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."

Comments

Amateur scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

Can suck my dick.

Re:Amateur scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate Sponsors of the Beijing Olympics Ignore Human Rights Abuses

Re:Amateur scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

Rick Roll. Sad part is that this is the most compelling (albeit off topic) link so far to have tricked me...though I had a hunch.
--beckerist

Good grief...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these the same yahoos that post videos of "perpetual" motion machines on Youtube? The folks with just enough science knowledge to be "magnets are cool!" but not enough to realize that no, no matter how you arrange the magnets, you will not get free energy...

Re:Good grief...

[taustin]

No, this really works as advertised. It's a high school science faire level of complexity and cost (if you're willing to deal with stray neutrons). For practical reasons, it can't be made to produce more energy than it consumes, is all. The principles have been known since the 20s. Robert Bussard (of Bussard Ramjet fame) had patents on it.

Re:Good grief...

[lgw]

But the stray neutrons (or other energetic particles, depending on the reaction) are the real problem with fusion as a power source. To quote TFA:

Fusion advocates say reactors would be relatively clean, generating virtually no air pollution and little long-lived radioactive waste. Today's nuclear power plants, in contrast, are fission-based, meaning they split atoms and create a highly radioactive waste that can take millennia to decompose.

The spent fuel from a fission reactor is just not that hard to deal with - park it in a contianment area as robust as the reactor itself for 5-10 years, and you're left with not-very-much not-very-radioactive waste that could be easily disposed of, if it weren't so valuable that we insist on keeping it instead.

It's the rest of the reactor that's the serious problem. Depending on the reactor design, quite a bit of the reactor structure can become radioactive over time.

Fusion is going to have the same problem. Even if you have a reactor vessel the size of a washing machine, you're going to need significant shielding, an energy transfer mechanism (water leading to a turbine or something), structural elements, etc. Surem the problem with spent fuel goes away, but the problem with speant reactors remains. Not something you'd want in everyone's basement.

Re:Good grief...

[lgw]

Only the first paragraph was quoted from TFA - preview button, who needs it!

Re:Good grief...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Are these the same yahoos that post videos of "perpetual" motion machines on Youtube?

No. Wikipedia is your friend.

Farnsworth - Hirsch - Meeks fusors are quite real and effective. They're easy to build even by hobbyists using readily obtainable parts. Commercial versions serve as controllable neutron sources. Fusion neutron output of up to a trillion per second has been reported and rates in the billions per second are easily obtainable. To date it is estimated that Farnsworth-Hirsch-Meeks fusors have produced far more total fusion neutrons than all other non-bomb fusion devices combined.

Downside is that they involve ions moving in a trajectory past a metal electrode, which they must pass without hitting many thousands of times on the average before they participate in a fusion reaction. Hitting the electrode loses the energy used to create the ion and attempt to confine it, dumping the energy as heat in the electrode. Getting the electrode to be sufficiently "transparent" to achieve breakeven seems to be a lost cause.

Bussard's family of Polywell fusion machine designs apparently started as an attempt to steer the ions around the inner electrode of a Farnsworth-Hirsch-Meeks machine using a magnetic field. But it has since developed into a different (though related) principle: Use the magnetic field from the self-shielding magnet/electrodes to confine electrons (which are much easier to handle), creating a high-density space charge in the center of the machine. Use the electrostatic field of the electrons to attract and confine the ions in this region at high density and temperature, resulting in fusion. The magnetic field still shields the inner structures and the field is convex toward the plasma, limiting the plasma instabilities the plague "conventional" fusion machines.

Re:Good grief...

[seven of five]

Robert Bussard (of Bussard Ramjet fame) had patents on it.

The patents apply to a fancier version called the Polywell. Polywell attempts to cut losses to the point where net power is possible. As far as I know, no hobbyist has attempted that one yet. It's a much more expensive design that, depending on the fuel, would generate truly lethal doses of neutrons, and would need lots of shielding.

Re:Good grief...

[NosTROLLdamus]

This comment section is rife with idiots like you who couldn't be bothered to read the fucking article. But at least we can all feel a little smarter about ourselves, can't we?

Re:Good grief...

[taustin]

But the stray neutrons (or other energetic particles, depending on the reaction) are the real problem with fusion as a power source.

That actually depends on what your fuel source is. The common science fair level project uses hydrogen (not deuterium, even), and produces, IIRC, neutrons. There are other fuels possible, and some don't produce much of anything nasty. IIRC, Lithium 3 on one side and Lithium 4 on the other produces stable helium isotopes, and electricity, and absolutely nothing else.

There are still issues with fuel that misses other fuel striking internal components of the reaction chamber, which can produce some radioactivity, but getting to the self-sustaining point will also greatly reduce this sorts of unwanted collisions and ther resulting radioactive byproducts.

Re:Good grief...

[stonecypher]

Wikipedia is your friend.

No, it isn't.

Re:Good grief...

[Cochonou]

This quote is surprising. Go tell people living around La Hague that radioactivity waste can be easily disposed or recycled. This also seems to keep silent the existence of long-lived (but weakly radioactive) nuclear waste.

Re:Good grief...

[Urkki]

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 ;-)

Re:Good grief...

[UnknownSoldier]

If a magnet is sticking to something where is it getting its energy from?

Re:Good grief...

[jacquesm]

No work is being done, so therefore no energy consumption is required.

By the same token glue would be producing energy by making two things stick to each other...

Re:Good grief...

[Teancum]

Actually, Bussard was trying to use a Boron-11 fuel matrix that doesn't release neutrons in the same fashion as Deuterium fusion does. One of the reasons for this is precisely to help cut down on the neutron flux coming from the reactor.

His design goal was to use it as a direct drop-in replacement for boilers at coal-fired power plants, using similar sorts of shielding and precautions as would be already in place for such a facility. Water in the boiler itself would offer what extra protection would be needed, and radiation levels for released radioactive products would be lower than would be typical for a coal plant as well.

FYI, coal plants release far more radioactive waste per kWh generated than the worst and most inefficient nuclear power plants... with perhaps the singlar exception of Chernobyl. Even that I'm not 100% certain of.

This said, you are correct that the fusion rate in a Polywell is something of a much greater concern if you actually got one going, and would be leathal if it used traditional fusion fuel targets.

Re:Good grief...

[Psion]

I don't see anything in that link except typical Greenpeace alarmism confounding ridiculously trivial releases of radiation with "millions of litres" of radioactive water. Sure, the water might be slightly radioactive, but so is the carbon-14 in your bones -- what of it? Why don't they give us a calibrated measurement of the radiation in the released waste and put it into perspective relating to other forms of radiation? My guess is because that wouldn't serve to advance their anti-nuke FUD agenda.

Re:Good grief...

[Beriaru]

create a highly radioactive waste that can take millennia to decompose.

Bullshit. You have nuclear waste highly radioactive, or cold waste which take millennia to decompose.

In fact, the nuclear waste can be recycled into fissible material, hot subproducts (very appreciated by the pharmaceutic industry), and cold waste which take millennia to decompose.

Re:Good grief...

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Lithium 3 + Lithium 4 ... fusion ... always raises the number of protons.

What you say makes little sense, the atomic number of the resulting element after fusion is higher. So Li3 + Li4 should give C7, which is a stable isotope.

It is, btw the conventi on to give the total number of nucleonic particles in the isotope number. So it's probably Li6 and Li7 you're talking about.

Re:Good grief...

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Actually most of the mineable Uranium is already in normal seawater. It's even in the rain !

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2006/01/207-uranium-from-seawater-part-1.html

(I don't agree with the message of this blog, it's just the first google hit)

And if radioactive uranium isn't enough for you, Poseidon also stocks (massive quantities of) both Thorium and Radon (the only radioactive substance that has in history actually cause large amounts of radiation disease in humans).

I'm sure that's not all of the radioactivity that's stocked by our Tremletted friend, just the beginning (apparently some Israeli scientists think he's also stocking an element with atomic number 122, which is something no human has ever done)

Re:Good grief...

[pbhj]

FYI, coal plants release far more radioactive waste per kWh generated than the worst and most inefficient nuclear power plants... with perhaps the singlar [sic] exception of Chernobyl. Even that I'm not 100% certain of.

Come off it, if coal plants produced the same results as the Chernobyl disaster we wouldn't be here now. All either dead from cancer or infertile from radiation sickness.

Have you any citations or evidence to back up your claim. Seems the Nuclear Fuels industry would've used this before if it were true.

Re:Good grief...

[Nazlfrag]

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.

Re:Good grief...

[Nursie]

OK, but when a small steel ball rolls towards a magnet, where does that energy come from?

I'm just curious, it's a long time since I did physics.

Re:Good grief...

[rufty_tufty]

The same place the energy comes from when you roll down a hill or when a meteorite burns up in the atmosphere. Or the same place the energy goes when you expend effort (work) to compress a spring.
Well sort of, it might help you picture what's going on here...

Re:Good grief...

[jeremyp]

IANA physicist but,

an object that is attracted to magnets in a magnetic field has potential energy much like an object suspended above the ground has potential energy by virtue of being in a gravitational field. In both cases, the energy of the object just before hitting the magnet/ground is the same as the work required to separate it from the magnet/ground and restore it to its starting position (assuming all energy conversions are 100% efficient).

Re:Good grief...

[Tejin]

Where does the energy come from when a steel ball falls to earth? There is potential energy tied up in the gravitational field between the ball and the earth. Likewise there is potential energy stored between the magnet and the ball in the magnetic field.

Re:Good grief...

[lm317t]

If a magnet is sticking to something where is it getting its energy from?

Son, you need to logout and post on your own slashdot account like a big boy. Don't ruin your father's Karma just because he left his account logged in.

Thanks,
Management

Re:Good grief...

[iwbcman]

Just don't pay too much attention to what these shills are saying. I consider articles concerning energy on slashdot as a kind of opportunity to practice anger management. The pro-nuclear fanboys that so utterly dominate slashdot have been so thoroughly brainwashed by that industry that they are only capable of equivocating and spreading falsehoods.

Although I am very reluctant to make such accusations, being that this comes awfully close to actual conspiracy, a thought which I almost always argue against, sheer ignorance cannot account for the level of equivocation which one sees being put forth on these forums. Most of these people were not even born when America had a large anti-nuclear movement. They do not remember the issues which people fought about and against which people protested. If you are old enough to remember these things, coming to slashdot you feel like you have wandered into the twilight zone, kind of like being in a parallel universe where the past the we know simply never occurred.

But what can we really expect? We have had 15 years of paid shills being used to manipulate the public opinion-including "scientists" bought and paid for by the large economic interests which see and cast the environmental movement as the heir apparent of the "commies".

What is so truly sad is that almost nobody in America can even remember that environmentalist movement was not merely lamenting the negative ecological impacts of our energy policies but perhaps more importanty attacking the tremendous centralization(monopolization) of capital and power which is synonomous with big energy.

This social justice aspect of the environmental movement which at its roots is defying the profound concentration of wealth and power and working towards environmental solutions which empower the individual and communities has been almost completely swept under the rug. None of these pro-nuclear fanboys even begin to address the larger socio-economic problems which have always played a crucial role in the environmentalist movement.

The patent intellectual dishonesty which equates the environmental lobby with big energy, is the same as that which equates coal plants "radioactivity" with that of nuclear power plants, that which talks about "clean coal" and nuclear power being "green"-doublespeak, in classice orwellian tradition.

If you listen too closely to these shills you begin to believe that nuclear power is infinite clean energy and that it produces only negligable byproducts which pose no threat at all. You begin to believe that the environmental movement and those who have engaged themselves in the fight against big energy are all bought and paid for by some vast conspiracy of evironmental lobbiests who have endless amounts of money to spend fighting the poor misunderstood behemoths of the energy industry.

And of course you also start to think that everyone who questions the wisdom of such energy policies are all just ignorant uneducated people who have no idea what they are talking about.

Open your nose, follow the money and soon enough you can see where this shit is coming from.

But of course- pecunia non olet. Bullshit

Re:Good grief...

[Teancum]

I said per kilowatt-hour produced. Geesh... did you even pay attention to what I had to say?

Chernobyl was awful, and I don't dispute that. I also noted it was a major exception to the general rule. The one thing that makes Chernobyl so incredibly awful is due to the fact that all of the material is concentrated in one place. The reason I hesitate about how damaging it was in comparison to coal is due to the fact that Chernobyl is not only a major facility, but that it is still supplying electricity to the Grid in Eastern Europe.

It is likely that Chernobyl would beat out a coal plant using sources particularly high in radioactive elements in terms of kilowatt-hours of energy produced, but I don't think it would be several orders of magnitude higher. Keep in mind that the coal plants spew this "waste" willy-nilly all over the entire area where they are located, and over the course of decades and not all at once like the Chernobyl disaster did. I also lack all of the specific numbers to do a strict comparison.

That facility is also an example of awful engineering that simply wouldn't happen in the regulatory environment of western governments, but that is a separate issue.

As far as citations or evidence, I could give dozens here. Here are a couple that perhaps you ought to read if you don't want to believe little old me:

• http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
• http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

At least so far as some "common sense" stuff, keep in mind that coal comes from underground sources and that often that coal is mixed with a whole bunch of other elements, including nearly every naturally occurring radioactive element on the Earth. Trace amounts of Uranium alone is sufficient to spread huge amounts of low-level radiation over nearly all of the soot fall-out that comes from the burning of coal... and that goes right up the chimney.

BTW, as far as the nuclear industry being aware of this... it has been "common knowledge" for decades. They have used this argument, but very few people are really paying attention. Certainly not the "greens" that get into an uproar over the construction of nuclear power plants. This isn't in the major news media outlets because it isn't really even news. There isn't anything "new" about this sort of information, even if it may be a revelation to you.

Re:Good grief...

[cheesybagel]

So your objections against nuclear power are concentration of wealth and power? Are you an environmentalist or a closet anarchist?

James Lovelock and Patrick Moore (Greenpeace co-founder) are just some of the people pushing for increased use of nuclear power at the moment.

Nuclear power is indeed cleaner than coal and is the only realistic alternative to coal available today for baseline power generation.

Re:Good grief...

[Teancum]

The "pro-nuclear fanboys" that you are complaining about here are the engineers who know a hell of a lot more about nuclear power than you do... partly due to the fact that they are in the trenches helping to design these things and have a hell of a lot better knowledge about basic physics than you seem to be demonstrating with this sort of posting.

If this gives me a chance to vent my spleen, so be it.

I will admit that there are issues well above and beyond just the raw design of the reactor, and the concentration of wealth/power that comes from the building of a major nuclear power plant is a huge issue as well.

One of the advantages of the polywell reactor is that it would de-centralize the building of power plants, and put them on the scale of a neighborhood plant that wouldn't be a major terrorist target. This is a reactor that conceivably an ordinary person in a 1st world country could own on their own, or at least it could be owned by a small non-profit group.

Another of the more interesting applications that Bussard and his team came up with was a nuclear-powered semi-truck using this technology. He didn't think he could get it any smaller than something on the back of a semi-trailer rig, but it could be used on that scale and haul freight on that sort of scale. That the radioactive products would be low-grade enough to allow transport on public highways is something to think about as well.

Of course all of this depends on getting the Polywell to work in the first place. While there have been some interesting promises, Bussard had his funding dry up right before he died. There is a group that was able to get some continued funding on the idea, but it is in the backwater of the R&D development.

As an extra note, the reason why there were budget cuts for this line of fusion research: The war in Iraq. Seriously. That was the explicit reason given by the OMB about why this research program was cut. Now mull that one over for a little while. This is about the "greenest" form of power production that I can even think about, yet because it is "nuclear", the green movement doesn't want to touch it at all.

Re:Good grief...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee Whiz.

I wonder why the environment movement has been losing its credibility - or, since I suppose you were around in the 60's-70's, call it a "credibility gap" http://www.wellesley.edu/Writing/Nixon/Slideshow/nixon_sign.jpg

You can't make the excuse "kids today..."

Maybe the movement has been "infiltrated"?

http://www.ncforestry.org/docs/Latest%20News/articles/Archives/environmental_movement_is_rapidl.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/opinion/12kristof.html

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/doe-reprint/

Re:Good grief...

[SuperDre]

ahh, but if everybody thought like you, then we wouldn't have a lot of stuff.. A lot of new inventions are based on going beyond the science we think is possible.. remember it's us people who wrote the laws of physics, and in the past we have been wrong on many occasions.. A lot of inventions are done by so called amateur inventors, where scholarships said it wasn't possible...

