International Fusion Reactor Project Moves Forward

mjgp2 writes to mention a BBC article about an agreement which will begin construction on the second most expensive scientific collaboration, after the ISS : the world's first large-scale fusion reactor. From the article: "The seven-party consortium, which includes the European Union, the US, Japan, China, Russia and others, agreed last year to build Iter in Cadarache, in the southern French region of Provence ... He said that the participants would aim to ratify their agreement before the end of the year so construction on the facility could start in 2007. Officials said the experimental reactor would take about eight years to build. The EU is to foot about 50% of the cost to build the experimental reactor. If all goes well with the experimental reactor, officials hope to set up a demonstration power plant at Cadarache by 2040. "

Comments

wow - power by 2040

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet, gotta start somewhere I guess.

Re:wow - power by 2040

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least the cockroaches that survive the nuclear war will have a source of electrical power.

- Anonymous Optmimist

Knocked down by 6 years

[PoitNarf]

"If all goes well with the experimental reactor, officials hope to set up a demonstration power plant at Cadarache by 2040"

Guess the traditional "40 years away" is now 36 years?

Re:Knocked down by 6 years

[Anonymous Coward]

You live in 2004?

Re:Knocked down by 6 years

[antiaktiv]

And maybe the traditional 36 years is now 34 years.

Re:Knocked down by 6 years

[ArsenneLupin]

John Titor?

Re:Knocked down by 6 years

[PoitNarf]

Yeah, shoulda previewed it more closely :P

Re:Knocked down by 6 years

[Aglassis]

I hate to break it to the project leaders, but if everything goes well private industry will build fusion reactors well before 2040.

Re:Knocked down by 6 years

[csnydermvpsoft]

I hate to break it to the project leaders, but if everything goes well private industry will build fusion reactors well before 2040.

Good - then they will have accomplished their intent. They're not trying to take over energy supply from private industry; they're trying to get clean, cheap energy. If industry jumps on the bandwagon, all the better.

Re:Knocked down by 6 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, they will re-invent atomic theory from the ground up as well, just so they don't have to use knowledge gained by, you know, public gov't funded universities.

Re:Knocked down by 6 years

[wiredlogic]

36... If you're counting with heavy integers.

Re:Knocked down by 6 years

[wealthychef]

Yes, and then they'll patent their one-off "discoveries," built on the backs of our tax dollars, and charge the crap out of us for the energy. Meanwhile, the Republicans will grant them a monopoly, and the Democrats will try to shut it all down because it isn't made out of vegetable oil and is somehow racist.

Re:Knocked down by 6 years

[Anonymous Coward]

I have worked in the field as a PhD student and one reason for the incredible delays is funding and approval.

Fusion reactors are very, very expensive. Especially as it is a non-military geovernment-funded research project.

There was an ITER design about 10 - 15 years ago. This was discarded because it was
too expensive. It was redesigned and a few years after that approved.

So, yes, it takes forever, but a large part of forever is politics and funding,
not physics or engineering.

We are gnats on an elephant

[BadAnalogyGuy]

We are these little intelligent creatures that live on an insignificant planet revolving around an insignificant yellow star in one of billions of solar systems among billions of galaxies in this universe.

It's amazing to me that we should be able to probe the laws of the universe with our limited energy reserves and stunted perspective.

Will we really be able to create the conditions that led to the creation of the universe in an Earth-based laboratory?

It's really fucking amazing.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah fusion had nothing to do with the birth of the universe.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[RsG]

"gnats on an elaphant"... BadAnalogyGuy

Congratulations on what is easily the most apt user ID on /. :-P

Minor quibble though - I wouldn't call this "creating the conditions that led to the creation of the universe". Fusion =! the big bang - this is more like recreating a dwarf star (one which can burn deuterium, but not elemental hydrogen).

Though it's still obviously a big deal, from a science/engineering/environmental perspective.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[eonlabs]

The better question is,
Will we be able to create the conditions that led to the creation of the univers in an Earth-based laboratory without killing ourselves!
I certainly hope so. Cheap clean energy is a good thing.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... fusion didn't help create the universe.

It was more of an anti-matter/matter reaction. But don't let that from keeping your sense of wonderment.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[thePig]

Actually it is not that amazing.
The probability of intelligent lives discovering truth is indeed small...
But, as you mentioned, there is so much matter and so much variations in the universe, that this probability converts to millions of possibilities.
We are just lucky that we fell in to that lot.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[MrSquirrel]

Actually, no ones KNOWS how the universe was created. My theory is that that the great Squirrel God was bored so he created the universe as his plaything. Now he carries the universe around in his mouth. Also, he says the universe tastes like licorice.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[RsG]

I beleive the universe was sneezed out in the great green Arkleseizure. Every day, I pray for deliverance from the coming of the great white hankercheif...

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[i_should_be_working]

A fun fact I like to wow people with is where the hottest and coldest places in the known universe are; New Jersey and Colorado.

Well at least they were. Princeton's Tokamak is no longer running and lot's of people have BECs now.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[superyooser]

Probably not, but the Earth does make a great laboratory for learning about the universe.

You come from a position of regarding the Earth as insignificant, but I can see that you are closer to recognizing what inspired the documentary The Privileged Planet.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[hackwrench]

That's the one thing about physical space and people I never quite got. Thousands of light years looks more impressive to them when they look up on the night sky than when it's written down on paper. What does physical size have to do with the ability to probe the laws of the universe? If that's what really matters, we have this huge sun nearby. We should ask it to do it for us. Oh and we'd better ask it to use small words!

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because you haven't been touched by His Noodly Appendage.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[Anonymous Coward]

Those people that say the French are cowards obviously never played Halflife

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[ultranova]

We are these little intelligent creatures that live on an insignificant planet revolving around an insignificant yellow star in one of billions of solar systems among billions of galaxies in this universe.

Insignificant to who ? "Insignificant" means "not significant"; it is not a quality of the entity being observed, but simply an expression of the priority ("don't waste time with this") assigned to the entity by of the observer, which in turn depends on the values of the observer. As such, simply saying something is "insignificant" is meaningless without also specifying the entity who's POV you are talking about.

And, of course, the very concept of assigning priorities assumes a limited observer - that is, an observer that cannot pay attention to each detail of the system under observation, and therefore has to choose which ones are worth being observed. It is easy to imagine observers to which this doesn't apply: God, obviously, as well as any non-realtime system - either one that records the observations, or one that effectively exists outside of time (in an accelerated time frame, for example) or simply a powerfull enough supercomputer or other intelligence. For such observers, the concept of insignificance would be essentially meaningless, since there would be no detail that couldn't be noted.

Of course we have no scientific evidence of such observers. However, we don't have scientific evidence of any other kind of observers either, save ourselves. And I'm very significant to myself, as is my kin, the people I know personally, the people I've heard of, and the human race in general.

So, everyone: please stop spouting this nonsense of "insignificant planet orbiting insignificant star etc etc". It sounds deep and philosophical, but is utter nonsense. Of course, so a many deep and philosophical thoughts too...

Besides, for all you know, our descendants might conquer the entire universe and become absolute rulers of everything you see in the night sky. And the bacteria that supposedly evolved into us were unlikely to seem any more significant than any other unicellular life forms. The guy who first connected two computers with a network was unlikely to see the Internet in his minds eye; neither was James Hargreaves likely to imageine the Apollo missions when he designed the spinning jenny.

It is foolish to make claims about human races place in the universe when humanity has barely gone through the industrial revolution and is just beginning to understand its potential. We are already powerfull beyond the wildest dreams of the medieval thinkers; you don't know where we will end up, so don't make statements about it.

Sorry for the rant, but these kind of baseless statements annoy me, as does them getting moderated insightfull.

Re:We are gnats on an elephant

[A Nun Must Cow Herd]

That's a bad analogy.

transporting electricity

[Douglas Simmons]

Just like there is room for improvement in battery technology, is there any chance we can come up with a way to transport electricity over long distances without it diminishing in power as fast as it does now? Or do physics tell us otherwise? That's the one thing holding us back from making super-duper large nuclear plants in the middle of nowhere...

Re:transporting electricity

[DreadSpoon]

You'd simply need a resistance-free wire. ... good luck with that.

Re:transporting electricity

[ShaneThePain]

high temperature super-conductors.

Re:transporting electricity

[Nutt]

Superconducting wires would elminate resistive losses but I think you'd still have inductive and capacitive effects so there's no way to get a perfect lossless line.

Re:transporting electricity

[centie]

Physics tells us that the energy lost from transmitting electricity (as heat) is RI^2, and power is IV (I = Current, V = Voltage, R = Resistance). So to send lots of power without much heating, you use high voltages and low current. This is whats done currently, to the point where the wires can't really take much more voltage (well, not cheaply anyway).

There's only one proposed solution I'm aware of, which is using high temperature superconductors as wires. These have very low resistance (in some cases theoretically 0) so reduce the energy lost by ohmic heating (the RI^2 thing). Plus they can conduct around 10* the voltage of current wires. The only problem is there still very difficult to make at all, let alone into wires, having only been discovered in 1986. The link below has some more info,

http://ec.europa.eu/energy/electricity/publication s/doc/underground_cables_ICF_feb_03.pdf

Re:transporting electricity

[ClickOnThis]

Superconducting wires would elminate resistive losses but I think you'd still have inductive and capacitive effects so there's no way to get a perfect lossless line.

I think you could take care of inductive and capacitive losses by going to DC. If you really could use superconductors for the entire distribution network, then in theory, you'd eliminate the need for high-voltage AC transmission to avoid I^2*R losses, followed by step-down transformers to provide safer low-voltage levels in customers' homes. Funny -- as I recall, didn't Thomas Edison propose DC in the first place?

Re:transporting electricity

[ronanbear]

here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductors

Transmission losses represent a certain percentage of transmission. All they do is lower the efficiency. Use 2 cables in parallel instead of 1 and you halve the power lost through heat.

Fusion doesn't look like it's gonna be cheap anyway so it's just a balance between transmission costs and the costs associated with citing these facilities closer to their customers

Re:transporting electricity

[RsG]

Like someone else said, what you're thinking of is high temperature superconductors.

Superconductive materials transmit electricity without resistance. A 10 meter long superconductive cable will have the same losses in transmission as a 10 kilometer one. I am unsure whether this is because the resistance is zero, or so close as makes no difference, but the upshot is vastly improved effeciency for any proccess that is ineffecient due to electrical losses.

The problem is that most superconductive materials only remain superconductive if they're very very cold. Unless you fancy equipping your transmission lines with cryogenic plants, you can't use them to carry power. There has been a lot of work on "high temperature" superconductors ("high" in this case can mean what we'd consider ambient temperature), but AFAIK we don't have a solution yet.

Ironically much of the research into these materials is tied into magnetic confinement for fusion research - if you're using a magnetic field to confine the fusion plant's plasma, then you'll get much better results with superconductive coils than you would with normal materials (though under the circumstances, we might be able to get away with low temperature superconductors, since the energy lost to running the cryo plant is offset by the energy saved from higher magnetic field effeciency).

Re:transporting electricity

[Jonboy X]

[I]s there any chance we can come up with a way to transport electricity over long distances without it diminishing in power as fast as it does now?

6 words: dump trucks full of car batteries

That is all.

Re:transporting electricity

[Goblez]

So my dream-like thought here would be a method of converting electricity into light and back. Seeing as how we can do it for information, I would think that it would be possible at some point in time. Or does this enter the realm of the Unification of forces in Physics?

Re:transporting electricity

[bucky0]

Actually, inductive and capacative losses don't really play into the equation with superconductors. They expell any external magnetic or electric fields, so there's nothing to induce a current with.

Although, I think that you would want to continue to use high-voltage low-current in these lines because there's a transition current where the material stops being superconductive.

