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Laser Fusion Passes Major Hurdle
chill writes "The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has performed their first controlled fusion experiments using all 192 lasers. While still not ramped up to full power, the first experiments proved very fruitful. The lasers create a lot of plasma in the target container and researchers worried that the plasma would interfere with the ability of the target to absorb enough energy to ignite. These experiments show that not only does enough energy make it through, the plasma can be manipulated to increase the uniformity of compression. Ramping up of power is due to start in May." The project lead, Dr. Sigfried Glenzer, is "confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon. He added, quite simply, 'It's going to happen this year.'"
In 5 years I can have Mr. Fusion where I can put junk to power my flying car...
Sweet.
I just hope that fax machines don't come back into style and have multiple for every house.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Where are the flying cars? Where is my copy of Du
SIGNAL DROPPED
What does "ignition" mean for the energy gain of this type of fusion? Is this going to be worthwhile enough to overcome the inherent difficulties of this approach? Right now, inertial confinement seems to be suited for one-off events but not for sustained power generation since the fuel pellet will need to be lined up nearly perfectly for the lasers to not just blow it apart. Is "ignition" going to produce enough energy to make all this setup worthwhile in anything but an experimental sense?
...I imagined the Death Star with its three lasers combining to become a super laser. I guess this is not the same lol, I should stop watching the Flea Market Montgomery Mini Mall Rap while I read slashdot.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
Now fusion energy is only 10 years away!
The project lead, Dr. Sigfried Glenzer, is "confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon. He added, quite simply, 'It's going to happen this year.'
Huh. I had always thought that some international police force like "The International Fusion Gestapo" would be dispatched upon hearing this news and show up at your lab and start smashing mirrors and urinating on lasers until you revised your statement to be "15 to 20 years away" so that all their dues paying members would have time to reach tenure before you ruined the party.
I mean, there was no other logical explanation why so many seemingly brilliant scientists continually gave us incorrect estimates of achieving milestones in fusion research. Is this just being overly optimistic or was he carefully picking his words so that they will know if this method is viable (above break even energy production) or not within a year? And if so, where will he get his funding given the if not scenario?
My work here is dung.
Cool story guys. I tweeted and poked it but most of all I digg it. Why isn't there a digg button?
Understand just enough to know that I don't understand enough, but this sounds fantastic.
Hope is the currency of fools
Boom?
... something to think about the next time you brag to your friends about your 300mW pocket laser pointer popping balloons & burning wood.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
but its low powered and has quick half-lives. additionally, there are no geopolitical overtones concerning fuel sources: you just need sea water. no climate changing pollution/ city-choking smog for that matter. no peak oil this or that, no bubbles and spikes in supply or pricing
additionally, if everyone had electric cars, there would be no petrodollars funding saudi arabia, a backwards fundamentalist regime that funds wahhabi madrassas in places like pakistan, that give rise to all of these well-funded (from saudi "charities") militant assholes in the muslim world
no funding of gas bag chavez in venezuela, no funding of neoimperial russia and putin, no funding for nigerian graft and corruption...
it will take a long time, but if we can remove the reason for the world to have any vested interests in backwards regimes, propping them up and preserving them unnaturally, and we instead let these regimes instead rise and fall on their own intrinsic value in governing fair societies, then we will have taken a mighty step forward in terms of progress in this world
of course, it will be decades before we're all driving electric cars powered by fusion plants. but one can dream, cant' they?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
1) May: ramping up power
2) June 1st: Flick the switch
3) ???
4) June 2nd: They are now the proud owners of a 2mile wide smoking crater...
5) Tourist industry profits...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
So I guess this is the same megajoule laser, that I read about over at engadger?
According to tfa:
"We hit it with 669 kilojoules - 20 times more than any previous laser facility," Nif's Siegfried Glenzer told BBC News.
