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Amateur Scientists Seek Fusion Reaction
ElvaWSJ writes "A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans — fewer than 100 worldwide — are building working nuclear-fusion reactors at home. The designs are based on the work of Philo T. Farnsworth, an inventor of television, from the 1960s. Some of these hobbyists hope similar reactors can one day power the planet, but so far they consume more energy than they create."
Can a string theorist explain why this won't work?, in simple terms please.
"A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans -- fewer than 100 worldwide -- are building working perpetual motion devices at home. The designs are based on the work of Albert Michelson, co-proponent of luminiferous aether theory, from the 1890s. Some of these hobbyists hope similar devices can one day power the planet, but so far they consume more energy than they create."
Good article.
Meanwhile at my home, I've perfected the generation of natural gas by eating the right combination of Burger King and Taco Bell.
Be relentless!
Sweet. They built a time machine.
Only the first paragraph was quoted from TFA - preview button, who needs it!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I can't fucking wait for the day cold fusion arrives and we get to tell all those assholes in the middle east "Hey heres a fusion reactor that lasts for a century and costs $500. We'll no longer be needing your oil"
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans -- fewer than 100 worldwide -- are building working nuclear-fusion reactors at home.
In other news, a small subculture of amateur neoconservatives are building working homemade tanks, fighter jets and cruise missiles in order to seek out and destroy these Weapons Of Mass Destruction before its too late and a mushroom cloud appears in somebody's basement
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Well, different strokes for different folks...
That's my favorite book ever... having been a boyscout with a parent who worked at a nuclear power plant.
Due to my book report on "The Nuclear Boyscout," way back when, I am now unemployable. Sucks to be me.
Now if they could put it in the form of a suppository...
not plane, nor bird, nor even frog...
Really embarrassing or REALLY embarrassing.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Confucius say "Man who build fusion reactor at home flux his wife instead of his secretary."
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Apparently, he never wants to get laid ... EVER!
- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
Why isn't this tagged with "goodnewseveryone"?
So don't forget to wear you film badge. Because nothing says safety like a device that can tell you after the fact that you've received a fatal dose of radiation
Shoot, I just spent all this time building a Farnsworth fusor for nothing.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
If we just gathered together enough matter, it would start fusing on its own through gravitational force. Using this method, we could create a gigantic fusion reactor in space, and then collect its radiation and convert it to electricity. It would be kind of like harnessing the solar power of the sun...oh wait...
Yes, Wikipedia is exactly that, a friend. You know, the kind of friend that likes to tell tall tales, and is generally fun to be around with. Just don't ask him/her to help with your homework, at least not if must get it right or you'll flunk ;-)
By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold.
I think my wife already has a patent on that ...
a couple of hundred bucks, less if you live near a junkyard :)
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I don't mean getting Mr. Fusor to give Mrs. Fusor a special cuddle, I mean using the thing as a neutron source to produce fission fuel.
I'm guessing not, as the thing would be more tightly controlled.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Radioactive carbon is one thing, uranium and plutonium another. There may be some typical overreaction by Greenpeace yet I'm not sure you should dismiss the issue as trivial so lightly. There were linked articles that shed some light on their concerns.
Greenpeace revealed that Cogema, the operator of the state-owned La Hague reprocessing plant, has installed inadequate equipment off the plant's discharge pipe, 30 metres under the sea, in a flawed attempt to prevent the routine discharge of radioactive particles into the ocean. Levels of radiation on the outside of the two steel chambers are so high (up to 500 micro-sieverts each hour) that a no-dive zone was self imposed by Greenpeace's radio-protection officer.
Since July, Cogema have been attempting to remove the radioactive crust from within their waste pipe. Greenpeace had called upon French authorities for a thorough Environmental Impact Assessment prior to any operation. This was not conducted, and during the operation hundreds of kilograms of waste material escaped into the ocean.
Greenpeace revealed today that nuclear particles larger than 63 microns were captured during a scientific sampling FROM Cogema's discharge pipe, while the Discharge Authorization from 1980 states that no particle larger than 25 microns can be discharged by the reprocessing plant.
In late 1998, following a green light and final checks by regulatory authorities DSIN, responsible for regulating nuclear transport, and OPRI which handles radioprotection, spent fuel shipment transportation from Cruas-Meysse to La Hague resumed. Shipments had been suspended in April 1998 after safety authorities reported ground contamination at the Valognes terminal near La Hague.
In mid-January 1997, the British Medical Journal published a study by two French scientists, Dominique Pobel and Jean-FranÃois Viel. The report warned of an increased risk of leukaemia for children who played regularly on beaches near the nuclear La Hague reprocessing plant, triggering local public concern. French Environment and Health Ministries commissioned an official epidemiological study of leukaemia around La Hague to be conducted by a high-level, ten-member team of experts. On 16 June 1997, the Secretary of State for Health requested OPRI (Office for Protection against Ionizing Radiation) to conduct an analysis of the marine environment (water, sediments, fauna, flora) around the sea discharge end of the effluent pipe of the La Hague plant. Measurements taken by OPRI near the beaches detected no radioactivity above the natural radioactivity level.
Activists such as Rousselet had reason to doubt La Hague's chemistry, essentially the same as the separation process developed by the Manhattan Project. It has proved an ecological, occupational, and humanitarian disaster nearly everywhere else. Spills and explosions at reprocessing plants in the United States, Russia, and Britain have polluted rivers and contaminated hundreds of thousands of acres. Britain's Sellafield reprocessing complex, on England's Cumbrian coast, was shuttered in April 2005 after safety authorities discovered that 83 cubic meters of highly radioactive liquids had spilled during a period of nine months.
While they may be rabidly anti-nuclear they still have a right to be concerned.
Can a string theorist explain why this won't work?, in simple terms please.
Sun big and hot. Reactor small and hot. Big hot better than small hot. String work better that way.