Re:Good grief...

[drakono]

Also, the link mentions the radiated water affecting beaches...nevermind that just GOING to the beach means you'll take in more radiation in one day than you'd get living next door to a nuclear plant all year. Oh, and if you FLY to the beach, you can add more to that total. (And airline pilots don't develop mutations.)

Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy, written by a former skeptic. Read it. Everybody. Please.

Re:Good grief...

[Mjec]

By "radioactive waste" I think GP was referring to waste that is radioactive, like C-14 (in various forms, including soot and CO2). Technically true. The comparison is entirely unfair, however, because molar quantity of radioactive material per KWh is not a measure of danger. Gamma energy released per sq km due to radioactive decay per KWh is probably better - though that's still not quite capturing it.

You have to look at the type of radiation, the energy of the radiation, the amount of the for a given unit of substance-energy-density, the longevity of the radioactive substance... it's all pretty complicated.

Re:Good grief...

[drakono]

Great googly-moogly. More FUD.

up to 500 micro-sieverts each hour

1 sievert (SV) = 100 rem So, we're talking about tens of milli-rems per hour. Great. You get cosmic radiation at a higher rate than that by flying on an airliner.

a no-dive zone was self imposed by Greenpeace's radio-protection officer

Yeah, like that means anything. Just more food for the FUD.

French Environment and Health Ministries commissioned an official epidemiological study of leukaemia around La Hague

Over ten years ago, studying a quickly-appearing illness. No results? No surprise.

Measurements taken by OPRI near the beaches detected no radioactivity above the natural radioactivity level

See? Greenpeace has no substance to their argument.

I'll admit that no plant should circumvent the guidelines, nor should they then hide that fact. But the facts are that the safety guidelines are many times more strict for nuclear power than for any other type of power. I don't mean precautionary measures, I mean environmental impact. Coal plants release many times more radiation, spreading it over large areas via their smokestacks, than nuclear plants could even dream of. Even wind power has a greater carbon impact than nuclear power -- from start to finish, including building infrastructure, mining uranium, and handling the waste. Again, La Hague seems to be acting in an unethical manner, but I just can't stand all the ignorance about nuclear power.

Re:Good grief...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fascinated by this new fusion which directly produces electricity. Although I suppose the reliance on a non-existant isotope of lithium is going to be a stumbling block. And the reliance on an isotope with a half-life of 91(9) x 10^-24 s...

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

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

Re:Good grief...

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the coal plants worldwide, on the aggregate, release more radioactivity in a year than Chernobyl did.

Nothing pisses me off more than politicians talking about "clean coal". There is no such thing! Coal makes a great reserve fuel, but as a primary power source it is absolutely horrible.

Worldwide combustion of coal released (in 1982) 3640 tons of uranium, and 8960 tons of thorium.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2006/10/coal-and-oil-have-been-real.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

Re:Good grief...

[Teancum]

I was referring to hard core radioactive waste like Uranium and Thorium. Carbon-14 and other background stuff is also there, but you would find some materials that clearly would be regulated by groups like the Atomic Energy Commission if the concentrations of the materials were higher.

Yeah, this is a complicated issue, and getting back to my original point: a nuclear fusion reactor using Boron-11 as a fuel source would in the long run be even cleaner than a coal plant in terms of just the issue of radioactive contamination alone. Other minor issues like CO2 production and environmental damage from scraping coal out of the ground are then just added bonuses.

BTW, the #1 source of Boron is Borax, which you can get enough for a lifetime supply of the element (in terms of energy production) at your local neighborhood Wal-Mart in the laundry detergent aisle.

Re:Good grief...

[Retric]

He is not over reacting that much if you where to stand in the worst area ~500mrem per hour for 8 hours a day for a week with zero protective gear you could hit the US the yearly federal limit for radiation workers in the United States. Granted you're under water so you would have to be hugging the tube the whole time and standing in the worst area but even still...

PS: Granted most people think the federal limit is extremely low but even still it's at the low end of the FUD spectrum.

Re:Good grief...

[wolenczak]

And also because it is "nuculear" the government doesn't want to touch it either.

Re:Good grief...

[stonecypher]

Whoever modded parent redundant didn't look at the link. What a tool.

Re:Good grief...

[Anonymous Coward]

The pro-nuclear fanboys that so utterly dominate slashdot have been so thoroughly brainwashed by that industry that they are only capable of equivocating and spreading falsehoods.

But your eyes are open and you know the real facts. You talk a lot, but give no facts. That's the definition of bullshit.

Re:Good grief...

[Mes]

Thats not a simple question.. I believe it comes from the potential energy "stored" in the magnet. Magnets can become demagnetized because of this. Likewise when you pull the steel ball away, you put some of that potential energy back into the magnet.

Re:Good grief...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lately there has been some research done on using liquid lithium as a plasma-facing component in a fusion device (http://pst.pppl.gov/ltx/index.php) , which essentially solves all of the wall issues. As the first wall is liquid and you're pumping lithium through, you don't have to worry about destruction of the walls. Li-6 can also be used to breed Tritium when bombarded with neutrons. The low-recycling nature of a liquid lithium wall also provides some incredible benefits to stability and confinement. Hopefully this catches on more with the mainstream fusion community.

Re:Good grief...

[Anonymous Coward]

The xrays produced are also a problem, and the HV source you need is not exactly in the science fair safety level either.

Re:Good grief...

[Cochonou]

That link was just the wikipedia article describing La Hague, because I didn't expect the Slashdot users outside Europe to know that it was the main nuclear waste recycling center of France. I only skipped over the article: as most wikipedia articles, it is certainly perfectible, but it is not the point I tried to make.
If you live near La Hague, or if you had the luck to visit the facilities, you'll agree that nuclear waste is not "easily disposed of". The site spans over 300 hectares, there is high security surrounding the MOX production. I can hardly think of anyone working in the field that will say recycling or disposal is not a very serious affair, which needs a lot of careful tracking and paperwork to prevent mistakes. The article makes it sound like it is a piece of cake.

Re:Good grief...

[lgw]

Hydrogen-hydrogen fusion requires energy densities far higher than any other reaction. It's a pipe dream as a power source. Sure, you can do it with muon-catalyzed fusion, but that process is inherently a net consumer of power.

Now, maybe if particle physics hadn't wasted the past 30 years on string theory, we might have some theoretical idea of how to stabilize a muon, that might turn into a power source 50 years form now, but sadly folks are still pretending that string theory wasn't a complete waste of lives, careers, and funding.

With any fuel beside pure hydrogen, you get massive high-energy particles to deal with, and the shielding and radioactive waste gets ugly.

Re:Good grief...

[pbhj]

I said per kilowatt-hour produced. Geesh... did you even pay attention to what I had to say?

Er, yes I did, and I was more than happy to believe you given sufficient evidence. Let's examine your claim - coal power stations produce more radioactive waste per kWh than Chernobyl:

FYI, coal plants release far more radioactive waste per kWh generated than the worst and most inefficient nuclear power plants... with perhaps the singlar exception of Chernobyl. Even that I'm not 100% certain of.

It's hard to assess the radioactive waste quantitatively but this quote about Chernobyl may help us make a qualatitive analysis at least, via Wikipedia, http://www.greens-efa.org/cms/topics/dokbin/118/118559.torch_executive_summary@en.pdf:

"In certain regions of Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Poland, wild game (including boar and deer), wild mushrooms, berries and carnivorous fish from lakes reach levels of several thousand Bq per kg of caesium-137", while "in Germany, caesium-137 levels in wild boar muscle reached 40,000 Bq/kg. The average level is 6,800 Bq/kg, more than ten times the EU limit of 600 Bq/kg", according to the TORCH 2006 report. The European Commission has stated that "The restrictions on certain foodstuffs from certain Member States must therefore continue to be maintained for many years to come"

Now let's look at the effects of radioactive waste from a coal power plants; http://www.coalonline.org/site/coalonline/content/viewer?LogDocId=81357&PhyDocId=5945&filename=5945_34.html at Section 3.2.3:

Radioactive trace elements in fly ash include the elements 238U, 232Th and 40K. Using the fission track registration technique, Jojo and others (1994) found the average uranium concentration to be 29.1 ppm in fly ash, 25.7 ppm in slag and 17.1 ppm in coal. Uranium exists in coal as the silicate mineral, coffinite, and as uraninite (UO2). During combustion, the refractory coffinite is distributed in equal concentrations in fly ash and bottom ash, while uraninite is vaporised and later condensed on fly ash when the flue gases cool. Uranium has only a slightly higher concentration in fly ash than in bottom ash.

Font and others (1993) quantified heavy metals in ash by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICPAES). The amount of radionuclides that are captured depends on their concentration in the original coal used, that of the ash it produces, the efficiency of the filtering system employed and the combustion efficiency of the power plant itself. The concentrations of some primary radionuclides in fly ash are estimated to be 265 Bq/kg for 40K, 200 Bq/kg for 238U and 240 Bq/kg for 226Ra.

Now the Greens-EFA and CoalOnline are both likely to be quoting research in their favour ... but at least qualitatively looking at the Becquerels/kg of the radioactive by-products of coal power vs. the fallout a couple of countries away from Chernobyl 20+ years later I can safely say I'd rather live near a coal power station capturing it's fly ash in building materials than near Chernobyl issuing forth it's radioactive matter upon the lands of Europe.

For comparison old houses with 400 Bq/m^3 of radon are considered to within safe limits in the EU. But who fills their basement with fly ash?

In other news, gas ovens make more flame than flame-throwers.

Re:Good grief...

[pbhj]

Few other factoids - Chernobyl's output to date is about 55 years (their are 4 reactors, opened in stages, closed in stages between 1970-2000) of maximum 1000MW production, so about 400TWh total.

Drax a UK coal fired power station opened in the 70s produces about 24TWh annually (7% of the demand apparently).

So by your consideration Drax has "released" at least twice the "radioactive waste" of Chernobyl. Having lived not that far from Drax for my first 18 years of life I find your definition of radioactive waste to be lacking somewhat.

Re:Good grief...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

and if you move 10 meters in any direction, what's the exposure? water is a pretty good absorber if you have enough of it.

Re:Good grief...

[UnknownSoldier]

Without the magnetic force, the magnet will fall, so how can you say no work is being done?

That's like saying "Well since you are not moving, there is no energy required, EVEN though gravity is constantly pulling you down."

Re:Good grief...

[Loki_1929]

And also because it is "nuculear" the government doesn't want to touch it either.

Remind me to dip my wallet in Carbon-14 before April 15th.

Re:Good grief...

[Anonymous Coward]

"So by your consideration Drax has "released" at least twice the "radioactive waste" of Chernobyl. Having lived not that far from Drax for my first 18 years of life I find your definition of radioactive waste to be lacking somewhat."

*snicker*

I haven't been shot since I started carrying this rock. This rock makes the owner bullet proof!

Re:Good grief...

[smaddox]

Stray neutrons are an engineering curiosity. They are not the real problem with fusion as a power source.

In fact, they are probably the greatest part of fusion as a power source because they allow us to build fusion hybrid reactors. Such a reactor would allow us to safely breed thorium into uranium for use in well researched fission reactors - thereby extending the usability of fission as a primary energy source for nearly 100,000 years into the future.

Re:Good grief...

[lgw]

Yeah, fusion is quite simple, aside from those pesky engineering details ...

Re:Good grief...

[lennier]

"So your objections against nuclear power are concentration of wealth and power? Are you an environmentalist or a closet anarchist?"

Why should anarchism be in the closet, especially here on Slashdot of all places? It's the political expression of the end-to-end principle that makes the Internet work, and the free/open-source software philosophy. Everyone's free to participate. Don't put big heavy social machinery into the core, put it on the edges - empower every person and group to be autonomous as much as possible. Much the same concept behind federalism, or at least confederation.

Whatever you might have thought you learned in high school, political anarchism is not about throwing bombs.

Though I'm possibly not precisely an anarchist as the political group is defined, I'm pretty much with E F Schumacher, one of the fathers of modern environmentalism. You may have heard of the terms 'intermediate technology' and 'small is beautiful'? Same principle, again. Small stuff empowers the individual, is environmentally friendly, allows rapid evolution of solutions. Big stuff - heavy, dangerous, capital-intensive plant - has political implications - centralisation of power rather than individual empowerment. And politics is just pragmatism that looks at the future. It's about the shape of social and economic interactions that investment in certain technologies implies.

Don't believe the nuclear hype. Look at the companies behind it. Look at their track record. How much do you trust them not only not to screw up, but not to screw you over?

If nuclear power were the Internet, it would be like Ma Bell, IBM and (for you youngies who don't remember Ma Bell) the RIAA building it based on everything being time-sharing servers and mandatory DRM. Deep centralisation, no user-servicible parts on the end - backed by *serious* hazard to life and health if you try to modify the system.

You're a Slashdot geek, and yet you're cool with that for your energy future?

Re:Good grief...

[pbhj]

Yes, but if I'd lived that close to Chernobyl there's a high probability I'd have suffered irreparable damage .. like death or something. I concede I may have suffered from radioactive doses from Drax but it's not distinguishable over background sources.

Re:Good grief...

[smaddox]

Exactly.

Pure Tokamak fusion will most likely never reach commercial viability because the necessary control infrastructure is just so damn expensive.

It is possible that an alternative form of pure fusion will eventually become viable, but we need to focus more on the near term. A full blown hybrid fusion infrastructure could become a reality in as little as 20 years if it became a priority.

Re:Good grief...

[Retric]

Just more food for the FUD.

Granted you're under water so you would have to be hugging the tube the whole time and standing in the worst area but even still

what's the exposure? water is a pretty good absorber if you have enough of it.

It looks like 3 post's trying and failing to say the same thing.

Re:Good grief...

[lgw]

Fusion has been 20 years away for 50 years now. IMO, this is because the fundamental problems are engineering problems, but scientists are trying to solve them. That rarely works.

Re:Good grief...

[smaddox]

Almost all of the tools and techniques that engineers have were discovered by "scientists".

Also, there are plenty of engineers working on fusion technology as we speak.

Either way your point is moot.

Re:Good grief...

[lgw]

Either way, we're *still* 20 years away from fusion, as we have been all my life.

Re:Good grief...

[Teancum]

I find your understanding of radioactivity to be somewhat lacking.

The huge issue with Chernobyl is that most of the radioactive material was released over a relatively short period of time. Had that happened all at once with the coal plant you mention here, I'm quite certain it would have been a major international incident instead of merely business as normal.

Radioactivity is simply a part of the environment that we live in. All I'm trying to point out is that those getting hyper-paranoid about radioactive material need to get a better clue about what it is that they are talking about, and understand that there are radioactive sources other than nuclear power plants that can and do cause environmental damage.

BTW, the final chapter on living near a major coal power plant has yet to be written. You seem to be implying "since I'm still alive and don't have cancer, this coal plant is harmless and has caused no health damage to me due to radiation". I'm pointing out that the radioactive material has indeed been spewed out of generator plants like this, and the areas surrounding those kind of facilities do have higher levels of some radioactive materials than comparable areas that don't have such generator plants. Indeed the levels of radiation may even be higher than would be the case for a well-designed nuclear fission power plant.

As for how damaging to your health such low levels of increased radiation may be to you, your children, and future generations.... I'm not even sure how to quantify that at all. I do live in an area which was down-wind from the above-ground (and underground) tests of hundreds of nuclear bombs. My father even has told me stories of going out to the desert to watch some of them go off and treating them like an evening of watching fireworks. Certainly the operation of a nuclear power plant, even going explosively damaging like Chernobyl, is nothing compared to thermo-nuclear detonations, yet I live in a city of well over a million people that is continuing to grow.

Re:Good grief...

[iwbcman]

You state up front that the fanboys I speak of are the engineers designing the nuclear tech. Is it not in their financial interest to push for broader use of nuclear power? Although I do not begrudge them in the slightest on their need to earn a living, supporting themselves and perhaps a family, you wouldn't deny that they're being paid for this work perhaps renders their opinions somewhat less "objective", would you ?

I would certainly hope that they know more about the technical aspects nuclear power technology than I do- they are, after all, being paid for this knowledge and expertise. If they dind't know more than me then the nuclear industry which is either directly or indirectly paying their wages is simply throwing money out the window.

You focus on someone named Bussard and his efforts to draw up funding for researching a line of nuclear tech which might have eventualy led to a decentralized form of nuclear tech which might have empowered individuals and communities instead of the behemoth nuclear industry. Ironicaly what you are describing here vindicates the point I was making even if you and I take a different stance to nuclear technology.

