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Is It Time For the US Government To Back Fusion At NIF Over ITER?
ananyo writes "Laser beams at the National Ignition Facility have fired a record 1.875 megajoule shot into its target chamber, surpassing their design specification. The achievement is a milepost on the way to ignition — the 'break-even' point at which the facility will finally be able to release more energy than goes into the laser shot by imploding a target pellet of hydrogen isotopes. NIF's managers think the end of their two-year campaign for break-even energy is in sight and say they should achieve ignition before the end of 2012. However, with scientists at NIF saying that a $4 billion pilot plant could be putting hundreds of megawatts into the grid by the early 2020s, some question whether the Department of Energy is backing the wrong horse with ITER — a $21-billion international fusion experiment under construction at St-Paul-lez-Durance, France. Is it time for the DoE to switch priorities and back NIF's proposals?"
Perhaps a better idea, given the potential benefits of fusion research, would be for the DoE to throw their weight behind multiple projects, rather than sacrificing some to support others.
Will this be a project to benefit society or will it be another thing where government money funds the hard, risky, long-term R&D and then a private company gets to reap all the rewards?
captcha: autocrat. Captcha generator reveals all.
Short answer: YES
You don't solve a problem by building a bigger hammer; the ITER approach is pure politics.
Seems like thorium reactors, which we've already built, and gotten working, are a much more tractable problem.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Basically, this should be a 'hero' project. Like a moon shot. Lets face it, we need to transit off of fossil fuels to a large degree sometime down the line. Not tomorrow. Not next year, but certainly in the next decade or so. Nuclear fission is an option - but as we've seen, not a terribly good one. Solar / wind / hydro / ponies and pixie dust / conservation will also help but we still need a backbone capable of powering modern civilization unless we want to devolve into something less pleasant. And that backbone has to put a lot of gigajoules into the system on a 24/7/365 basis.
So we need to put our money where our collective mouths are and work on something capable of bringing up the entire world to first world standards.
Or fight the war to see who's standing over the oil fields.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm vaguely familiar with the NIF and their "how it works" section breaks down in great detail everything involved in generating the beam, amplifying the beam, targeting the beam, and imploding the target, but how do they capture the energy produced by the target?
I think the DoE should reward homegrown projects first, and all things being equal, a domestic project should get priority on funding.
America didn't become a superpower by international collaboration; it did so out of invention and innovation, and a sense of patriotic duty.
On a very basic level, I'd like to know just how many jobs are going overseas because of our government's international investments as opposed to the good that funding can do right here on our soil.
How much international funding did Fermilab get when it was initially built?
if you don't know where Philadelphia is and you live in DC you an send one man up each road north untill you find an answer or you can send severl men up many roads and find the answer sooner
[NIF's managers] say they should achieve ignition before the end of 2012.
I'm guessing their target date is December 21.
Is $4B really that hard to come up with for this project? That sounds a lot cheaper than the constant state of war we find ourselves in today in the Middle East to keep the oil supply flowing.
to support nuclear weapon maintenance and design by studying the behavior of matter under the conditions found within nuclear weapons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility
Or at least let the DoE get involved instead of driving them to the DoD with inter-departmental pissing contests.
For the money that the Polywell people are asking, and what a full-size model would cost compared to the "superconducting cathedrals"* of ITER, they'd be fools to not at least give them a try.
*The late Dr. Bussard sure did know how to turn a phrase. There's no doubt about that, which is more than can be said about the actual Polywell concept itself - at least so far.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
The LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) is a much more promising technology. For starters it's already been done, decades ago at Oak Ridge. It only needs to be commercialized. Also it lacks the hard gamma problems inherent in fusion.
See energyfromthorium.com
Experts and executives within NASA have had very positive things to say about the potential of the technology.
(Sources: http://www.ecatplanet.net/list.php?category/45-NASA)
Two companies claim to be working on final prototypes to be released after patents: (Andrea Rossi, http://ecat.com/ and http://defkalion-energy/ ) that are giving private and semi-public demos to interested parties.
If $5-10 million were spent examining these claims and doing some basic replication research, it would be money very well spent.
There is no reason not to when you consider how much is going towards other projects.
Fusion research is valuable research, the more ideas funded, the better.
If we ever go full fusion and get a really efficient system going, it would be such a huge change, almost as big as the industrial revolution.
Energy will no longer be a problem to us. We will have reached the "unlimited power age" where our advances are only held back by our creativity, and of course the laws of physics.
It would then cascade in to other industries, such as farming & food production, water, water, imagine that, no water problems due to power-hungry purification.
We could mass grow even more crops using artificial sunlight and water in large-scale vertical farming buildings as well as hydroponics in general.
It might even lead to the space age becoming feasible through mag-launchers mechanisms instead of fuel-based systems.
And even then, fuel would no longer be a problem, we could grow enough crops in order to produce those fuels.
In fact, with all this power comes new materials research in general. We could create all sorts of new power sources using various different combination methods.
We could possibly even power more compact linear accelerators with high amounts of power for production purposes, specifically for converting other elements in to new ones.
With our space age here, we could be out there mining meteors to power our new highly advancing race. Colonies around Earth, on the Moon, even Mars.
Fusion generators could power some new-age field-generator experiments to protect ships from EM.
The sky isn't even the limit anymore, if we ever finally crack the fusion age.
Shame it will just get sidelined as "another energy source" instead of "this will solve everything ever!"...
Please let me assume you are also railing just as hard against all the subsidies oil companies are also receiving for oil exploration right now.
polywell is smallish has good results so far and it's only 200mil to build a pB^11 reactor that generates power. so what the hell are we waiting for
I promise that until the end of time no matter how much money you throw at energy research I won't use it as a cheap point of criticism (as long as it goes to guys in lab coats or those stereotypically thereby attired).