Re:transporting electricity

[Nutt]

Duh. I knew that, guess I'm just stuck in an AC frame of mind. I was just thinking that it'd be cheaper to continue to use AC transmission since the grid is already set up to use it. Using DC for the long distance part would work better than AC but an inverter plant would need to be built to convert the DC back to AC for use.

Re:transporting electricity

[Phanatic1a]

I think you could take care of inductive and capacitive losses by going to DC.

This is, in fact, what is done for long-haul lines. The disadvantage if that you need to convert at either end, but as the transmission line length increases, there comes a point where it's more cost-effective to do that than it is to run AC and lose efficiency charging and discharging a big capacitor 60 times a second. And thyristors have gotten a lot cheaper. You also avoid corona discharge, dielectric losses, and so forth. But you've still got to have at least a couple of hundred miles of transmission line to make it worth it, so you only see it in the longer runs (or underwater, where the capacitive losses are much higher.)

Re:transporting electricity

[cliffski]

why bother? why not go with a decentralised system of solar and wind and geothermal energy sources instead? Then there is way less power transit, and thus way less loses.

Re:transporting electricity

[gomoX]

No, actually the reason you don't put power plants in the middle of nowhere is because those cables are ridiculously expensive to make and deploy (because the longer the distance, the higher you want the tension to be in order to reduce resistive losses, and the higher the tension, the bigger the towers to keep the conductors apart) and this is just economically speaking. Nobody wants to live near HV towers, if you live in city, because you have heard that they give you cancer, and if you live elsewhere, you like your landscape enough to have it ruined by ugly structures and cables. Therefore it requires a lot of lobbying and convincing people.

Re:transporting electricity

[RsG]

I recall that being proposed for orbital power - you put a solar array in orbit, a recieving station on the ground, and beam the power back via microwave. The upshot was that the effeciency of ground based solar is much lower than that of orbital solar, due to the lack of atmospheric interference, which offsets the losses in transmission from converting electricity to microwaves then back again. Of course, for this to be workable, you'd need cheap launch technology... and try getting green energy folks to support space research.

What I don't know is how much power you're losing in the conversions. If it's greater than the amount you'd lose in transmission over power lines, then that's out. And I'm also not sure how you'd go about transmitting light (or other radiation). Would large scale fiber optic lines lose power over distance?

A perfectly parralel ray of light through total vacuum would be completely effecient (or at least it's effeciency would not diminish with distance), and also thouroughly impossible.

Re:transporting electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you thinking of light bulbs and solar panels here? That's one way of doing it...

What you're really thinking about, though, is microwave power transmission... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_power_trans mission

Re:transporting electricity

[ronanbear]

Because of Ohm's Law (V=IR) the equations for heat (RI^2) and power (VI) are equivalent. Its voltage drop in the power lines (or other component) that determines power loss. OTOH the electromotive force is the total voltage difference determines the total power.

Re:transporting electricity

[drinkypoo]

Using high-voltage AC gets the loss due to transmission down to VERY LITTLE. Like, single-digit percentage points in total transmission loss. High-tension lines in the us are ~700V, while in other places they are commonly something like twice that. Residental power in the US is ~220 at the pole, brought into the house that way, and split into ~110VAC circuits (except for the dryer and maybe electric stove - these pull from both sides for the 220V.)

Anyway all that babbling is prelude to a question: In the US we use 110 in the home and 220 on the pole. The UK uses 220 in the home, right? Do they use 440 on the pole, or is it still just 220? If the voltage is higher, it's more dangerous (jumps further) but losses are dramatically reduced.

Re:transporting electricity

[SydShamino]

...as long as the dump trucks don't run on said batteries...

Re:transporting electricity

[Phanatic1a]

in some cases theoretically 0)

It's not theoretically 0, it's really actually 0. It's a macroscopic manifestation of a quantum-level effect. In high-temperature superconductors, there is a finite resistance, but in 'classical' superconductors, it's really zero: current flows with no applied voltage.

The problem with superconductors as a transmission line isn't so much the temperature (although that is a problem). It's not even the materials properties (high-temperature superconductors are basically ceramics. They're brittle and not very strong, which means they aren't very useful as wires). It's the fact that, in addition to a critical temperature Tc above which they don't superconduct, superconductors also have a critical magnetic field and a critical current density. Exceed any of those, and they stop being superconductors, which can lead to some quite catastrophic failures. High-temperature superconductors have much higher critical field strengths than low-temperature ones, and higher critical current densities, but you can't just run all the current you want through them and expect them to not blow up/melt/spontaneously disassemble.

Re:transporting electricity

[Dan Ost]

Go to wikipedia and look up HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current). There are
certain situations where HVDC is advantageous and economical to use over
normal AC distribution.

Also, high quality switching power supplies can convert DC to DC analogous
to how a transformer converts AC to AC with similar efficiencies. As the
price of copper increases, transformers will actually cost more to make
and we may start seeing AC distribution replaced by DC distribution.

If that happens, the real question is whether or not the last mile would
be DC (very few of our home appliances would actually prefer AC).

Re:transporting electricity

[ClickOnThis]

Actually, inductive and capacative losses don't really play into the equation with superconductors. They expell any external magnetic or electric fields, so there's nothing to induce a current with.

Fields inside the conductor are not the issue. The inductive and capacitive effects occur when two conductors, super or not, are near each other, as they would be if they were part of an AC transmission-line network.

Re:transporting electricity

[Dan Ost]

HVDC transmission is also used to link different AC networks that are
out of phase with each other.

Re:transporting electricity

[VAXcat]

Because you lose all economies of scale.

Re:transporting electricity

[TigerNut]

Actually... even in residential areas (US and Canada), the line voltage on overhead transmission wires is typically 13800 volts, and long distance power transmission is done at 45000 volts and higher, up to 500 kV for really high power, long distance lines. These voltages are high enough that you need to use 3, 4, or six-wire bundles (spaced about 8 inches or so apart) to keep the electric field gradient low enough so you don't get corona discharge around the wires.

Re:transporting electricity

[955301]

two words: automobile accidents

Re:transporting electricity

[bucky0]

Oh, of course. But what I was saying was if the magnetic field from adjacent conductors can't penetrate each other, they couldn't induce a current in each other. AFAIK...

Re:transporting electricity

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

You reduce corona discharge because you don't have voltage peaking well above the average level 120 times a second. You can't really eliminate it short of putting the conductors in really wide evacuated tunnels.

Re:transporting electricity

[Phanatic1a]

Residental power in the US is ~220 at the pole, brought into the house that way, and split into ~110VAC circuits

There's nothing you can touch in a US house that's going to be at 220V to ground. Two legs are brought in, along with a neutral, and the two legs are 180 degrees out of phase with respect to each other. So if you want 220V, like for a dryer or a stove, you take both legs, and you have 220V between them, but each one is only 110V wrt ground.

And it's not 110 at the pole, either. It's 110 when it comes out of the transformer, the line voltage at the pole is usually around 3 kV.

Re:transporting electricity

[SloppyElvis]

You could think of Hydrogen as a "battery" if the Nuclear plant power is used to crack water. There is still energy loss though. You'll spend energy cracking water, transporting (ship, vehicle, or pipeline), and during combustion. Crude oil experiences similar losses from source to destination.

Anyway, the safety of Nuclear reactors are only one problem with the technology. The waste they produce is the more difficult to address. There aren't too many wastelands open to accepting radioactive waste - and even fusion (to my reading, though I am no expert) produces these waste products.

Re:transporting electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a well-publicized myth. Awhile back in sweeden I recall, it was statistically proven that cancer rates were higher among people living near such wires.

This, however, was not BECAUSE of said wires. It was eventually determined that the chemicals and pesticides used to treat the areas around the towers to prevent them from being overgrown with foliage were highly carcinogenic (think Agent Orange)

High voltage lines are a real, practical, and cost-efficent solution to this problem. This is why they're used pretty much everywhere.

Re:transporting electricity

[Surt]

There are other strategies, of course:

1) Build a lot of cheap generators. Generate a lot of power at a power plant (such as the aforementioned fusion plant), and use that power to create fuel (such as hydrogen or methane) instead of electricity. Ship the fuel to your home, and generate the electricity there (using your cheap generator). Then your losses are in conversion and transportation efficiency rather than transmission efficiency. Megabonus: no more ugly transmission lines everywhere.

2) learn to build really small fusion reactors, and build a lot of them. If you have one of these in your back yard (or laundry room ... wherever), then you really don't have to worry about transmission or transportation, or even conversion losses. Alternatively, if you have one per city block, you can again

Re:transporting electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

High-temperature superconductors have much higher critical field strengths than low-temperature ones, and higher critical current densities, but you can't just run all the current you want through them and expect them to not blow up/melt/spontaneously disassemble.

Yeah, so run thousands of them in parallel.

Re:transporting electricity

[helfom]

If you are looking for improved and not perfect transmission there is one solution that people seem to be missing. Sure room-temp superconductors sound great, but until there is a miracle discovery, we might have to settle with carbon nanotube transmission lines instead. They allow for high current transmission at very low losses and the technology is right around the corner. A quick google came up with this article. Not the best link, but it will get you started...

Re:transporting electricity

[ClickOnThis]

if the magnetic field from adjacent conductors can't penetrate each other, they couldn't induce a current in each other.

Think of it this way. All conductors try to arrange their internal free charges (usually the electrons) to produce a net E=0 inside, because if there were a nonzero E, then it would apply a force to the free charges until the charges were arranged so as to cancel out the applied E within the conductor. Also, a changing B field outside the conductor induces a current in the conductor that tries to oppose the change in magnetic flux through any closed loop made by the conductor (Lenz's Law.) All conductors do these things; superconductors are just better at it.

Re:transporting electricity

[cliffski]

and you lose the susceptibility to system wide attack of failure.

Re:transporting electricity

[FireFury03]

If that happens, the real question is whether or not the last mile would
be DC

I think it's unlikley that the "last mile" will become DC since there are significant safety concerns with DC (namely that if you grab hold of a live conductor you won't be able to let go whereas if you grab an AC conductor you naturally let go).

However, it seems quite plausible that we may end up with several low voltage DC supplies *within* the home. You wouldn't want to make the cable runs very long because of transmission losses at low voltage, but having a number of separate low voltage DC circuits is a good solution.

Re:transporting electricity

[FireFury03]

You reduce corona discharge because you don't have voltage peaking well above the average level 120 times a second. You can't really eliminate it short of putting the conductors in really wide evacuated tunnels.

I imagine you can eliminate it by putting a low-voltage shield around your high voltage wire. The problem of course is that you need an insulator between the wire and shield that isn't going to break down when subjected to the enormous electric field... and the cost of doing so would also be pretty huge.

Re:transporting electricity

[spun]

How are power utilites supposed to maintain their monopoly if we do that? You know the world owes them a living, right? No, if we ever do use renewable energy, it will be with big centralized plants so they can protect their rightful income. Oh, I'm sure that won't be the rational they foist off on us, but I'm willing to bet that's the way it will go down.

Unless governments step in and mandate, oh say, solar panels on all government buildings. Then economies of scale will kick in and solar will be affordable for the rest of us, and the power companies can kiss their monopoly goodbye. But we all know that politicians would never do anything to hurt their friendly neighborhood lobbiest.

Re:transporting electricity

[Moqui]

You do recall what happened with beamed microwave power sources from SimCity, don't you?

Re:transporting electricity

[Solra Bizna]

It's a great power source. The only disadvantage is when the satellite misses the ground plant, and blows a gash in your city, and then the power plant blows up for no reason. Then you have to deal with a massive fire, rolling blackouts--

Hm... I'm getting a terrible feeling of deja vu... like I've made this joke before....

-:sigma.SB

Re:transporting electricity

[Quantum Fizz]

It's not theoretically 0, it's really actually 0.

Only for DC current. AC current always has a finite resistive component to it.

Regarding critical current, one could effectively run up a huge potential (eg millions of volts) and send a trickling DC supercurrent to the receiving station. Of course this brings with it all sorts of high voltage problems beyond the typical substations have dealing with high-tension wires. One being the much larger potentials, the other being efficiently converting DC to DC (as opposed to transforming the AC, as traditional power stations do).