Neither the government nor nuclear industry are interested in funding developments of such projects. Such projects, which empower the individual and the communities, are anti-thetical to the financial interest of big power and to the legislative desires of the government.

Big Power(tm) is all about seducing private investors and attaining government contracts. The government is only interested in gigantic scale projects which can be approved and realized within a given legislative period and which promise something which can be sold to their electors-ie. "creates jobs", "investment in our community" etc. The bigger the project the more legislation and more regulation, and most of all taxes.

We may have far more in common than you might think-regardless of our respective stances towards nuclear tech.

Re:Good grief...

[iwbcman]

Funny that when one focuses on issues of social justice and invidividual and community empowerment one gets labeled a "closet anarchist".

Somehow I rather much prefer to be labeled such than to be a pawn of the nuclear industry and to be part of their propaganda campaign.

Saying that nuclear power is cleaner than coal is not saying much at all, really. Posing nuclear power as the only realistic alternative is simply disingenous- nuclear power is not alternative in any meaningful sense of the word. By implying that there is no other option you are doing nothing to justify this choice. This is exactly what big power wants us to think.

Yeah, I know, it is awfully unamerican of me to be opposed to the concentration of wealth and power.

Re:Good grief...

[Hartree]

No, it's not unamerican of you to oppose concentration of wealth and power. Actually, that's a very common sentiment in at least the earlier anti-nuclear movement.

It's a viewpoint that can be reasonably talked about. I just don't think it is very convincing when the consequences of it are fully explored. I also think it won't sell well with the public.

I'd very much like to argue the points for and against nuclear power on that basis. Instead, it gets caught up in arguments that will more easily work for public consumption.

Instead, we get Amory Lovins saying in his talks that we don't need anymore power plants of any hind, and thus nuclear is unneeded. At least he was honest enough on one occasion to admit that he felt that any cheap clean source of power would be a massive disaster as it would allow mankind to destroy nature even more.

We get the portrayal of the plutonium produced in a light water power reactor as being a major proliferation risk (go read up on the need for isotopic purity of a Pu bomb core to prevent early criticality).

We get statements on just how radiologically deadly Pu is when the observed rate of known exposures doesn't show the massive increases in lung cancer predicted. We get statements saying saying that standard reactor waste needs to be stored for tens of thousands of years, when in fact the highly radioactive portions decay much faster, etc, etc, lather rinse repeat.

And then, those who point these things out are labeled as brainwashed and industry shills by the very people using these arguments rather than the harder to sell real ones.

On balance, I've seen more intellectual honesty when arguing with Christian fundamentalists (and that's saying something).

Re:Good grief...

[Teancum]

It is indeed likely that we have some very similar views toward power generation and energy projects. The abuses that you are referring to can only happen when you permit large organizations that operate on the scale of governments to operate in a position of political power.

One previous energy company of which I used to be a customer that also used to be locally owned and controlled... in North America... is now owned by Scottish Power. Why some guy living in the UK, acting as CEO, cares one little bit about a state government much less an ordinary consumer in another country half-way across the planet is something that I don't think can be effectively answered in an honest manner. In other words, the very state regulatory agency in charge of monitoring and regulating this company is literally dwarfed in sheer manpower by a company that has more employees than the whole of the state government that is regulating it, and arguably more gross revenue than that state as well. Even threats of removing a business license from this company ring very hollow for businesses this large.

I, for one, advocate local ownership and small community-operated power facilities. It doesn't really matter what the "fuel source" is, it ought to be controlled on a level that an individual can make a difference in what happens and how everybody gets affected by the decisions of creating the power in the first place.

There is also some very interesting developments of power generation on a very small scale... even to the point of being done by individuals. How the utility companies are dealing with these issues is something to consider, and unfortunately government responses to this sort of potential is mixed at best.

second post

[Anonymous Coward]

cmdr taco likes to buttfuck little boys.

Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can a string theorist explain why this won't work?, in simple terms please.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[TheSHAD0W]

Because for every hobbyist who builds one of these hoping to get more power than they put in, there's someone in the background playing a violin...

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[taustin]

No string theory needed. The reason it takes more power than it produces is that the fuel collides with stuff other than just other fuel, like anodes and cathodes needed to make the fusion happen.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[morgan_greywolf]

That really is the bottom line, seriously. There are no means of power generation that involve getting more power out than is put in. None. No string theory or quantum mechanics even required. Just the law of the conservation of energy and matter... energy or matter can neither be created nor destroyed.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Jordan ez]

Except this has nothing to do with violating conservation of energy. Tell the sun you can't get a surplus of energy out of fusion.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[NotBornYesterday]

Yeah, but "more out than put in" is shorthand here for "more power generation from the fusion than power needed to start and maintain the reaction", not "find a loophole in the laws of thermodynamics"

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Spatial]

I don't think it can hear him from here. We need to send him a bit closer! :)

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when we drill for oil, it takes more than one barrel to get a barrel out? Are you this retarded all the time?

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[TheSHAD0W]

No, no, no. Seriously. It's a limitation of the design, not the idea of a fusion reactor.

Bussard's "whiffleball" reactor design looks promising, and there are a few others which may succeed, but building one of those which will actually generate power is (unfortunately) financially out of the reach of any mere hobbyist.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[linzeal]

Thank you, anyone on Slashdot who has not taken at least physics, chemistry and biology at AP level or college please go enter yourself in a science class. Some computer scientists really need to take the broader view in college and realize that they will be working for software that has to specialize in something be it point of sale, economic modeling or QCD simulation so take fucking classes in what you want that specialty to be. If you are an OS, game, UI or Web programmer it is not essential; but it is nice. and for the rest of you programmer freaks out there; remember that you might be dealing with engineering folk, business dudes or creative types who might know more about algorithm design than you, they just don't have an extra 40+ hours a week to deal with programming. I don't even put my programming skills on my resume anymore, I would rather spend my time in the mechanical side of things. We don't need another programming language we need an entirely new way of modeling process into algorithm. I have seen some of the visual stuff and nothing is more nifty to me than a good simulink model that I can break apart and play with to understand new concepts. Why can't we make something open source even better? The CAD side of Linux is dying. Vendors are pulling out of the OS faster than new companies are supporting it. I am sad, time for a porter.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

...but building one of those which will actually generate power is (unfortunately) financially out of the reach of any mere hobbyist.

Right! Which is pre-cise-ly why mere hobbyists were totally unimportant when steam engines were superseded by explosion/electric engines, when electricity superseded town gas, or when heavier-than-air craft superseded dirigibles, or when modern biochemicals/genetics/pharmaceutics took off after the '70s. And to the whole transistor -> chip -> microcompting discontinuity thing.

No 'amateurs' there, no sir-ee. No bycicle mechanics either. Or cofee plantation heirs engineering in Paris. Nooo-sir !

What's more, personal fortunes were much greater and lives-of-leisure more common (and acceptable) in those days than in our own more proletarian and democratic (or board-cratic) era.

So its quite improbable that anyone nowadays will have enough money and free time available to turn these 'hobbies' into 'serious' research. No free time. No wealthy patrons. And resistance is IR^2, damn!, I mean : futile. :)

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Free the Cowards]

So, I'm having trouble figuring this out, and would appreciate some help. Are you an asshole, or just a moron?

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF does this have to do with the parent post? Or the topic at hand?

Are you high?

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[budgenator]

Just the law of the conservation of energy and matter... energy or matter can neither be created nor destroyed.

That not what happens, E = mC^2, so a little tiny spec of mass can be converted into a great deal of energy with no change in the total E * m of the system. With these fusor they'll never get past break-even because the containment fields require more energy to maintain than the reaction releases; think of it as changing electricity into neutrons with the fission as an intermediate step rather than a power source.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Fusion is already happening in the sun, so why not just bring the sun to the earth? Then we have an active fusion reaction that we KNOW will be maintained for years to come!

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

In terms of string theory? I think you needs a pretty sturdy set of shoe strings to pull yourself out of the swamp and make this work.

And by work I mean achieve a net-exergonic reaction. Right now this doesn't work anymore than a car without an engine - once you push it forward, it kinda drives. But it's not really useful.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Grishnakh]

I don't think it's a matter of budget. If these older fusion reactor designs could have been tweaked to produce usable power, it would have been done by now by researchers who do have sufficient funding. Many national governments would be extremely interested in this, as would many private companies. I think it's pretty safe to assume that after all these decades, if people haven't figured out how to make these reactors produce power, it's just not going to happen.

This doesn't mean no one will ever make a fusion reactor that produces usable power, just not with these antiquated designs. Someone needs to come up with a new reactor design.

Trying to use these old designs is like trying to build a modern warship out of wood. For a long time, people thought that boats could only be made with wood, but eventually someone figured out how to make them out of steel instead. Only an idiot would try to get steel-hulled boat performance out of a wood hull now.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes in terms of string theory, i heard that it is the forefront of particle physics right now and i thought that it can provide some insight about why the design is flawed, maybe we are not putting enough money to string theory research.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[stonecypher]

Tell the sun you can't get a surplus of energy out of fusion.

The sun isn't a Farnsworth Fuzor. There's a big difference between what fusion can do and what the Farnsworth methodology can do. It turns out that most technology has very different constraints than a runaway gravity driven reaction of stellar quantities of loose gasses.

Also, the sun can't hear you. It's pretty deaf.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ramble much?

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[shawn(at)fsu]

The resulting energy that we get out of the fusion is because of the gravity that's pulling everything together. Right? I mean it's a balance and to get energy on one side of the scale you need gravity on the other side. I don't think you're getting something from nothing out of the sun. Sure we could do the same thing if we had a solar mass of hydrogen laying around. Course then we'd have another sun... So then it comes down to why don't we use the sun we have? Why are we trying to reinvent the wheel when the universe gave us one for free?

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except this has nothing to do with violating conservation of energy. Tell the sun you can't get a surplus of energy out of fusion.

Except this has nothing to do with violating conservation of energy.

nothing to do with violating conservation of energy.

violating conservation of energy.

violating

viola (*accompanies by playing a small violin*)

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[tenco]

The sun's fusion reaction just turns one form of energy (matter) into another (radiation). No surplus.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[jacquesm]

I disagree about the cad side of linux dying, and these folks would probably do the same.

 

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[jacquesm]

insightful was the new funny right ? but this is an AC ... so he doesn't have karma ... *head explodes*

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Xiaran]

Maybe he's a "morhole" or an "assron"... I wanna be an assron.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[hughk]

I don't think you can call the gasses in the solar core loose. There are also some pretty awesome magnetohydrodynamics involved. In the end almost every high-energy photon produced will spend a looong time bouncing around the core (I've heard estimates of up to 50 million years) being absorbed and re-emitted ensuring that much of the energy stays in the core.

Actually it is that last bit that probably does it, the large quantity of emitted energy that ends up being recycled to maintain the reaction. That is the difficult bit with a Farnsworth Fusor

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[hughk]

Big science tends to be towards politics and fashion. If you want a $100mil you had better be able to carry the politics and convince enough of your colleagues that this is the fashionable solution. If you try and go against the $100mil solution, you risk being unfashionable and miss funding, because nobody wants to turn around and say that the $100mil is not necessary. That's where nuclear physics meets psychology, particularly cognitive dissonance.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[phagstrom]

This is the worlds smallest violin, playing the worlds smallest atom...just for you

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[PinkyDead]

Or cofee plantation heirs engineering in Paris. Nooo-sir !

Or multi-millionaire orphans who become crime fighting superheroes.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

References?

The only paper I've seen which gives limits on possible net-energy fusion reactions using inertial confinement *allows* fusors to give net-energy for certain reactions.

There is no design limitation which forbids fusors from ever giving net energy. It is an *engineering* problem.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[HungryHobo]

Gah!
gravity energy?
Gah!

the energy comes from changing hydrogen into helium. Gravity is not needed for fusion.

Hmm... I wonder which people would prefer to have, 10 square killometers of expensive solar pannels which have to be replaced regularly and block all the light from the ground below them making it useless for much else or a single reactor burning a remarkably clean fuel we have in almost unlimited quantities.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Tell the sun you can't get a surplus of energy out of fusion.

The newspaper?

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[DerWulf]

gravity is required in the sun and as far as our efforts go it seems mandatory, too, in order to harness fusion for energy generation. As it stands now, fusion is just a very expensive way to create helium ...

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Culture20]

Maybe he's a "morhole"

I call it a Hawking-hole.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Nazlfrag]

No, you are fusing two atoms together to create a larger atom. Gravity plays no part in this reaction. The resulting atom has less mass than the initial atoms, and the excess mass is converted into energy. E=mc^2 and all that.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[hey!]

Well, orders of magnitude have this way of piling up, and when they do so, it matters.

So, you need offsetting orders of magnitude: money, brains, luck, or some combination thereof.

I've worked with fusion researchers; some of them were jerks, but all of them were pretty damned smart. They didn't have much money relative to what they wanted to do, but they were spending lots more than any hobbyists are.

That leaves luck. Somebody might just happen on something that others could have thought of, but didn't. The right piece of information at the right time sort of thing.

You can't dismiss luck. But you can quantify it. Personally I wouldn't bet on the entire community of fusion hobbyists to produce a practical power reactor, or even something that will make such a thing possible.

But I'm glad they're doing it.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[hey!]

Well, break even is a matter of scaling, isn't it? Bigger reaction or longer duration. Mainly longer duration.

I know what you're talking about. I worked for a few months at a fusion lab. They had what looked like their own power plant, but was really a big motor/generator/flywheel combination. They needed that because they needed way more power than they could get of the grid, and they weren't even coming close to break even.

If we imagine these guys coming up with something that makes fusion power a reality, I don't think we'd imagine them breaking even with anything remotely looking like "conventional" ideas of what a fusion reactor would look like. Either it would be something that could be scaled into a conventional design making break even that much closer, or a design so unconventional what we're talking about doesn't apply.

Personally, I think it's just an interesting hobby that isn't going to produce much of practical use when it comes to energy generation; other inventions possibly. But you never know.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[lm317t]

No, please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence.

Specifically:

In nuclear fusion roughly 0.3% of the mass of fused atoms is converted to active energy. In thermonuclear weapons (see nuclear weapon yield) some of the bomb mass is casing and non-reacting components, so the efficiency in converting passive energy to active energy, at 6 kilotons TNT equivalent energy output per kilogram of bomb mass (or 6 megatons per metric ton bomb mass), does not exceed 0.03%.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Lisandro]

And resistance is IR^2, damn!, I mean : futile. :)

Yeah! Power to the resistance!

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[dintech]

Slow down there buddy, you're getting out more words that you're putting in.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[sdpuppy]

Yeah I thought that too at first but then I realized that power is I^2R

Dang now I'm going to spend the entire day trying to figure out the inner meaning in that post -

What the heck is IR^2 ?

(and how can I use this new-found knowledge to take over the world, Pinky?)

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[MightyYar]

block all the light from the ground below them making it useless for much else

To be fair, most installations seem to be either on a roof or in the desert.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Mjec]

And resistance is IR^2, damn!, I mean : futile. :)

I'm only doing this because I love to nitpick, but I think you can see your problem. Resistance is V/I - ohmicly anyway.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[drerwk]

Tell the sun you can't get a surplus of energy out of fusion.

That depends on what you mean by surplus. The sun converts mass energy into light energy. It's not creating more energy than it already has.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[UdoKeir]

Hmm... I wonder which people would prefer to have, 10 square killometers
So smaller than most cities? Or indeed the rooftop area of most cities.
of expensive solar pannels
More expensive than a machine that has yet to be invented?
which have to be replaced regularly
25 years is regular? You need more fibre in your diet.
and block all the light from the ground Or roof. Which would reduce the cooling needs in the summer.
a single reactor burning a remarkably clean fuel
Aside from the radiation mentioned above.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[DarkOx]

energy or matter can neither be created nor destroyed through normal means, is the rest of that rule. Fusion reactions are not considered normal means in the chemistry sense.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Ihlosi]

There are no means of power generation that involve getting more power out than is put in.

Which is trivially true, but also fairly meaningless unless you're trying to argue with perpetuum mobile nutjobs.

In all other cases, you're looking at how much _usable_ power you get out of a process, and how much power in addition to the fuel you need to feed in.