So, basically, if I am getting this straight
Really powerful laser => shoots really cold stuff => reaction causes x-rays to be created => x-rays cause stuff to get super hot => if you can get two things hot enough (i.e. hydrogen atoms), they fuse.
How interesting.
OK...let's see...then going by current trends, its manufacture should be offshored in 2012.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
OK, Fusion within 2010. Great.
The question now becomes: will this generate more energy than it takes? And can it sustain power generation?
And, let's admit everything works: what quantity of nuclear waste will such a machine produce? And of what type?
Don't give me the "it's fusion, so it's clean, duh" line: this machine is going to generate an enormous amount of energy and a lot of that will in the form of a "carefully controlled thermonuclear explosion" (BBC dixit) -- which means radiation, which also means neutrons. And neutrons are not really good for your health.
And will ITER be quickly refactored to take this into account? Will the EU combine HiPER (high-energy laser projects) and ITER? Will the USA share its latest discovery with its ITER partners?
Questions, questions, questions...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
The 15 to 20 years estimate is always for energy-positive, viable power plant. The one year date is just when this particular device will be fully operational. There are already many operational fusion devices that exist for research, and this adds another that may or may not give us a breakthrough.
Soon there will be enough energy to power my Dual SLI GeForce 9800 GX2!
My interpretation is simply that they want to reach the density and temperature required to start fusion within the plasma. This only means that the fusion reaction is starting to happen. Only after that can one start to ask the interesting questions (can enough energy be extracted to have a net surplus? can the energy output be improved? is this economically viable?). So they aren't done for several years yet.
http://www.moonlight3d.eu/
Screw the technology. I wanna know who the fricken' shark trainer is!
Why aren't they using an array of neural-network-controlled, articulated metal arms to control the fusion chamber?
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
But don't get me wrong, I am amazed at this. And if (earth-bound) fusion becomes a workable energy source, I think it would have the biggest practical impact of any Big Science program, ever.
Are you sure it's wise to ignite your nation?
I'm glad that there's plenty of water between me and the nation in question.
The project lead, Dr. Sigfried Glenzer, is "confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon. He added, quite simply, 'It's going to happen this year."
That's freaking wonderful news, Siggy! I have the sharks ready, just bring the freakin lasers and let's burn this joint! *evil pinky smile*
Note he is just saying they should start hydrogen burn this year. The 20 years thing is for economically viable fusion power plants- this research helps bring us closer to that but 20 years would still be optimistic. This announcement is like the LHC saying they'll be running the beam at full power by the end of the year (but without the bad track record for the equipment)- you seem to treat it similar to CERN saying they will find the Higgs by the end of the year. His prediction sounds reasonable enough to me.
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My house, Saturday night. Bring Your Own Bottle and Laser Pointer.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Everyone knows fusion power doesn't become available until 2050, and microwave power comes first.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
I don't understand why this is even doing news. The temperatures that were reach are commonly reached inside tokamaks. Fusion itself has already been sustained in them for several seconds,a feat a laser confinement mechanism cannot do. Of course these reactions did use more energy than it created. Laser mechanisms have a longer way to go in order to be credible fusion power plants.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
What you are describing is Frank Herbert's: The Tactful Saboteur. An excellent short story.
In Lieu of Red Tape
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
.. which said that it was never that fusion was 50 years away, but that it was 500 billion dollars away. The fifty years was just an estimate based on how much funding, brainpower, and so forth went into it. Let's face it, you can't just put a basket in a storage locker with a placard atop it reading FUSION, then come back in fifty years and expect to find something in the basket.
We have not spent the large amounts of money required to do the research. When we do, it's in fits and starts, buffeted by people with ecodread and slavered over by those in the DOD who lust for some new level of destruction. It's always been easy to just ... drill another well. Blow up another mountaintop for coal that they assure us will be clean, this time around.
c'mon read the fine(?) article, the guy says its going to happen this year, so at most that means about 5 years, not twenty, c'mon he didnt say first quarter next year did he? I could see 20yrs then
Is there any truth to that part in the Fantastic Four movie, where the human torch went so hot that he almost ignited the earth's atmosphere?
