Biggest Obstacle of Nuclear Fusion Overcome?

Yetihehe writes "Nuclear fusion could become a more viable energy solution with the discovery of way to prevent super-hot gases from causing damage within reactors. The potential solution, tested at an experimental reactor in San Diego, US, could make the next generation of fusion reactors more efficient, saving hundreds of millions of euros a year."

Comments

I just want a Mr. Fusion in my car

[PrescriptionWarning]

but I guess it makes me wonder if such a thing would ever be possible? Can a car run purely off of garbage? Or does the fusion process require a more specific substance to begin with, like water or carbon or something?

Re:I just want a Mr. Fusion in my car

[Fordiman]

Deuterium, usually. Heavy hydrogen.

And, no. You can't have Mr. Fusion in your car. You have to use Budweiser in your Direct Ethanol Fuel Cell - which is fine; if a purpose for Budweiser can be found, it's better than drinking it.

Re:I just want a Mr. Fusion in my car

[NittanyTuring]

One of the problems with Mr. Fusion is that it would produce way too much energy. One banana peel, into pure energy, would produce 1.25 billion kilowatt-hours. How many miles can you get on that? Releasing such energy instantaneously would probably spell the end of this sector of the solar system.

Re:I just want a Mr. Fusion in my car

[greenegg77]

After all, Budweiser is just kidney-filtered Guiness...

Re:I just want a Mr. Fusion in my car

[Heraclius]

Budweiser is certainly a much less expensive fuel than gasoline, so that's a plus.

Re:I just want a Mr. Fusion in my car

[javamann]

And tastes the same, that's a minus

Wow!

[gasmonso]

The first post related to fusion on /. without declaring that cold fusion is only a few months away!

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Re:hmmm..

[GundamFan]

Well... What do you think they burn in these things? (kidding... put away the flamethrowers junior economists)

1:1.2784

[Anonymous Coward]

saving hundreds of millions of euros a year

You misspelled dollars.

Oh, right. That's not how you spell 'dollar' anymore.

hundres of millions of euros?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are that many foriegners being killed annually by fusion? I knew stuff was bad out there, but this is amazin

It'll Be All Done...

[Anonymous Coward]

...in 20 years.

Trust me. The fusion folks can be counted on to be consistent.

Re:summary is wrong

[The_Mr_Flibble]

And doc oc doesn't go crazy.

Re:Vapourwear

[famebait]

No, "vaporwear" would mean you're shrouded in smoke. This here is not smoke but plasma, and it's not doing the shrouding, it is itself shrouded in a magnetic field ("fluxwear", if you will), which following this discovery can be made more hardwearing than before, which will in turn protect from damage the hardware, which encloses the whole system and as such might be referred to as "hardwear" for the contents. It is important to be wary of the difference lest the reader grow weary. It's not really all that hard.

Didn't Dr. Octopus figure this one out already?

[Benjamin Shniper]

Using AI -controlled extra metal arms seems like a much cooler way to fix this problem of controlling the reaction to prevent outbursts. Plus you can beat up superheroes.

-Ben

Re:Solution: ditch your TV

[Tx]

Funny, I went the other way. After a long period of wasting time having long conversations with your wife, reading books, going biking, building mame cabinets and remodelling my house, I realised that was all a huge effort to expend just to avoid watching TV. Bought a 42" plasma, never looked back. ;)

Natural Organic Save Our Animals Power

[spun]

I suggest calling nuclear fusion "Natural Organic Save Our Animals Power," or NOSOAP. Something tells me hippies would love to have NOSOAP.

Re:Err...

[ultranova]

I think achieving energy breakeven is just an engineering problem. Once you scale up the reactor to a certain size then it breaks even.

Unfortunately, the big enough size is about 1.424025 × 10^29 kg. So I'd suggest finding out a more efficient solution and not depending just on economics of scale.

Re:And still people will complain...

[OldManAndTheC]

Clearly we must figure out how to compress environmentalists into super-dense pellets for use as fuel in fusion reactors.

They should vanish in a brilliant flash of green ...