Hence, a fusion reaction would be energy-producing if (electric output power) > (electric power input needed to keep the fusion reaction going)

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Teancum]

I would have to agree with you to a perhaps much more limited extent:

The fusion design that has been getting all of the attention is the Tokamak design, where all of the billions of dollars and thousands of professional engineers and physicists have been working toward. After all of the money and decades of research, I think it is fairly safe to say that this line of research is at or very nearly at the end of the road in terms of what else they are going to learn from it.

If you compare this to computer technology, it is like trying to build a full modern computer using vacuum tubes in logic circuits. You ended up with monster computers like the ENIAC or UNIVAC that worked, but pushed the technology right to its edge and demonstrated that something else was needed in order to significantly scale down the complexity of the design.

What is needed for fusion research is to find the equivalent of a semi-conductor solution that can significantly reduce the size of the needed components and allow a major break-through in terms of efficiency and power output.

Just as semi-conductors haven't completely replaced vacuum tubes, any new breakthrough in fusion power generation will have to come from some place completely different.

It should be noted that the IEC reactor (aka the "Farnsworth Fusor") is something that has only recently been explored to any major extent, and even this is only by mostly amateur researchers. It certainly isn't something that a complete knowledge of the technology has been obtained about, nor have there really be "decades of research" on the concept.

The Polywell reactor is a direct descendant of the IEC, and there may be other similar kinds of designs. Bussard even gives credit to Philo Farnsworth and his research, and goes into what the actual limitations of the basic IEC design might be as well as noting how the Polywell design tried to overcome some of those limitations.

This certainly isn't a scientific well of ideas that has been exhausted.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Teancum]

It really isn't the containment field that is causing the problem, but rather that the particles (including atomic fuel source nuclei) keep bumping into the physical structure of the apparatus, sucking energy out of the process before it can initiate a fusion reaction. If you could build the containment field without the need to put in the physical elements, it may just be enough to get past that energy break-even point. But how do you accomplish such a task?

There are a few interesting ideas on how to accomplish something similar to that, but it does take some imagination. The Polywell concept is at least one that uses a similar approach but avoids the physical metal grid in the center that causes so much grief to the IEC researchers.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[stonecypher]

I don't think you can call the gasses in the solar core loose.

Physicists do. Please don't comment on things you don't understand.

the large quantity of emitted energy that ends up being recycled to maintain the reaction. That is the difficult bit with a Farnsworth Fusor

Not even close. Please don't comment on things you don't understand.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[careysub]

Right! Which is pre-cise-ly why mere hobbyists were totally unimportant when steam engines were superseded by explosion/electric engines, when electricity superseded town gas, or when heavier-than-air craft superseded dirigibles, or when modern biochemicals/genetics/pharmaceutics took off after the '70s. And to the whole transistor -> chip -> microcompting discontinuity thing.

This is a bit more like the amateur's role in the development of jet engine or fission reactor technology. That is to say, negligible or less.

Some technologies are out of the reach of the hobbyist - especially with regard to genuine innovation (as opposed to copying or simply using commercially available technologies on a small scale).

Note that even with the dominant role of hobbyists in the rise of the microcomputer they didn't develop the LSIC technology, nor make the chips they built their home brew computers from.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[hughk]

Actually astrophysicists refer to the gas coming into a proto-star as "loose" not the stuff that has been gravitationally compressed and heated to the point of fusion. I suggest you should do a bit more studying.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[prelelat]

The problem isn't being able to make a fusion reaction the myth is making a cold fusion reaction. They are different. I recall a story about some kid that made one of these for a science fair in the states I think. They called in a group of people to take radiation readings and make sure it was safe once they knew what it was. But yeah I wonder why they can't make these things self sustaining and produce more energy than is put in like the sun.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[harrkev]

Actually it is that last bit that probably does it, the large quantity of emitted energy that ends up being recycled to maintain the reaction. That is the difficult bit with a Farnsworth Fusor

For those who may not know how a fusor works...

You need to get hydrogen to slam into each other very hard to have fusion. One traditional way to do it is to make a magnetic "bottle" to contain everything. This is hard to do, because the gas does not like to be compressed, and can squirt out the edges if your field is not incredibly strong and consistent. This is kind of like squeezing a hand full of jelly. This is the "traditional" approach. See HERE.

A fusor, on the other hand, takes a different approach. It uses a static electric field. The theory is that, if you ionize the hydrogen, it has a positive charge. So, you put it in a roon with a large electric charge. The hydrogen will accelerate towards the negative-charged region and keep on going all the way through. Once it passes through, the negative charge is behind it, so it starts to slow down, and eventually reverse direction and go back to the charge again at high speed. If you get enough ions doing this, eventually some of them will hit head-on in the middle with enough velocity to fuse. Simple, no? Pretty pictures available HERE.

There are only two problems. The first (and most serious) is that the region of negative charge is usually created by a bunch of wires welded together in a soccer-ball shape. You put a strong negative charge on the wires, and you have an instant negative region of space to attract the hydrogen ions. This works well, but some of the hydrogen ions hit the wires of the ball itself, which rob the entire system of energy. Those ions have to oscillate thousands or millions of times through that region before they, by chance, happen to hit another ion. If the ion hits the wire before hitting another ion, then it's purpose in life has failed. If there was only a way to create a static electric field without those pesky wires.

The other (less serious) problem is, even if you achieve over-unity energy, how do you extract energy from a system like this? The most obvious answer is heat (steam turbines, etc.), but the system (and those little wires) can only take so much heat before melting. Fusors (if I am not mistaken) are very good at producing neutrons, helium, and maybe X-rays. It is pretty hard to get energy out of those.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[HungryHobo]

sure, solar pannels on the roof are all fine and good although the aditional kit to to change it into usable household voltage is quite expensive so unless you hand out grants like candy it's a tad expensive.(even if you hand out grants it's still expensive but it's everyone paying so you personally don't notice.)
You could run your house on solar power sure.... provided you live near the equator... and it's summer.... and you have a pile of money up front but that's the thing.
Solar power is not reliable.
And try running an aluminium foundry with a few pannels on the roof or even on everyone elses roof for miles around.
I can't see factory owners being too happy about having to shut down at night and during the winter because the solar powered grid can't handle the strain.
So they'd have to build 2 lots of power plants.
one as backup for when clouds make the shitty solar power plants useless.

Fusion is attractive because it promises to be reliable.
As for the radiation it's not too bad and if you can get hold of the He3 you don't even have to worry about that.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK do you REALLY not see the problem here? Let me see if I can spell it out for you:
It goes out at NIGHT, moron. What are we supposed to use for power then?

People these days...

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[shawn(at)fsu]

When I was posting this last night at 2am it made much more sense.
Sleep deprived posting is like drunk dialing only it's put in to record so that everyone can laugh at you....

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[DanielLC]

In order to cause fusion you need enormous pressure. No artificial fusor uses gravity to do it because in order to get enough pressure with that, the mass must be enormous. I'm looking at you, Sun. Ahh! My eyes!

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only radiation from fusion generation that's dangerous to life is in the ultraviolet spectrum, and that can be absorbed fairly easily.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

hear hear

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Ihlosi]

The only radiation from fusion generation that's dangerous to life is in the ultraviolet spectrum, and that can be absorbed fairly easily.

Um, dude ? Even if you manage to run a completely aneutronic fusion process (good luck, you're going to need it) ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion
.... do you see those numbers with MeV behind them ? That's Mega-Electron-Volts. Any photon packing Mega-Electron-Volts is definitely _not_ in the ultraviolet range. It's probably even beyond the X-ray range. We're talking frickin' gamma rays here.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Americium]

30 years ago Fusion was 30 yrs off. Today Fusion is 30 yrs off. It's not happening anytime soon... right now the hope is we can mine Helium 3 from the moon and perhaps use that to create Fusion.

WE HAVE NUCLEAR - why not use it?

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[ElizabethGreene]

Excellent explanation. I'll take it one step further.

Recently, there was a rather famous Google Talk by the founder of Energy Matter Conversion Corp, a DARPA funded energy research company. They built a series of fusors using "Inertial Electrostatic Confinement", which eliminated the wires using an array of electrical coils. This research appeared quite promising, but the project was shuttered for political and budget reasons.

-ellie

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Aphoxema]

Wait, what? You can change one element into another?

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Some_Llama]

"one as backup for when clouds make the shitty solar power plants useless."

yah solar is so Dependant on absolutely clear skies, that's why they installed one in the roof of London City Hall.

http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/city_hall/solar-power/index.jsp

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Teancum]

The Polywell attempts to combine "the best" of both types of fusion reactors, as it tries to set up a "magnetic bottle" that can contain an electric charge that does pretty much the same thing as the Fusor in terms of trying to confine the nuclei of fusible atoms. Since the electrons creating the electrical field are contained in a magnetic structure instead of a physical metallic structure, it solves two things at once:

• Removes the pesky wires that the nuclei keep banging into... giving more energy back into the system.
• Allows the reactor core to get to much higher temperatures that can be substantially warmer than the melting point of a conductor like gold or copper.

Still, there are a number of other issue and things unique to the Polywell that raise questions if that line of thinking will actually produce energy as well. Some detractors of the Polywell think that some of the energy losses from its design may still not get past the break-even point, but that remains to be seen in practice.

What you've written here, harrkev, is a good introduction to the topic. Thanks for putting this together!

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need a string theorist for this. Any old nuclear physicist (like me) can do the trick.

There's no violation of conservation of energy when you get more energy out of fusion than you put into the reaction. It's just that some atomic mass is being converted into an equivalent amount (E = m*c^2) of energy.

The problem is that there is no practical way to create the conditions for fusion in your garage. And it's not just a little impractical. It's so many orders of magnitude impractical that I'm really very certain that it will not happen in my lifetime or that of my children.

The proof that people who think that they have accomplished this have not done so is that they are still living. The amount of neutron radiation that would come out of any such "cold fusion" scenario would very likely nuke the careless (or possibly even a very careful) experimenter into non-livingness.

There have been a couple of published reports of laboratory scientists incorrectly thinking that they had created fusion in their labs (remember Pons & Fleischmann, or Taleyarkhan's "Bubble fusion"?) But it is easy to show that if their neutron-production data were true that they would have taken extremely lethal doses of radiation in the process.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[HungryHobo]

yes, yes you can.

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[HungryHobo]

that's what's called a publicity stunt

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[StrategicIrony]

Hahahaha.

Uhm. It's called Fusion.

It involves converting matter into energy.

Net effect is that a few micrograms of matter is turned into pure energy which can (hopefully) be extracted.

Well, it's not practical in basement laboratory environments right now, but a few large-scale reactors DO get more out than you put in.

That's energy... not matter, which is consumed...

Neat how nuclear fusion works, isn't it? :-)

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[budgenator]

The other guy that replied to me below explained the problem even better that I did; but not working the math I'd guess that making a fusor twice as big would would increase the power loses 4 times. The guy that invented these fusors is Philo Farnsworth and Philo invented television, so this is old well understood technology here, not something new and unknown,

Re:Can a String Theorist?

[Aphoxema]

That's AMAAAAAAAAAZINNNNNG!

whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone remember the "radioactive boyscout"?

David Hahn to make his own reactor (breeder, i think). He accumulated quantities of radium and tritium from smoke detectors and lantern mantles in a shed. The DOE had to lock down his parents whole house and yard to clean it up.

David Haun

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahn was arrested last year for trying to steal smoke detectors from his apartment complex.

Judging from his mugshot he looks to be suffering the effects of radiation exposure.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

note the comments on your blogspot link that say it's a photo of a meth addict stolen from the smoking gun, not the radioactive boyscout.

newsflash, journalist images are even less honest than their writings

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[thatskinnyguy]

Mantles contain thorium. Tritium is for fusion reactions.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to provide the link on smoking gun? No? Maybe because the "comments on blogspot" were from people as ill-informed as you? I guess you didn't notice that the original source article also included the same photo, right?

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Gideon Fubar]

David Hahn as a teenager

That does actually appear to be him in the photo. Notably (according to wikipedia), he has refused testing and medical treatment for radiation poisoning on many occasions.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats not sience, thats obsession. Although one could argue that most scientists are obsessed. But still, look at the mug-shot. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy keels over from some sort of cancer within 5 years.

Will we ever know what he tried to achieve or find out? Beyond what you can already read in undergrad physics text books I mean?

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Captain DaFt]

Here's a better article on him: http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html
Hmm, This quote: -Of his exposure to radioactivity he says, "I don't believe I took more than five years off my life."- Doesn't seem to match the present picture does it?

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Paradise Pete]

note the comments on your blogspot link that say it's a photo of a meth addict stolen from the smoking gun, not the radioactive boyscout.

He's got way too much muscle tone for a meth addict in that condition. They tend not to eat. He looks strong.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What he is doing is real science. All the time you see arguments that people should believe in Science because it's real and tested, and that you shouldn't believe the bible because it's just a book. But how do many scientists operate? They read stuff in books and believe it. Do they do the experiments themselves to verify the science? Or do they just read in a book about somebody else who did an experiment?

Then you get somebody like this who gets out there and does his own experiments, actually tries things out to see what happens. He's a real scientist. So if you wanna be a scientist, get out there and do some experiments! And if you want to believe the bible, do some bible experiments! Try reading a book, and doing what it says, and see what happens. Real science.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[lobiusmoop]

I remember reading about him a few years ago and being struck by his reasons for doing such dangerous work - "the oil won't last forever". It's sad that a bright, enthusiastic young kid has more insight into our future than most of the people in power seem to have today.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[ozbon]

Hmmm, "Bright young kid smarter than politicians" - that'll never be a headline.

Now, "Politician smarter than house-brick" - *that* would be a headline...

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[pla]

Judging from his mugshot he looks to be suffering the effects of radiation exposure

Just to clarify - Skin lesions like that don't result from radiation poisoning far in the past (though on the short term from acute exposure, perhaps).

More likely, he inhaled/ingested/absorbed waaaaay more Thorium than does the body good, which does lead to skin lesions (not to mention other nuissances like bone cancer).

Remember kids, as much of a PITA we all consider OSHA, their standards usually err on the side of the employer, not actual safety. If they say "use a dust mask" to work with something, you probably want nothing short of a negative-pressure glove-box.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Muad'Dave]

Man, he looks like he took some birdshot to the face. I hope that's not radiation damage.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

OSHA standards err on the side of the employer? They err on the side of mexican employers. We've already moved manufacturing south of the border because the punch press standards have basically become "only GM can comply with these; don't even try."

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[pla]

We've already moved manufacturing south of the border because the punch press standards have basically become "only GM can comply with these; don't even try."

Funny, my employer, a pretty small-scale (in the big picture - rather large locally) manufacturer, has no problems using them safely.

Or do you just mean to whine that robber-baron manufacturers can no longer send children into running machines to do minor repairs, thereby avoiding downtime at the trifling risk of a few fingers?

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The blogspot folks speculated on it being a meth shot. But, it looks like they're wrong.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292111,00.html

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The link points to..... dangeroustories.org

Poor Brits.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[JavaManJim]

Real science? Not especially. Consider reading the book; "The Radioactive Boy Scout". Or I can send it to you (seriously $5 plus shipping, let me know). David Hahn wanted to "do" nuclear without really understanding the physics. The book's sub title says "whiz kid" but obviates this when it describes the hazardous methods used to extract the material.

Reminds me of my own stupidity when I tried to burn sulfur and candle wax together was when I was eleven or so. Bountiful amounts of hydrogen sulfide and other nasty fumes resulted. This was not real science discovering H2S but certainly a learning experience. After recovering my lungs it was what the heck happened? So I looked into the basic chemistry books at the library and was thus enlightened.

David Han's original work dates from before 1998 BEFORE this wonderful internet thing opened up many doors. Its a shame today that he is still running around trying to hammer Americium-241 out of smoke detectors.

Thanks, and let me know re the book,
Jim

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[dave420]

Scientists don't just believe things written in books unless there is good reason to, such as different teams achieving the same results, and published findings, all peer-reviewed. Comparing that to the bible is pretty silly, considering the only thing they have in common is the use of words. Obviously each and every scientist having to perform every experiment ever conducted throughout history is not good for humanity, hence science's incredible ability to score a line under each one, and allow science to progress. That is real science.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Starlet Monroe]

Why is this modded flamebait?

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! Niiice... I didn't think he'd be nutty enough to try that again.

I remember a couple years back to when I was on the Enterprise (CVN-65), and had a short conversation at a mess deck table. "Hey aren't you-?", which was interupted with, "Don't wanna talk about it." Basically part of his enlistment term was to not ever go into much detail of his crazy project. But yeah, all the nukes knew of him. I think he even made second class in his rating. (Was MS or SK, but something that kept him away from the engineering stuff.) Other than his past hijinks, he wasn't really a remarkable or memorable member of the crew.

