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Can World's Largest Laser Zap Earth's Energy Woes?

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-could-go-wrong dept.

newviewmedia.com writes "Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory plan on using a laser the size of three football fields to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth. If they're successful, the scientists hope to solve the global energy crisis by harnessing the energy generated by the mini-star."

63 of 372 comments (clear)

  1. And nothing could possibly go wrong... by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Okay, no, nothing will likely go wrong (at least, nothing dangerous to anyone more than a few hundred yards from the event in the worst case scenario). But damn if this doesn't sound like the opening to the plot of a disaster movie.

    --
    $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
    1. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by germ!nation · · Score: 5, Funny

      <spoiler>
          everyone dies apart from Bruce Willis
      </spoiler>

    2. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by Ironchew · · Score: 2, Funny

      Don't worry, it's safe to approach during nighttime.

    3. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by TrentTheThief · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Don't worry folks. The fire at Lawrence Livermore will burn itself out at the Mississippi."

    4. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, if the star turns out to be a problem, you can get rid of it with a black hole from the LHC...

    5. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by stonedcat · · Score: 2, Funny

      Better yet, almost everyone lives apart from Bruce Willis!

      --
      You can't take the sky from me.
    6. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by Walterk · · Score: 4, Funny

      At the very least this is one laser you don't want to look into with your remaining eye.

      --

      "If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
    7. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      My question is "Can we find a shark big enough?"

    8. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by halcyon1234 · · Score: 2, Funny

      But damn if this doesn't sound like the opening to the plot of a disaster movie.

      It is. It's the plot of Spiderman 2.

      Oh, wait, I thought you said disastrous movie.

      --
      UTF-8: There and Back Again
    9. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by lxs · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's called the Leidenfrost effect.

    10. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by j_166 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How about how the one guy was bitten by a radioactive spider and gained spider powers?

    11. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      1. You actually found these jokes funny in the first place.
      2. You impression of the humor changes just because you learned about the guys religious/political stance.
      3. You even care what his religious/political stance of an actor is?

      You are one really petty person.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    12. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 2, Interesting

      1. Ok, found them mildly amusing. Now they just leave a bad taste in my mouth.

      2. Yes, the subject of the humor does affect how I feel about the content of the humor. Is that such an alien concept to you?

      3. If the actor in question is making a concerted effort to pull society toward his religious/political stance, yes. If he had the exact same beliefs, but felt no inclination to tell others to believe the same, I wouldn't have a problem with him.

      --

      Technoli
    13. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by DogAlmity · · Score: 2, Informative

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010:_Odyssey_Two

    14. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by chris+mazuc · · Score: 2, Informative

      As for the topic at hand, like fusion reactors the main problem will be getting MORE energy than you consume.

      Way to go captain obvious.

      Perhaps a smarter move would be to figure out how to harness the star we already have

      Thanks for the laugh. Even with 100% efficient orbital solar stations we would need a few million km^2 of panels just to match current energy usage. That number seemed large to me so I did a little digging and found this image that details electricity consumption alone. Switching to 100% solar and building a grid capable of redistributing that power from where it is generated to where it is used (nevermind orbital based power stations) would be a megaproject to dwarf every other construction project in history combined.

      --
      E pluribus unum
    15. Re:And nothing could possibly go wrong... by Sabriel · · Score: 2, Informative

      15,000,000,000,000 W / ~1,300 W/m^2 = ~11,538,461,538 m^2 or ~11,538,461 km^2

      Um... without looking at the rest, do note that 1 km^2 = 1,000,000 m^2. (consider: how many 1x1 metre squares can fit in a 1x1 km square). Your result should thus be ~11,538 km^2.

  2. bad journalism by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Informative

    The National Ignition Facility is not doing research into energy production. The research they're doing will not have applications in energy production. The hope is that by understanding ignition other nuclear fusion projects will be able to make better progress.. it is completely pure research, as you would expect from a national laboratory.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:bad journalism by dintech · · Score: 5, Funny

      And from the article

      you'll have to suspend all previous notions about what a laser looks like. This one is basically a giant factory full of tubes.

