Slashdot Mirror
Should Google Go Nuclear?
Baldrson writes "One of the founders of the US Tokamak fusion program, Dr. Robert W. Bussard, gave a lecture at Google recently now appearing as a Google video titled 'Should Google Go Nuclear?'. In it, he presents his recent breakthrough electrostatic confinement fusion device which, he claims, produced several orders of magnitude higher fusion power than earlier electrostatic confinement devices. According to Bussard, it did so repeatably during several runs until it blew up due to mechanical stress degradation. He's looking for $200M funding, the first million or so of which goes to rebuilding a more robust demonstrator within the first year. He claims the scaling laws are so favorable that the initial full scale reactor would burn boron-11 — the cleanest fusion reaction otherwise unattainable. He has some fairly disturbing things to say in this video, as well as elsewhere, about the US fusion program which he co-founded."
It isn't just fusion. There's some fission involved too in the particular chain of reactions he wants to use. But it's fission of light elements, and Bussard claims it won't produce gamma rays or speeding neutrons.
In fact, pure fusion reactions do produce neutrons that go flying off and have to be captured, which means that they produce harmful radiation. The seeming lack of neutrons is what makes many very skeptical of cold fusion claims. But the reaction chain he proposes involves fusion and fission and produces no neutrons or gamma rays.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Yes. If $20 billion made a real fusion project, every oil company would be killing each other to get in on it. The ROI on that project is immense, and their shares and options would go through the roof. Not to mention the positive publicity...
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Oh get off it. First of all, oil companies are already quite secure in their profits. Oil's used for a hell of a lot more than just electricity. Everything plastic, for example.
Also, oil companies are some of the ones leading the alternative energy charge, believe it or not. Oil companies know even better than you do that their oil wells are not going to last forever, and they want to be ready when they do start drying up by already being leaders in the next power resource. They are generally not stupid nor abnormally immoral. They do want to make a buck, but they are good at thinking long-term.
(Note: I am talking about most large oil companies other than Exxon/Mobil. Those guys in particular seem a little on the retarded side.)
Random and weird software I've written.
Provided it's cleaner energy than what's currently produced by corporations, this is bad how?
That's great, but we're not talking about purely hypothetical space propulsion mechanisms from 40 years ago. What does the Bussard Ramjet, hypothetical musings from 40 years ago, have to do with this story today? Nothing. They share fusion, but that in name only. And what of it that science fiction has appropriated his name? And that's before you launch into your tirade of name calling. When you do reference reality, you distort it and cast it in the worst possible light. To characterize the history of his research as "whenever he tried to test it under controlled conditions, it failed - and he blamed some obscure technical malfunction for this inability to achieve any measurable results," is distortion.
Although the Slashdot moderators appear to have found your handwaving and strawman rather clever.
If you do not find at least plausible his explanation of a hold on publishing and loss of funding due to alternative energy research being cut from the Navy budget due to spending pressures on R&D coinciding with the Iraq war, without evidence to the contrary, you are simply unreasonable. Do you really believe, having provided no evidence to this effect, that this man is attempting to swindle potential investors out of $200 million? This borders on libel.
You imply Bussard is engaging in deception, yet you offer no evidence of this other than handwaving and your science fiction strawman. Do you assume everyone is attempting to deceive you until proven otherwise in a controlled experiment? Did you even watch the presentation of the story you are commenting on? I doubt it.
What are these "results" you claim he purports to have found but can't reproduce? The claims he makes of his tests are not remarkable. You appear to present the issue in a purposefully antagonistic manner. He does not, to my knowledge, claim to have demonstrated a fusion device that would be capable of producing greater useable energy than is required to power it. And in this sense, there is nothing remarkable about what he claims to have found in his results. Certainly nothing paranormal.
And what on earth should Randi have to do with this? Randi is an excellent foil for psychics and dowsers, but he is not a physicist.
And he is not asking for $200 million for himself or his company. If this is the form funding to see these tests realize took, he would accept this, but as he says, he is an old man and is tired. He only wants to see his vision realized, even if that means it is carried out by another company or by another country.
And infact in the proposal he presents, the first step involves only $2 million, and is intended to reproduce the results of earlier tests in an environment where engineering, and lab control and instrumentation are fully funded in order to improve the reliabilitty of the results. This is more than the paltry prize offered by Randi. Although I fail, again, to see why Randi would have any interest in verifying unremarkable claims of nuclear fusion.
This is not some nut playing with magnets and tesla coils in his garage.
But they are in the power-consumption business, and plenty of it.