Just glimpsed an updated bio via google. It said he went to the Marines later on. I wonder if he got kicked out earlier, or if this latest stunt was his somewhat suicidal way of getting discharged.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[smellsofbikes]

This is a silly, less-than-useful story, but I'm offering it here because I had a crisis of faith one night right before an inorganic chemistry midterm that was very heavy on electrochemistry.

So I went downstairs, lit up a bunsen burner, took a small crucible, filled it with 1/2 tablesalt and 1/2 baking soda, and started heating it. Pretty soon it melted (because the combination of them lowers the melting point to something fairly reasonable.)
I hammered out a little titanium spoon-looking thing, and another flat strip of ti, put them in the melt, and hooked up a power supply with a couple volts, and made sodium metal. You could see a little shiny sphere of the stuff in the titanium spoon every once in a while, for a moment, until the oxygen in the air got through the (poor) protective burned-gas mantle and destroyed it.

Still, it made me decide that Science was still cool and worth pursuing.

(I presume the other electrode was bubbling out chlorine gas. Ew.)

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[An ominous Cow art]

Holy crap, I had never heard that story before. I used to live in the same subdivision as the radioactive house, and probably delivered newspapers to it. That was back in the early 80s before this kid's activities, luckily.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, so scientists believe things written in books for good reason, such as a lot of other scientists believing it and saying that it's a good thing to believe. Believing what's in the science books is good if other scientists are telling you that you should believe it. No need to do those experiments yourself! Beliiieeeeeve!

But believing what's in the bible is silly. It doesn't matter if lots of people are telling you it's a good book worth reading. See, it's not science! So it's silly. It doesn't matter if people have been reading the bible for hundreds of years, and that many people have got value from it. It doesn't matter that the bible might be relevant to a person today, despite being very old. It doesn't matter that people regularly laugh at science that is a few hundred years old. The bible is silly and wrong just because it's the bible. You can believe stuff you read in any other book, no problem. You can even believe stuff on TV and get away with it. But don't you go believing the bible!

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Science wouldn't go anywhere if we spent all our time repeating experiments other people have done to make sure they work. That's what peer reviews are for!

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[dave420]

Scientists don't listen to people. They listen to evidence. Evolution has a shitload. Gravity has a shitload. Science has a shitload. The Bible has none. Favourable reviews don't count as evidence. You can take all the nice fuzzy-feeling stories from the bible if you want. Heck - go right ahead. Read about all that stuff - no problem. It's when the Bible (crafted in the bronze age) starts trying to explain things we had no idea of back then, which have since been identified, studied, classified, by scientists (with supporting evidence anyone can verify), that we have problems. People think the bible is inherently truthful, which is complete horseshit. It was written by men, it is flawed. Using an old book to teach science is fucking retarded. Not to mention the obvious marks of man's authorship all over the damn thing, but I digress. Bible != science. Using the Bible to learn science is like using science to learn religion. Retarded.

Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Kagura]

"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.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

While not quite perpetual motion machine, since it requires fuel (hydrogen and/or deuterium) and produces fusion products including neutrons, it has been proven the current design can never pass break even. Course is the design is drastically altered in some fashion that invalidate the proof, then all bets are off and it just may be all it claims to be...

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Kagura]

Replying to my own post, I've never actually heard anything suggesting Michelson believed in luminiferous aether, but I figured his name would be well known for the experiment.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

umm. is there a good reason why parent is modded offtopic? seems he was making a (somewhat) clever joke

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you mentioned to any scientists that Sol is a perpetual motion device? I'm sure NASA and many physicists would love to hear your intriguing ideas.

I love snarkiness as much as the next guy, but your simplification makes you look a bit... simple.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Kagura]

Solar fusion works by extreme compression due to the gravitational force... and if you were referring to the orbits themselves, it's ridiculously well-established that you can't gain free energy out of a gravitational system.*

*Arapidlyspinningblackholesayswhat?

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[edalytical]

The reason is, and I don't care if I'm modded down to -1, some mods would rather bitch slap people than do actual work like thinking and reading post. Some mods use it to suppress differing opinion.

I just don't get it. When I have mod points I look for good stuff to mod up. Sure I mod down "first post", unmistakable trolls, and spammers, but if someone doesn't fall into those groups and seems sincere I either leave it be or mod it up.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Sometimes discussions should be offtopic, and sometimes redundant etc. Most importantly every discussion needs humor. I see no reason to bitch slap when someone is being sincere.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[synaptic]

http://www.glafreniere.com/sa_Michelson.htm

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[jcorno]

The reason is, and I don't care if I'm modded down to -1, some mods would rather bitch slap people than do actual work like thinking and reading post. Some mods use it to suppress differing opinion.

I just don't get it. When I have mod points I look for good stuff to mod up.

That's funny. I usually waste my mod points modding down posts that start with variations on "Go ahead and mod me down." I guess this is your lucky day.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

and if you were referring to the orbits themselves, it's ridiculously well-established that you can't gain free energy out of a gravitational system.*

... you mean like dropping a whole lot of water through some turbines?

Yeah you're right, that'd never work
http://www.destination360.com/north-america/us/nevada/las-vegas/images/s/las-vegas-hoover-dam.jpg

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[BlackSabbath]

You can't "gain free energy", but you can transfer energy from say, a planet, to say, a spaceship.

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

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[GaryPatterson]

That's not free, when you consider the bigger picture. There's energy used getting the water up to the starting point (heat, etc), the difference is that we're not paying for it directly.

In a more-or-less closed system, like a solar system, you don't get free energy from gravity.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

Free as in beer? I, for one, welcome our neutron blah, blah, blah. These jokes are getting old.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. "I don't care if I'm modded down" always - absolutely always without any exceptions whatsoever - means "I'm a dishonest shitstain and I'm hoping to leverage my phony martyrdom into mod points I doesn't deserve". It is utterly impossible that it could ever mean anything else.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Gideon Fubar]

Getting, you say?

Good news everyone! I've successfully gone back in time and added a 'Funny' modifier to slashdot's moderation system, thus furthering the myth that nerds like me have a sense of humor!

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[edalytical]

And that, ladies and gentlemen of court, is why alleged criminals will be tried by a jury their peers.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Nefarious Wheel]

I've never actually heard anything suggesting Michelson believed in luminiferous aether

Let me help:

Delta-V, Delta-T, Albert A. Michaelson

Wanted to find out why light moved so brisk;

Needed a much bigger

Interferometer;

Back to the drawing board,

can't get the drift.

-- sorry, remember the quote but not the attribution.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[RoboRay]

"Lisa! In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for correctness' sake: A perpetual motion machine isn't one if it uses more energy than it produces. A fusion reactor is a fusion reactor even if it uses more energy than it produces. The key aspect of a fusion reactor is that it fuses atoms into bigger atoms. There are probably easier ways to get helium, but if all you got is hydrogen, then you don't care how much energy your reactor uses.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not an alleged criminal, you're a proven idiot.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[edalytical]

What I get a comment and not negative moderation? WTF is /. coming to? If you're going to be a jerk at least back it up with some mod points so I know I'm without a doubt in the wrong and a proven idiot.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

You already know that you're wrong and an idiot; that's beyond all possible doubt. It's the only reason anyone ever plays the "I'm gonna get modded down" card. To say that is no different than shrieking at the top of your lungs that nothing you can ever say will ever have the tiniest iota of merit.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[edalytical]

or it's just another way of saying I know some people will disagree with me

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it isn't. It never has been and never will be. You'd have said that if that was what you meant. Instead you chose to use an adolescent sympathy ploy. You'll claim that's not what you were doing, but that lie won't even fool yourself, let alone anyone with a functioning brain.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[edalytical]

Why is this so important to you? Are you a moder with a vengeance? You'll sure show us lowly poster who's boss. "Better not say anything I don't approve of." May I suggest you you study this song Pay particular attention "Soapbox house of cards and glass so don't go tossin' your stones around." You might also be interested in: the pot calling the kettle black; looking in the mirror; and why do you see the speck in your brother's eye but fail to notice the log in your own eye? Enjoy. I hope you lean something.

Re:Amateur Scientists Seek Perpetual Motion Device

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this so important to you? Are you a moder with a vengeance? You'll sure show us lowly poster who's boss. "Better not say anything I don't approve of."

This is a strawman you created and incompetently attempted to assign to me, not an honest paraphrasing of anything I actually said. In other words, you're a filthy liar. But we already knew that.

May I suggest you you study this song Pay particular attention "Soapbox house of cards and glass so don't go tossin' your stones around." You might also be interested in: the pot calling the kettle black; looking in the mirror; and why do you see the speck in your brother's eye but fail to notice the log in your own eye? Enjoy. I hope you lean something.

You're the one who needs to take that advice, as you are the only one engaging in the behavior you so clumsily describe. YOU are the one who started this conversation rather than letting my passing comment on your stupidity stand (it stands anyway of course, but that's beside the point). Each and every response you make proves that you are more emotionally invested in this thread than I am. So you're a hypocrite as well as a liar.

Really?

[AmonEzhno]

So wait... why build a reactor that produces a negative output? I'm all for home tinkering, but this seems a little extreme...

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

People do not build the reactors to get energy. One of the reasons they are built is to see a fusion reaction, which is quite impressive. There are some videos on youtube.

Re:Really?

[kbonin]

Its for the tinkerer who wishes to learn more about high vacuum pumps (absorption, ion, vane, turbo...), vacuum chamber design (welding, management of outgassing...), low pressure measurement, low pressure gas flow, high voltage (flybacks, diode stacks, corona discharge, flashover...), particle detectors (scintillators, avalanche photodiodes, image intensifiers, calibrated op amps...), instrument design (fast ADCs, multi-channel analyzers...), oh and some cool stuff related to nuclear physics thrown in. Most of us can't buy all the gear, so we make it all from scrounged parts. And learn a tremendous amount of related engineering in the process. Look at it this way - its like the difference between building an RC car and rebuilding a classic car - anyone can toss together a kit, but if you want to learn how to restore an older car you end up learning dozens of skills you didn't realize you need. Its one of the most interesting educational projects in modern science that isn't illegal (yet).

Re:Really?

[domatic]

Farnsworth fusors are also used as a laboratory source of neutrons. For that application it only matters that they produce sufficient neutrons of the required energy.

Re:Really?

[hughk]

Its one of the most interesting educational projects in modern science that isn't illegal (yet).

Great sentiment but I can see this changing, very quickly when the DHS realises that you have a fusion reactor in your dorm-room/basement. They will get nervous even if the reaction is non self-sustaining. In any case, those neutrons are dangerous, aren't they?

Re:Really?

[ErikZ]

Oh no you don't. The last thing we need are environmentalists hounding us for reducing our "Neutron Footprint"

You'll be accused of working for the "Global nuclear industry consortium" and if you're not dedicated to removing all neutrons from manufactured goods, you're a traitor to humanity.

Re:Really?

[ErikZ]

"What's that thing in the corner? Oh, it's that fusion reactor I slapped together."

I'd love to be able to say that.

Not a good design for power

[Anonymous Coward]

Farnsworth style fusors will never break even. They simply don't contain well enough--once you get the mesh fine enough to stop your particles from hitting it, the voltages you drive it at will probably destroy it.

Polywell is just a better idea. Hopefully EMCC will finally build the large scale one and prove it.

Re:Not a good design for power

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Polywell is just a better idea. Hopefully EMCC will finally build the large scale one and prove it.

We're due a report from them in another couple weeks or so.

Re:Not a good design for power

[symbolset]

Sometimes the desired result of a bonfire is not thermal energy. So it is with fusion. There are byproducts and some are useful.

by working you mean failing

[Anonymous Coward]

they might be trying but if they consume more energy than produce then they are failing
there is no such thing as "nearly fusion" (as useful a statement as "nearly pregnant")
either it works or it doesn't! and if a hundred individuals are consistently failing then working it aint

i won the lottery, i only need to get the numbers right and i have the cash

Re:by working you mean failing

[dgatwood]

No, no, no. It's not "almost" fusion. It is fusion. It is almost a fusion generator. That doesn't mean fusion isn't occurring. It means that the reaction is not self-sustaining. There's a huge difference. Saying that it isn't fusion is like saying that a match placed in a sealed jar and set ablaze using a laser isn't really fire because it consumes all the oxygen and burns out and there's no way to add more oxygen....

Re:by working you mean failing

[wealthychef]

dgatwood, your shell script games are amazing. :-)

Re:by working you mean failing

[smaddox]

In reality, no fusion reactor is self sustaining - except for possibly stars.

However, there is a way to keep the reaction going on long enough to get more usable energy out than you put in. A commercial reactor would have shots of a few minutes.

What could possibly go wrong?

[L. J. Beauregard]

All known hydrogen fusion reactions produce strong neutron fluxes. Strong enough to kill, and death by radiation poisoning is not my idea of a fun time.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

All known hydrogen fusion reactions produce strong neutron fluxes. Strong enough to kill, and death by radiation poisoning is not my idea of a fun time.

What about a hot date with a radioactive supermodel?

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[the_humeister]

Strong enough to kill, and death by radiation poisoning is not my idea of a fun time.

Well, different strokes for different folks...

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

The intensity of the neutron flux is just a matter of how much fusion you are dealing wiht. A single neutron is not going to kill you any more than all the cosmic rays that hit you throghout the day. While it is correct that a large neutron dose would be bad for you, it is completely a matter of dose, so as long as you know what you are doing and take precautions to not generate excessive neutron fluxes you should be fine.

It is also perfectly possible to shield the device using materials that are good at absorbing neutrons, such as hydrogen and boron.

Yes, radiation can kill you in large quantities. As can paint stripper, inhaling the vapours of superglue and being careless with a chainsaw, but that does not stop people from using those things. You do need to know what you are doing, and you do need to take precautions, but radiation is not some ocult spawn of satan that any amount of it will make your skin turn green and ressurect dead puppies into zombies.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Cyberax]

Homemade fusors are not likely to have really dangerous levels of neutron radiation.

The principal danger in fusors is X-Ray radiation. It's produced in generous amounts and can kill you just as good as another types of penetrating radiation.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[fm6]

Every hobby has its hazards. Building a fusor is probably safer than, say, mountain climbing. In both cases, you could die a nasty death if you're not careful. Serious practitioners are careful.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[cunniff]

All known hydrogen -hydrogen fusion reactions produce strong neutron fluxes. Strong enough to kill, and death by radiation poisoning is not my idea of a fun time.

There, fixed that for you.

The holy grail for Polywell fusors is proton-(11)Boron fusion. Aneutronic, and generates alpha particles which are almost trivially easy to convert to electricity.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Born2bwire]

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

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but Hydrogen and boron-11 yields only charged particles, alpha particles to be specific, which is what most of these hobbyists use. They're part of the Poly-well community, as the farnsworth reactor is much simpler than a true polywell.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[tylernt]

radiation is not some ocult spawn of satan that any amount of it will make your skin turn green and ressurect dead puppies into zombies.

Shoot, I just spent all this time building a Farnsworth fusor for nothing.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[mako1138]

There are plenty of hurdles for p-B fusion as well, as the WP article points out. It sounds nice, but I don't think it will be possible any time soon, despite what the Polywell and Focus Fusion people say.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[VAXcat]

Well, X-rays aren't good for you, true...but nothing is worse than neutrons. It's like the old physics test question - if you have an alpha source, a beta source, a gamma (similar to X-rays) source, and a neutron source, all of similar "intensities", and you can eat one, put one in your pocket, hold one at arm's length, and throw one away...what do you do? You put the alpha source in your pocket, since the cloth in your pants will stop alphas. You hold the beta source at arm's length, since a foot or so of air will stop betas. That leaves the neutron and the gamma...well, you throw away the neutron source, since neutrons will activate and make radioactive any material it is close to, this making more radiation over time. You swallow the gamma, since its range make that just about as bad as the other two alternatives.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Ihlosi]

You swallow the gamma, since its range make that just about as bad as the other two alternatives.

The inverse square law disagrees with that, but given that all the other options are already exhausted, there's nothing else you can do if you can only assign each action once.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Abcd1234]

Every hobby has its hazards.

Yeah, I know every time I crack open a book, I worry I'm going to suffer a fatal papercut...

