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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. "
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.
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).
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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?
- Kal`Goblez
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.
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.
Because you lose all economies of scale.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
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.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.