They aren't in the ATX Power supply manufacturing busininess either, but that didn't stop them designing a new one.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Soo... there's the old adage that big claims need big evidence, and Bussard currently has rather an excess of one and a lack of the other. but for someone who chooses to discredit him for not being a bit short on concrete, verifiable data, your post itself is completely science free. In a discussion that is entirely dependant on science (his last prototype's malfunction is unfortunate and perhaps suspicious, but is by no means proof of hackery), I don't understand why people find what amounts to an emotional evaluation of his work useful.
Your criticisms are mostly ad hominem, e.g. his "Incessant groveling for cash" - he does not grovel incessantly, in fact in the Google lecture he admits to giving up on the search for funding. Should he have just packed his bags when his funding was cut (it should be noted that it was all navy energy research funding, not him in particular)? He also defends the malfunction quite reasonably (it was one not a series as you suggest), and considering the supposedly successful prototype was only tested a few times at useful power levels, small amounts of data are also not unreasonable.
If he's a quack, so be it. But let's actually add to the debate by citing facts, not armchair opinions that essentially a love of science fiction == hack (Remember how people used to dream about a better and wonderful future? That used to actually be a fairly american quality and he is of that generation).
I don't try and discredit ID proponents just by calling them assholes. I point to the fact that it is a scientifically sterile non-theory and that there is a wide body of evidence supporting evolution. He wasn't working alone in his basement, he had a pretty impressive team (Jim Benson immedialely hired them after funding dissapeared) that would have complained publicly if he was lying about his results. Treat his science as you would any other, and fight it with evidence, or restrain your tongue.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
James Randi is not a trained diviner, psychic oder medium either. In order to assess the question, if something works, it is not necessary to understand how it works. If Bussard won't indeed produce any verifiable experiments then he's just not doing science.
Of course it isn't. But I regard with great suspicion anybody involved in mainstream fusion research who doesn't want anybody to pursue anything else. Tunnel vision happens everywhere. And while it seems that Mr. Bussard may suffer from it, I have no doubt that people who have their entire careers wrapped up in magnetic confinement have it even worse.
If the original poster had given even a shred of a reason why the idea wouldn't work, especially if (s)he gave a pointer or to to some pages describing why it wouldn't work in detail, I'd be all impressed and credulous. As it is, Mr. Bussards idea of confinement with electric forces doesn't seem particularly ridiculous to me, and it seems like it deserves to be on an equal footing for funding.
I stand by my claim that the original poster engaged in exactly the same kind of mudflinging and ad-hominem attack that Mr. Bussard did and from the shield of 'Anonymous Coward' no less. Neither of them deserve any respect for engaging in such attacks, though I submit that the anonymous coward was being much nastier for trashing an individual rather than an idea. But I also see no evidence presented that his idea stands a lower chance of working than the magnetic confinement ideas that have been being pursued for all these years.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'd even go so far as to say that cheap energy for all would save the world. I'm not normally a doom and gloom kinda guy, but it seems to me that the path we're headed on right now leads to civilization breaking down.
With cheap and bountiful energy, the US would care a whole lot less about what's happening in places with oil. And in turn those places would care a whole lot less about the US. Many parts of the world could be made to be much more pleasant places to live, and the general cost of getting things done plummets.
Right now there are many, many people in the world who are extraordinarily unhappy with things as they are, and would take down civilization if they could. They lack only the means, not the motive. Eventually, and inevitably, the means will become more and more accessible. Suicide bombers, for instance, are an expensive weapon. They work only once, at most, and are difficult to cultivate. Recently there was a story of Israel wishing to develop a lethal insect-sized robot. While not practical today, sooner or later it will be. And not long after that, cheap enough and available enough to use in place of suicide bombers. At that point the equation changes, and destabilizing society on a larger scale becomes much easier to do.
The only way to save the world is not through force, but rather improving the lives of everyone, everywhere. And nothing would take anywhere near as large a stride towards that end as cheap and plentiful energy for all.
The way to stop terrorism is not by spending a trillion dollars killing people, but rather spending that money on figuring out how to make things better.
Furthermore, high density power sources may open up new lines of weaponry (directed energy, magnetic propelled projectiles, ionizing plasma for destroying biomass like humans), and even new defenses against nuclear weapons (which would make them more likely to be used).
Also, I doubt that whoever discovers this "free energy for all" would dare to allow all to have it, much less for free. It is such a powerful economic advantage that any country with that technology would far surpass the rest of the world, resulting in more inequality, not less. With ridiculous amounts of free energy, we could afford to mine/assemble everything here and be nice and isolationist. Who knows, maybe wars will be fought over this technology? Those in power are often reluctant to give it up...
I'd like to see fusion power get to the point where it's a useful substitute, but you should be very careful what you wish for. "With great power comes great responsibility" they say, and if mankind has proven anything over the least fifty thousand years, it is that it is anything but responsible.