I don't favor either NIF or ITER because frankly I don't care, but I've been hearing "Fusion is almost at the break-even point" for the last 20 years.
In my lexicon almost =/= 20 years and I have to wonder why it was not achieved back in 1995 or 2000 (as they claimed would happen). Perhaps they should be more careful with their claims of "almost there", else we'll start viewing them like the boy who cried wolf.
And for energy sources, why not just burn liquefied sugar (ethanol) and other plant oils in our cars? It's plentiful and renewable and inexhaustible (as long as the sun keeps shining). It appears to be working for the Brazilians.
Another thing that would help is having 1/10th as many people, thereby decreasing the energy need by 1/10th. I think China has the right idea (1 child per couple) even though it is morally repugnant. But then so too is overpopulation and starvation; if we don't limit our growth then Nature will do it for us.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Isn't that implicit in my remark?
Well, good luck with getting power into the grid by 2020.
The reason why I'm saying this, is that it's an incredibly bold goal to turn the technology they've already got into a working prototype, incorporating everything learnt elsewhere, into a next-generation scientific experiment, let alone a power plant, by 2020. Hell, even HIPER won't break ground before 2020.
Besides, the REAL fun stuff, is things like advanced materials for the combustion chamber, and a working blanket, which NOBODY has yet demonstrated, not JET, not ITER, not NIF -- nobody.
Worse yet, we don't know what problems we'll run into once we achieve ignition in NIF, or the burning plasmas regime in ITER.
To the genius who suggested that ITER is a political waste of time is obviously unfamiliar with the science. Even if ITER achieves its low-balled goals, it'll be a massive step towards a working plant. And they plan to actually test working power-generating, and tritium-breeding blankets as well, although that won't start until quite late in the project (the D-T phase of the project).
The 'patriotic' Americans slagging ITER on /. should be quiet, as the US is, true to form, turning its back on the rest of the world, starving the US Domestic Agency of funding, and doing what it wants anyway.
Those "subsidies" are nothing of the sort, actually--they're actually tax breaks, and they apply to pretty much every industry, not just to Big Oil.
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Not necessarily. You'd say exactly the same thing if you were an fossil fuel pigopolist working to hamstring your successor technology and preserve your business model. No dinosaur ever welcomed the coming of mammals.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
It seems to be that the thermal energy produced is equal to the optical energy put in. Well, great, it's a milestone of sorts, but still massively far off actually producing energy. First and foremost, conversion of thermal to electrical is 33-40% efficient. Then you have to convert that to optical, an efficiency I do not know, but seems according to the Wiki page to be 1% (422MJ bank, 4MJ shot, could be old). Still, maybe it could be a lot better, but probably wouldn't exceed 80-90%. So, you actually have to beat this "break even" by a factor of at least 3 in order to actually output energy. But that doesn't account for fuel production, nor maintenance or construction of the facility.
And, I should also point out that this story is just that their laser works, not that an sample was fired producing "break even" energy.
Will it work? Maybe. But realistically, by the time we see commercial power from this, a fission plant built today would be reaching end-of-life.
well then Thorium nuclear reactors would seem to be a better bet.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
We need adequate energy sources, and fairness in distributing those resources, to get most of the developing world past the 'demographic transition'. It's a big ask, but could be done if we were truly determined.
Fusion is _hard_. We had no idea how hard it would be until we tried doing it -- mostly because of unknown unknowns. It's took only a few short years (maybe 10?) to turn Fermi's first nuclear pile into a working power plant. Fusion is one to two /orders of magnitude/ more complex to pull off. So obviously, we're going to have to wait longer for a working power plant. If ITER works (and we're now confident it will), the first prototype power plants (the DEMO machines) won't be far behind.
The question isn't "Can we reach and pass the energy break even point" but "Can we produce economic energy this way". On this measure ITER is the better bet. The bid achilles heel of the NIF approach is manufacturing the pellets that are fused. There need to be incredibly precise in order to collapse in a uniform way and not deform too much. A commercial plant would have to rip through hundreds of pellets a minute. The things currently cost well over a million each.
We need to discuss economics more than energy break-even.
Yes. Next question?
I said "your little science projects" not "your little competing science projects".
Also, I don't think you really understand evolution.
If anarchy's what you want, move to Somalia. The folks depriving you of your money by violence won't be from the Government, because there IS none ;-)
Go solicit private capital rather than forcing me under the threat of violence to fund your little science projects.
Go move to Somalia if you don't believe in the social contract and the public good.
The US government is currently funneling funds to NIF. Ananyo, the uber-parent poster, suggests the DoE backs multiple projects, instead of "sacrificing some to support others." It is unclear how the US government is supposed to pick the right technology worked on by the right people at the right time, or how unlimited funds will be available to fund various projects to prevent sacrifices when the CBO projects the entire US economy will "shut down" in 2027 based on current trends.
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I have been hearing about biofuels since the early 80's so I don't think they have a record that is any better than fusion.
Brazil is still mostly dependent on fossil fuels. Gasoline there is a 25/75 ethanol/gas blend.
A population reduction - are you volunteering?
Or fight the war to see who's standing over the oil fields.
Imaginary Yale grad dialogue:
So we already selected that option, its really freaking expensive, but we're "winning" so why fool around with the alternatives?
For generations we've been dropping the median standard of living so when the oil runs out we'll remain in charge, so no problemo there.
Why do I/we need to do this to remain in power, again?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Basically, this should be a 'hero' project. Like a moon shot.