      Ted Stevens, is that you?

    2. Re:bad journalism by Yvanhoe · · Score: 3, Informative
      From https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/nif/

      The resulting fusion reaction will release many times more energy than the laser energy required to initiate the reaction.
      Experiments conducted on NIF will make significant contributions to national and global security, could lead to practical fusion energy, and will help the nation maintain its leadership in basic science and technology.

      The goal of this kind of experience is geared toward energy production. Granted, this is not a prototype power plant, but one could consider the lasers used there as a prototype for elements of a power plant.

      The summary also is funny in how it understates achievements of fusion research. I remember a physicist saying "The Sun ? Pfah ! Too cold and too inefficient ! If we were to reproduce the conditionss in the sun, we would never get anything that would interest industries !"

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    3. Re:bad journalism by pedestrian+crossing · · Score: 5, Informative

      I remember a physicist saying "The Sun ? Pfah ! Too cold and too inefficient ! If we were to reproduce the conditionss in the sun, we would never get anything that would interest industries !"

      Indeed. From Wikipedia:

      The energy production per unit time (power) produced by fusion in the core varies with distance from the solar center. At the center of the sun, fusion power is estimated by model to be about 276.5 watts/m3, a power production density which more nearly approximates reptile metabolism than a thermonuclear bomb. Peak power production in the Sun has been compared to the volumetric heats generated in an active compost heap. The tremendous power output of the Sun is not due to its high power per volume, but instead due to its large size.

      --
      A house divided against itself cannot stand.
    4. Re:bad journalism by pz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The National Ignition Facility is not doing research into energy production. The research they're doing will not have applications in energy production. The hope is that by understanding ignition other nuclear fusion projects will be able to make better progress.. it is completely pure research, as you would expect from a national laboratory.

      My understanding from friends who work at LLNL is that it's an open secret that at the NIF they are not working on energy production, but, rather, thermonuclear ignition for weapons research. It's still pure research, in that they're working to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion rather than designing bombs outright, but the purpose of understanding fusion per se is so that we can better understand the current state of our present arsenal as it gets older. At least that's what they tell me.

      So, we have a tiered layer of secrecy about NIF:

      1. for the public: we're doing energy research for a petroleum-free tomorrow
      2. for people who probe: we're doing fusion research to model our ageing weapons stockpile
      3. [ guess the real reason here ]

      I'm betting the third line is only marginally related to the first two, given the history of activity at LLNL.

      --

      Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
    5. Re:bad journalism by machine321 · · Score: 3, Funny

      nobody can second guess what fruits fundemental research will bear.

      Most of the research I've done into fundamentalists indicates that they don't bear fruits well at all.

      And I don't think you're supposed to call them "fruits", it's kind of derogatory.

    6. Re:bad journalism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      If by "pure research" you mean "nuclear weapons research," then you are absolutely correct. I am a nuclear physicist who has done some work for the NIF project. This is a big make-work project for otherwise the otherwise unemployed nuclear weapons establishment. We don't explode nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site anymore, but DOE wants to make sure that we can be confident that our aging stockpile of warheads will continue to operate.

      Part of the project's justification is its potential use as a scientific user facility. A big pulse of 14 MeV neutrons could be valuable for all kinds of nuclear science experiments. But that's a sideshow. Another part of the project's justification is the potential of inertia driven fusion as an energy source. To get a 600 MWe power plant out of NIF, you'd have to implode a capsule something like 10 times per second. That would involve dropping a stream of target pellets into the chamber and having the lasers target them, and hit a falling object simultaneously. Right now, the targets are individually placed at the precise center of the chamber and the lasers are fixed to aim at that point. NIF will fire perhaps twice per day once they get the bugs shaked out, and the laser people convince themselves that the lasers won't destroy themselves each time they are activated.

