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Construction of French Fusion Reactor Underway
GarryFre writes "It has been said that fusion is 50 years away for quite a few decades, but now work has actually been started. Digging has begun in the south of France on the planned site for France's first fusion reactor. A tokomak is a torus shaped magnetic confinement device which is necessary to withstand the temperatures associated with fusion that are so high, solid materials can't hold them. As such, the building represents the future core of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.) It will be interesting to see if it takes 50 years to build it."
I guess your Free World doesn't have any gypsies in it.
When some of the early fusion reactor designs were tried they worked great.... until they started trying to increase the temperature and confinement. Tokamaks have been chosen for ITER because they are the most promising and well tested design. When polywells can demonstrate temperatures in excess of 2 keV (many large tokamaks e.g. JET, DIII-D, JT60-U), long operation (e.g. Tore Supra, over an hour), more energy out than in even briefly (JET, JT60-U), then people might become interested.
I wish the polywell guys and General Fusion the best of luck, but the chances of their investors getting their money back is laughable
Of course this design has no chance of achieving net power output. It's useful as a source of low-energy neutrons. I've always wondered what kinds of isotopes you could make with one. The next "radioactive boyscout" might use them. If you aren't familiar with that story, google it.
For all "intents and purposes", "whom" remains part of the language. I care about spelling and grammar, particularly when i see either misused.
"Gypsy" has double meaning: it's an ethnicity, and it's also a culture. As cultures goes, this particular one is deeply rooted in crime, it's practically what it breathes.
And that crime is, effectively, what is persecuted in Europe. It gives the perception of racism, because it's one of those cases where straightforward application of laws results in a disproportionally large number of representatives of a particular culture (who also happen to be representatives of a particular ethnicity) being targeted. The fault is not with the law, though.
But then again, anyone who has actually lived in areas with significant gypsy population (again, by this I mean the folks which embrace the culture, not gypsies by blood) know that all too well, and those who hadn't will just keep crying "racists!", because in their rosy multicultural picture of the world all cultures are equally good and valued.
Indeed the world cannot sit on it's hands waiting fusion. Fission is a highly practical, safe and clean form of electricity generation. And Generation IV reactors make it sustainable and hugely reduce the waste issue. If you haven't seen it, there is a host of informative material and discussion on Barry Brook's blog. Brooke is Director of Climate Science at the University of Adelaide and one of the group including Hansen pushing for development and deployment of Gen III and Gen IV nuclear.
Brave New Climate