Any danger of this scenario happening with that laser fusion experiment?
By definition, when they achieve ignition - there will be a self sustained, fusion reaction - the fusion reaction will sustain itself until its fuel is exhausted. More energy will be produced than was put in - a net positive in energy.
Of course there isn't any mechanism in NIF to collect the energy, but thats not really the point of the project...
However, just as with fission, it's likely nothing will be built without massive amounts of subsidy, and it will pay off only in a span of decades
I think you would actually find a coalition of both democrats and republicans that could be for fusion subsidies. And, the whole lot will get cheaper as the much smaller free electron lasers replace the laser design in NIF.
This is my sig.
I wouldn't want to be the guy feeding the 192 sharks. I'd want to be paid an arm and a leg in advance. Literally.
When will I be able to walk into Walmart and buy my very own light-saber, is what I want to know!
And you believe that a digital readout contains no error, why???
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A commercial reactor would generate steam to drive a turbine to create electricity at about 35% efficiency. We've been using steam to generate electricity for at least 100 years. There HAS to be a better way.
So, we're now using lasers to control fusion? Are we sure Gillette doesn't already own the rights to this?
(Suggested keywords for reply jokes: excel, sensor, stealth)
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
With frickin' fusion lasers!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Here.
</joke>
I personally know a big oil guy who, with a couple of drinks in him, argued that if free energy were discovered tomorrow, then the whole economy of the world would collapse. Personally, I think he was just egocentric and had been hanging around too many refineries. Certainly his world and income would collapse. Of course, he simultaneously argued that oil production was used for so many applications that the world was dependent on it and could not function without it. To this day I'm a little confused how you can go broke from no longer being needed and take everyone that desperately needs you down with.
This was a silver tongued Texan salesman who kept expanding software requirements though, so everyething his says needs a fist-sized grain of salt with it.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that they would definitely try to kill this sort thing, and they would use the flimsiest of excuses, and actually belive their own bullshit. They would believe they're helping the world by nuking fusion projects.
I'm glad I got out of that industry...
If we have 192 sharks with frickin' lasers strapped to their heads all pointed in the right direction, we'll have fusion, right?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I'm a physicist, I love these experiments, but...
The people running this thing need to think really, *really* hard how their comments play out in the media, maybe try and be a little more clear. The difference between getting fusion (the physical process) to work and getting fusion (the power generation system) to work is huge! Should they accomplish their goals in a year, they will still be a very long way away from thinking about building an electricity generating system. The line of "getting more power out than we put in" for fusion in the lab was crossed decades ago, and it's still unclear how doing this with yet another method of creating a fusion plasma is going to result in a more straightforward commercial reactor design.
This is how we end up with government officials who think we're all full of hyperbole, and don't actually do any work. I know they're fighting for their jobs at Livermore, but I don't see how they can keep this up long term. At some point, some Congressional committee is going to ask them to deliver on what has been promised, even if it was a confused, incorrect promise mis-translated by the media.
How is this better than taking direct (solar panels and mirror arrays) and indirect advantage of that local fusion reactor, the sun? While fusion is high tech and cool and all that, we can still make a *lot* of power by damming thousands of smaller rivers and putting in mid size hydroelectric plants. No new technology is needed, and ecological concerns can be addressed by diverting only part of the water to a manmade channel and not touching the original riverbed.