By that argument after spending $100B we'll get ITER/NIF to work but the cost of building any more fusion plants will be so overwhelmingly expensive that we will not build anymore for the next 40 (and counting) years. Instead why not take a chance on something a lot simpler like General Fusion. These guys have a beautiful reactor design and are working on a shoestring budget to develop it. While the chance of success is not known (they themselves estimate it to be 10-50%) if it were successful it would be instantly deployable and have massive repercussions for energy generation - certainly the basic physics behing it is good the only question is in the complexities of plasma dynamics and interactions and whether they can fire the pistons to compress the molten lead with a sufficiently accurate timing.
Go move out of the US rather than forcing me under the threat of violence to let you mooch off the civil society taxes and government has enabled.
No, seriously. Get the fuck out of my country.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Cane is working for brazillians because they have climate and soil that can grow a lot of it, for a relatively poor country. It's completely unrealistic most other places. You'd never have enough land for that to work in say India or china, and corn ethanol is horribly inefficient compared to cane.
Also, research is new, novel and doesn't always work as well as you'd hope. It's not engineering where they know what the outcome will be. On the scale of things 20 billion dollars for one research project is basically nothing. To build one nuclear power plant (not reactor, but power plant) will probably cost more than that. If it works there will be hundreds of 'fusion plants' worth building eventually.
> I don't favor either NIF or ITER because frankly I don't care, but I've been hearing "Fusion is almost at the break-even point" for the last 20 years.
Ever tried getting funding for a project that takes 100 years to complete?
In my lexicon almost =/= 20 years and I have to wonder why it was not achieved back in 1995 or 2000
because 20 years previous we hadn't signed on the dotted line to do it.
Its kind of like building a house. I can hire out to get one built in a year, anytime I want to start ... but until I sign on the dotted line its going to perpetually be "a year away".
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I'd have polywell funded, even if just to shut up the myriad internet cranks constantly banging on about it.
No offence folks -- but citations from reputable peer-reviewed literature or STFU.
You don't get out much, do you?
The NHS delivers far superior healthcare outcomes to everybody and costing us half as much as a percentage of GDP as the US spends. The US model is utterly, utterly broken, because policy is made by ideologically-blind libertarian halfwits.
But please, continue deluding yourself. It's funny to watch.
>>>I have been hearing about biofuels since the early 80's so I don't think they have a record that is any better than fusion.
I can run my car or truck on ethanol or biodiesel respectively.
Now show me where I can buy electricity that came from a fusion reactor.
Oh it doesn't exist. QED biofuels have a better record than fusion.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Really now, they've fired ~2MJ pulse. But what does that mean? 2MJ of laser light was present in their test chamber. This was fueled by 400MJ of electrical energy stored in capacitors. So we can now see that they have accomplished making a 0.5% efficient laser. This is nothing to write home about. Lets consider the actual fusion power output. The most they've had is about 1kJ of fusion energy output. This is not a lot. The balance between energy in and energy out is very poor. Getting 1kJ from 400MJ is about the best they can hope for. An overall efficiency of 0.00025%. Who here thinks that's good? JET, which is the smaller brother of ITER has achieved a 90% energy balance. Still not breaking even, but still 3600 times closer. ITER is designed to output 10 times more energy than is input. So it'll spank NIF. QED. That doesn't stop it being expensive though...
Is it really economic to do this? If we have to build a new facility every time it goes past breakeven and explodes, it just seems like it is going to be expensive. Not to mention the politics of siting a bomb blowy-up thingy near cities where they need the power.
That's a straw man argument; I'm already arguing AGAINST violence: The violence by "non-Government" Somalia is no different than the violence by "Government"; violence is violence, regardless of whether you're called Warlord or Sheriff.
Not just Thorium, and there's probably better designs out by now anyway, but I for one was very pissed and still am that Clinton canceled America's Integral Fast Reactor project. Because ohhh scary nuclear. Except the IFRs produce less waste, safer waste, and can be fed just about anything, including most the crap that right now is considered waste.
Bad project, Bill kill!
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
You must believe in Intelligent Design; otherwise, you'd see the folly of central planning by the noble bureaucrat with his brilliant mind and his crystal ball.
Terms like "social contract" and "public good" are buzzwords and straw men (similar to "Patriot Act").
What's with spergy computer nerds and libertarianism? I guess it must be appealing to reduce the complexity and unavoidable ambiguity of human society into just a couple of quasi-moral rules pulled out of nowhere.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
There's nothing inherently wrong with fossil fuels. We're just running out is all. (Oh and I seriously doubt the OP is a fossil fuel corporation. No need for ridiculous attacks.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Mod Parent Up,
Although I would really like to see fusion reactor, it seems that fission still has a lot to give with Thorium reactor.
Can't fund it all. The rest of the cash went to oil subsidies.
is to spread the bets... I totally agree that in order to find that successful solution, one must look at ALL solutions to find the most successful. Sometimes its not as easy as saying "You succeeded, and you failed" but rather "You succeeded, and you did it better than the others"... So I would tend to agree with the poster on this one...
> if we don't limit our growth then Nature will do it for us.
About half a century ago, people said that there is enough food for only 3 billion people in here. And then we invented a way to make more food. Penicillin was a very small invention if you consider the equipment, but it had a huge global impact. But people overused it and made it less efficient.
If you want to predict the doom of human kind, you need to remember that humans fight back.
The really touching part is that you really believe that without a Government, there wouldn't be violence and people taking by force.
Awww, bless!
Using heavy ions (Xenon Bismuth Lead etc) accelerated to 10GeV (~0.4c) in a linear accelerator to ignite DT cylinders encased in lead in a simplified NIF type target chamber filled with lithium spray is a far more likely approach to economic fusion power than anything else in existence.
http://www.fusionpowercorporation.com/press-information
The technology is in hand, and has been since the 1970's, but has the problem of sticker shock:
-The drivers are adapted lineacs (and related collider tech) that are much more efficient (30%) than lasers. They can run at very high power without overheating and delicate optical issues of lasers.