      Assuming we can overcome those hurdles, then we have the problem of converting a burst of 14 MeV neutrons into usable energy. In a fission reactor, the (charged) fission products carry most of the energy. Being charged, they interact strongly with the fuel. Collisions transfer the energy to the fuel, the fuel heats up, and the flowing water removes the heat from the fuel to make steam and turn a generator. How do you get those uncharged neutrons to deposit their energy in a small volume of material (diffuse heat is useless heat)? Several solution have been proposed, but there are potential problems with each of them.

      Assuming those problems can be fixed, where are you planning to get enough tritium to fuel the thing? NIF's Ignition Campaign is centered around D+T fusion. Tritium is a byproduct of fission reactor operations, but if you need a multi-billion-dollar fission reactor (1,110 MWe) to supply a multi-billion-dollar fusion reactor (600 MWe) with fuel... why not just build two fission reactors and devote the savings to reprocessing or disposing of the spent nuclear fuel?

      In short, Fusion is the power of the Future! (And always will be.)

      To say we're a long way from a viable power plant

    7. Re:bad journalism by da+cog · · Score: 2, Informative

      Indeed, it's not like they've posted information on the fact that they intend to model nuclear weapons in plain sight on the internet as one of their three missions.

      --
      Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
    8. Re:bad journalism by tmosley · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To be fair, a random bunch of dirt doesn't make much heat, but put a few million (billion?) cubic miles of the stuff together, and you get a molten core, a thin layer of solidified crust penetrated with volcanos, etc.

    9. Re:bad journalism by Muad'Dave · · Score: 2, Informative

      ... any viable energy source we have except theoretical fusion processes will run out in less than 100 years time ... 200 years tops for nuclear power ...

      Integral Fast Reactors can extend our nuclear fuel reserves out for 1,000 - 50,000 years, depending on the estimate, while burning up our current waste.

      --
      Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
    10. Re:bad journalism by michael_cain · · Score: 3, Informative

      I suspect that plants do not use 100% of available energy reaching the surface of the Earth.

      Correct. Crop plants typically convert 1-2% of the sunlight striking them to biomass. Under optimal conditions, some varieties of sugarcane can convert up to 8%.

      Its not like we'll be coating the surface of the Earth with solar panels within the next 100 years.

      Nor need to. The usual rough figure for PV solar to provide for current US electricity consumption is about 10,000 square miles of Southwestern desert -- a square 100 miles on a side. Of course, you'd also need enormous changes in the national transmission grid, and you'd have to find places to store a bunch of the daytime production for use at night (lots of pumped hydro storage located around the country might work for that).

      I do agree, however, with your concerns about the effect of wide adoption of solar energy on weather patterns.

      I suspect that we can do almost anything we want to a 100-mile square of desert with little or no change on climate or weather except in that immediate area.

    11. Re:bad journalism by Yvanhoe · · Score: 3, Interesting

      At 15 x 10^6 K, the sun's core is hot indeed.
      At 100 x 10^6 K, the temperature required for deuterium-tritium fusion, tokamaks are a bit more impressive.


      Also what is impressively low is not the temperature of the sun's core, it is the energy it generates per unit of volume.

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    12. Re:bad journalism by smellsofbikes · · Score: 2, Informative

      I was reading a book about metabolic biochemistry the other day (thrilling! really!) and the author went through a series of calculations to show that mitochondria produce about four orders of magnitude more power per unit volume than the sun. I guess it's not that weird, though: the sun's predicted to live for 20 billion years, so it can't be burning *that* fast. It just seems surprising.

      --
      Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
    13. Re:bad journalism by michael_cain · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When you go read the material at the NIF web site, there seem to be a lot of problems that haven't got past the "conceptual design" stage:

      • How to manufacture 400,000 deuterium/tritium targets per day on site.
      • How to hit the targets when they are moving at 100 meters/sec.
      • How to produce enough tritium on site to use for target manufacture.
      • How to build lasers and optics that can cycle rapidly enough.
      • How to do inter-shot chamber preparation at the necessary rate.
      • Developing materials that work well at 500 degrees C and satisfy all the other necessary properties.
      • During fabrication, targets are cooled to 20 degrees K, and the target has to remain at this temperature until injection.