So yes, fusion is neat, but I think it's kind of dumb as cost effective engineering solutions go.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
oh well, i guess in 2030 the usa will be invading bolivia
bolivia has the world's largest deposits of lithium, by a long shot
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/americas/03lithium.html
maybe its time we look off-world for unobtainium ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
1. the way chinese and american research funding is going, self-sustaining ignition will probably happen in chengdu before it happens in chicago
2. if the usa does achieve ignition, it will probably share the knowledge. no, really: its in their soft-power interest to do so, and for all the geopolitical reasons i mentioned above. when the usa shares such energy independence knowledge, their enemies, mostly funded by energy scarcity resources, suffer, they don't benefit. and even if the usa doesn't share, or someone like china achieves it first and doesn't share the knowledge, the fact that ignition has been achieved somewhere, anywhere, will convince everyone else to quickly catch up with their own research: there's no groping in the dark anymore, the goal is starkly defined in technical aspects that any serious researcher in the world will understand, and all the purse strings will be opened quickly to capitalize on the bonanza. america being tight-lipped atom bomb secrets did not stop russia, china, britain, france, india, israel, pakistan, etc., or even basket case north korea from figuring it out, or, as with pakistan and khan, outright stealing the secrets (from the netherlands, in pakistan's case), and then selling it to libya, iran, etc.
3. i saw that keanu reeves/ morgan freeman "chain reaction" movie too. it was cute. but you do release that hollywood movies purposefully engage in paranoid delusional fantasy for entertainment value, not serious education about reality, right?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In the meantime, amateurs build fusion devices in their basements and achieve real measurable D-D fusion:
http://www.fusor.net/
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
FTFA: The current calculations show that about 1.2 megajoules of energy will be enough for ignition, and currently Nif can run as high as 1.8 megajoules. - also see, they only need to scale this thing 10^3 times to get to the needed energy output. Let's just hope there is at least one DeLorean left by the time they can get this sucker going (and obviously they need to sustain that output at least for a second I guess).
You can't handle the truth.
the waste management of fusion products, including irradiated containment vessels, is a serious issue, and its not my intent to belittle or whitewash that point
but the point is that there is no energy source anywhere that doesn't have downsides. think of the waste products in the production of solar panels and the massive amounts of land and expense needed to make a dent in power needs from solar. think of the effects of wind on migratory birds, and noise and landscape alterations from wind power. heck, tidal increases silting, which much be dredged, and that has environmental effects. geothermal efforts near san francisco were recently abandoned due to earthquake fears (based on near conclusive evidence a swiss earthquake was caused by geothermal energy research). we know what dams does to migratory aquatic life like salmon and the overall health of rivers and river communities. biofuel costs in terms of landscape utilization, fertilization pollution, processing pollution, eventual pollution from combustion... pick any energy source: its not "free" in terms of downsides
but fusion's downsides: initial infrastructure cost (big) and ongoing waste management costs (assuming all such pollution can be successfully mitigated and kept from the environment, then that's the only cost from pollution: the money you need to responsibly manage the waste), i assert, when taken in consideration with the zero scarcity of fuel sources and massive potential for energy returns (other energy sources are usually "boutique" and will never scale to our real needs), is the best energy source mankind will EVER discover (until some bizarre far future where physicists discover star trek-type energy sources, like, uh... zero point flux accretion... of course), and lead to a golden age of civilization and progress. i really believe that. so much evil today in this world can directly be traced to the moral, environmental, and other compromises we make for our energy needs. lots of cheap energy without environmental and geopolitical costs will be a first in the history of mankind, and will be a wonderful time to live. our period in history right now will be viewed as brutal and cruel and immoral as we view the times of the romans today
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
argued that if free energy were discovered tomorrow, then the whole economy of the world would collapse.
I agree this is clearly nonsense in the long run though some countries (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Mexico, etc) who are primarily dependent on oil income would experience very severe economic problems. It is correct to say that oil is one of the underpinnings of the current economy and it would take some time for adjustment.
Of course, he simultaneously argued that oil production was used for so many applications that the world was dependent on it and could not function without it.
For the foreseeable future he is probably correct in that assertion. The number of products we use that have some form of oil-based products is astonishing. Besides fuels like gasoline or diesel, many, many, many other products have oil as a vital component for which there is no substitute. Synthetic fibers, lubricants, paints, plastics, coatings, chemicals, coolants, and fertilizers all jump to mind off the top of my head. Without oil for power and fertilizer, modern agriculture as we know it could not exist. It is entirely correct that our modern world could not function without oil.