-Lithium spray absorbs all of the neutrons and breeds tritium - avoiding all Tokomak first wall neutron and plasma interaction problems.
-Costs are actually pretty comparable to ITER, but the payoff is absolutely massive.
Problem is you need to build big to overcome ignition energy barriers - 100GW (10GJ/pulse) with 10-20 target chambers being fed by the same lineac would be about right. The lineac needs to be about 7-10km long so not small. Gains of 1000:1 are expected so driver is not overwhelmingly huge, estimated $10 billion), and at $20-30 billion (assuming large cost overruns) for 100GW it is cheaper than any other source of power. It also has zero proliferation risk, and almost no radioactive waste.
The very high temp (1100C) liquid lithium produced in the reaction chamber can be used as a heat source in Sulphur Iodine chemical process to create hydrogen feedstock for hydrocarbon synthesis at $50/barrel forever. Waste heat from this process can then also make electricity.
300 of these units around the world would address all of humanities projected energy needs for the next 100 years - both electrical and transport fuel, at lowest possible costs, with none of the existing downsides of other forms of electricity production.
The ITER people will whine , wah wah wah it's only 10 years away yada yada yada
Because of course ITER 'is the only true and scientific way'
OTOH it would be good for the DoE to put their weight behind other types of confinement and fusion generation (like Polywell, which IIRC is funded by the Navy)
First of all Chine just announced at the latest FESAC meeting that they are building an ITER clone.
NIF cannot be made into a power plant. Order to make an economical power plant, NIF would need to fire 100 shots per second. They are lucky to get 10 shots in a day.
Polywell as no thermal confinement and will never reach break even.
You need to leave the science up to the scientists.
Even though their proof of concept system may not ultimately be the best way to fusion, they invented a HELL of a lot of technology in the process of getting there. Those laser pulses are amplified by sheets of giant crystals, so they had to invent a process to extrude them. And they always knew that their system was merely a demonstration of what could be done: they hope to license the technology to private energy companies who want an alternative to nuclear. Without the R&D component, the price tag of a NIF style fusion plant should drop from four billion down to 200-300 million, on par with the initial investment cost of a nuclear power plant. (I toured the facility a few years ago. Holy moly that place is cool and awesome. And the wine off Tesla Road is pretty good, too.)
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I went on a tour of JET, ITER's predecessor. Even they reckoned that, if they were given full go-ahead to go straight to a production power plant with all safe speed, it would be 28 years before it wen on-grid. That is prett close to the "fusion power is thirty years away. Alway has been, always will be."
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I guess it must be appealing to reduce the complexity and unavoidable ambiguity of human society to something that can be solved via one-size-fits-most central planning by an Intelligent Designer, a noble bureaucrat with a brilliant mind and a crystal ball.
The best computer simulations written by the best scientists and fed with decades of data still can't predict terribly accurately even something as mindless as the weather; what makes you think an "expert" has any chance whatsoever of predicting let alone controlling social, financial, and technological development?
Complex systems have no master, but that's exactly the role that Government tries to play the larger and more centralized it becomes. Intelligent Design is a fanatasy; localized, decentralized experiments are essential to peaceful evolution towards a prosperous world.
Sugar cane also works for Brazil because they don't have nearly as many cars on the road in the first place. There's also the very serious hazard of using arable land to grow fuel rather then food, and the follow on effects that can have on global food prices.
Biofuels are really a non-starter - it's inefficient solar power, with all sorts of limitations and where and how much of it you can use. It also is only an answer for transportation fuel at that. There's no possible way we could satiate our electricity demands using biofuels (when you need 60% of the arable land in the US to manage the oil needs of transportation alone - optimistically).
Fusion research has to be done, no matter the cost, until we either definitely establish it can't be done, or we succeed. Given the positive results that we have that, it seems likely we can succeed - but nothing that complex is ever easy or quick.
The really touching part is that you really believe that without a Government, there wouldn't be violence and people taking by force.
From what I've read, as bad as Somalia is today, it was worse when it had a government.
Certainly given that governments have killed hundreds of millions of people in the last century I would say that private sector murderers would have to work pretty hard to catch up.
Why the fuck do people keep on mentioning Thorium reactors? They still produce fission products. And fission products are the only thing that nuclear reactors need to protect against releasing to the public. Fission products are also statistically determined. You will always get short medium and long term radionuclides even if you burn up some.
There are benefits to Thorium reactors, but in a major accident they will still release enough highly radioactive substances that will require evacuation and quarantine of the affected area for decades. Yes, a thorium reactor can still meltdown, it still has decay heat, and it would require complex engineered safeguards to protect it.
"policy is made by ideologically-blind libertarian halfwits"
You're referring to some other nation. With no true leadership in the U.S., the libertarians are certainly not in power, and incapable of forming any coalition to gain power.
You may, however, be refering to the crony capitalism that is pervading our goverment. That and dueling idologies on all sides is causing us some problems, not just in healthcare.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Why do I/we need to do this to remain in power, again?
Because you keep electing warmongers like Bush and Obama that would rather destroy the earth than cede one iota of control...
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The cost of EVERY single stealth bomber (plane and supporting program) comes in around 3 billion dollars. So considering this is about creating a virtually endless supply of energy capable of sustaining us for thousands of years, Why is this even a consideration. Move $100 billion from defense (I would argue this is the most important defense spending in our history) and get'er done, once and for all.
At no point did you get the impression that he believes such a thing. You made that up and pretended he was saying it, because you know that you are too stupid to refute what he actually said.
I guess it must be appealing to reduce the complexity and unavoidable ambiguity of human society to something that can be solved via one-size-fits-most central planning by an Intelligent Designer, a noble bureaucrat with a brilliant mind and a crystal ball.