      In some ways, it seems like ignition is one of the more minor problems they have to solve.

    14. Re:bad journalism by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > I recall reading that the NIF is the first stage of a prototype
      > for an actual method of producing steady thermal power
      > from fusion, i.e. a viable electricity source.

      LLNL has been saying this for years, but it's never been true.

      The primary purpose of the NIF is to give the bomb-making establishment something to do so all the physicists won't find real jobs. I am not making this up, it's well recorded and easy to verify.

      The justification they release into the defence establishment is that NIF will be used to tune the hydrodynamics code they use to design h-bombs. Everyone outside LLNL dismisses the need for such a project, and the other weapons labs (like LANL and Sandia) have been particularly scathing.

      To the public, LLNL releases a stream of reports about "unlimited power" and such, but calculations made over 30 years ago demonstrated there is no hope for this. At best, with completely new solid-state drivers, you might be able to get 1/10th the power out that you put in, BEFORE conversion from thermal to electrical. ... with the current designs. Look up HiPER.

      Maury

  3. Focus Fusion by Extremus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    On the subject of fusion power, the researchers at Focus Fusion seem to be doing a great job as well.

    1. Re:Focus Fusion by mcoon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not only that, but their current results generate 50% of the input energy without any of the neutron rich dirty output typical of deuterium based fusion.

    2. Re:Focus Fusion by Extremus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Offtopic!? I mention a related fusion power project and get modded "offtopic". Someone mention a related way of making things going kaboon and get modded "interesting". Ohh, insane world.

    3. Re:Focus Fusion by Eunuchswear · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not only that, but their current results generate 50% of the input energy without any of the neutron rich dirty output typical of deuterium based fusion.

      So they make more energy by not turning it on. Great.

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
  4. Funding... Anyone? by digitalchinky · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Quote: We have a very high confidence that we will be able to ignite the target within the next two years...

    So basically it'll never happen. Haven't they been saying this for the last 20 years?

    1. Re:Funding... Anyone? by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 3, Funny

      Nah. Fusion power is supposed to be perpetually 10 or 20 years away. They made a big mistake with that deadline; with a mere two year timeline, people will actually remember what was promised when the deadline passes.

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
    2. Re:Funding... Anyone? by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 2, Informative

      And for the record, it's been a hell of a lot longer than 20 years that fusion power has been 10 or 20 years away. I think the first promises of that sort appeared around 1950.

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
  5. Or its a weapon? by elucido · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wouldn't be surprised if its a death star type laser.

  6. Commercialisation by benjfowler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The big problems concern engineering -- how to turn a piece of very expensive scientific equipment into a cost-effective and reliable power station. The challenges are huge, and not just for inertially-confined fusion, but magnetically confined fusion as well.

    I'm 30 and I'm not even sure I'll be alive to see a working fusion power plant.

  7. Wanted... by Heed00 · · Score: 4, Funny

    One frickin' huge shark.

    --
    Thought thinks itself.
  8. White cat by Alain+Williams · · Score: 3, Funny

    We should be safe unless the director of the facility has a white cat, is surrounded by beautiful girls, has a tank of sharks for visitors, ....

  9. Re:Not to be hosted inside cities by MoonBuggy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Luckily enough, we've got plenty of infrastructure dedicated to transmitting power from generators to our cities already. It's not like you can fit a coal fired plant in your back yard, either...

  10. Re:Not to be hosted inside cities by wisnoskij · · Score: 2, Insightful

    how is powering an entire city not worth 3 football fields of real estate?
    I would not be surprised if that is not already in the ballpark of what is being used.

    --
    Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
  11. The BBC did this much better, back in January by Tomsk70 · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8485669.stm

    Slashdot has gone down in my estimations, if the best source they can find is CNN :-(

    1. Re:The BBC did this much better, back in January by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hey, don't complain - usually we just link to a blog, which links to another blog linking a twitter feed with a tinurl-obfuscated link to another blog finally linking to a tabloid article. When you worked yourself through that link chain, you have all the information you need to google for the original source, which, of course, is behind a paywall.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
  12. When will we quit generating steam for power? by Bruha · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The most technical power plants in the world still use steam powered turbines. When and who is going to get us a way to convert directly to power?