Sounds NIFty.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
The Laser fusion experiment exists to do nuclear testing without technically violating nuclear test treaty obligations. The primary goal **IS NOT** the production of a commercially viable fusion reactor.
with the way oil prices are going, and how deep we have to dig now to get to oil, or how we have process things like shale and tar sands in order to get at it... and how great our advances so far in terms of genetics, biochemistry, materials science, and related processes, i confidently predict 100% of sources for plastics in the future will be from plant-based starting points
http://consumerist.com/2010/01/new-coke-bottles-made-from-sugar-cane-soda-still-made-from-corn.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This sci-fi comedy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza!
is about a planet where they learned to turn water into energy... and now the planet is 100% desert.
if they can get the crucial fusion fuel requirements down to just deuterium and lithium, maybe salted with a tiny amount of tritium secret sauce at best, then we're talking. until then, as you say, we're far away from practical fusion
whatever team does that though, they deserve 10 nobels and immortal fame. for they will deliver mankind to a new golden age
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8827-no-future-for-fusion-power-says-top-scientist.html
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978Sci...199.1403P
but see http://www.frc.gatech.edu/Policy/fusion_critic_response_stacey.pdf
for a response
and anyway, people who back fusion are just stupid; why would you build plants that produce huge amounts of radioactive waste (via neutron capture in the containment shell) when you could have, for the same investment, solar wind and devices that use less energy
Yes, the interstate highway system did kill trains, especially the interurban trains surrounding urban areas. But that isn't the point. The building of the interstate system, a massive government project, succeeded in reaching its goal of allowing the utilization of vast swaths of under-utilized land, allowing commensurate increases in economic capacity. This was the real goal of pushing automobile transportation. Unfortunately, implicit in this goal was a massive surge in urban sprawl, pollution, and most importantly a huge surge in the production of greenhouse gasses.
I am arguing here that the assumption that government programs always fail and are almost always fundamentally flawed is incorrect, and is not born out by historical evidence. Government CAN achieve constructive goals in society, IF those in government are wise rulers.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Imagine someone who said 15-20 years in 1995. They aren't even wrong yet.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The Navy-funded Polywell experiment is looking to hit break-even in some time less than the frustrating "20 years away" event horizon that's been plaguing magnetic confinement and laser based devices such as this one. I'd say it's a good bet that Polywell will achieve break-even first.
i can't tell if this is nerd rage or roid rage...
given the subject is heading towards sports...
but this is /.
either way, lay off the roids.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Well, here's the kicker. It's where the "Oil as a God" argument falls apart, and really is due to a faulty assumption on which said argument is based: Green energy does not completely replace oil, only as a replacement power source, e.g. our electrical grid, and (possibly, depending further advances) for transportation. I've heard & read of various research into creating synthetic fibers & plastic-esque materials based from corn silk and other "natural" materials rather than petroleum, but I don't know how far along such research is.
Still, it's ridiculous to assume that a collapse is imminent with the advent of a new technology; I'd guess and hope that a change-over would be done more incrementally to see how it would work out. As for the oil barons' financial well being?... Suck it up. Whatever happened to free-market capitalism, and may the best player win, survival of the fittest, etc? If you can't see anything above the edge of the oil barrel in which you live, can't innovate with a new business model to keep up with changing demand, who's fault is that?