The other thing mentioned is very true, regarding catastrophic failure of the lines. I work with superconducting magnets, where to pack a huge magnetic field, you need tiny wires to get enough wrappings in a small space. So we're basically putting 70+ amps through a 22 gauge wire. That's all fine and dandy when the magnet is immersed in liquid helium at 4K, but if you do something dumb, like change the magnet current too quickly or go past the critical current, you can cause part of the magnet to go normal (as opposed to superconducting), in which case that 70A is going to dissipate LOTS of heat, causing more parts of the magnet to go normal, and ultimately cause the whole magnet to go normal, dissipating the induction energy stored in the magnet as heat, which can boil the liquid helium vigourously, build up pressures, damage the magnet and electronics, etc. Very dangerous. Now imagine a similar scenario but in some transission wires at a potential of millions of volts running through a forest or a neighborhood.

Re:transporting electricity

[turgid]

In high-temperature superconductors, there is a finite resistance, but in 'classical' superconductors, it's really zero: current flows with no applied voltage.

That sounds like a bogus explanation. From your description, that would be a perpetual motion machine.

Re:transporting electricity

[gfilion]

Actually... even in residential areas (US and Canada), the line voltage on overhead transmission wires is typically 13800 volts, and long distance power transmission is done at 45000 volts and higher, up to 500 kV for really high power, long distance lines.

Hey Hydro-Quebec uses 735 kV transmission lines. They made a nice buzzing sound when you walk under them... :-)

Re:transporting electricity

[constantnormal]

Two companies that produce superconducting materials are Intermagnetics General (IMGC) and American Superconductor (AMSC).

AMSC in particular sells high temperature (relatively speaking, these things still need to be cooled by liquid nitrogen) superconducting wire, and has managed to produce it in lengths far too short for long distance power transmission, but more than adequate for use within power generation facilities, and in devices like motors and generators.

Re:transporting electricity

[mfrank]

I think most of the hydro electricity coming from the Pacific Northwest down to California goes through high voltage DC

Re:transporting electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, that reminded me of this video. Electricity is so cool.

Re:transporting electricity

[kurzweilfreak]

That's all?

Re:transporting electricity

[lgw]

Solar, wind, and geothermal are each quite restrictive in where you can put them if you need real power. Solar would actually work well for much of the country, but only if you had a magic battery to store the power both efficiently and safely when it was dark. If you had such a magic battery, cars could use it too, and you could transport power by transporting the batteries if you needed to.

This is the entire rational for the "hydrogen economy", and it should work with existing infrastructure (people always forget how important that is). Hydrogen (stored as a metal hydride, not as a gas or liquid) has great energy density and is reasonably safe. I really hope it works out, as I'd love to move to solar, but the rechnical obstacles are significant. Fortunately, the government is throwing money around to make this happen, but given it would use existing infrastructure, existing corporations would benefit from it, so there's plenty of R&D money being thrown at the problems.

Of course, solar and wind and hydro power are all just fusion power beamed to us by ultraviolet, and it would be nice to go to fusion directly one day.

Re:transporting electricity

[lgw]

The US uses balanced 3-phase power (three hot lines and a ground that would carry no current if the loads were perfectly balanced). The hot lines are 120 degress out of phase, are 120V to ground, but 220V across any two hot lines.

Balanced three phase is hugely more efficient for tranmission than a two-wire setup.

Re:transporting electricity

[Salsaman]

The UK uses 240V on the pole. And it is 50Hz as opposed to 60Hz in the US. In continental Europe, 220V/50Hz is more common.

Re:transporting electricity

[ceoyoyo]

Well, we know how to make light bulbs. Photovoltaic cells too.

Oh, you mean with 100% efficiency.

We can convert information into light and back?

Re:transporting electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

current flows with no applied voltage.

How does it know which way to go?

Re:transporting electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

"Only for DC current. AC current always has a finite resistive component to it."

If you can distrubute DC with zero loss, why would you continue with AC?

Re:transporting electricity

[Xyrus]

Another completely useless way of transmitting power without loss would be to use electron tunneling to over come the potential well from the power station to your house.

Unfortunately, you need so much energy to do that it would probably shred space-time, and turn the solar system into a quark-gluon plasma.

The only real way to transmit electricity with the least loss is to have your own home power station. Solar cells or a bio-diesel generator would be decent choices.

~X~

Re:transporting electricity

[Black Acid]

How does it know which way to go?

Inertia.

Re:transporting electricity

[Nefarious Wheel]

What would you need for an insulator?

Re:transporting electricity

[Nefarious Wheel]

How much could we save by switching to silver? I suppose after the collapse of the photographic film industry, it may no longer be quite such a precious metal.

No, I have no idea of the amount of silver it would take,or what's available, etc. just a thought provoker.

Re:transporting electricity

[Nefarious Wheel]

We tried that in the southern hemisphere, but the Greens are against it because the windmills visually pollute the view, and there's an inverse-Avogadro chance of it harming the orange-bellied parrot.

Ok, cue the parrot jokes (sigh) sometimes you just can't win with some folks...

Re:transporting electricity

[Nefarious Wheel]

Yes, transport the energy as gas. Home cogeneration is cool. Buch 'o' New Zudlunders came up with a nice one. Check out Whispertech at http://www.whispergen.com/

-==[NOT affiliated]==-

Re:transporting electricity

[stevelinton]

Electrolyze water to make hydrogen, liquefy it and tanker it around.

There is a one-off loss for the electrolysis and a low loss from the fuel-cell at the
other end assuming you want electricity and not (say) heat, but given how low bulk shipping costs are, there is essentially no loss or
cost for the distance you carry it over.

Iceland is getting quite seriously into this idea as a way to export their hydroelectric & geothermal energy (currently they export it in the form
of refined alumnium).

Re:transporting electricity

[bucky0]

Makes sense to me. My understanding of superconductors comes from about a week in my modern physics course, so I don't understand it in the depth I'd like...

Re:transporting electricity

[Quantum Fizz]

If they can get decent simple-enough high-tc superconducting lines (ie, with sufficient cryogen cooling, etc) then the only reasons I can think of to stay w/ AC would be ease of stepping the current up/down with transformers. I don't know how efficient DC to DC conversion really is, especially for such a huge scaling factor.

The other reason might be ease of integration with existing substations that are already expecting AC, to be stepped down.

Re:transporting electricity

[Guignol]

It's not close enough to zero, it's exactly zero which is the big point of the superconductor (versus, say, an extremely good conductor).
The neat levitation trick would not work if it wasn't exactly zero.

Re:transporting electricity

[Inebrius]

"How much could we save by switching to silver? I suppose after the collapse of the photographic film industry, it may no longer be quite such a precious metal."

Silver has gone up in price considerably over the last couple of years, similar to what has happened to gold. I just checked the commodity prices:

Gold $651 per troy ounce
Silver $12.73 per troy ounce
Copper $3.82 per pound

Copper is still considerably cheaper than silver. It wouldn't make sense to change the distribution system when the costs would far exceed to costs of the power losses.

This is the same reason why masses of people do not drive Honda Insights, Toyota Priuses, or have solar power on their houses. It's cheaper to buy power from the power company and continue to pay more for gas on a gas guzzler than take on a new vehicle payment.

When the economics change, so will peoples preferences.

Manhattan Project

[spycker]

Instead of $300B spent in Iraq we should have spent it here on fusion reactor research!!!
Thats what happens when politicians are un-educated rubes.

Re:Manhattan Project

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever rated this post a "Troll" is an @$$.

Re:Manhattan Project

[Stickerboy]

"Instead of $300B spent in Iraq we should have spent it here on fusion reactor research!!!
Thats what happens when politicians are un-educated rubes."

That's really funny coming from a poster that thinks progress in fusion research is directly proportional to how much money is thrown at it.

I bet you also subscribe to the "if only we spent the space program money on solving poverty/homelessness/starving people in Africa!" line of thought.

Re:Manhattan Project

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess money doesn't buy speed in construction. Encourage a greater interest in talented students to pursue physics. Etc. Of course if Haliburton got the no bid contract the money just might get pissed away. Other than that how could someone be so naive to think the amount of money allocated makes no difference? Even with waste, if successful it would be worth it. And you seem to be ignorant for how long there has been no real expenditures in this area.

Re:Manhattan Project

[mozumder]

Actually, progress does increase with economic resources thrown at it.

It's a derivative of Moore's law.

The more money spent on more scientists (hiring, training), the better chance of coming up with original ideas. The constant flow of money spent each year on semiconductor R&D results in chip costs going down.

Spend $10bn/month on fusion research. Or $10bn/month on a public rail transportation infrastructure, instead of roads for cars. It'll be worth it.

Sure beats killing people.

Re:Manhattan Project

[pinkocommie]

How about spending the 300 billion on researching basic sciences and attracting more and capable minds to it. You can't honestly tell me that doubling the amount of capable people working on understanding the universe won't accelerate our understanding of the same (not to mention unforeseen applied sciences advantages)
Time / Is America Flunking Science
Government spending on research
Also I know that there isn't a 1:1 correlation the point is the more you expand scientific knowledge of all kinds, the larger the potential for new discoveries (standing on the shoulders of giants and all that)

Re:Manhattan Project

[kidtexas]

Actually, as someone who works in the fusion community, it would help if there was more money to go around. ONE of the reasons fusion is always 20-40 years away is that the funding isn't where it needs to be in order for that to happen.

It's a tough nut to crack and more money for more projects and more jobs would help a good deal.

Re:Manhattan Project

[Jerf]

Actually, progress does increase with economic resources thrown at it. It's a derivative of Moore's law.

I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your brochure.

Please explain more fully how you get "progress increases with economic resources thrown at it" from "the complexity of integrated circuits, with respect to minimum component cost, doubles every 24 months".

Perhaps you didn't mean "derivative", but there's no way to make sense of that statement that I can see.

You are especially being disingenuous by using Moore's law as your implied cost/benefit curve, as nothing other than electronic circuits has experienced an exponential curve for so many decades. You have to consider the cost/benefits when doling out money. Fusion is on anything but an exponential curve; in fact it's damn near on a constant curve, making almost zero progress over time, as evidenced by how it's been "40-50 years in the future" for 40-50 years now.

A weakened version of your claim, that all else being equal more dollars will progress more than less dollars, is trivially true but useless, because that progress could very well be very minimal even for a gigantic investment, and perhaps ironically given your argument, fusion is almost certainly the canonical example of that case.

Re:Manhattan Project

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Instead of $300B spent in Iraq we should have spent it here on fusion reactor research!!! Thats what happens when politicians are un-educated rubes.

You're confusing different goals for lack of education and sophistication. From certain politicians perspective the choice is:

• spend the money on hard science which makes oil worth less and helps free the US from dependence upon it. Considering how much money politicians have invested in oil (entire family fortunes built upon it) and considering the political ties to the middle east they have that make them valuable players this does not look very good.
• Go to war in the middle east. Billions of dollars are suddenly allocated for this war, most of which are then to be allocated to defense contractors. Giving that money to particular people results in large political and financial favors in return. Giving that money to companies you are heavily invested in makes you billions personally. Unlike a private sector allocation, you can hide the waste in "national security" or justify it as "the soldiers need it now, whatever the cost" or "they were more expensive but the best thing for the troops." Additionally, those ties political contacts and ties in the middle east are suddenly more important and valuable.

Given the choice between advancing mankind, while making less money and losing political capital, or killing thousands, but making obscene amounts of money and political capital, I don't think we have to guess which way politicians will jump. It is not ignorance, but self interest without a whiff of ethics that made this choice.

Re:Manhattan Project

[Anonymous Coward]

Un-educated?? No, they seem fairly educated.

Corrupt and highly seceptable to look out for certain big business special interests, YES.