Yep, spergy computer nerd incapable of making subtle distinctions right there. You manage to put up both a straw man and a false dichotomy. Primarily because there's no other way to support your argument.
Here's your problem: you correctly identify some of the problems that government has, but then decide to solve them by throwing out all government. You are completely clueless as to the requirements for a functioning society, as well as the costs necessary to maintain it. The correct discussion is to talk about whether the money is better spent elsewhere. Your blanket squeal about thievery is completely, utterly sophomoric.
localized, decentralized experiments are essential to peaceful evolution towards a prosperous world.
And you also managed to get evolution wrong. Here's a little hint: evolution has nothing to do with a better world, or more prosperous world. Only with who makes more kids.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
There are benefits to Thorium reactors, but in a major accident they will still release enough highly radioactive substances that will require evacuation and quarantine of the affected area for decades. Yes, a thorium reactor can still meltdown, it still has decay heat, and it would require complex engineered safeguards to protect it.
So you think that because things are "hard" they aren't worth doing?
Sock Puppets: damn_registrars=pudge_confirmer=jimmy_slimmy=raiigunner=cml4524=a_klavan=red4men=ronpaulisanidiot
No.
I'm moderately Libertarian leaning too, and find most of the EuroSocialist vermin around here to be pretty annoying, but...no. We won't go solicit private funding and we will force you to pay taxes, go to prison, or get shot in the head - pick one.
Fundamental energy research is a massive public good, it's critical to both the security and well being of the nation. I don't want a world where China discovers efficient fusion power first and uses it to establish utter world domination.
Your comment is silly. I get where it's coming from and sympathize with your motivations, but they're misguided in this case.
Because it gets us off fossil fuels, which are a guaranteed ongoing disaster of greater magnitude (even though we've thought of it as normal for some time now).
We have:
Fossil fuels -- guarantee of large, global negative impact.
Various "green" sources (some greener than others) -- all are highly contextual in their effectiveness. Might improve with breakthroughs in battery technology.
Fission -- small risk of extreme, but local, disaster when running, small risk of major, but local, problems with the output.
Fusion -- like fission with fewer waste products and more availability of raw materials, and, oh yeah, we don't know how to do this yet and can't be sure when we will.
There are several thermal fusion projects that endeavor to produce energy and take good if not slow and expensive steps to get there. Then there are several that try to trigger fusion for other reasons. Who here favors the first?
Well, like that's never happened before!
Hint: The government usually backs the wrong horse. It's the nature of government.
Please stop using the little science project called the Internet, stop using electricity, take off any of your clothes which contain polyester and go live in a field, as modern civilisation would not exist if cretins like you were allowed to veto massive infrastructure investment like this as 'a little science project' and it is the logical conclusion of your happy ignorance.
kthxbye
Train prisoners to use the force and use them like a hamster on a hamster wheel. Generate that energy from "the force" and you have yourself a renewable source of energy. Just hope no jedi comes in and ruins the plans though
Ironically, you are the one who has put up straw men and a false dichotomy.
I don't state that all government should be thrown out. Rather, I imply that the power structure should be decentralized and localized as much as possible.
Firstly, evolution is a process; biological evolution just happens to be the most prominent example of evolution.
Secondly, evolution is defined by 2 phenomena: Variation and Selection. For the record, neither of these phenomena need be random or even mindless (especially selection).
Is that enough spoonfeeding and hand-holding for your mind?
Then go to Utopia. A society without any form of violence did never exist, and will never exist in the real world, as much as we would wish for it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You are a bigger right-winger than the grandparent. Or rather, the strawman version of the grandparent that you made up to attack.
I love how projected "breakeven" and "ignition" in 2012 has suddenly been extrapolated to MW powerplants on the grid within a decade.
Nevermind that we don't capture the energy yet, which might give us best-case 50% efficiency. Nevermind we need 3x breakeven the breakeven energy for converting heat into steam to power a turbine. Nevermind just about every factor of 2-3 efficiency loss out there. I'm going to post one goddamn link that was true when I interned there, and is still consistent today and then I want to see what the "scientists" who projected this commercial powerplant planned to do about this minor detail:
http://www.ieer.org/reports/fusion/chap3.html
By contrast, a large commercial power plant using ICF will require around five shots per second. Laser drivers also have low efficiencies, currently around 1% for solid-state lasers such as those to be used in NIF.
99% efficiency loss right off the bat. What's left for these people to even argue about?
A population reduction - are you volunteering?
A large part of the Slashdot readership is doing exactly what is necessary for population reduction. Some of them even voluntarily.
Why the fuck do people keep on mentioning Thorium reactors? They still produce fission products. And fission products are the only thing that nuclear reactors need to protect against releasing to the public. Fission products are also statistically determined. You will always get short medium and long term radionuclides even if you burn up some.
There are benefits to Thorium reactors, but in a major accident they will still release enough highly radioactive substances that will require evacuation and quarantine of the affected area for decades. Yes, a thorium reactor can still meltdown, it still has decay heat, and it would require complex engineered safeguards to protect it.
You do realize that EXISTING thorium reactor designs -
1. Do not need water as coolant (hence no high pressure evironment and much smaller)
2. As designed will shutdown on their own with no outside intervention.
3. As designed they can't "overheat".
"Best results occur with molten salt reactors (MSRs), such as ORNL's liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), which have built-in negative-feedback reaction rates due to salt expansion and thus reactor throttling via load. This is a great safety advantage, since no emergency cooling system is needed, which is both expensive and adds thermal inefficiency. In fact, an MSR was chosen as the base design for the 1960s DoD nuclear aircraft largely because of its great safety advantages, even under aircraft maneuvering. In the basic design, an MSR generates heat at higher temperatures, continuously, and without refuelling shutdowns, so it can provide hot air to a more efficient (Brayton Cycle) turbine. An MSR run this way is about 30% better in thermal efficiency than common thermal plants, whether combustive or traditional solid-fuelled nuclear.[27]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Commercial_nuclear_power_station
4. The US has a metric fuckton of thorium in it's coal deposits.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Stop lying. The NHS delivers a better _average_ healthcare outcome, it doesn't deliver better healthcare outcomes to everybody.