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[khallow]

You may be surprised to hear this, but for many people, reading requires a lot of concentration. These people often find it difficult to read a book while barreling down the highway and chatting on their cellphone. And you'd probably not be at your best if you read War and Peace while operating a front loader.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[fm6]

Obviously you shouldn't read Tolstoy while operating heavy machinery. Everybody knows that. But I think a comic book, or even a Steven King novel is perfectly OK.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[muhadeeb]

Has anyone have access to some Dilithium crystals so I can use in my reactor? I wanna generate several million joules of usable energy to power fusion converter.

Radioactive Trajedy

[Kratisto]

Today, it was found that, in nearly one hundred cases world wide, a small subculture of amateur physicists deluded by the works of Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of the television, have been admitted to local hospitals for radiation poisoning. It is currently unclear whether or not contacts of these science fiction fans have also been exposed to dangerous amounts of radioactive isotopes, and further investigations are preceding.

Re:Radioactive Trajedy

[Anonymous Coward]

further investigations are preceding.

Sweet. They built a time machine.

there was a high school kid

[circletimessquare]

who built a tabletop farnsworth reactor a few years ago

its technically challenging to build one of these, but not beyond the skillset and material list of a committed and persevering amateur science buff

however, saying that once you build one you can work towards self-sustaining fusion is like saying after playing with legos you can go build a pyramid. well yea, you have the conceptualization down, but you still need to move heaven and earth and invest trillions

having said that, what these guys are doing is still important in terms of awareness and getting the good word out. we NEED fusion power. to save us from pollution, global warming, petrodollar funded russian neoimperialism and islamic fundamentalism, etc.

and one of these guys just one day may provide the mental spark to get working a real breakthrough in the field, or inspire a kid somewhere to wonder in awe, and he grows up to provide that mental spark of a breakthrough. anyone who doubts that is just way too jaded

so i salute you amateur fusion researchers

keep hope alive

Re:there was a high school kid

[grahamd0]

having said that, what these guys are doing is still important in terms of awareness and getting the good word out. we NEED fusion power. to save us from pollution, global warming, petrodollar funded russian neoimperialism and islamic fundamentalism, etc.

We have plenty of fusion power.

We've got a 1.989e30 kg fusion reactor producing approximately 386 billion billion megawatts of power.

We just don't harness it very efficiently at the moment.

Re:there was a high school kid

[Jugalator]

And of those watts produces, the atmosphere is struck with around 1.4 kW per square meter. Not that bad either. :)

Re:there was a high school kid

[Anonymous Coward]

to save us from pollution, global warming, petrodollar funded russian neoimperialism and islamic fundamentalism, etc.

and from "the european-north-american" energy lobby-imperium axe of evil etc.

Re:there was a high school kid

[luna69]

> "having said that, what these guys are doing is still important in terms of awareness and getting
> the good word out. we NEED fusion power. to save us from pollution, global warming,
> petrodollar funded russian neoimperialism and islamic fundamentalism, etc."

Keep in mind that ANY generation of energy releases, in the end, heat.

Re:there was a high school kid

[Ihlosi]

We have plenty of fusion power.

Yes, but the reactor design sucks big time. Let me explain:

We've got a 1.989e30 kg fusion reactor producing approximately 386 billion billion megawatts of power.

1. The thing is way too big. We can't move it or take it with us.

2. The specific power per volume or mass sucks really big time. I mean, 27 Watts per m^3 ? 20 Milliwatts per kg ? This is a ridiculous waste of space.

Re:there was a high school kid

[Ihlosi]

Keep in mind that ANY generation of energy releases, in the end, heat.

Which isn't a problem if we don't try too hard to keep the waste heat from escaping into space.

Heck, any human-generated amounts of heat on Earth are dwarved by the 1.275*10^17 Watts of solar irradiance Earth receives anyway.

Re:there was a high school kid

[RegularFry]

We just don't harness it very efficiently at the moment.

Wouldn't a lens at one of the Lagrange points help with this?

Re:there was a high school kid

[Chris Mattern]

Keep in mind that ANY generation of energy releases, in the end, heat.

The heat generated by man-made endeavors is negligible in the earth's overall heat budget. Global warming is caused because we are causing more solar heat to be retained, rather than directly from our own piddling efforts.

Re:there was a high school kid

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no, the whole point of this is that making a net-energy fusion reactor is an *engineering* problem and that the whole gigantic trillion-dollar torus of plasma approach is not the only possible engineering solution. It is feasible that one of these hobbyists will create the first net-energy fusion reaction in their garage for way less than a trillion dollars.

Re:there was a high school kid

[kryliss]

"Real American Heros........" Budweiser salutes you Mr. Basement Fusion Reactor Guy.

Re:there was a high school kid

[Delwin]

You think Global Warming is bad now... and you want to add more energy to the system that's not already there?

Re:there was a high school kid

[rogerz]

We've got a 1.989e30 kg fusion reactor producing approximately 386 billion billion megawatts of power.

... of which ~1kW/m**2 arrives at the equator on a perfectly cloudless day. So, to produce as much power as a typical commercial fission reactor would require 1M m**2 array of photo-voltaic cells operating at that location at 100% efficiency, without any reasonable access to repair failed components (i.e. no spacing).

Removing some of the unrealistic assumptions from that previous paragraph results in the need for at least 10M m**2 of equipment at a typical populated location on earth. That's a square 3 km on a side - for the same power we can get from a nuke plant requiring about 100 m on a side (counting only power-generating components).

Conclusion: Even with perfect efficiency, nuclear power generation is roughly 100 times more land-efficient than solar could ever be on earth. At realistic levels of efficiency, with realistic commercial configurations, the ratio is well over 1000.

Re:there was a high school kid

[Anonymous Coward]

We've got a 1.989e30 kg fusion reactor producing approximately 386 billion billion megawatts of power.

Look a little farther and you may find more. Just please, don't try to build one at home.

Re:there was a high school kid

[grahamd0]

I'm not against fission power. In fact I wholeheartedly support it.

I was just pointing out that we have a readily available source of fusion power already that is more than capable of providing a significant portion of our energy needs, though obviously not all of them. It's been enough to supply the energy required to sustain almost all life on Earth since there was life on Earth.

Not all of that energy necessarily needs to be converted into electricity to be useful for us. We can (and people do) use it directly to heat water, for one quick example.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I once saw an infomercial about a Mr. Fusion device, why not buy one of those?

Fusion? Pah! I've done them better!

[MarkRose]

Meanwhile at my home, I've perfected the generation of natural gas by eating the right combination of Burger King and Taco Bell.

Re:Fusion? Pah! I've done them better!

[EdIII]

Burger King and Taco Bell? You could do so much better. Let me help.

Step 1: Broccoli and Cheese soup. Crush some Oyster Crackers into it and DON'T forget the Tabasco sauce.
Step 2: Pork and Beans. 1 Can. Always a classic.
Step 3: ONE foot-long-cheap-ass Don Miguel burrito (the spicy red one). Can be purchased at any fine 7-11 anywhere. Only ONE. Trust me.
Step 4: 5 Hardboiled eggs with salt and pepper.
Step 5: Steamed Cabbage and 2 raw onions with plenty of butter.
Step 6: A single large bag of Funyuns.

Do all of this within 3 1/2 hours. Sit on the couch and wait about another 2-3 hours. Hold everything in till about 6 hours after you started.

You know that saying "killed the dog"? Well if you have pets, I don't recommend this.

DISCLAIMER: If you have any kind of a heart condition, or if anyone else in the house has one DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS.

Re:Fusion? Pah! I've done them better!

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so it's been about 6 hours now, and nothing. What's supposed to... oh god... I just crapped myself. I just ruined my pants AND my couch. You bastard.

Re:Fusion? Pah! I've done them better!

[Anonymous Coward]

... wow! the phelps diet!

Widely used in medicine and research

[CustomDesigned]

Farnsworth fusors are widely used in medicine and research as an easily controlled and cheap source of neutrons.

Re:Widely used in medicine and research

[AmonEzhno]

But the article is about amateur scientist, not commercial use. It's really amazing no doubt, but what kind of costs are associated with a project like this?

Re:Widely used in medicine and research

[jacquesm]

a couple of hundred bucks, less if you live near a junkyard :)

Re:Widely used in medicine and research

[Anonymous Coward]

Another invention by Farnsworth, the Finglonger serves as a tool for operating machines over a "fair-sized distance."

Not power generators

[syntaxglitch]

Despite the fact that this is a link to a non-technical publication's website, the Farnsworth Fusor is a real fusion device and works basically how they describe it. What it is not, however, is anticipated to ever be a viable power source, and there are significant theoretical hurdles to prevent it from being viable relative to other approaches (and when you make any kind of fusion reactor seem plausible in comparison, you're probably not going anywhere). In my experience, most hobbyists are well aware of this and just enjoy the tinkering.

The primary functions of a fusor are 1) Generate neutrons 2) Look really cool 3) Kill you with extremely high voltages if you screw up.

Re:Not power generators

[Prune]

On the other hand, a fusor derivative, the polywell, is expected to be a power source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

Re:Not power generators

[Rogerborg]

Note: "Wikipedia expects" is not the most compelling technical analysis I've ever read.

Why didn't they mention the polywell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Focusing on Farnsworth fusors in an article written in part about fusion as a possible energy source seems as poorly researched as writing about steam engines in an article about internal combustion. The polywell seems be the heir apparent for serious work in energy out of the fusor lineage.

Re:Why didn't they mention the polywell?

[Zobeid]

I was wondering exactly the same thing. In my view the Polywell is the most interesting thing going on in fusion research these days, and it's a direct descendent from the kinds of devices these hobbyists are building.

Re:Why didn't they mention the polywell?

[Baldrson]

The WSJ is notorious for poor research of the most critical issues.

Re:Why didn't they mention the polywell?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty odd that they don't mention polywell, given that they do mention Tom Ligon, who was on Bussard's research team.

Has someone tried,..

[Anonymous Coward]

Making a fusion/fisson reactor?
One takes it appart, the other put the 'waste' back together.

or does the process just cancel itself out?

Re:Has someone tried,..

[MarkRose]

It doesn't work that way. You can get energy out of fusion and fission until you hit iron at the middle, which is at an energy well. The sun will end up a lump of iron once it finishes fusing due to this fact.

Re:Has someone tried,..

[Waffle Iron]

It doesn't work that way. You can get energy out of fusion and fission until you hit iron at the middle, which is at an energy well. The sun will end up a lump of iron once it finishes fusing due to this fact.

Actually, the sun isn't massive enough to create iron. It will instead end up as a lump of mostly degenerate carbon and oxygen.

Re:Has someone tried,..

[YttriumOxide]

It doesn't work that way. You can get energy out of fusion and fission until you hit iron at the middle, which is at an energy well.

Which, all in all, would be a pretty nice "waste material" to have.

Of course we're nowhere near capable of being able to actually do this reasonably as a power production method, but if we could, I certainly wouldn't be complaining about all of that "iron waste".

Re:Has someone tried,..

[RegularFry]

Here's an honest question: where do our iron deposits come from?

Re:Has someone tried,..

[Ihlosi]

Here's an honest question: where do our iron deposits come from?

Um ... from dead stars that had enough mass to produce iron (as well as even heavier elements) as they died. This means stars that were much more massive than our little sun.

Re:Has someone tried,..

[RegularFry]

Is it reasonable to assume that all the materials on earth came from a single supernova, or is that overly simplistic?

Re:Has someone tried,..

[Ihlosi]

Is it reasonable to assume that all the materials on earth came from a single supernova, or is that overly simplistic?

That would be overly simplistic.

The solar system is roughly 5 billion years old, the universe is roughly 13 billion years old. The early universe contained more supermassive stars than today's universe, and these giants only had lifespans in the tens of million years. So a lot of them popped before our solar system formed. It is believed that our solar system formed in the vicinity of several earlier supernovas.

Re:Has someone tried,..

[mog007]

The current star in our solar system is five billion years old, however it was formed by the collapse of a previous star which had gone nova. The remains of that nova formed the planets, and the left over hydrogen collapsed and formed our sun.

i wonder how many

[Anonymous Coward]

ARE IN IRAN1111!!!!!!!!1!

You've gotta be kidding me...

[Chappster]

By absolutely NO means is this anything new. This is being done world wide all over the place. In fact, with 2,000 dollars and a couple hundred collective hours, anybody could make them easily.

Before I switched majors from physics to CIS, I was planning on building one just as an experience buffer. It's extremely, extremely friggin' simple.

http://brian-mcdermott.com/fusion_is_easy.htm

Philo T. Farnsworth

[QuietLagoon]

Now nearing the ripe age of fifteen, Philo Farnsworth turned his team of horses around at the edge of the field and surveyed his work. Before him lay his mowed hay field, clearly delineated rows cut in alternating directions. Suddenly the future hit him with a vision so startling he could hardly sit still: a vision of television images formed by an electron beam scanning a picture in horizontal lines....
.

Best book on the early days of television that I have read. The above quote is from page 126.

Re:Philo T. Farnsworth

[Scarbo27]

Now nearing the ripe age of fifteen, Philo Farnsworth turned his team of horses around at the edge of the field and surveyed his work. Before him lay his mowed hay field, clearly delineated rows cut in alternating directions. Suddenly the future hit him with a vision so startling he could hardly sit still: a vision of television images formed by an electron beam scanning a picture in horizontal lines.... .

Best book on the early days of television that I have read. The above quote is from page 126.

This pattern is called "boustrophedon" and some early languages were written like this. The first line might go from left to right as Europeans write, and the next line would go from right to left as in the Semitic languages. Then back again. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon We now return to our regularly scheduled broadcast.

Futurama

[LingNoi]

More information about Dr Farnsworth...

Re:Futurama

[hampton]

Next, the small subculture of amateur physicists will try to duplicate Farnsworth's other inventions, the Smelloscope, the What-if Machine, and the Fing Longer!

Re:Futurama

[psxman]

Luckily, they already duplicated his Smelloscope last year.

Re:Futurama

[Xiaran]

A small technical point. He never invented the Fing Longer. But a man can dream... a man can dream.

Fusors are Old News

[istartedi]

As the summary acknowledges, the fusor has been around for a while. If it were theoreticly possible to get net power gain, don't you think it would have been tried?

I doubt many of the people experimenting with the fusor are seriously trying to get net power gain. It's useful as a neutron source. Thus, you could make isotopes with it. That's rather scary, and something that I'm sure a lot of people would not want advertised; but it's also common knowledge for anybody who has an interest in nuclear science.

Re:Fusors are Old News

[Anenome]

Most of these experiments deal with softball sized reactors, essentially, and then imagine that scaling them up will increase their efficiency when the fact is that scaling them up makes them operate worse because the neutrons generated can only travel so far before they are block by something. What I'd like to see is a Fusor reactor continually shrunken down. If you could get it to the size of a pinhead or so I bet it would produce a net energy gain.

Re:Fusors are Old News

[Urkki]

If it were theoreticly possible to get net power gain, don't you think it would have been tried?

AFAIK, there's nothing theoretically impossible about getting a net power gain with this general type of device. I mean, as far as I understand, the theoretical minimum amount of electrical power needed is far far less than the energy released in the fusion reaction. It's just that so far it's proven to be not possible in practice, due to all seemingly unavoidable losses. And yes, people have been trying. I'd think it's a wet dream of anybody who's ever played with these kind of fusors.

I predict that this is possible, and that eventually we get something like this to work. It'll probably be with a very small fusor, probably using exotic metamaterials designed spesifically for this purpose, with suitable electrical and magnetic properties such as room-temperature superconductivity, and eventually even with properties like self-correcting structure to get around radiation damage to the metamaterials. So it won't be a hobbyist who discovers how to do this.

Re:Fusors are Old News

[Hektor_Troy]

Thus, you could make isotopes with it. That's rather scary,Warning. You are surrounded by large numbers of isotopes at this very minute. As we speak, your body is quite litterally being inundated with mole upon mole of Carbon13, Carbon14, Carbon12, Oxygen16, Oxygen18, Nitrogen14, Nitrogen15 and countless others.

Quick - run!

Re:Fusors are Old News

[Hektor_Troy]

And without the tag screwup - it was the isotopes that made me screw up, I swear those fuckers are out to get me!

Thus, you could make isotopes with it. That's rather scary,

Warning. You are surrounded by large numbers of isotopes at this very minute. As we speak, your body is quite litterally being inundated with mole upon mole of Carbon13, Carbon14, Carbon12, Oxygen16, Oxygen18, Nitrogen14, Nitrogen15 and countless others.