Seems to me that they just choose to ignore common sense, logic, and the majority of the democratic notions this country was founded on.

Do not confuse willful power mongering with ignorance.

Re:Manhattan Project

[spycker]

"You're confusing different goals for lack of education and sophistication."

Actually, things are simpler than you could possibly imagine :-)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_J._Hanlon

Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

Re:Manhattan Project

[NoGenius]

You can complain, but you are reaping the benefits of being the offspring of men who have fought and won many wars. Perhaps you could move to Iraq and enjoy their lifestyle for a few years to compare. Maybe instead of spending over $3 trillion dollars (in 2005 dollars) to fight and win WW II we should have spent it on scientific research. Oh wait, thats right, we would all be dead by now...from either the Germans or the Russians...take your pick.

Re:Manhattan Project

[demachina]

Well... given the choice between squandering at least $400 billion in a bloody quagmire, thats killeds tens of thousands of people, or spending it on ANY worthwhile R&D project the answer is obvious that R&D would be better. Maybe you wont achieve a successful commercial fusion reactor but as long as you insure sound R&D is happening in physics, materials, etc chances are you are going to get something worthwhile out of it.

I saw this illuminating article on what the U.S. has wrought in Iraq. All indications are Iraq is in really no better shape than it was under Saddam. At least then there was order, now there is chaos, with large numbers of people being killed, kidnapped and tortured under both regimes. Sure there are elections now but the government its lead to is just a bunch of factions who are carving up the country as they each try to grab a slice of the power and money. Corruption is rampant, militias are increasingly the only law and order and their brand of law and order is as arbitrary as Saddam's was.

The only people who benefit from the vast sums the U.S. is squandering in Iraq is the host of Republican connected U.S. companies that are profiteering off it, and the Iraqi factions that grabbed the biggest piece of the pie there.

The U.S. used to be the place where a large number of breakthroughs happened. Now the U.S. government doesn't invest in basic research, unless its related to weapons, spying or trying to attain a false sense of homeland security. American corporations increasingly slash research funding in pursuit of better quarters today while they destroy their long term well being, or they move it to places like China where the Chinese are likely to benefit from it more than America ever will.

Get used to a world where all the breakthroughs in science and engineering, outside of weaponry, happen someplace other than the U.S. because thats the road we are going down. Not sure we can even accomplish the weapons breakthroughs if the scientific, engineering and manufacturing base in the U.S. continues to hollow out.

It would be wonderful if the U.S. HAD spent that $400 billion on anything worthwhile versus wasting it which is what was done.

Re:Manhattan Project

[spycker]

You're confused. I was for the war. I was for the killing of Saddam & Sons. But again stupidity reared its Bushist head. Remember how the first Bush betrayed the southern Shiites? The only saving grace is not the politically astute Generals you find in the war but rather the brave and thoughtful Captains, Majors, and Colonels.

We could not have held that immoral "no fly" zones and embargo indefinitely. At the cost of Iraqi lives and Iraqi misery. Also, we could not turn our back on Saddam and walk away, just like we can't walk away from the current evil manifestations in Iran.

On the other hand I would never have spent so money to kill Saddam or in the future to hobble Iran.

Re:Manhattan Project

[bigpat]

Spend $10bn/month on fusion research. Or $10bn/month on a public rail transportation infrastructure, instead of roads for cars. It'll be worth it.

I agree with the fusion research part, but the tricky thing about road spending is that it is derived from a tax on road use...the gas tax. So if you don't spend the $10bn/month on roads then sooner or later you won't have the 10bn/month to spend on public rail. And I think your roads and bridges will become unusable faster than you could replace them with an effective rail system.

Re:Manhattan Project

[rtaylor]

Fusion is on anything but an exponential curve; in fact it's damn near on a constant curve, making almost zero progress over time, as evidenced by how it's been "40-50 years in the future" for 40-50 years now.
The speed of progress is proceeding at a rate far higher than 0. The catch is that there is more progress required to be made than initially thought.

Consider a map. Going from point A to point B may be quite short on the map. Once you start driving you find out about bridge construction which sends you on a detour. Later on the road you wanted to take is a dirt trail not maintained in the winter -- second detour.

Progress was still made but it took far longer to get to the actual destination based on what you learned along the way, or rather, the task list increased.

Holding major research projects to schedules is silly. If you know how long it will take (thus all of the steps along the way) then there isn't really any research to do.

Re:Manhattan Project

[Anonymous Coward]

in fact it's damn near on a constant curve, making almost zero progress over time, as evidenced by how it's been "40-50 years in the future" for 40-50 years now.

I get the sense that if my constant curve goes on long enough it makes a circle.
So even though it took us 40-50 years to get where we are, the fact that we have made a circle means we havent really spent any money either. This is mainly due to the fact that when we moved through Quad's II and III we actually had gravity helping our economic expenditures so we actually made as much money making this part of the circle as we lost making Quad's I and IV.

This next 40-50 years, I say we should stop work on the cirle just as we hit the beginning of Quad II and let natural phenomena make us a profit. But once Quad IV is reached, we should invest no money and let the chips fall where they may, circle or no cirle be damned.

Our circle could be even more profitable if we use the little Pi of 3 as told the book of books. If we use 3.1 or 3.14 or 3.1459 (lies) etc ..... we get an infinite growth in costs and this is not good. Sticking with pi as 3 is much more cost beneficial and efficient due to calculations ..... just the material savings alone should make this apparent as the circles created aren't as big using little pi 3 vs. big pi 3.1459(+).

Re:Manhattan Project

[vmalloc_]

It is not wise to create laws on anecdotal evidence. Particularly ones that ultimately affect people's right to their own labor (IE, the money they make before it is taken at gunpoint from them by the government to fund boondoggles created by people that believe in laws like this).

Re:Manhattan Project

[Chandon Seldon]

World War II was a good deal science-wise. We got fission power, rockets (leading to space travel) and computers.

No later war was anywhere near as useful, especially not the current Iraq civil war.

Re:Manhattan Project

[dkf]

Our circle could be even more profitable if we use the little Pi of 3 as told the book of books.

Just remember, if pi is 3, your circle has six sides (assuming regularity). For some reason, people don't normally use hexagonal circles...

Re:Manhattan Project

[mozumder]

Please explain more fully how you get "progress increases with economic resources thrown at it" from "the complexity of integrated circuits, with respect to minimum component cost, doubles every 24 months".

Transistor count doubling every 24 months is a results of R&D. This R&D has been given a fixed amount of money over time. Subsitute "money" for "R&D" and it leads to: Transistor count doubing every 24 months is a result of money.

Now, adjust that amount of money, and it doubles every 25 months or 23 months instead.

Therefore: the rate of technological progress leads is directly proportional to money applied.

There may be limits, but we do not know what they are. So, If every scientist stopped what they were doing to work on the Fusion project, we might have a working Fusion reactor.

I personally prefers painting radium on to thin layers of PN Junctions...

Re:Manhattan Project

[Inebrius]

It would be even nicer if the money was never spent. It's not like the money needs to be spent or it burns up and is lost. The federal government is consistently spending more money than it takes in. When the government boasts of being over budget, it really means that they haven't overspent as much as they had planned originally. And that is a rare occurrence.

If we had the exact same budget as we had in 2000, the income tax could be eliminated. With no VAT and no income tax, and maybe a little more freedom, where do you think the most productive, innovative, and mobile people in the world would want to live? Then, what do you think we could accomplish?

Governments spending is often just a check against other government spending and regulations. That 300 billion, like a few other 300 billion, would be much better utilized in the hands of private citizens.

Re:Manhattan Project

[Anonymous Coward]

more $ does = more progress, but it is not simple or direct.
just having more money does not do anything; it is only paper.

you need to use that money to harness human potential. one way of looking at this is brute force. instead of leaving hundredes of millions of chinese at subsistence level farming, along with hundreds of millions of indians in the same boat, use 300B $ to educate them in engineering, physics, medicine etc. so here youn need money time and infrastructure. but if you did that with the ~ 1B people that do not have such opportunity im pretty sure you would see more than "trivial" gains, and far more than could ever be hoped for in iraq at any cost.
moore's law is disingenius because it does not show real world activity, but corporate decision. the only reason transistors dont triple on an ic every month is because nobody wants to do the rnd to make it happen. if there was enough money in this intel, amd, or anyone else with sand, an x-ray machine and a few engineers would be doing this. if china or india ever reach critical mass for an unfettered industrial revolution you will see this law change.

money also has the immediate effect of attracting brighter people. right now engineering is not it. senior management is where the dollars are, essentially paying parasites that produce nothing. the drug valium is a prime example. the inventor was paid 1 $ by big pharm for the patent. while that kind of compensation may work in a rice field, it will not attract anyone without a true passion (slave) for the work.

so when you eliminate government, executives, kickbacks, and other parasites whose first question is "what's in it for me?" 300 B $ can do a lot. why do you think Kennedy said ask not what your country can do for you? probably why he got shot. look at it as a racing motor; it can do no good if the wheels are not gettin traction

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[MindStalker]

yea but that 10bn/month buys over 100K dead as well. I mean just try to buy that many hitmen...

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[neonprimetime]

Bah! I say - much better to spend 10bn/month to buy lots of bags of m&m's.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[javachip]

I'm thinkin', 2040 for the DEMO power plant!?! Jeez, it's not like they're writing VISTA, for god's sake! Hell, by then we'll all be flyin' around in magnetic powered aircars ('course I'll splurge and get an airSUV(tm)!) By the way, where the hell is John Galt when you need him?

Now all we need..

[smaerd]

...are the crew compartment, engines, storage compartment, enviromental unit, etc and we're on our way to Alpha Centauri!

It will be before 2040

[styryx]

The Japanese are the contractors, they are pretty well renowned for their efficiency. So I think building time may be reduced.
More work needs to be done on the spherical Tokamaks such as START and MAST. Which are showing increasingly promising results. I know from an inside source that more attention is being given to the spherical Tokamak. Especially now that in nearly all the participating countries there is at least a single toroidal tokamak.

From TFA:
"However, environmental groups have criticised the project, saying there was no guarantee that the billions of euros would result in a commercially viable energy source."
This baffles me, just whose side are the environmentalists on again? It doesn't matter that there is no gaurantee. The likelyhood of it being a comercially viable energy source is very high.

Also, bear in mind that everybody knows that fusion will be "along in 20 years" and has been this way for the past 60. However, most countries in the world are producing larger plasma departments at universities and there is a much greater influx of fusion scientists. Many hands make light work. And it has already been mentioned that there are many tokamaks in the world, Russia, China, Japan and America have multiple. The UK has the current largest, Jet, and it also has the spherical tokamaks as stated.

Peace out, baby.

Re:It will be before 2040

[Stickerboy]

"From TFA:
"However, environmental groups have criticised the project, saying there was no guarantee that the billions of euros would result in a commercially viable energy source."
This baffles me, just whose side are the environmentalists on again? It doesn't matter that there is no gaurantee. The likelyhood of it being a comercially viable energy source is very high."

They're pointing out the obvious elephant in the room, that they're spending $10 billion to scale up a reactor design that is guaranteed NOT to be commercially viable. Maybe they should invest in basic research trying to solve the "energy input > output" for controlled fusion instead?

Re:It will be before 2040

[syrinx]

invest in basic research trying to solve the "energy input > output"

Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Re:It will be before 2040

[blibbler]

From TFA:
"However, environmental groups have criticised the project, saying there was no guarantee that the billions of euros would result in a commercially viable energy source."
This baffles me, just whose side are the environmentalists on again? It doesn't matter that there is no gaurantee. The likelyhood of it being a comercially viable energy source is very high

I think their point is if 10 Billion Euros were spent on developing solar, wind, and other renewable energies, there would be a much quicker and surer return on investment.
On the other hand, the potential for Fusion is imense. If Fusion has the same benefits as it did in Simcity 2000, after 2050, we won't use anything else.