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo
Weird how the photographer held a pencil to point at the laser.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
1. i saw the republicans applauding virginia doing offshore drilling in the state of the union response. pfffft. yeah: let's turn the virginia coast into something ugly and polluted, and keep driving fossil fuel burning cars, with their smog and particulates and greenhouse pollutants. furthermore, someday even our domestic deposits will run out, and/ or (if they aren't already) prove to be extremely expensive to extract. gas prices will continue to climb inexorably since demand isn't going down. this is a denialist's "solution", that doesn't take into account the obvious, inevitable need to get off oil as a fuel source
2. battery technology, indeed, sucks. but you can, even with current technology, bulk up on the batteries some more, and extend driving ranges 2-3x. still, you won't be able to truck goods anywhere or take that cross country trip. big deal: obama is making the shrewd and intelligent and long-overdue investments in our rail infrastructure, which is the real answer to problem of insufficient battery tech
3. boron is rare. so wherever you mine it as a fuel source (turkey i think), you are just making trade offs in the geopolitical scarcity game, and the game of diminishing returns/ escalating costs
4. yes: irradiation of containment vessels is a real problem, and don't want to minimize it. however, it can be controlled and managed and minimized so that half-lives are quick and radiation is low power. it will all be very expensive to ramp up these fusion plants too. but its simply the best form of energy possible, and we are very rapidly approaching a world where our energy demands and our energy sources give us no other choice BUT to go to fusion
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I really don't care if they end up discovering portals to other worlds or generating limitless energy... I WANT MY HOVERBOARD!
With this design, a successful ignition with a very positive result wouldn't produce commercially practical electricity within 40 years. This isn't a design that has a significant chance at commercial use. (That wasn't it's intent.)
Where we go from here is dependant as much on political decisions as scientific ones. The scientific ones (including engineering, but not economic) would probably put commercial reactors 20 years out. Political decisions could either accelerate or retard that by quite a lot, but not less than 10 years even with an all-out go-for-broke push. So I'd say somewhere between 10 and 50 years. With 50 years NOT being the upper limit, and with 10 years being a very hard lower limit.
OTOH, we could do commercial fusion reaction this year if we decided to. Thus:
1) Dig a deep hole.
2) Explode a fusion bomb inside the hole.
3) Treat this as a source for heating water to live steam.
4) Run a turbine.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If it works, Dick Cheney will instantly keel over.
/ something something Dark Side
Not to start fusion, but to get fusion that sustains itself, so that more of the fuel in the pellet is consumed. They have been getting small amounts of fusion in these pellets for many years.
tHIS REALly sounds like the plot to Spiderman 2.
---
Fusion Feed @ Feed Distiller
...actually it was 31 years ago, in 1979 to be exact.
The flights were a little short, and the landings were kinda rough however.
"Unfortunately, implicit in this goal was a massive surge in urban sprawl"
Urban sprawl exists because many people don't like living in dense cities and enjoy more personal space than hive culture allows. Sprawl allowed people to escape obsolete cities (moving is more affordable than replacing deteriorated infrastructure) for a better life in the suburbs. Outrunning inevitable infrastructure deterioration and the people who go with that is key to maintaining a comfortable life.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The point of a "self-sustained" laser fusion device is that it produces more power from each fusion blast than is needed to power the lasers.
The idea is that each fusion blast produces enough energy to fire the lasers for the next blast, plus some additional amount that can be used to do useful work.
Sure, it takes a constant stream of pellets as input, but a fission reactor uses fuel rods the same wayl.
The building of the interstate system, a massive government project, succeeded in reaching its goal of allowing the utilization of vast swaths of under-utilized land, allowing commensurate increases in economic capacity.
Of course, that wasn't the primary goal of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
plant sources
http://consumerist.com/2010/01/new-coke-bottles-made-from-sugar-cane-soda-still-made-from-corn.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That sounds naughty!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Outrunning inevitable infrastructure deterioration and the people who go with that
You mean the people who lack the economic means to escape decaying infrastructure. Just come out and say it, you can't be happy when you're living near the poor.
As to the preference for more personal space, at this point it is very difficult to extricate what is natural preference versus what's culturally encouraged by our received views of the importance of space and countryside. We've put the pastoral on a pedestal for so long, in large part *due* to the sprawl phenomenon that depends on automobiles, that we can't say if that preference is innate or learned.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.