Quick - run!

Bring on fusion!

[ArchieBunker]

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"

Re:Bring on fusion!

[Tuqui]

I can't fucking wait for the day cold fusion arrives

This type of fusion is not in the Cold category.

Re:Bring on fusion!

[coopaq]

I bet they can't fucking wait for you to tell them too.

Re:Bring on fusion!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right! No plastics, no chemicals, no lubricants !!!
Idiot!

Re:Bring on fusion!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right! No plastics, no chemicals, no lubricants !!!
Idiot!

This is slashdot, so I assume the last one doesn't matter too much.

Re:Bring on fusion!

[Urkki]

Right! No plastics, no chemicals, no lubricants !!!
Idiot!

All these can be manufactures from just about anything with carbon and hydrogen. It just takes energy, so as long as there's oil to be pumped, it's cheaper to use the oil. It would even be possible (though not worth it) to manufacture stuff equal to crude oil.

And then of course there are oils directly from plants. This might be a big thing in the future, when genetic engineering makes it possible to design plants to produce oils with desired properties and desired extra chemicals in them. After all, proteins can manufacture just about anything, it's just a matter of desiging the proteins to produce the molecule you want. The rest (converting the protein to DNA and inserting it into a plant genome so that it works) should be possible with today's crude genetic technologies, even.

Re:Bring on fusion!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why he is waiting. Informative?

Re:Bring on fusion!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look around your room... IT IS ALL MADE OF OIL!
All the plastics, paint and so on and on. It's all made of oil.
You eat, shit and breath oil every damn day.

Re:Bring on fusion!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't fucking wait for the day cold fusion arrives

This type of fusion is not in the Cold category.

That's why he is waiting. Informative?

Then you would need to wait a long time, because neither "Hot" Fusion is available yet.

Re:Bring on fusion!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to say one word to you - just one word. Plastics.

Re:Bring on fusion!

[Ihlosi]

I just want to say one word to you - just one word. Plastics.

And why would you need oil if you have enough energy to synthesize any hydrocarbon of your choice on an industrial scale ?

Re:Bring on fusion!

[magus_melchior]

I hear they're doing some wonderful things with biological plastics. Oh, and there's this big pile of floating plastic debris in the Pacific. It'd be a shame to let all that free plastic go to waste.

WMD

[clarkkent09]

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

Re:WMD

[Anonymous Coward]

Real neocons build torture devices, toxins and biological weapons. The point is not to kill people, but to cause as much pain as possible.

Re:WMD

[NorQue]

Yawn, old news. Meh, even Slashdot had it already.

As others have said ...

[tgd]

I don't think anyone building these expects to ever have a net power output from them -- that's not the point. The point is to be able to say you built a fusion reactor, or as others have said to generate isotopes for other experimenting, etc.

IMO, a more important area of amateur and admittedly fringe scientific research around fusion and fusion-like reactions is the several hundred teams that still continue to this day to investigate what the heck is going on with low temperature fusion. Tons of progress is being made in the field, and some reasonable theories are starting to form. There's a lot of unknowns, but helium is regularly produced, neutrons are regularly produced and more interesting from a theoretical standpoint, lots of atoms are changing from one element to another...

Its like the 1700's experimenting with chemistry. Lots of people doing lots of very cool and interesting experiments and getting lots of very interesting results, even if we (humanity, not me personally) still don't quite get it.

IMO, its an aspect of science we miss in the modern world. These days we just assume we understand things pretty well and experimenting is about engineering or proving a theory. Its cool there are still areas of fundamental science experimentation going on where we just don't get what is happening and have no idea what might happen with the next variant.

Re:As others have said ...

[Anonymous Coward]

even if we (humanity, not me personally) still don't quite get it.

The correct word for a group of people that excludes you is "they". Using "we" is disingenuous. If a person says "we have a debt towards Jews for what happened in WW2", you would assume the speaker is German. When he then states that he is in fact Jewish himself, you tend question his motives and his message itself....

Re:As others have said ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. It's hilarious and sad the way real work like this is dismissed, yet people praise stupid shit like Mythbusters, a show which often tries to prove a negative (a logical impossibility), and frequently gets things wrong after declaring something "busted" (see the mirrors vs. wooden ships thing).

The story is so old and duped

[Anonymous Coward]

on Slashdot that I can't even think of anything smart-ass to say.

Wait: Well I could say that perhaps the Slashdot editors are in the testing of the new 21st century mind control warfare effort we heard about, where we can make the enemy forget they are in the military.

In this case, we make people forget about rehashed stories and they are repeated over and over. So just like 20 years until mind control is realized, 20 more years of dupes will materialize.

Real fusion

[Geoffrey.landis]

These are real fusion devices. The last time I judged the national science fair contest, there were not one, but two fusion reactors-- one put together from parts scrounged from junkyards.

There was an article by Tom Ligon in Analog back in September 1998-- it's available on the web if you're interested in more details.

This is pretty cool. I love amateur science.

With that said, note that there is a vast difference between merely demonstrating fusion, and producing usable power by fusion, roughly similar to the gap between the glow of your old radium watch dial, and a nuclear bomb. But if the hobbiests can learn to scale it up... now, that would be cool.

Re:Real fusion

[budgenator]

Things might get interesting if they lined the steel shell with beryllium, and the beryllium shell with a thorium shell; then you'd have a fusion-fission reactor the size of a washing machine. Probably would be pretty easy to get past break-even with one.

Re:Real fusion

[Teancum]

There are some hard limits to what a typical IEC fusion reactor can produce... as the "grid" that encloses the fusion core also tends to absorb some of the particles that are needed to sustain the reaction.

What the IEC (Internal Electrostatic Confinement) reactor does really well is produce a stable neutron source that can be turned on and off with a switch. There are some very useful applications for such a device in terms of nuclear physics research and medical treatments where this would have tremendous value even if you can't reach anything even near a break-even energy production for the device.

For a medial device, it is really nice in terms of being able to have a neutron source that can be turned off, pulled apart for maintenance, and when the equipment is de-commissioned or surplussed you don't need to get deal with radioactive waste disposal. It can also be installed without having to get special permits from the Atomic Energy Commission.

Re:Real fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

The number of reactions per second on these things is small enough your not going to get useful power unless your getting millions of fission reactions per fusion reaction which makes the fission part redundant.

Smoke detectors?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're mistaken: smoke detectors contain Americium, unless I misremember.

I think he managed to make a neutron source, though and figured out how to moderate it to some degree (albeit mostly after talking to scientists who knew more than he did). And he got some antique glow-in-the-dark items that were radioactive as well as the old smoke detectors.

But I don't think he managed to accomplish much except to irradiate himself and contaminate his neighborhood.

Re:Smoke detectors?

[symbolset]

But I don't think he managed to accomplish much except to irradiate himself and contaminate his neighborhood.

Actually, yes, he did. He managed to accomplish quite a lot. It's really amazing how much he achieved with his limited understanding. Scary even.

Re:Smoke detectors?

[jheath314]

Now I'm curious... the wikipedia article only says that he managed to generate a large amount of radioactivity, but could not achieve critical mass. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't exceeding critical mass result in a runaway reaction?) Does anyone have more detail on what he was aiming to do, and what he achieved?

Re:Smoke detectors?

[Cecil]

Yes, you are correct about exceeding critical mass, but keep in mind that simply having a supercritical mass is still a long way from having anything that will do anything spectacular like explode. A supercritical mass would be much happier to simply melt itself (and everything it's in contact with) into a molten and highly radioactive goo. It can take a long time for this to happen if the mass is not far above critical, plenty of time to disassemble or disable it.

Not to say it's particularly safe, either, you'll probably die of radiation poisoning not too long afterwards, like the two scientists who accidentally let the "demon core" go supercritical back in the 40s.

Re:Smoke detectors?

[jacquesm]

it can even happen by chance, in nature

Fusion? BAH!!!

[adric]

Now if they could put it in the form of a suppository...

Re:Fusion? BAH!!!

[MarginalWatcher]

Ah, the good old "Preparation H"...

Michelson

[Geoffrey.landis]

" The designs are based on the work of Albert Michelson, co-proponent of luminiferous aether theory, from the 1890s."

It's worth reminding people that, whatever his original views of luminiferous aether, Michelson was one of the great experimentalists of the 19th century and his name is most firmly associated with the experiment that's widely credited with experimentaly destroying the credibility of aether theories.

(It's still possible to come up with aether theories even with the Michelson-Morley results (and the results of hundreds of other people who replicated and refined that result), but it's much more difficult, and the resulting theories end up rather hard to credit.) I assume that the original use of the word "proponent" was a typo).

Re:Michelson

[Anonymous Coward]

Well not that difficult.

Think of a clock built somehow from soundwaves. What happens to to its tick when it goes against the "stream"? In one direction the signal propagates faster (c+v), in another slower (c-v). How long does it take to go back and forth? Do they cancel? Nope. It's 0.5/(c+v)+0.5/(c-v) = 1/(c^2-v^2).

Bonus points for figuring out where the missing square root comes from. If you can do that you can deduce the whole special relativity as a pretty much straightforward consequence.

Re:Michelson

[Anonymous Coward]

Michelson actually was a proponent of aether theories, and in the context of the text you quoted, I suspect the author said exactly what they intended to.

However, once he set about trying to studying aether, he only ended up finding out it didn't exist. His initial reaction was to suspect he wasn't seeing it because of experimental error, but continually improved experiments by him, Morely, and others also failed to find any evidence of aether.

I live next door to a terrorist

[duckInferno]

I'm surprised the guy doesn't have a giant black SUV constantly parked outside his house. The most the article mentions is that a kid who made a fusor for his science project was visited by the state health department, who then left him alone from there on. His neighbors seem cool with it too (not to mention his wife). What is this, some sort of alternate reality version of the US?

From the sounds of the article though, these people aren't actually looking to make a proper electricity-generating fusion reaction; they're just making fusors for shits and giggles. Misleading title?

There's only two possible outcomes.

[jpellino]

Really embarrassing or REALLY embarrassing.

Confucius say

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Confucius say "Man who build fusion reactor at home flux his wife instead of his secretary."

next to his bed?

[cashman73]

Carl Willis, a 27-year-old doctoral student at Ohio State University, who keeps his fusor just a few feet from his bed.

Apparently, he never wants to get laid ... EVER!

Re:next to his bed?

[jamesh]

Apparently, he never wants to get laid ... EVER!

And if he does, he needn't worry about birth control...

Re:next to his bed?

[kubrick]

Even if there are any kids, they'll end up with mutant superpowers. Everyone's a winner!

Re:next to his bed?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if he does, he needn't worry about birth control...

For more than the obvious reasons. Any contraceptives located near his bed are going to be comfortable to use! (RVNRL)

Re:next to his bed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Five eyes can only be considered a superpower when more than one of them works.

I just built a home fusion reactor!

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm about to turn it on!

OK here goes .. flicking the switch now guys ..

Wow, seems to be wor^DConnection to slashdot.org closed.

Science takes a leaf from Ankh-Morpork Alchemists

[Anaerin]

By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold.

- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

1000 Years in the Future:

[Wo1ke]

Good news everyone! You're all going to planet horror in the forbiden sector to trade my newest invention, the "tele-vision" for their fusion reactors!

Just.. .nonsense.

[mindstrm]

Okay... news flash.

What is a "reactor"... it is a machine or mechanism that allows a "reaction" to happen.

It's not some magical energy-producing thing.

Fusion is not hard. Fusion is not new.

Fusion with a net surplus of energy in a controlled fashion is the thing we've been unable to achieve.

It's like saying some kid lighting some veggie oil on fire in a can is "working on an internal combustion engine"

brilliant

[Goldsmith]

As someone who has worked in fusion, there is significant radiation created by the process. The larger reactors can't run on the ideal deuterium/tritium mixture because it would irradiate entire cities while the reactor burned. I would not want a small one in my garage. The reactor I worked on was in a concrete bunker a fair distance away from any people. It was also the size of a large house.

If you want to live in the future and be on the cutting edge of science, go to grad school and study physics (you're never too old). There are not enough people seriously studying fusion. You'll get paid to work on reactors (big or small) which may have a commercial future. We wear snarky shirts that no one understands too.

Re:brilliant

[jeffb (2.718)]

As someone who has worked in fusion, there is significant radiation created by the process. The larger reactors can't run on the ideal deuterium/tritium mixture because it would irradiate entire cities while the reactor burned. I would not want a small one in my garage. The reactor I worked on was in a concrete bunker a fair distance away from any people. It was also the size of a large house.

It was also probably producing considerably more than the few thousand neutrons per second you'd expect from a simple homebrew fusor. The activity coming out of such a fusor is in the sub-microcurie range -- that's less activity than the source inside a smoke detector, and unlike a radioisotope source, it has an off switch.

Re:brilliant

[ErikZ]

I've never heard of there ever being any demand for physicists.

Re:brilliant

[Goldsmith]

A few thousand neutrons is a gross underestimation. Some of these reactor are getting around 700,000 n/s, or were several years ago... they may be much higher now. Curies are not the relevant unit when talking about the danger of radiation, you want the rather squishy unit of rems or sieverts.

Alpha particles from a smoke detector are very easy to shield and effect you differently than the fast neutrons produced by fusion. Over several years, the materials around a fusion reactor do become radioactive.

farnsworth

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't this tagged with "goodnewseveryone"?

Obligatory Simpsons reference

[incognito84]

"What are you doing down there?" "I'm making a highly complicated dohickie... do you have elbow macaroni or glue on sparkles?"

Does he buy lots of milk?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

So long as he's not making milk powder you're probably safe from being bombed.

it's perfectly safe.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using one to power the computer I'm typing this with right nsdkjkfkjwe%@#%^#$^#$^&$#47

Amateur scientists?

[rossdee]

Maybe if 'Professional' science and research was as well funded as 'amateur' sports (sound effect) Bay-ching (/sound effect) we would have had viable fusion power for decades.

Why don't they...

[actionbastard]

Just build some sort of Deathclock or a Smell-o-scope or a Doomsday device. Anything but a fusion reactor. Honestly.

Re:Why don't they...

[kcbanner]

Good news everyone!

What about gravity?

[coldsalmon]

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...

Confusion say

[Anonymous Coward]

Confusion say: "What the flux you talkin' 'bout!?"

Tee Hee Giggle Snort

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"The designs are based on the work of Philo T. Farnsworth..."

Ah, so we can expect these in suppository format?

ITER

[Jason-NZ]

If the ITER is going to take upwards of USD$10B and 40 years to acheive a fusion reaction with net energy gain, I say glhf to these guys :P

Did I just read the same comment 10 times?

[TheNarrator]

I think I read the same comment modded up to 5 10 times in a row now.

The comment is always a variations on: "This is fusion. No it's not a viable source of power."

Re:Science takes a leaf from Ankh-Morpork Alchemis

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ...

Neither do the non-hobbyists

[Jesrad]

"Some of these hobbyists hope similar reactors can one day power the planet, but so far they consume more energy than they create"

That's fine, the billion-dollar fusion projects aren't producing excess power either, and likely never will because of Bremsstrahlung.

Just My One Hope

[Nom du Keyboard]

A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans -- fewer than 100 worldwide -- are building working nuclear-fusion reactors at home.

I just hope none of them are my immediate neighbors.

What about 'Plasma Focus'?

[Plasmania]

why the obsession with the fusor? many countries in europe and asia are pounding in their resources in 'plasma focus' to obtain fusion reaction, may even be looking at break-even, and here we are still talking about hobbyist fusor. no one seem to take Eric Lerner seriously, strange though.

Re:What about 'Plasma Focus'?

[ErikZ]

Can one build a "Plasma focus" device on an experimenalist's budget?

Re:What about 'Plasma Focus'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps because the promise is pretty good if you can solve the "particles hitting the wires"-thingy?

An LHC-sized reactor that's hardly even as efficient or clean as current nuclear plants is hardly exciting compared to cheap, clean and efficient reactors you can fit in your pocket.

Too bad it's easier said than done because of two reasons:
1. The particles, being similarly charged tend to repel each other.
2. The wires, being oppositely charged tend to attract them.

Re:What about 'Plasma Focus'?

[Plasmania]

Why not? Case in point, refer to the UNU-ICTP Plasma Focus Facility of which many 3rd world countries are posesing right now. Other than the high voltage 33 microfarad capacitor which is purchased from Maxwell/General Atomics, the rest of the stuff are dirt cheap. Neutron yield is said to be around 10^8, a significant figure.

