees....
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
In order to use nuclear power in a widespread fashion, we'd relaly have to have fast breeder reactors, to extend the lifetime of our supply of fissionable materials.
The problem is that fast breeder reactors are perfect for making weapons-grade Plutonium too.
So although I very much lament how poorly most people understand nuclear power and how they don't understand how much cleaner it is than any alternative (except solar), there are other impediments too.
I have to say I found it hilarious that North Korea demanded the US build them a light-water reactor. We suck at power reactors. They should ask the French to help them build one of their reactor types instead. Better yet, get the French to make you a pebble-bed reactor.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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/
Think of capitalist complaints against communism. They complain that a communist society offers no incentive for innovation. With advances in robotics and food technology, there would be no incentive for innovation if the world had free power, except innovation for its own sake. What could you possibly offer someone who can already control an army of robots to make anything he wants?
I'm not paranoid enough to claim that current governments and corporations realize the radical implications of free energy and are trying to suppress it.[1] But this is something they will come to think about once the technology begins to blossom. And they will suppress it until they figure out how to sustain the current socioeconomic paradigm.
And they will do it by attempting to control the flow of information. Expect to see a flurry of laws limiting robotics technology to corporations for "public safety." Expect to see more DMCA style laws to protect "intellectual property." This is a sham. The concept of intellectual property requires material scarcity in order to be relevant. Indeed, aside from praise, why should an artist/engineer/designer be given anything if every material need and desire is satisfied? And what would be the value of anything we give if it cost us nothing?
Sadly, I think few will have the foresight to work for such a future.
[1]Though with obvious possibility of cheap nuclear power, I have my doubts. Waste can easily be disposed by launching rockets to the sun and we'd still save money on energy.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I don't get any of your calculations. Shouldn't your units be in KWh? And, having asked that, wouldn't a single 75W light bulb left on all the time consume 54KWh/month? I think an average household consumes a LOT more than 20KWh/month. Also, your household estimate may be a bit high -- there might still be 8M people in NYC, but I don't think they each live alone with only a single 75W bulb to keep them lit/warm/company.
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.
Yeah, I don't quite know why the question is being asked of /. but anywho, glad it is...
I don't particularly trust anything at all I read on "physorg" unless it is also published somewhere else and this search is not boosting my confidence in the article's validity. Other things which make me doubt the clam VERY VERY MUCH are the fact that lightning has a temperature usually not reported in the literature to be above 40-50,000 Kelvin while virtually all fusion devices (which are in thermal equilibrium, as this would also be the mechanism here presumably unless they are proposing some super exotically weird non-equilibrium mechanism) need to attain temperatures in the MILLIONS of K range to even begin seeing neutrons. The fact that they are also claiming that this explains why they see "100 times the background" levels of neutrons during lightning storms is, I think, bordering on the ridiculous. There is a reason it took us until just 2 years ago to discover that lightning emits x-rays, and that is because uhmmm it involves studying lightning at very close range! Interference effects in sensitive electronic equipment caused by the insanely huge magnetic and electric field pulse very close by are extremely hard to eliminate. Until I read the paper, I'll very highly doubt this neutron/fusion "discovery".
Anyway, I think the following line in the submission needs some factual clarification:
"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 is a bit of a convoluted misconception. Firstly when NIF (if they ever finish the damn thing) compresses and ignites its DT capsules, they will theoretically produce a gain of something like a maximum of ~50. That is to say, they will release ~50 times more energy than was delivered to them by the lasers which are used to start the reaction and this will result in the emission of a neutron pulse and other thermal and electromagnetic energy in the 10s of megajoules range. This is exactly a replica of a thermonuclear bomb in the lab (without the primary). They ARE "micro-H-bombs", that's the whole idea of the thing. Secondly NIF want's to use uranium and plutonium as reported recently not because they will increase the fusion yield of the micro-bombs but rather because the megabar, megakelvin conditions achievable with NIF will allow the examination of these metals at the conditions which are found at the cores of imploding primaries (and secondary "sparkplugs"). These are called "subcriticals" and they allow the examination of the equation of state" of these metals at energy regimes pertinent to A-bombs without having an actual chain reaction occur.
As for the question "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'"...
Don't count on it. There are lots of very promising and very very exciting ideas out there, but fusion on an economic (and laboratory; ie. not H-bombs) scale is just damn hard to do. The 30 year rule, sadly, still applies. T
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
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.
Yes, from now on it will only (perpetually) be 20 years away...
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.
Let's see. You've got your power/energy units mixed up. Watts is the power unit, and to qualiy that in terms of energy used, you need to know time. The convinent unit for our application is the kilo-Watt-hour (kWh), which is just an average of the power applied over an hour. No big deal, but let's try to see what's really going on, because I think your average Watt usage is about an order of magnitude off, just guessing. Personally, I have a mini-machine shop complete with 200 Amp 480 service, welders, compressors, plasma cutters, lights that turn night into day, enough 120V to run the entire block if I wanted and all sorts of other good stuff that I use often, and I don't come close to using 20kW on a consistent basis, or basically ever. I can only use one machine at a time, afterall. Unless I splurge on some good CNC equipment, anyway :D
From UCI, they say that the average home in 1999 used 866kWh/month, it probably hasn't changed drastically. If we call a month 30 days, that's 866/kWh/720 hours. Hours cancel out, we get 866/720kW, or about 1.2kW average over 70 days. With AC and fridges, that seems entirely reasonable, if a bit low. Also, computers rarely used the full rated output of the power supply, so if you're a geek with a bunch, you've got to take that into consideration.
I've had a hard time with finding exactly how much energy is contained in an average lightning bolt, I must admit. I've seen anything from 5,000 Amps at 2,000,000 Volts (which sounds reasonable) over 200 miliseconds to a hundred or a thousand times that (which dosen't very sound reasonable) Watts=Volts*Amps, so my reasonable sounding lightning strike will discharge 10 GigaWatts over 200ms. With 3.6 million miliseconds in an hour and a bit of division, it looks like our bolt will do 2777kWh if entirely captured, which is enough to run our average house for 3 months and some change, not bad. Shame there's no way to capture it.
Truthfully, I have no idea how close that figure is to an average lightning bolt, it seems that most of the numbers out there people just pulled out of the air. I could be off very far either direction, and likely am, for all I know. Nature is pretty fantastic, though, isn't it?
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
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.