Under the NHS, the bum down the street gets much better care, and I get somewhat less care than I get here. Good for a nation as a whole, really good for others, not good for many.
Don't get me wrong, I've changed my mind in the last year and am mostly for a single payer type system with a sliding deductible ($0 for the truly poor, up to maybe $10k for the wealthy). But that doesn't mean our current system is broken for most of us or that we don't have the best medical technology in the world available.
Somalia is as it is because of interference from other governments, especially the US government. They don't have a government because no government that could possibly form there would get the required international approval.
Thorium is Nuclear. Scaaaary scary!
It doesn't matter that Thorium reactors are as different from the Chernobyl reactors as (bad analogy time!) a modern IC engine is to a coal burning steam driven locomotive engine.
Fusion doesn't have that Pavlovian NO NEW NUKES response that is such a firm part of our society's hive-mind. Indeed, it's got an almost magical, Star Trek feel to it, it's just magically taking natural hydrogen and making energy! Like the sun! Not like that unnatural evil nuclear stuff that poisons puppies and blows up whole countries...
At least, that's my guess why.
"It only needs to be commercialized."
Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow
Life expectancy at birth, UK 78.95, US 77.71 (2005, "World Development Indicators", via http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_lif_exp_at_bir_tot_yea-life-expectancy-birth-total-years )
Life expectancy at birth, UK 79, US 77 ("Latest Available", "World Health Organization", via http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_lif_exp_at_bir_yea_tot_pop-expectancy-birth-years-total-population )
Probability of not reaching 60, UK 9.9%, US 12.8% ( http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_pro_of_not_rea_60-health-probability-not-reaching-60 )
Infant mortality, per 1000 live births, UK 4.56, US 5.98 (2012 est, "CIA World Factbook", https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html )
Replying to a troll, and a bad-mouthed one as well, but the WHO figures are at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/mar/22/us-healthcare-bill-rest-of-world-obama
Somewhat offtopic perhaps, but effiency of large-scale projects is relevant here. Also if there is more money left over from essentials, and I consider healthcare an essential, there is money for R&D
Polywell as no thermal confinement and will never reach break even.
Could you elaborate on this point please? I'm merely an interested layman but I was under the impression that the ions in the device all had energies close to the well depth, i.e. not an M-B distribution.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Bush, did conceed control ... when he stepped down after his elected term. Obama hasn't really started any wars, and basically ended one. I mean, he's not exactly a pacifict, but he's not exactly Bush/LBJ either.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
a massive public good, it's critical to both the security and well being of the nation.
Everybody uses those words about everything. They are meaningless.
If your idea or project or initiative or agenda or whatever is so important , then you should be able to find people who will readily make voluntary investments.
I don't want a world where China discovers efficient fusion power first and uses it to establish utter world domination.
You accuse me of a silly comment? Hey, I hear Saddam had WMDs.
Your little fantasies are no basis for stealing money from people to fund your little projects (which might also be fantasies).
we will force you to pay taxes, go to prison, or get shot in the head - pick one.
For the "public good", you threaten me with a cage or with a violent death?
For the "public good" and for the funding of your project, you would remove a productive person from society?
For the "public good" and for the funding of your project, you would waste resources keeping me caged up?
Of course not. You just want me to pay my taxes to fund your little projects. These are merely threats, mostly empty, but sometimes fulfilled in order to keep the game going.
You are not "Libertarian leaning" (not even in the slightest).
Scary isn't it?
Yet no one in Washington truly wants to stop this train wreck. Maybe we can get lucky, get fusion to work, and sell it to pay off our debts.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think the same can be said of ITER... look where it got them!
The recent Obama budget cut several important programs, in order to better fund other important programs in this era of zero-based budgeting. For example Mars exploration budget was severely cut, perhaps due to the huge cost overruns of the Mars Science lander (now enroute). Perhaps a congressman or two will earmark this money back in. However, the space comunity gets together every decade to prioritize their programs. I'd more trust the space community to allocate their money than politicians.
If you watched the Google Video of Dr. Bussard's talk you could understand the discussion in this thread. DoE heads protect funding for long term projects because they are long term projects...
Oh and your reference since you can't use Google:
http://pop.aip.org/resource/1/phpaen/v18/i11/p112501_s1?isAuthorized=no
No offence taken - but citations from independent research/experiments that say the polywell concept doesn't work, or STFU yourself.
Privacy begins with
Well, you've got me there... unfortunately not being involved in the field means I wouldn't know a reputable journal if it slapped me in the face! I do see your point though; if not for his reputation - which of course means precisely damn all - I would have written off Bussard as a crank myself, especially with his frequent remarks about a publishing embargo.
I assume you know what you're talking about, so can you say if Plasma Physics, Fusion Technology and the Int. Aeronautical Congress are reputable or not? Hell, for all I know he was laughed off the stage from the latter.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
if not for his reputation - which of course means precisely damn all - I would have written off Bussard as a crank myself
What reputation? Bussard has no reputation in the Plasma Physics community what so ever. Langmuir, Alvén, Van Allen, Debye, Bohm, Valsov, have reputations.
I was writing from their point of view. We don't get a choice in our leaders. Two are selected who are different sides of the same coin, basically the same goal with different PR campaigns, and we're told we're making a choice. We are not.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I imply that the power structure should be decentralized and localized as much as possible.
So you're for "forcing...under the threat of violence", but just on a more localized scale?