Re:It will be before 2040

[spycker]

Well Mr. StickerBoy you sound and act like a high falutin' physicist well in the know. Out of curiosity why doesn't the nuclear waste industry take plutonium dilute it into the dirt that the Uranium was taken out of orignally and put that back in the hole in the mountain or ground it was taken out off? Maybe they could even process the Plutonium in some fashion before hand?

Re:It will be before 2040

[955301]

What I don't understand is how billions of dollars can be spent on Tokamaks. I mean, their buffalo wings are okay, but they are loud and the service isn't consistent.

http://www.tacomac.com/

Re:It will be before 2040

[Phanatic1a]

The likelyhood of it being a comercially viable energy source is very high.

No, I don't think it is, and I don't think anyone can say that with any certainty.

I tend to class problems in three general ways:

1. Theoretical problems: We're not sure if this is even *possible*. e.g. FTL travel
2. Materials problems: We think this is possible, but we don't know what to build it out of. e.g. a space elevator.
3. Engineering problems: We know this can work, we know how to make it, we just have to work out the nuts and bolts. e.g. The Manhattan project.

Depending on the particular scheme in mind, commercial fusion is all three.

1. There are a wide variety of fusion schemes (the various aneutronic cycles, all cycles in thermal non-equilibrium), that are simply theoretically impossible to generate net energy from. Even plain old D-T fusion is *theoretically* hard; sure, we know it's possible, but getting it to proceed at a rate sufficient for useful net energy extraction might just be intractable.
2. What do you build the reactor vessel out of? You need something that can survive the 300-500 displacements *per atom* that it will experience from neutron collisions over the lifetime of the reactor. No such material is known; ITER will generate only one hundredth of that sort of neutron flux, so it can't even adequately explore the issue. There's another test facility intended to do that, but it's doesn't even exist on blueprints yet. Again, proper materials just might not exist, so you might have to replace the reactor vessel inner surface every few years, which dramatically increases the costs of the scheme and makes it much less viable commercially.
3. Everything else, and there's a lot of it, sits here. And there are some pretty big engineering problems as well, but yeah, those aren't show-stoppers. How do you get the energy out? How do you turn a flood of 14 MeV neutrons into electricity?

Re:It will be before 2040

[barawn]

Maybe they should invest in basic research trying to solve the "energy input > output" for controlled fusion instead?

Huh? They have. From a basic research point of view, JT-60 passed breakeven in 1998. From an experimental point of view they didn't, but that's due to their inability to use D-T fuel (which ITER can handle). Note that their inability to handle it is a political/radioactivity safety issue, not an engineering issue.

ITER very likely might not be commercially viable (i.e. the costs will exceed the benefits) but the basic design is theoretically viable. It should generate more power than it takes in.

Re:It will be before 2040

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>What do you build the reactor vessel out of?
>How do you get the energy out? How do you turn a flood of 14 MeV neutrons into electricity?

What happened to the idea of coating the walls with a "waterfall" of liquid lithium? It heats up (energy extraction), absorbs neutrons (sparing the vanadium walls and deferring or eliminating the need to anneal in place), and when it absorbs the neutrons it breeds tritium that can be used for reactor fuel. Is it too high a vapor pressure or something?

Re:It will be before 2040

[Phanatic1a]

The idea was never to coat the walls in lithium. The idea is that neutrons that escape the vessel will be trapped in a surrounding *blanket* of lithium. Lithium *inside* the reactor vessel would do nobody any good.

Re:It will be before 2040

[Ibag]

If 10 billion euros were spent on developing solar, wind, and other (currently known) renewable energies, we would probably have a lot more windmills that are only slightly more efficient than current ones. Environmentalists, at least the ones on the fringe who are making noise, are against a lot of things. They don't like coal plants because of the obvious pollution. They don't like fission plants because of the radiation and risk of meltdown. They don't like windmills because of the dangers they pose to birds. I have even heard stories of environmentalists opposing coastal wave plants.

Fusion is our best hope for a high yield power source that doesn't pollute, doesn't radiate, and doesn't have a risk of meltdown (although I don't know how viable and useful something like geothermal would be). With each larger plant, and with each new design, we understand more and get closer to break even. If we can achieve a sustained reaction, it will be the biggest thing that has happened for the environment in a long while.

If we can replace all coal with fusion, then the energy required to make solar cells, electricity for electric cars, and hydrogen fuel cells won't be coming from sources that pollute. A lot of technologies that only appeared to be environmentally friendly finally would be. Fusion would help make cars that don't run on petroleum products a lot more viable. Cheap, clean, bountiful energy will do a lot to help the world, and even if this particular reactor doesn't achieve break-even, the science conducted there will help us to eventually reach that point. We might have better uses for the money in the short term, but not in the long term.

There are a lot of times when I sympathize or even completely agree with environmentalists. However, since there is almost no way that fusion is not in their best interests, this cannot be one of those times.

Re:It will be before 2040

[kidtexas]

Actually, this is exactly where I am doing research. Having liquid lithium plasma facing surfaces does have some interesting advantages. For a neutron blanket it would be ok for the lithium not to be a plasma facing component (though the blanket wouldn't be protecting the actual plasma facing components from neutrons).

Flowing liquid lithium has a tremendous power handling capability. It also reduces recycling which could be an interesting shift from the high recycling H-mode plasmas that dominate the field. Ironically, attaining H-mode seems to rely on extensive condition of the plasma facing components...

TFTR's best fusion power results were from Lithium pellet supershots where lithium was important in conditioning the walls. Actually, we have obtained some really interesting results with liquid lithium limiters and evaporative coatings and (partially) as a result, NSTX is currently operating a lithium evaporator in the vessel to coat the walls.

Take a look for info on the TFTR Li supershots, CDX-U, and LTX to see more about coating the walls with Li.

Re:It will be before 2040

[bobscealy]

This baffles me, just whose side are the environmentalists on again? It doesn't matter that there is no gaurantee. The likelyhood of it being a comercially viable energy source is very high.

The problem with the title of 'environmentalist' is that a whole bunch of different groups like to apply it to themselves so that the feel warm and fuzzy when they tuck themselves in at night. I hate to throw arround stereotypes, but I am guessing that the groups that made these comments own a lot of beads and hemp clothing.

OK, thats a lie, I do like throwing arround stereotypes

Re:It will be before 2040

[iamlucky13]

If we don't spend the $10 billion on fusion at some point, we will never have it. We will always be tied down to the limitations of carbon, fissile, and solar-derived energy forms: hydroelectric interferes with river ecosystems, wind is weather dependent, solar takes up a lot of land and is expensive (all the solar-derivatives are location dependent), fission produces lots of toxic and low-level radioactive waste, and there is a statistically significant correllation between carbon fuel use and the amount of annoying babbling the global-warming crowd makes.

Eventually we will outgrow the practical limitations of the "renewable" energy sources. $10 billion is peanuts compared to the amount of money spent on energy annually. It's possibly worth it for the amount of other science produced by operating the reactor, and it's definitely worth it just to determine if we are on the right path to a controllable break even reaction, regardless of whether or not this design actually does break even.

Re:It will be before 2040

[Anonymous Coward]

If we don't spend the $10 billion on fusion at some point...

That's 10 billion euro, son, or about $13 billion.

Why not?

[Rob T Firefly]

2040, you say?

Hmm, let's see.. I'm 28 now, 34 more years means... yep, I'll probably have lived a full life by then. Sure, go ahead, build your thingy, you kids knock yourelves out. :-D

By 2040 ?

[this great guy]

Perfect date to power those Intel Core 6 Octo CPUs running Windows Vista !

Re:By 2040 ?

[mentaldingo]

Maybe it will feature in the plot of duke nukem forever?

Re:By 2040 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

2040...so right around the time that Vista ships then?

Re:By 2040 ?

[pinkocommie]

Perfect. It'll be able to provide the 1.21 gigawatts those cores will need

Re:By 2040 ?

[Surt]

I hate to warn intel about this, but if they don't have Intel Core 6 Octo cpus out in 2020, much less 2040, they're in serious trouble. (According to Intel's roadmaps the Octos are actually due in 2008/2009, but Core 6 is likely to be in the 2015-2018 time frame at the current pace).

Re:By 2040 ?

[Handover Phist]

Nah, XPSP23. Vista's been pushed back to fall 2042.

Need help from real Pro-physicists.

[zymano]

We use plasma to help bring atoms together to fuse.

Why not accellerate the plasma to a speed that helps this out by building the tokamak into something like a particle accellerator/collider ? Build two rings just like a collider but instead use plasma.

It would definitely overcome repulsion by atoms.

Re:Need help from real Pro-physicists.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would definitely overcome repulsion by atoms.

Sure, it's easy to get (at least some) fusion reactions even with a modest accelerator, the problem is that accelerators suck up VAST amounts of energy, so much, you never break even.
Generally, if your power plant involves a large particle accelerator, it almost always would use more energy than you can get out of.

Re:Need help from real Pro-physicists.

[zymano]

I was thinking that maybe you might need less energy because you didn't need the 100 million c temp then but if it takes more to accellerate plasma then it wouldn't be economical/practical.

It was just an idea.

Re:Need help from real Pro-physicists.

[l0b0]

IANAP, but I'll hazard a guess at a couple factors: Volume (a few million atoms vs. a couple grams), and the fact that it takes huge amounts of energy to accelerate and keep on track these particles. The last part is important, as that energy will not be returned when the beams collide.

Re:Need help from real Pro-physicists.

[kravlor]

I am a plasma physicist.

You can certainly make fusion reactions with a collider -- but the problem is that the goal of a fusion reactor is net energy gain. The tremendous energy losses associated with running particle accelerators rules out their use as a fusion device.

So, the alternative currently employed is our only other option: heating the D-T fuel to thermonuclear temperatures (~10 keV / 100,000,000 C) and let the intrinsic thermal motion of the particles overcome their mutual Coulomb repulsion.

More info: General Atomics Fusion Education

Re:Need help from real Pro-physicists.

[mako1138]

People have looked into this. It doesn't seem very promising for energy generation.

Re:Need help from real Pro-physicists.

[zymano]

I should have been more specific that the accellerator should be just like a regular tokamak but with plasma moving at high speed but not particle accellerator speed. I don't know how fast. I also don't know how much energy that would take.

Probably still too inefficient.

Thanks for reply.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Liquorman]

Why wait until then for energy produced by amazing sources. Check out this intense welder that uses water for fuel!

In my day...

[mentaldingo]

8 years to build a test reactor? When I was a lad I had to build three in a single weekend, in the snow, and it was uphill both ways! Once I only managed two and I was beaten with a leather belt. Quite right too! You kids these days...

Holy racial stereotypes, batman

[donutello]

It's a little naive to generalize and claim that just because the Japanese are involved, this project will be completed ahead of schedule.

Re:Holy racial stereotypes, batman

[Anonymous Coward]

"Japanese" is not a race, it's a nationality.

Re:Holy racial stereotypes, batman

[tgd]

Thats a cultural stereotype, not racial.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[javachip]

Well, your URL was amazing, anyway... ;-)

An idea

[thePig]

I guess this has lots and lots of issues, due to which it was taken out.. but anyways here goes
-
The problem now is that there is no way of controlling fusion.
Then dont control it.

Have some huge contraption made ready such that a huge explosion at some specific point can be used to set up potential energy reservoirs which then can be tapped slowly and efficiently.
Now, explode anything, and now we do have a means to obtain energy from the same.

How etc is very vauge, since this is just a germinating idea. But if this is possible, then we have fusion that can be tapped (albeit inefficeintly).

Re:An idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Have some huge contraption made ready such that a huge explosion at some specific point can be used to set up potential energy reservoirs which then can be tapped slowly and efficiently.

It's called Inertial confinement fusion.

Re:An idea

[ClickOnThis]

The problem now is that there is no way of controlling fusion. Then don't control it.