    1. Re:When will we quit generating steam for power? by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 4, Informative

      Despite it's earlier mention in the thread, I have to take the opportunity to point out that Focus Fusion involves a reactor design that extracts power from the reaction via 2 routes ;

      • Direct induction of current by a stream of helium ions
      • Gamma-voltaic collector

      Both of which are very much more direct than steam generation. I believe the reaction has plenty of waste heat which could be used industrially as well.

    2. Re:When will we quit generating steam for power? by jo_ham · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Any why not? Water is a very useful working fluid - relatively high SHC, liquid at standard pressure and temperature, non-toxic, non-corrosive, plentiful, cheap.

      Using it to generate electricity from heat and expansion is effective and well understood. Just because we've been doing it since the early days of industrialisation doesn't mean we have to abandon it just because it "feels a little old". It's not like a pentium 2 with a 16Mb graphics card.

  13. Units of Measure by halcyon1234 · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...a laser the size of three football fields...

    That tells us nothing without a measurement of density. How many Libraries of Congress worth of energy can those three football fields produce?

    --
    UTF-8: There and Back Again
  14. Fusion power dream by pedestrian+crossing · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The March 2010 edition of Scientific American has an article that raises some significant doubt that we will ever be able to use fusion as a commercial source of power. The problems aren't about ignition, they are more fundamental engineering problems...

    --
    A house divided against itself cannot stand.
    1. Re:Fusion power dream by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 5, Informative

      This article concentrates on Deuterium-Tritium fusion, and I agree with it in that context.

      Most of the concerns are addressed by the design of a DPF reactor.

      withstand temperatures of millions of degrees for years on end

      That's just FUD, I'm afraid. Even in tokamak reactors, the plasma is kept separate from the reactor vessel. The plasma is at millions of degrees ; the reactor vessel is not. In a DPF reactor, the plasma is a teensy little 12 microns across - even if the contents are running at about a billion Kelvin, they won't heat the reactor vessel to millions of degrees. The reactor is also designed to emit most of it's energy through non-thermal vectors.

      constantly bombarded by high-energy nuclear particles

      True, in a DT reactor. Not so true in a pB reactor - the reaction produces helium and electrons, not neutrons.

      has to make its own nuclear fuel

      This one is the big winner. As they rightly noted, tritium is one of the rarest elements on Earth. A pB reaction uses no tritium, it uses common or garden "normal" hydrogen, and boron, an element that's abundant enough to sell as eyewash.

      no outages, interruptions or mishaps—for decades on end

      When a 1 GW reactor goes offline, yes, you have a shortfall problem. When the proposed 5MW output DPF reactor goes offline for it's routine maintenance (for about 12 hours), you just lean on the others you have running. Lots of small, local, redundant reactors the size of shipping containers make for more reliability than a few whacking great behemoths the size of aircraft carriers. When they cost $300,000 instead of $10,000,000,000, you can afford to pile them high, and sell them cheap.

      must also convert energy from the neutrons into heat that drives a turbine

      The design is intended to use 2 methods of direct energy collection that are not heat engines, a more elegant and efficient solution that places it closer to "power plant" break-even.

      At least they report the purpose of NIF correctly, albeit couched in soft language - it's about "National Security", not energy generation.

  15. Re:in 20 years ... again? by Eunuchswear · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "It will take at least another 20 years, with adequate funding, to develop a continuous fusion reaction that
    could heat water, create steam and turn generators at a commercial fusion power plant, she said."

    See the problem now?

    --
    Watch this Heartland Institute video
  16. I wonder by xednieht · · Score: 4, Funny

    If the laser is the size of 3 football fields how big does the shark have to be?