If governments confined themselves to their basic reason for existence, that is to protect people from each other, then our taxes, all taxes of all shapes and kinds, would amount to about 10%. As it is, the governments take half of the money that productive people earn, in order to redistribute that money taken by force, to those people that are unproductive, that are a drag on society. This includes not only the “poor”, but also, perhaps even more so, the ultra rich corporations, who are “too big to fail”.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
http://pop.aip.org/resource/1/phpaen/v2/i10/p3804_s1
4. The US has a metric fuckton of thorium in it's coal deposits.
The hell!
The US has an imperial fuckton of thorium, not a metric one.
an MSR was chosen as the base design for the 1960s DoD nuclear aircraft largely because of its great safety advantages
The safety characteristics of nuclear airplanes would appear to be right up there with nuclear hand grenades.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Or fight the war to see who's standing over the oil fields.
Of course, the advantage to fighting the war is that we can already do that and we don't have to develop any fancy new technology to do it. I mean, we're already paying an army, so we might as well use it for something worthwhile. And I could either give the money to a bunch of companies who make bombs and finance my campaigns or to a bunch of nerdy scientist-types.
(The above is sarcasm)
There are uses for fission byproducts you know? Nuclear medicine saves more peoples lives then reactor accidents have ever taken.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Or we just agree that electricity is worth ~20c/kWh, and pay 50% premium for autos with a 50kWh battery, get a grid to tie them together and we are set for the ages. All at a price everyone can afford with technology we already have. Or we make syngas with solar in the desert and covert it with fischer tropsch for about $4.00 gal gasoline. We have no technology problems or money problems only stupid people problems, greedy people problems, and ideological problems.
Then stop using the fruits of government sponsored research. You can start by shutting down your computer and disconnecting from the internet.
LOL your link to far-right semantic weaseling does not impress. In his words "That argument [that we should remove big oil subsidies] simply does not exist" Well ok! I better go home! I don't care who the else gets the tax breaks, I want them removed for big oil! IF you want to have a conversation about removing the subsidies for some other industry I'll have that too, but's irrelevant and I don't give a flying F%#! about them while on the topic of oil subsidies. And please don't try to feed me some unconstitutional BS
Why do you believe this? It's clear that they deliver better average healthcare, but how sure are you that your care is actually better here, or that most of us receive better care. That is, citations?
And how, exactly, do you define "available"? To whom, and at what price?
When I worked at the Office of Fusion Energy, US Department of Energy in the early 90's, we referred to ITER as "money ITER".
LOL social contract is a buzz word? You can't even recognize the ideas that are a foundation of your society :( You poor uneducated plebe. You need a benevolent dictator. I don't think you can govern yourself :(
Touche!
Although I believe it's 2.2 imperial fucktons to one metric fuckton....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
LOL YA, CUZ THATS THE WAY IT WORKS. You make extra ordinary claims and I provide the extraordinary evidence to disprove them. What a wonderful idea. By any chance are you one of the internet cracks mentioned by GP???
Guess what? So did the Fukushima reactors. Critical reactors aren't the main meltdown threat. It is decay heat not being taken care of after a trip. It isn't rocket science. If you have a large amount of decay heat inside a containment and there is no cooling being provided, it can and will overheat and melt. Once it melts various high temperature interactions (like core-concrete) will generate hydrogen and pressurize the containment. If you are unlucky, the containment will be overpressurized and fail. If you are very unlucky, the hydrogen will ignite and cause a major containment failure. Either way, large amounts of fission product gasses are released to the environment.
I'm not against nuclear power. I actually strongly support it. I just don't think the thorium reactors are anything special. They are idolized here as being inherently safe and they are not. They produce lots of extremely high radioactive waste just like any other type of fission reactor. And they create large amounts of decay heat that has to be taken care of after a trip. The thorium fuel cycle is a decent idea, but there is no critical need to shift to it. Thorium reactors are a good research idea and may be useful in the future, but they are not a replacement for the safety issues of PWRs and BWRs.
Brazil is still mostly dependent on fossil fuels. Gasoline there is a 25/75 ethanol/gas blend.
For transportation yes, that's a fact. Most cars produced since 2002 or so can run on 100% ethanol but as current prices stand it is uneconomical. As for the electricity generation, we can say it's quite green: 87% (as of 2007) generated by hydro power https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_policy_of_Brazil
This is a UDP joke, I don't care if you get it or not...
Somalia does have a government, the Transitional Federal Government, which does have UN backing. It just doesn't hold the entire country. Puntland and Somaliland are autonomous areas of the country. Though Somaliland has declared independence, something no nation has formally acknowledged, Puntland seems to be in part waiting for the rest of the country to get its act together. The TFG controls a few provinces in the center of the country and part of Mogadishu, and Al Shabaab controls most of the south.
Despite waging an effective war against the TFG for a while, drought and declining revenues from criminal activities such as kidnapping and extorting pirates seem to be taking their toll on the group, and it's been fracturing. They also seem to have made the mistake of pissing off Kenya by conducting operations there (kidnappings, bombings, etc.) in an effort to dissuade the Kenyan government from getting involved. Precisely the opposite has happened, and Kenyan forces invaded a few months ago with the support of the TFG. Depending on who you listen to, Al Shabaab losses have either been heavy or they have merely ceded territory in strategic withdrawals.
The country still has a long way to go, but it's at probably the brightest point in the last two decades. Somaliland is still a potential problem as it wants to be its own country, but the TFG is unlikely to allow it, and both sides may have to settle for autonomy. There is at least reason to hope that the wars might be winding down and in a few years the country may again see unity, at least at a very high level.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I can't answer for others who advocate for Polywell -- indeed, with my limited background in nuclear physics, I probably qualify as an "internet crank" but the trails of information that are out there seem pretty high density that at the very least, someone who knows should be given a grant to examine things and make sure that the good stuff gets attention.
