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A Step Closer To Cheap Nuclear Fusion
ewsnow writes "The Focus Fusion Society reports that the scientists and engineers at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics have finally built an operational Dense Plasma Focus device. While still at less than half power, they were able to achieve a pinch on their device. The small company that Eric Lerner started recently gathered enough funding to start a two-year study on the validity of his theory regarding fusion-inducing plasmoids. If the theory holds, the device will produce more electricity than it consumes. In contrast to the billions of dollars spent on Tokamak fusion (think ITER), LPP is conducting their research on a budget around a million dollars. Yet, if it works, it will provide nuclear fusion with much simpler equipment and much less cost. Eric Lerner and Focus Fusion have been discussed on Slashdot before."
Isn't that what they use on the sun!? I don't want that sort of thing in my backyard! what if the reaction gets out of control and it annihilates the entire solar system!? What are we going to do with all of the nucular waste?
Folks, can we pretty please think of another name for this stuff? 50 years worth of misinformation is, I fear, holding us back. People here the word "nuclear" and immediately start shitting their pants with fear.
I vote we call it "Hydrogen Energy". After all, hydrogen is 2/3 of the ingredients in water!
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
I really hope this works. I get more excited about science for cheap and clean energy production than I do about efforts to raise the cost of energy consumption as a means to drive conservation. Too much emphasis on conservation will lead to a world where only rich people have the freedom to consume large amounts of energy. Access to cheap and clean power must be pushed down to today's poor. This will offer lots of ways for them to overcome their systemic poverty.
I hear Fusion has moved from "Always being 10 years away" to "Always being 5 years away." Great progress!
Earth has moved one step nearer to the Sun?
Agreed. Every joker who builds a farnsworth fusor in his basement thinks he is going to be producing commercial power some time next year, and when they make a noise about this, and idiots with money buy into their promises of more for less, it can take funding from genuine research. When you are doing something that is inherently slow, costly, and prone to overruns, you've constantly got some bullshit artist nipping at your heels claiming they can do the same for less money, in less time, with big fucking bells and whistles on.
I'm involved in a cubesat project, and we recently had to explain why we were spending 100k on a launch when some random jokers on the internet with new-age mysticism and off-the-shelf amateur rocket motors claimed to be able to do the same for 10k "some time next year".
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
An important facet of LPP's research is that they are pursuing aneutronic fusion. This is truly clean nuclear energy. Explained well here. and here. Nuclear Power without Nuclear Waste: It's Closer Than You Think
Nuclear fusion has the potential to generate power without the radioactive waste of nuclear fission, but that depends on which atoms you decide to fuse. Conventional fusion approaches work with deuterium and tritium, while focus fusion works with hydrogen and boron. When a boron-11 atom fuses with a hydrogen atom the result is three helium atoms and energy, but no radioactive waste. This is because: the fuel (boron and hydrogen) is not radioactive, the reaction product (helium) is not radioactive, and the reaction releases no neutrons (it's "aneutronic").
There have not been any new nuclear plants built in this country in a long time not because of protesters, but because they are insanely and hideously expensive to build. They are for the most part not cost-effective.
They have become insanely and hideously expensive to build primarily because of the influence of your sign-waving hippie-hordes and mouth foaming idiotic masses. The actual cost to build a nuclear power plant would be a secondary consideration if it weren't for the likewise insane regulatory requirements, which if you ask me are slanted disproportionately at nuclear power. Ergo, the sign wavers won, and sanity lost.
The evidence is there. A power company can dump millions of tons of slightly radioactive and toxic coal ash under a golf course (a few tons of which contains vastly more radioactive waste than the totality of materials released by all civilian power related nuclear accidents). However, if that measly amount of waste came from a nuclear facility someone would have hung, certianly metaphorically, possibly in actuality. Furthermore, worker deaths occurring at fossil plants and related activities (especially coal mining naturally) are more numerous and held under far less scrutiny. If that number of people were killed because of nuclear power, there would be a huge price to pay.
I'm not arguing that regulation of dangerous materials is bad... But sanity should prevail. Were we able to process the wastes available and store unprocessable waste, and let investors build safe plants without having excessive governmental burden, it would prove to be a very cost effective and safe enterprise. Japan is prone to earthquakes, and there haven't been significant problems.