    --

    Hope is the currency of fools
  17. Can We Harness Nuclear Fusion in the '70s? by ewg · · Score: 2, Informative

    Obligatory link to Edward Teller's article "Can We Harness Nuclear Fusion in the '70s?" in Popular Science magazine, May 1972 edition.

    http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=VvyLShXydNgC&pg=88

    --
    org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
  18. Article is horribly misleading by da+cog · · Score: 3, Informative

    By "mini-star" they just mean a brief fusion reaction that is expected to last for a fraction of a second --- if for no other reason then there is only a limited amount of fuel available to it.

    Also, the way in which many of those involved ultimately intend to use this is not to create a reactor drawing power purely from fusion but rather to create fusion/fission hybrid reactor in which neutrons from the fusion reaction drive fission reactions in nuclear fuel that would not become critical by itself --- i.e., so we can burn things like nuclear waste and thorium. Such a reactor would be intrinsically fail-safe because when fuel pellets stop being dropped into the reactor and ignited by lasers into "mini-stars" (which, again, is something that needs to be done continuously --- several times a second --- since the "mini-stars" burn up all their hydrogen fuel so quickly) then eventually the whole thing shuts down on its own.

    In other words, this is completely unlike the ridiculous and highly implausible fusion reactor featured in Spider-Man 2 which had the magic power to sustain itself by eating everything around it --- which, incidentally, is a power that even our own *actual* sun doesn’t come close to having, since it can only burn its limited supply of hydrogen fuel.

    --
    Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
  19. Any chance we could use the laser ON Mississippi? by Benfea · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just curious.

  20. Re:So... by couchslug · · Score: 2, Funny

    Budget restrictions prevented that, so they will use Roseanne Barr in a finned sharkskin bikini.

    --
    "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
  21. Didn't these guys see Back to the Future? by rclandrum · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A real fusion powerplant is the size of a trashcan and accepts any old garbage you have around as fuel. Puts out gigawatts of power.

    Yeah, they might eventually fry a few teensy pellets at the NIF, but I mean really - huge impractical lasers perfectly synchronized onto tiny hard-to-make fuel pellets fed at precisely the right rate and positioned in precisely the right place at precisely the right instant to be imploded? Operating perfectly over months and years in industrial powerplant conditions? Maintained on a daily basis by a crew that goes home and watches American Idol and The Simpsons? All securely automated and monitored using the latest Windows OS? Not even in our grandkids lifetime.

    What they *should* be concentrating on is designing a room-sized fission powerplant that can power a neighborhood using a replaceable fuel cartridge that a service weenie replaces for you once a year. Minimal moving parts, easy to replace if service is needed, and the entire grid isn't nuked when Rocky the squirrel suicides on a transformer.

    C'mon Mr. Kamen, quit screwing around with third-world water filters and build this puppy.

  22. the size of three football fields by gencha · · Score: 2, Funny

    These people with their science talk...

  23. Re:Super Cool er I mean hot by ErikZ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "So to replace the fuel based primary energy Germany must build 95 nuclear plants."
    Or four reactors, 24 times as powerful.

    How many fossil fuel plants do you think they're running now to produce the rest of their power? A few hundred?

    --
    Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
  24. Not mutually exclusive! by Logarhythmic · · Score: 3, Insightful
    FTFA:

    "The world needs to employ existing fixes for climate change rather than looking for a technological silver bullet that will prove to be too expensive for commercial energy production anyway"

    Actually, the world really ought to be doing both. I'm not implying the existence of a "silver bullet" but any renewable energy source (especially one as fundamental as solar fusion) is probably a worthwhile endeavor. Just because it isn't immediately commercially viable doesn't mean we can't still benefit from it.

    --
    "Before criticizing someone, first walk a mile in his shoes. Then, you'll be a mile away... and you'll have his shoes."
  25. Re:OT sig reply - off by an order of magnitude by YttriumOxide · · Score: 2, Informative

    on average US taxpayers pay $10/month for everything that NASA does.

    Number of US tax payers is about 138 Million... NASA Budget is 18.7 $B(2010). So mathematically the average is closer to $130 per taxpayer...

    $18.700.000.000 / 138.000.000 = $135 per person per year.
    $135 / 12 (months in a year) = $11 per person per month.

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