Re:What about 'Plasma Focus'?

[Plasmania]

I think you got something mixed-up, Plasma Focus or Focus Fusion as Eric Lerner put it, doesn't seem to involve wires. You might want to clarify on this.

Can be used for breeding?

[damburger]

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.

Cheering the big booms

[Jesrad]

"before its too late and a mushroom cloud appears in somebody's basement"

I for one cannot wait for the moment one of those amateur fusion tinkerers vaporizes his own house in one humongous boom. I'll be there and cheering when it happens.

Do you know why ?

Because it'll signal the end of a whole era. Have you followed the research domain of LENR/CANR - formerly known as "cold fusion" - over the years, for example ? There you have thousands of labs all around the planet making endless refinements and taking almost infinite precautions so they make the most impossibly-deniable measurement of some excess heat when electrolyzing half a pint of water.

This is madness ! That kind of exercise in pointless "due process" is an incredible waste of time ! That's at best undergrad routine, it should be reserved for the time when LENR/CANR/LANR/whatever-it-is makes it to mainstream acceptance, and be funded with leftover budget while the big names focus on the Big Things like earning a Nobel rewriting our understanding of chemistry and building net power generators and licencing the tech all around.

What those guys really need to build acceptance and make a true breakthrough is one of them to go in a huge boom that razes a whole wing of the electrochemistry department building, a boom so big no one can pretend with a straight face that the excess energy in the beer-mug-sized jar was just a measurement fluke. A large fireball rising amidst flying debris and thunder ! What better pan-in-the-face demonstration of useable excess energy or net power gain can you wish for ?

How many brilliant chemist careers were started by exploding hydrogen-filled balloons and/or dumping raw sodium metal in water ? This is what we really need: more big booms for science's future ! More awe in the eyes of the passers-by ! Nuclear technology did not build such a pervasive recognition in the mainstream throughout the 50s by merely splitting some atoms inside a heavy graphite box, but by expanding radioactive mushrooms of fiery hell to the stratosphere !

Re:Cheering the big booms

[Teancum]

A huge difference between the folks pushing around the "cold fusion"-like apparatuses and those experimenting with internal electrostatic confinement (IEC) devices is that the IEC devices have been proven that they are at least producing a fusion reaction. The real question here isn't if the reaction is happening, but if the technology... if somehow modified... could possibly be used to make a real power source that is self-sustaining.

The "cold fusion" reactors have even the very question of if a fusion reaction is happening at all raised, much less trying to bring this to something of a more practical power generation system. From what I've seen, there may in fact be a real fusion reaction in these sort of devices, but it is so small that it is hardly detectable from the background radiation noise of whatever environment that you happen to be in.

The infamous Pons/Fleishman experiment tried to use a calorimeter instead of a neutron detector, and was unable to explain away a potential chemical reaction instead of a purely nuclear reaction.

Again, none of this applies to these IEC experiments, as calorimeters aren't even being applied here... just a visual examination of the interior of these chambers is evidence that plasmas are being produced and that conditions favorable to have at least some fusion is taking place.

No, it's about scale

[Kupfernigk]

The reason that steam power (various anonymous mine engineers), gas engines, oil engines, balloons, electric motors, gliders, early airplanes and even gas plants and thermal nuclear reactors could be pioneered by amateurs is that they all work at small scales. Every one of these technologies can be made to work at a size that will fit on a kitchen table. (even, with the right isotopes, a thermal nuclear reactor)

Now look at a float glass plant, a steel continuous casting and rolling mill, or any likely practical fusion design. They simply do not work at small scales, therefore they cannot be developed by cottage industry.

Re:No, it's about scale

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the Wright brothers should not have been able to invent the airplane because they were incapable of building a Boeing 747 in their little cottage?

Re:No, it's about scale

[Ihlosi]

So, the Wright brothers should not have been able to invent the airplane because they were incapable of building a Boeing 747 in their little cottage?

FAIL.

You can build a perfectly working airplane that fits on a kitchen table. Granted, it might not transport a person, but it's otherwise completely functional and airworthy.

Next?

Re:No, it's about scale

[Teancum]

I would agree that the tokamak reactor is something that simply won't work on a small scale... and seems to be the current darling technology for mainstream physicists who are working on fusion technologies.

With the billions of dollars spend in that direction, it should speak volumes that this is a dead-end technology.

As far as a practical fusion device that can generate more energy than it takes to get the fusion process started.... that is indeed a tough challenge. The IEC hints that it may not have to be as complicated as the tokamak reactor design, and the IEC at least allows an amateur scientist to study this concept where actual real fusion is taking place... admittedly on a small scale.

As far as steel fabrication and manufacturing, I happen to know a few amateur blacksmiths that get pretty good at what they are doing, and can make some rather incredible things. It isn't quite on the scale of a major steel fab plant, but there is room for amateur metallurgy and glass fabrication that can work on the scale of an individual or small-team level. That economies of scale are there, no doubt, but it can be done on a much smaller scale than you are implying here. The rest is how you scale that production up to larger quantities and ensuring more consistency in terms of the end product.

Slow news day?

[Max Threshold]

I've known about Farnsworth-Hirsch fusors since I was in high school.

Zombie Puppies ...

[pbhj]

Zombie Puppies ... so you get electricity, a free Hulk costume and the plot for a great film. Where do I sign up?

Re:Zombie Puppies ...

[DKelley]

And lemme guess, it is Citibank's vast army of War Kittens that saves us in this film?

Eureka!

[Ora*DBA]

Another product overengineered by General Dynamics...

Very old news

[FridayBob]

Amazing! I personally brought this story up in 2002: Build a Nuclear Fusion Reactor at Home. Back then, a number of very informative comments were made that only helped to confirm my suspicion that it will never work.

Jungle?

[Paolone]

expensive solar pannels which have to be replaced regularly and block all the light from the ground below them making it useless for much else

Well, Arecibo radiotelescope opponents said the same and, lo and behold, under the reflector panels there's a bloody jungle.

Re:Jungle?

[Anonymous Coward]

The other argument is that we will likely put the panels in the desert where nothing grows anyways. Well, nothing of any large consequence.

Re:Jungle?

[HungryHobo]

All I can find on that is some references to how the plants growing under the telescope are growing a bit weird because of the electrical fields.
Can't find any pictures of the underside.

Also are not the reflector panels in a radio telescope little more than thin wire mesh?

Re:Jungle?

[SETIGuy]

All I can find on that is some references to how the plants growing under the telescope are growing a bit weird because of the electrical fields. Can't find any pictures of the underside.

There are some pictures here.

Also are not the reflector panels in a radio telescope little more than thin wire mesh?

When arecibo was built, the original dish was made out of chicken wire. But as the observatory started using higher frequencies, the holes needed to get smaller and the figure needed to be controlled better than was possible with chicken wire. The current surface is aluminum plates with machined holes. Depending upon where you are and where the sun is, 30 to 50% of the light is probably getting through. (And more importantly, all of the rain.) The spherical surface is maintained to a few milimeters RMS by the anchor wires you see under the dish.

And no, I've never actually been in the pool.

Victor Deeb should have built a fusor...

[argent]

Poor Victor Deeb should have put away those icky chemicals and built a fusion reactor instead.

Richard Hull is IMBY

[Muad'Dave]

Richard Hull, the guy behind fusors.net lives 8 miles from me. At least now I know which way to look to see the nuclear flash/smoke from the hole where is house was when it all goes wrong! 8-)

Seriously, I think his work is extremely interesting, and I applaud him. I love to tinker, too. My 'nuclear dream' is to commercialize alpha-only sources for survival gear. If you don't think a tiny amount of an alpha source can generate large amounts of heat, read this fascinating article. I'd love to have a chunk of Gd148 to experiment with.

Doesn't work until it does

[192939495969798999]

Sure, it seems incredibly hard, but that's only because we don't know what the solution is yet that will go from where we are to the final version, just like airplanes pre-Wright Brothers. Any hobbyist building a reactor knows that all these posts about how impossible it is for a hobbyist to build one of these that produces useful power are going to seem really stupid once someone can build one that does produce useful power.

Insightful huh?

[Technopaladin]

Most of what you say rings true, Pity it isnt.

1. Lives of leisure are certainly NOT more unacceptable today. See: Hollywood, Children of the VERY wealthy, Politicians(remember the President is over 500 DAYS of vacation in 7 years). If we valued hard work or lives of deeper meaning and value I am sure I wouldnt have too see all that garbage in the news.

2. More personal fortunes then? Not hardly. We have more Billionaires today then they had Millionaires. Even accounting for inflation and cost of living we have FAR more wealth today.

3. Lastly the point of the article above is we have hobbists working on Fusion. That said the last part of your post is wholely inaccurate.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science
and thats not counting the billions donated by the wealthy to support research in a HOST of fields.

Re:Insightful huh?

[CFTM]

Stick to your technod&d hombre because that probably doesn't go flying over your head. The GP was clearly making a funny!

Re:Insightful huh?

[Sally Forth]

Ya but a higher percentage of those billionaires are taxed more heavily than ever so that the government can decide the most politically correct group to try to fund research.

Not to mention so that the government can give out a variety of handouts to whoever the politicians want to vote for them next election year... ^.^

About Mr. Farnsworth

[Illbay]

He was a scientist, inventor...and devout Mormon.

I know that's a kick in the gut for some here who would prefer to pretend that science and religion cannot coexist, but there you go.

Re:About Mr. Farnsworth

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a testimony to the flexibility of the human brain that can happily reconcile nonsense on one side, and reason on the other. Besides, I'd take the "devout" part with some reservations, seeing the biased source.

Re:About Mr. Farnsworth

[Illbay]

A "biased source?" Some people will consider anything that doesn't fit their own preconceptions as "biased," I guess.

The fact is, it's only been in the last few generations that science and religion were considered incompatible, and that mostly because of the old, time-tested "groupthink" phenomenon rather than any clear-cut, "unbiased" information.

Re:About Mr. Farnsworth

[Enigma2175]

The fact is, it's only been in the last few generations that science and religion were considered incompatible

Galileo would beg to differ.

Re:About Mr. Farnsworth

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no. Galileo never contested the existence of God. The debate between Galileo and the church was regarding whether or not it was reasonable to posit that the earth revolved around the sun, and he had quite a bit of support from many churchmen. Take some time to actually read the subarticle titled Galileo affair.

even more so if you slow them down...

[Fallen Andy]

So, neutron source - check. moderator, natural uranium. Wait a mo - you're really trying to make plutonium? The DHS will have kittens...

Andy

Need a Catalyst

[reeherj]

I don't know why posters are being so critical.

All Fusion reactions (hot or cold) need is a catalyst which increases the efficiency (lowers activtion energy, increases yield, affects rate, etc) of the reaction. In fact, if an amateur can find any catalyst/technique/etc which influences the efficiency, rate, or any properties of the reaction then that technique/substance can be studied to find out WHY it influences the reaction and possibly lead to the discovery of better techniques or catalysts.

Granted, it's much more likely that any breakthroughs in in fusion technology will come from full-time well funded research institutions, but as others have pointed out, history has demonstrated that amateur researchers (particularly those with good technique and knowledge of scientific method) have thier place in science as well.

Re:Need a Catalyst

[Ihlosi]

All Fusion reactions (hot or cold) need is a catalyst which increases the efficiency (lowers activtion energy, increases yield, affects rate, etc) of the reaction.

Err ... so far we've found only one catalyst for fusion reactions, and that's muons. Not really all that helpful. And you usually don't want anything other than your reaction fuels in hot fusion, because anything else will act more as a pollutant than anything else and increase the likelyhood of unwanted interactions.

DILITHIUM CRYSTALS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

/star tek

//sorry

colon slash

[postermmxvicom]

we NEED fusion power...to save us from...global warming

Why can't current nuclear technology suffice?

Not that I am a warm-earther, but if I was...what's wrong with current nuke plants?

Re:colon slash

[Ihlosi]

Why can't current nuclear technology suffice?

Because it's still dependent on a fuel source that will be exhausted much sooner than most fuels for fusion reactors. Ok, that means that we don't need fusion power right now, but we'll need it eventually.

The audacity

[Anonymous Coward]

Upon hearing of the audacity of these "fusioneers" to use their intellect in scientific endeavors without getting government permission and permits for creative thinking the FBI and local law enforcement have set up a mass raid to confiscate all of their equipment and charge as terrorists attempting to build WMD's, to commence in 5...4....3...2.......

Experiments alone don't make science

[snowwrestler]

I'm conducting an experiment now. My hypothesis is that God makes it rain here at least once a month, so if it rains anytime in the next 30 days I'll have proved that God causes rain. Science, right?

There are a lot of wacky experiments that people can perform themselves, and fool themselves into thinking that they have significant results. Two of the things that make science science are the concepts of rigour and repeatability.

Whether or not most people learn things themselves or from other people is not an issue specific to science. It simply reflects the specialization within a structured society. This is a good thing since it allows us to expand human capability beyond what any one single person is capable of.

Re:Experiments alone don't make science

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm conducting an experiment now. My hypothesis is that God makes it rain here at least once a month, so if it rains anytime in the next 30 days I'll have proved that God causes rain. Science, right? There are a lot of wacky experiments that people can perform themselves, and fool themselves into thinkig that they have significant results. Two of the things that make science science are the concepts of rigour and repeatability.

What would you be trying to prove with your experiment? That you can design bad experiments? Why not try a real experiment? Too chicken?

Try this: read a few chapters of the gospel of John. Then pray, and ask God to show you the truth, to show you if God is real. Spend about 5 or 10 minutes a day on it for a month. See what (if anything) happens.

we'll run out of thorium and uranium

[circletimessquare]

we won't ever run out of helium and hydrogen (deutrium, tritium, etc.)

but short term, yes: use breeder fission reactors

Fusor Documentation

[cyanoacry]

I've built a fusor while in high school (a couple of years ago), and it's certainly within the reach of a dedicated person, or somebody with lots of support.

More info for the interested at http://stores.lulu.com/raymondj .

For me the fusor wasn't really an end so much as a starting point: it is an educational experience that is unmatched, because to build a fusor, you've got to have a grasp of high voltage, high vacuum, and gas management systems. Learning about these things in theory is nice, but there is nothing that can compare to slaving over a hot wrench after bolting down your chamber for the last hour and leak checking every single seal.

And, if anything, it does look good on a resume.

In what time frame?

[postermmxvicom]

When will uranium and the breeder reactors be exhausted of fuels?

We?

[postermmxvicom]

Do you mean we, as in you and I? Or do you mean we, as in the year 3535, if man can survive?

But, seriously, would you chime in on the post above this (to avoid forking) as to what time frames we are talking about here?

I didn't know meth was radioactive!

[wsanders]

However, it can help you achieve the dream of stealing one million smoke detectors.

This guy needs some help.

Household chemicals > Nuclear Fusion

[DireLlama]

Just don't try this in Massachusetts.

I am an amateur physicist

[OricAtmos48K]

and my latest experiment seems very promi

Grammar Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans â" fewer than 100 worldwide â" are building...

Grammar fail. "Subculture" is singular, while "are" is plural. Back to grade school for the submitter.

Moon

[bill_mcgonigle]

You think Global Warming is bad now... and you want to add more energy to the system that's not already there?

Hello, that's why we have a moon! :)

IANAOM, but it seems to me that a series of steerable lenses in geosynchronous orbit around the Earth with a PV system, or even metamaterials on the moon should be able to convert this into microwaves to be beamed to ground stations which could feed the grid.

With GPS synched clocks everybody would know when to go on battery power while receiving stations are switched.

Oh, wait, wrong decade...

Unfrozen Caveman String Theorist

[I Like Pudding]

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.

Obligatory Futurama...

[Anonymous Coward]

"And what's with this layer of ozone? That's never been there before!"

More stupidity from Kdawson

[cdn-programmer]

There are so many stupid stories posted by Kdawson that I cannot count them.

The fusor has been around since the 1960's. When someone gets it to energy out greater than energy in then we have a story. When someone even gets it close to break even then maybe we have a story. What we have now is nothing worth reading about.

Where's the helium? !

[aqk]

Until I see enough Helium to float a child's balloon, please do not call me.

Or are these phoolish Philo Farnsworth fakers converting the hydrogen into something else, such as, perhaps, CUCUMBERS?

... mind you the helium produced in the above balloon would prob be sufficient to light up Chicago for a year or so...
If he were alive, Stanley Pons would be spinning in his grave. (with a suitable armature to gen electricity)