Have some huge contraption made ready such that a huge explosion at some specific point can be used to set up potential energy reservoirs which then can be tapped slowly and efficiently. Now, explode anything, and now we do have a means to obtain energy from the same.

I find it hard to imagine how you could build something that could contain a large nuclear fusion explosion and store all that energy so quickly, let alone efficiently. Whatever you build would have to be far enough away from the explosion so that it didn't vaporize; and the farther away you are, the bigger it has to be. Something of this scale would be a good start.

Better to make the "bomb" smaller -- alot smaller -- which is exactly the idea behind laser/pellet fusion.

Re:An idea

[Ironsides]

Have some huge contraption made ready such that a huge explosion at some specific point can be used to set up potential energy reservoirs which then can be tapped slowly and efficiently. Now, explode anything, and now we do have a means to obtain energy from the same.

Here's a few links showing the explosions we've used. Some even involved fusion reactions.
image1
image2
image3
image4
image5

Re:An idea

[i_should_be_working]

Exactly! Let's harness that!

Re:An idea

[Broken Legend]

It sounds risky. I hope Doc. Oct is working on the project (and spidey is there to back him up!)

Re:An idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, if you want to do it with bombs, PACER.

Re:An idea

[TheRaven64]

There was a Soviet design for a fusion power plant floating around a while back. The basic idea was that you would drop a fusion bomb down a flooded mine. It would vaporise the water, which would drive a large number of turbines at the tops of various shafts. Another bomb would be dropped down as soon as the mine had been re-flooded.

The design was never used.

Re:An idea

[Foobar_]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER

"The PACER project, carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the mid-1970s, explored the possibility of a fusion power system that would involve exploding small hydrogen bombs (fusion bombs)--or, as stated in a later proposal, fission bombs--inside an underground cavity.

The proposed system would absorb the energy of the explosion in a molten salt, which would then be used in a heat exchanger to heat water for use in a steam turbine.

[...]

As a power source the system is the only one that could be demonstrated to work using existing technology. However it would also require a massive supply of nuclear bombs, making the economics of such a system rather questionable."

Add some of your favorite security concerns, and you've got an practically unworkable system.

Re:An idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could make it bigger. A *lot* bigger.

Then put it so far away that you don't need to contain it, and you can use the energy it radiates by converting from light and/or heat into something more manageable.

You could call it 'The Sun'....

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

"Project estimated to cost 10bn euros and will run for 35 years"

Re:Why not the US?

[HunterZ]

No, they're putting it in France in case it blows up.

I dont' get it...

[gfxguy]

If it takes 8 years to build, why does it take 34 years before you can demonstrate it?

Re:I dont' get it...

[ayne]

maybe they said 2014 (2006+8) and some reporter got it wrong and wrote down 2040. any thoughts on that?

Re:I dont' get it...

[Fr05t]

Beta testing...?

Re:I dont' get it...

[Markus Landgren]

It takes 8 years to build an experiment which does not generate electricity. The extra couple of decades is for running the experiment and designing the demo reactor.

Re:I dont' get it...

[dastrike]

ITER is not the demonstration power plant. ITER is an experimental research fusion reactor that (hopefully) will lead the way to building real fusion power plants.

So eight years to build ITER, then a couple of decades of research, running tests, tweaking stuff to find out what works out the best. Then when that is done, the demonstration power plant can be start to be built using the knowledge learned by the couple of decades of tinkering with ITER. And by the time the demonstration reactor is done, we are at year 2040 or thereabouts.

Re:I dont' get it...

[deglr6328]

alpha testing more like.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again...sitting on slashdot trying to get first post for upmods (usually with things that are neither insightful nor informative, and usually leftist politically (which is also not surprising)), or posting in the first highly moderated comments if you "miss" your chance.

You're pretty pathetic.

Imagine the possibilities

[Phoenix666]

well, it's not in spain, but pretty sure provence is close enough to pump out the mediterranean and re-seal the pillars of hercules and the suez. the best farmland is on the bottom near Rome and Marseille and Istanbul. but best be sure to have a boat handy in case pesky eco-terrorists bomb the fusion plant...

Re:Imagine the possibilities

[Maverick TimeSurfer]

No need for a fusion powered pump. Block up the Straits of Gibraltar and the Suez, and the Mediterranean will drain itself by evaporation without the inflow of sewater from the Atlantic.

Re:Why not the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

And, if it blows, say goodbye to great food, wine,
    cheese. Oh, and people. And a generally nice place.

Reaaaaly intelligent !

Re:Why not the US?

[ral8158]

Because the US is the center of everything that happens in the world. Of course. Seriously though, the US didn't get it, because A) It's a worldwide effort from several countries, (7, I think?) the chances of it being in the US aren't exactly low, but if you're throwing a dart at a board, then chances are it won't be the US. There's really no reason to have it in the US, either.

Orange Energy

[Doc Ruby]

If we don't have affordable fusion power completed and boring by 2040, we're doomed.

This project by the world's biggest operators of petrofuel companies and deposits (including coal) looks more like a giant anvil they're handing to fusion science/engineering than any effort to deliver our post-petro energy tech.

Re:Orange Energy

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation -1
    100% Troll

TrollMods want to wait until the oil's gone to see a fusion demo. Demand better performance from our public energy/science/engineering investments, and the anonymous losers start defending anvils.

Fusion power versus fission

[edxwelch]

In case you don't already know here's the advantage of Fusion power over fision: The waste product.

D-T fuel cycle Fusion produces Helium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

Fission power produces low radioactive waste which can be buried
and also high radioactive waste (cesium-137 and strontium-90) which is too radioactive to be buried (they give off enough heat to boil ground water into steam. Steam could corrode the containers or break up surrounding rock, raising uncertainty about secure burial.)
The cesium and strontium has to be kept in a storage pool that circulates cooling water for 150 years, before they cool down enough to be able to be buried.
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? ch=biztech&sc=&id=13992&pg=1

Both fission and fusion produce neutrons as well, which makes the reaction chamber radioactive and means that the power plant has to be buried after it's decommisioned

Re:Fusion power versus fission

[Urusai]

If the shit is giving off heat, maybe we could, you know, HARNESS IT TO MAKE POWER??? Stupid nuclear scientists...

Re:Fusion power versus fission

[mdarksbane]

And we're calling this stuff waste? Anything that gives off enough energy to convert water into steam without us doing anything sounds like a potential source of electricity.

Re:Fusion power versus fission

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, why are they building this in an existing nuclear (research) facility? Can fusion reactors blow up? Would it damage nearby fission facilities if it did?

Re:Fusion power versus fission

[RsG]

*sigh*

People keep asking this question, and it keeps getting answered...

No, a fusion reactor cannot explode, melt down, or otherwise catastrophically fail. In all likelyhood the reactor could fail badly enough to render it useless (anything running that much juice should be able to at least blow out its wiring), but the reaction stops if the reactor fails, plain and simple.

The whole reason a fission reactor is dangerous is because the reaction doesn't stop when control is lost, potentially leading to a chain reaction meltdown. Without the possibility of a chain reaction happening spontainiously, there can be no meltdown. This is precisely why fusion is so much harder to create in a lab, and why fusion reactors are so much safer.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Liquorman]

Man I suck... Here is the link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HF__Qlhtnws&search=wate r%20power Don't let my inability to get it correct the first try dissuade you from tying the link this time. It is kinda amazing....

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're pretty pathetic.

I am honestly surprised you dont think that applies to you too.

I sure do

[SuperBanana]

I bet you also subscribe to the "if only we spent the space program money on solving poverty/homelessness/starving people in Africa!" line of thought.

The ISS was put up a few years ago piece by piece and cost over a hundred billion dollars just in construction; NASA allocates another $10-20BN a YEAR for it. What did it get us? A plaything for the world's richest people, something for space fetishists to admire ("the sense of WONDER!") and something to put in our kids textbooks (which even in the US, they're starting to have to share because school budgets are getting slashed.)

A hundred billion dollars buys a lot of cement, plywood, 2x4's, and tin roofing. Buys a lot of wheat/rice/corn. It also buys a lot of tractors, schoolbooks, etc. To put things in perspective: the US's largest construction project, The Big Dig in Boston, MA, was unbelievably extensive and complex; 10 years, countless engineering challenges, and they overhauled Boston's inner highways and tunnels while keeping the city (mostly) moving. Despite the problems with cost overruns and fraud on the part of various contrators, it came in at about $15BN for a decade of work.

The 2005 Federal budget included about $65B for the department of Health and Human services, $53B for the department of Education, $50B for the Department of Transportation, $30B for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That's pretty much the meat and potatoes of all the major social things (well, except law enforcement). It totals $150B, and that is to handle the needs of about $230M people in one of the better-off nations in the world. The cost of "doing business" government-wise in Africa is probably a fraction of that; you don't need 5 tomes of federal highway standards, for example, to build a road from A to B. You just grade things, put down some tar, and stick some signs in the ground, and you're 75% there.

Given what a Billion Dollars can do in terms of basic human necessities and a country's infrastructure...yeah, I do get really pissed off every time I think about the International Space Station. Tom Toles, a Washington Post cartoonist, drew up this great comic on the endless circular nature of NASA.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[SlimFastForYou]

Yes, but will Duke Nukem Forever be done before then?

Why should it be the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why SHUOLD it be in the US?

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Man I suck... Here is the link: http://youtube.com/watch?v*snip* Don't let my inability...

Man - you do not suck, that was... worth watching.

Can you give me a little background info? WTF was it on? I see the fox logo there... I hope it was a joke?

Already too late

[boyfaceddog]

There is a problem here.

40+ years at the current fuel consumption levels will enable us to produce limitless energy - but not to be able to produce/maintain the infrastructure to deliver it. No matter how you slice it up, transportation of supplies needs OIL. Horses and llamas are not an option.

Elephants - maybe.

We're doomed!

Re:Already too late

[TheRaven64]

Oil is easy to make. All you need is carbon (found in air), hydrogen (found in water), oxygen (found in water and air) and a load of energy. There's nothing stopping and fusion power plant from producing oil.

Re:Already too late

[boyfaceddog]

From a fiction writing perspective, how would you do that? What resources can I research?

Re:Already too late

[Chirs]

Oh, please. Surely you have more imagination than that. If you have cheap electricity from fusion power, then there are at least a few obvious possibilities for portable energy, and probably more that I just haven't considered:

batteries
hydrogen from electrolysis
rapidly spinning flywheels (in a vacuum, magnetically levitated)

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[MindStalker]

Damnit cought my troll. /Strong supporter of glass parking lots. //Wife thinks we should nuke isreal too.. But I'm not that hard core.

Environmentalists are on the side of whining

[Sycraft-fu]

You will find that by and large the peopel involved aren't really about any soltuions, they are just about screaming about problems. If you tell them "Ok I agree it's a problem, what do we do about it?" they tend not to have any real answers. The only thing they are ahppy with is you giving them money to continue their cause.

So it's no supprise this is getting protested as well. It's sad, really, because there are environmentalists that really care about the environment, and want to preserve it while also finding ways to give humans what they need, however they are vastly outnumbered by people who just feel like screaming about the cause du jour without really getting educated on the facts behind it.

Re:Environmentalists are on the side of whining

[sl3xd]

So it's no supprise this is getting protested as well. It's sad, really, because there are environmentalists that really care about the environment, and want to preserve it while also finding ways to give humans what they need, however they are vastly outnumbered by people who just feel like screaming about the cause du jour without really getting educated on the facts behind it.

Many a protest uses environmentalism as a reason to protest any sort of 'big' project, be it commercial, governmental, or scientific. Many an environmentalist is more concerned with stopping (or making life hard for) 'big business' or 'big government' than they are with the environment. (The whole tired 'too much power in too few hands' argument)

Many people apparently have difficulty believing that anybody can be more interested in being part of a great work than they are in wielding any sort of political or financial power.

Re:Environmentalists are on the side of whining

[Chandon Seldon]

Many people apparently have difficulty believing that anybody can be more interested in being part of a great work than they are in wielding any sort of political or financial power.

Many other people have difficulty believing that anyone could exploit a position of power for personal gain. In fact, both have happened and continue to happen - the problem is that corruption tends to feed on itself.

Re:Environmentalists are on the side of whining

[sl3xd]

the problem is that corruption tends to feed on itself.

Integrity tends to feed on itself as well.

Re:Why not the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not the US? Is it because of the war on science in the US that we didnt get the reactor?

No. It's because the project managers hate freedom.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the web site:

http://hytechapps.com/
http://hytechapps.com/presentation/

Why would the Fox logo be a "joke"? You do realize that Fox is like, um, one of the four major broadcast networks in the US, and kind of has, you know, local news at the local affiliates that cover stories of interest, and, you know, news? (Why couldn't you tell it was a local news show just from looking at it for about 1.5 seconds?)

http://www.fox26.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KRIV

Also, why is this surprising to you in the least (that electrolysis can release hydrogen from water, or that hydrogen is flammable and can burn, or that the byproducts are water)? This is nothing new.

US should sponser an He Prize

[kerskine]

Instead of putting our eggs into one EU driven basket, I propose that our (US) government sponser the following contest:

Prize: US$10.0 Billion

Contest: Within the next ten years, produce a sustained fusion reaction that can generate 1.0 MW of power over a 30 day period.

I bet there are a couple hundred smart engineers/physicists out there that would make this happen.

Re:US should sponser an He Prize

[Anonymous Coward]

No. There aren't. All the smart engineers/physicists are working on ITER or some other sponsored test device (such as the DoE Spheromak at Lawrence Livermore). If you'd had any idea the cost of getting the superconducting magnetic coils alone with a chamber thats strong enough to hold it together, let alone the monitoring equipment required for such a venture, then you'd be stupid to say that this could be done in a prize format. This is nuclear fusion for chrissakes, not a word puzzle.

This is one of the few things that requires investments that only governments would be willing to make. High risk of failure without any return on investment perhaps even in our lifetimes.

Re:US should sponser an He Prize

[Anonymous Coward]

never going to happen. how are you going to get venture capitol on that large a scale? Heck, the 10 million dollar x-prize was a big deal...and only happened because guys like Paul Allen are star trek nerds with some spending money lying around. Now multiply the initial investement required by 1,000 and were is all that going to come from? You don't just go down to the store and buy this stuff off the shelf.

It's way to big a project to be outsourced as a prize to a group of private scientists to stumble their way toward. If one group eventually wins, the others would be out billions of dollars. And your timeframe of 10 yrs is way too optomistic...impossible.

Re:US should sponser an He Prize

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem that sometimes stifles research is not lack of money -- it IS money.

You may remember the "room-temperature fusion" announcement a few years ago (1990?). The guys who did that one produced some kind of reaction but no one (including them) could prove it was fusion -- the only evidence was the production of typical fusion byproducts (more heat energy than a typical chemical reaction, plus lithium, IIRC). All the researchers wanted was $4 or $5 million in federal research money to see what it was they had -- not the $10 billion prize money proposed here.

They were run out of town by the big-name researchers at places like Yale, Harvard, and MIT who had $200+ million federal grants for traditional fusion research. Plus, their research was stifled by their own university (the University of Utah) while the lawyers haggled over who should own any patents -- the researchers who did the work, the university that provided facilities, or the state that funded the university.

Did we miss an opportunity to pursue a promising new avenue of energy production? Probably not -- but we'll never know because the pursuit of money warped the pursuit of science.

Re:US should sponser an He Prize

[mako1138]

The thing about the X-Prize: governments have already gotten to space, and private companies are just replicating what was done in the 1960s. Fusion: governments haven't gotten a viable reactor. The technology simply isn't there yet.

Re:US should sponser an He Prize

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, way to warp an already bad story.

The chemists in questions were Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah. They ran one experiment, published it. Then everyone else tried the experiment (oh, darn that replicability of science!) and not one research team was able to replicate the results the two chemists had in question.

Tell a physicist that cold fusion is possible btw, and they'll laugh at you. You need a schooling in thermodynamics to know its impossible. But please to spread apocrypha like that.

Re:US should sponser an He Prize

[RsG]

Just to clarify, their experimental results weren't consitantly replicable, but they were replicated at least once. IIRC, the heat generated in the so called "cold fusion" device is thought to have come from chemical reactions, rather than nuclear.

I think this was established based on the fact that the same results were found for hydrogen (H-1) as they were for deuterium (H-2). For those that don't remember their chemistry and/or physics, different isotopes of an element have the same chemical properties, so they will yeild the same results in a chemical reaction, but they have different nuclear properties, so they shouldn't be doing the same thing in a nuclear reaction. Therefor, if a reaction is identical for H-1 and H-2 (which are different stable isotopes of hyrdogen), it's a safe bet the cause is chemistry rather than fusion.

I don't know if any theory was put forward as to what sort of chemical reaction might have contaminated the results.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Retric]

It's a variation on a standard electric welder. He is using electricity to split water transforming 2 H20 into 2* H2 + O2 which is then burned.

Now FOX news cut out all the science making this seem like a *great new thing* which use water as an energy source but it is water as a battery. They are basically doing the same thing as saying "I can use copper wire to power my lights" ignoring the fact the only reason it works is the coal power plant attached to said copper wire.

In the same way the car is not using water as a power source rather it's some kind of battery. After all if it really ran on H20 there would be no reason for the car to run on gas.

And I imagine their logo...

[LanMan04]

The seven-party consortium, which includes the European Union, the US, Japan, China, Russia and others, agreed last year to build Iter in Cadarache, in the southern French region of Provence

I wonder if their logo will look like this.

If you don't get it, go watch Contact

Re:Why not the US?

[dwarfling]

ehhmmm, just in case you did build it up ;) otherwise fussion reactor cannot blow up ;)

Re:Why not the US?

[ballpoint]

... in case it goes KADARASH !

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Anonymous Coward]

I REALLY fucking hope you're being sarcastic. "Hey, let's nuke an entire geographic area, because ONE fucking organization there attacked us"

Fucking morons.

ISS is not a "science collaboration"

[adminispheroid]

I am concerned to see the ISS referred to as a "science collaboration." What scientific groups ever asked for the ISS? What science has been done on the ISS? What results have come out? What science *will* be done on the ISS? The answer to all four questions is "None."

The NASA PR machine has used the "constant repetition" technique to get Congress and the public to believe that the ISS has something to do with science. Apparently with some success. But this does not change the fact that there is no science, and there are no results.

Re:ISS is not a "science collaboration"

[Anonymous Coward]

Very little has come out of the ISS in terms of, say, physics research, but if you go over to PubMed and search for "international space station", there is a modicum of biomedical research. Not enough to justify the ISS's existence, but still ...

Re:ISS is not a "science collaboration"

[DerekLyons]

I am concerned to see the ISS referred to as a "science collaboration." What scientific groups ever asked for the ISS?

What does it matter? There are individual scientists and engineers lining up to use it.

What science has been done on the ISS? What results have come out?

Very little - but that is hardly surprising for a facilty still under construction.

What science *will* be done on the ISS?

Biochemistry, chemistry, some physics, some materials science, some human factors, some psychology, etc... etc...

The answer to all four questions is "None."

Umm... no. There are valid answers to all four questions - and they aren't "none".

The terrorists strategy is working.

[hackwrench]

That isn't say anything regarding their overall success, but the American strategy doesn't seem to be taking the terrorist's strategy into account, which is this: Make the Americans spend lots of resources fighting the war.

Taking that strategy into account would mean that America would lower expenditures to trick the leaders into movement that increases their visiblity to try to goad America into reraising their expenditures.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[c6gunner]

That's not what they claim though. From their website:

Our technology centers on the ability to generate a unique type of hydrogen/oxygen gas mixture (a "unique gas", which we call "Aquygen(TM)" gas) on demand from a lightweight, compact machine that uses the water electrolysis process as its underlying technology basis. This unique gas is infinitely stable until it comes in contact with a select target media. Then it sublimates, causing a molecular surface exchange of certain elements, reacting with such excitation as to cause temperatures of up to 10,000 F, the temperature of our Sun's surface, which is currently the limits of our ability to measure.

Which sounds like a load of hooey to me, but maybe someone with a better understanding of chemistry would be more qualified to comment.

Re:Why not the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Say goodbye, as though France was the only place with good food, good wine, and good people? (On that last one, have you ever BEEN to Paris? The rest of the country I'll agree with you, but Paris is utterly devoid of that last group)

Besides. It was a JOKE. Fusion reactors are unlikely to blow up, and even if they were to do so (They *are* dealing with superheated hydrogen after all), they wouldn't take out much as it would simply be a chemical reaction which caused it.

More info...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HHO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquygen
http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=4934566&na v=0RZFL8gu
http://www.phact.org/e/bgas.htm
http://www.waterfuelconverters.com/

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that that organisation even comes from that area anyway...

Re:Why not the US?

[sl3xd]

Because the US wanted to build the IETR in Japan. The US has several of its own large fusion experiments in parallel with the IETR. (Important thing with IETR is the 'TR' for tokamak reactor; not everybody's convinced a Tokamak is the way to go.)

The US's National Ignition Facility (NIF), is quite different in its approach; it doesn't use a Tokamak at all, rather using lasers to fuse pellets of fuel, and it uses a 'combustion' cycle of sorts.

Basically, the US wants to be part of the IETR, but (along with most of the IETR participants) it doesn't want to focus on only one possible route to nuclear fusion. Discoveries that would have been missed had everybody focused solely on the IETR can still provide a benefit to mankind.

In France...

[Lazbien]

And if it ends up melting down and blowing a large chunk off of the Earth, all we'll lose is France.

Godspeed!

Re:In France...

[runningoutofnickname]

Fusion does not have the risk of a runaway reaction like fission does. If a crack were to develop in the fusion reaction, the impurities that would be introduced by, say, a single human breath would quench the reaction. Maintaining such a high level of purity within the reaction chamber is one reason it has been so difficult to realize fusion power (unlike fission, which went from theory to reality in a matter of months!)

Re:In France...

[tehcyder]

As an earlier post mentioned, we should indeed have a US-based prize, if only to balance things up.

bad math?

[MrSquirrel]

Not to knock their plan... but let's say it does take 36 more years. We will assume the following variables: the scientists working on it are PhD's, meaning we can also assume they spent 8 years in college. Average college starting age of 18, + 8 years, means the average college-graduation-age of these scientists should be around 26. Now, assume the likely fact that these men (and women!) are probably not all immediatelly being pulled into the project from college, rather they probably have a good ten years or so working in related fields. Add 10 years of work experience to the 26 year old's life and you get 36. If the project is suppossed to take 36 years, add that to the person's age now and you get... (no, don't open up "calculator", you can do it in your head)... 72. So, it's a (VERY) wild estimate that the median age for these scientists will be 72 when this project is suppossed to be complete. Doesn't that seem illogical? I mean, they probably WON'T be working on this project when they're 72. This means the project (especially the upper-management people who are probably even older than 36) will likely have important positions change hands (maybe even more than once). This has the potential to create political clashes (in the work environment, I'm not talking about 'dubya vs. *insert whatever here*). It seems like this is QUITE the undertaking. Quite the undertaking indeed. On a further note, something I just realized is that maybe the reason the "expected project length" is so long is because the first group of scientists is going to slack off (i.e. /. all day) and then when they retire, the second wave will have to haul butt to get the project done "on time".

A gas that sublimates?

[HornWumpus]

You realize what sublimate means?

It's BS.

Wires are'nt the limit on voltage but current.

[HornWumpus]

Arcing is the main problem with higher voltages.

Unless you can design as well as get approval and aquire rights of way for much larger towers you can't really raise the voltage much higher.

You simply have to move the wires further apart. That takes structure.

Insulating the wires with materials such as rubber is one obvious solution that just does'nt work. Look at limits on underground/underwater cables as well as the costs associated.

Thorium reactors

[deanpole]

Thorium reactors have more promise. They are safer, simpler, and cheaper.

Re:Thorium reactors

[RsG]

As safe as, maybe. Safer than fusion? Sorry, not really. How can something be safer when the object of comparison is completely safe already?

Assuming the artical you linked is correct, then the meltdown risk is minimal (they say improbable), and the waste less hazardous that with conventional fission reactors. With fusion, the meltdown risk is zero (a fusion plant can no more meltdown than a coal fired one), and the waste isn't just less hazardous, it's completely harmless - He4 is stable and chemically inert.

Both types of reactor, and the existing types of nuclear power, have the problem of neutron irradiation, so that point of comparison is the same all around. Fusion is more expensive and complex, so you are correct that thorium power would be simpler, but I'd say the lack of any fission waste products, and the complete inability to sustain a reaction when control is lost, makes fusion the safer of the two.

Environmentalists think energy is bad Wrecks stuff

[HornWumpus]

It's not just that hippies think yuppies are stupid for driving SUVs to the mall.

It's that they know eventually some of these SUVs will be resold and used by rednecks (like myself) to wreck their nice quite woods with our trucks and guns. Yeahaw, what the hell am I doing here at the computer...

They think if I had unlimited cheap energy I'd just use it for something distructive but fun. They're right.

I'll be happy with a hydrogen powered Unimog (not one of those litte Hummers) and a rail gun.

Solar Power Funding

[MrSteveSD]

We already have a huge Fusion reactor in the sky blasting us with masses of free energy. Spending billions on an experimental Fusion reactor is all well and good but it might just be a good idea to spend similar amounts of money working out ways to cheaply produce highly efficient solar cells.

How does government funding for photovoltaics compare to funding for Fusion research? Does anyone have the figures? I've never heard of any grand government push to make dirt cheap 50% efficient solar cells. Imagine if you could buy a 1m square 50% efficient solar cell for $10. That sort of technology could change the balance of power in the world.

Re:Solar Power Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar cells aren't the way to go. Best current efficiencies are around 25% and they cost a whole lot of money - roughly $1000 per square meter. What you want is Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants instead. They are much more economical for commercial power generation.

Governments won't throw money at this sort of research until there is a monetary penalty for environmental damage - and you know they aren't going to agree to that.

Re:Solar Power Funding

[RsG]

Actually, existing photoelectric cells are adequate for almost any solar power use. They're close to what we'd consider a mature techology.

The two best aplications for solar power are distributed generation and orbital power. The former involves putting solar cells on rooftops and the like, thereby getting power generated at the same site it's used in. The problem with this, and other forms of distributed power, is that they work best at suplimenting power generation - they aren't a replacement for power plants. We can however do this with existing tech to reduce our energy needs. Additionally, this requires an environment that gets enough sunlight - for example, this wouldn't work for about half the year where I live.

The second use for solar power is orbital power stations. You build a massive, spread out solar array in space and beam the power back via microwave to a ground based recieving station.

This has a few advantages:
1) There's no weather or day/night cycle to get in the way. Power output is constant.
2) Solar energy is stronger in orbit, since the sunlight is unfiltered (ie, a square meter of panel generates more power in space than at high noon on the ground).
3) We can build the solar array as large as we like, without worrying about the structural considerations of building in a gravity well, or the price of land to build on (both in dollars are habitat).

The catch is that lauch costs are still far too high. We'd need to be able to haul lots and lots of mass into orbit, not just the mass of the panels but other equiptment as well, for a lot less than it costs today to make this work.

If we could get to orbit however, we already have the solar tech to build this thing. And no, super effecient solar panels wouldn't solve the problem of launch cost, since there's only so much power you can get from X surface area, and even 100% effecient panels would need better launch tech to get up there in the numbers we'd need. Cheap panels also aren't an issue, since they're already the least expensive part of this arraingment.

Neither of these applications of solar power would benefit from tonnes of money spent on photoelectric R&D - the former because what it really needs is economy of scale and mainstream adoption, and the latter because what we lack is launch technology.

Fusion however is not a mature techology. And it fills a different role from solar - we can build fusion plants anywhere we'd like, whereas we're limited to either space or certain lattitudes for solar power.

Both solar and fusion are useful clean energy solutions. To suggest we pursue one and abandon the other, because the first is easy and the latter hard, is short sighted and foolish at best.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[lgw]

The cool part of his invention (if it's real) is that no one else knows how to get hydrogen out of liquid water at anywhere near the efficiency needed for this torch. Simply using a pair of electrodes really sucks, efficiency-wise, and steam electralisis is better but still sucks.

If we go down the road of nuclear power -> hydrogen -> cars, which is the only short road to using less oil, we need a better way to get the hydrogen!

Not perpetual motion...

[sean.peters]

I quote from Wikipedia:

Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials at low temperatures, characterized by exactly zero electrical resistance

I don't understand your objection. No one claims that any energy is being obtained for nothing, just that electrons can move through the superconductor without resistance.

Sean

Re:Not perpetual motion...

[turgid]

I see what you mean.

Missing the point

[sean.peters]

I think the point here is that literally ANYTHING would have been a better use of our funds than the mess in Iraq. We've spent the $300B dollars, and the situation is objectively far worse than it would have been if we'd simply done nothing.

Sean

Greedy French?

[FreekyGeek]

Wait a minute... didn't France also just win the giant new underground supercollider project? Why do they get both? Aren't any other countries allowed to have large scientific projects, or are the French gonna hog them all?

Hey, France: QUIT BEING SO GREEDY!

Re:Greedy French?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's happen that France is certainly with Japan the most advanced country when civilian nuclear technology matters. More than 80% of their electricity is produced this way and they have some very efficient scientific research centers. France also gets wide support from all European countries against US (who have the tendency not to share) and Japan (too far).

But..

[necro2607]

But will that meet the system requirements for Duke Nukem Forever?

grand government push to make 1+1=3

[HornWumpus]

Before the government will spend gigabucks on something you should have a scientific theory.

50% efficency from photovoltaics is impossible. Study some solid state physics. You're price point is equally unrealistic and way beyond what is needed to make solar a realistic option.

Besides solar cells are already an industry with a market. They have all the interest they need in making better cells. Markets will bring forward better solar cells over time. It's like asking the government to spend money making GE jet engines better (granting the complications: Government gives tax credits for R&D plus the military is likely the single biggest customer).

Chemicals from air and water

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd need the Fischer-Tropsch process, and water electrolysis, and a method of carbon sequestration.

Eurodisney site?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if it is on the site of EuroDisney?

Re:Why not the US?

[mako1138]

Among the US fusion community, many researchers were worried that the US's stake in ITER would eat up the entire fusion research budget, leaving nothing for domestic programs.

NIF's main purpose, really, is weapons stewardship. France is building (built?) a similar facility too.

Over 99% of Earth's mass is hotter than 1000C...

[Timbotronic]

...and we're looking to spend billions on fusion for power?

I wonder what the return would be if we spent the same amount on drilling technology and geothermal power plants.

Neutron bombardment

[Anonymous Coward]

Disposing of hot nuclear waste has been a research topic for 50 years. There are numerous promising techniques in development. They generally involve bombardment with neutrons to force the elements to mutate to a stable isotope. Here is a naive google search, please get up to date with this before you hammer out the usual anti-fission stuff. We're going to be up to our armpits in water soon unless we make fission better. Fusion is taking too long and it actually may not work.

goog bombardment search

Re:Neutron bombardment

[edxwelch]

Ha, ha! Maybe you should follow your own advice. If you actually had *read* the google links that you posted, the 2nd one says:

"THERE IS NO MAGIC ANSWER FOR DEALING WITH UK RADIOACTIVE WASTE SAYS WATCHDOG

RWMAC Press Release - 3 December 2003

For many decades there has been the suggestion that the nuclear industry can largely solve the problem of long-term management of its radioactive waste by using chemical and nuclear technologies to transform dangerous, long-lived wastes into shorter-lived, less harmful forms. This process is known as partitioning and transmutation. However, a report of a study commissioned by Ministers from the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC) finds that this cannot, in practice, provide the answer to the UK's radioactive waste problems."

The International Consortium

[www.TheInternational]

All consortium are run by us....We're the umbrella consortium...The uber-consortium...It's wunderbar...It's sugoi

http://www.theinternationalconsortium.com/ [theinterna...ortium.com]

Re:Why not the US?

[tehcyder]

No, they're putting it in France in case it blows up.

No, they're putting it in the USA in case it blows up.

Would this be moderated Funny?

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Errr, yeah, I kinda got that it was a hydrogen/oxygen welder.

The bits I was having trouble with were:

1) torch is cold enough to touch (yet hotter then the surface of the sun!)

2) Claim that more power comes out then whats put in electricity wise.

3) Fox presenting it as something truthful (should be on some sort of consumer action/anti scam prog if you ask me)

I honestly thought it was a (extremely deadpan) joke, but if I cast my mind back to some fox "reports" I've seen I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Re:Why not the US?

[HunterZ]

Yes, absolutely - if they were building the prototype in the U.S. instead of France, that is.

Re: Over 99% of Earth's mass is hotter than 1000C.

[RsG]

In places where geothermal is easy to get to (the low hanging fruit), it's being used. See Iceland for a good example of this. However, the energy output isn't even close to what we could get with fusion.

Geothermal, like solar, wind, etc, is a power source that draws passively from the environment, and all forms of passive power generation hinge on location. Solar power works in sunny climates, and in space. Tidal power works on the coast. Hyrdo works where there's a river to harness. None of these things work just anywhere.

You ask why we don't just drill a deep hole to get geothermal power regardless of location. I would ask you why you don't think we should construct deep canals to generate hyrdo power anywhere? After all, it's the same idea; alter the local enviroment to provide us with power.

When you look at it that way, you begin to see why it's not going to work terribly well - you can't expect to expand massive amounts of energy just to get at a passive energy source, especially not one that that's only moderately powerful. How deep do you have to dig to get at abundant geothermal energy in most parts of the world, and how long would it take to break even once you harnessed it?

Fusion, like nuclear, isn't passive. We aren't harnessing an existing energy source we're making our own. That generally avoids the aforementioned problems, and lets you put your power plant where it's needed, not where it's geographically convienient.

Also, side note, you are aware that fusion is an awful lot hotter than 1000 degrees, right? If it occured at those temperatures, we'd have the reactors already.

Re:10 Billion Dollars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he doesn't waste all day every day begging for mod points, then posting AC (like you did here) to say what he really thinks so he doesn't lose his precious karma.

And the funniest thing is, we're two different AC's busting your balls for being such a loser.

Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

The bits I was having trouble with were:

1) torch is cold enough to touch (yet hotter then the surface of the sun!)

Well, yes, but that's because you're stupid.

2) Claim that more power comes out then whats put in electricity wise.

Again, stop reading Slashbot for your science education. Such things are possible, regardless of what the idiots (including you) blather on about.

So again, it's because you're stupid.

"3) Fox presenting it as something truthful (should be on some sort of consumer action/anti scam prog if you ask me)"

Yes, but nobody ever asks you, and moronic comments like this are why.

At least it demonstrates the arrogance that pervades your being. Of course the other side can't ever be telling the truth. That would mean that you DON'T have a monopoly on what's true.

Why should your thinking reflect reality? Better to assume your opinion is fact (regardless of the mile long lines of people smarter than you telling you otherwise).

I love pointing out what an asshole you are. You make it so easy, I could do it for every post if there weren't DOZENS OF THEM EVERY FUCKING DAY, ALL DAY LONG. I have a life, so I can't keep up with that kind of shit storm.

If they constructed it in....

[EricTheO]

If they constructed it in.... Antarctica, would it produce "Cold Fusion"? ;-P Sorry had to get the Pun out of my head. -Eric