From where I'm at, calling the folks who advocate for polywell "cranks" is almost as good as calling Dr. Bussard a "crank" since he holds forth in a hard to understand voice (like a crank) for 90 minutes in the Should Google Go Nuclear video -- in which he was definitely "advocating" for his project.
At the very least, every government that is supplying any money to ITER should peel back 5 or 10% (I'd like to see more than that, but even such a pittance would be a princely sum -- even that much of a rollback will lead to a rice-bowl fight, I'm afraid) to establish some kind of research board to examine the other alternatives: NIF, Polywell, Thorium (in many forms), Burnaby BC's "General Fusion", whatever, and lets not just aim for the commercialization of one alternative. Let's go for several and eliminate as they prove unworkable, or long term intractable. ITER has had more than enough time to breakthrough and it hasn't. So let's not stop working on it, but let's put a few more eggs in our baskets.
And unless Pons and Fleischmann are showing up again, let's hold off from calling people cranks when what you ask for isn't available and not necessarily through the fault of the technology being suggested.
And the neighbour who asked for peer-reviewed evidence that Polywell doesn't work is on the right track there.
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
No, the US has a United States Customary fuckton of thorium.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Virtually everything about the NIF design has been optimized for the production of calibration information for the nuclear weapons program. Nearly all the experimental runs are designed for weapons, as are nearly all the scientists working with it.
It is run, and funded by the NNSA, the part of the DoE that makes weapons, not the Office of Science.
The little patina of 'energy programs' is a cover for its actual purpose. But if in fact, it had really been about alternative energy, it would have been canceled ages ago. (Not because of scientists' desires but because of Congress' desires).
I predict that they will almost have it... If only they could have a laser just a little more powerful...
decentralized and localized as much as possible
And conveniently, you completely neglect to talk about the hard part: what exactly is "possible"? How do you define the limits of possible? In your quest to reduce the government "as much as possible", you completely fail to specify the exact limits of the reduction, leaving you with an absolutely unworkable model for government. Not to mention that the "as much as possible" always ends up being "nothing for what I don't want, and everything for what I want"
Firstly, evolution is a process;
Actually, evolution is the result of a particular set of reproduction mechanisms. It is as much a process as gravity is.
biological evolution just happens to be the most prominent example of evolution.
Biological evolution is the example you tied your analogy to. I understand you currently want to move the topic, but that's up to you.
For the record, neither of these phenomena need be random or even mindless (especially selection).
Wait - we're now talking about directed evolution? I.e., the use of an Intelligent Director to guide the outcome of evolution? Yeah..... for some reason, Libertarians always end up disappointing me in their ability to present a rational, coherent argument for what their position is. And for some reason, that position can always be summarized as "I've got mine, go fuck yourself".
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Well, there Was Libya, but if Obama is going to do any more of those I'd very much support it. The Libyans took back their own country, the West took care of all of Ghadaffi's advanced gear to give them a chance (plus giving them some basic training), but the Libyans spilt their own blood to get their own country back, so they really care about who's going to lead. They have ownership back, rather than having a decade of some foreign nation trying (and failing) to put everything back together as happened in Iraq/Afganistan (wars which Bush et al. started/ran).
Well, a little war at least in Libya. But, on the plus side, its not a trillion dollars worth of destruction.
Buzz, it's 2.2 dickwads per metric fuckton. The imperial fuckton is a Longton, thus there are 1.5 metric fucktons per Imperial Fuckton.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Yes, and you could have run your vehicle on ethanol or biodiesel 20 years ago.
There has been little to no progress in replacing fossil fuels with biofuels.
Go do your homework on the history and development of Nuclear Reactors. You'll finally come across one of the fathers of modern US Nuclear Reactors, and how Thorium, in his eyes, was but an endless supply of free energy! Sadly, to the Government, it didn't warrant investigating since the resulting production of fissile Uranium and Plutonium wasn't enough for their tastes.
Citations? I've done mine reading. Go find it yourself. It's all on the web, if you know where to look.
You keep hearing about thorium reactor, because a lot of people are convinced it would be a very good idea to do this based on the options that are clearly possible in the near term. Maybe, you should do your own research on the LFTR reactor and see why lots of people think so. And just so you know (in case you did not), fusion will also have radioactive byproducts, expected to be less of a problem than LFTR reactors though.
Ultimately might be able to get LFTR power for as low USD 0.01 per kwh, and there are millions of years worth of it. This excites people, we've never seen large scale energy this cheap or this long-term, not in the history of the world. Fusion won't hit this price for a long time, if ever.
Every large-scale technology has risks. People are killing by falling of the roof installing solar panels. Coal -- you get pollution, explosions and mine collapses -- and plenty of radiation, coal being mixed with thorium and uranium, we shove plenty of radiation into the air when burning coal. People die from natural gas, hydro, wind, wood and candles too.
I just don't know that we can afford to wait another 50 or 100 years for Fusion to be viable on a large commercial scale. There are just not many options that allow the whole planet to have power intensive economies. It is morally wrong as far as I am concerned to decide that others should not have abundant power, while I get to keep mine, or even worse, that no-one is allowed abundant power. Widespread death, disease, etc. will rule.
Bet on fusion, please go right ahead. Bet on solar power satellites, too. Bet on anti-matter production production in solar orbit near Mercury too, but please lets be sure to bet on something very likely to keep us in the game until we get the "perfect" sollution. I.e., Bet on LFTR as a safe bet, if not the perfect solution.
How do you generate hydrogen in a molten salt reactor? What's the source?
The Fukushima reactors generated it because the water was boiling to steam and reacting with the zirconium-cladded fuel canisters. There are no such canisters in a molten salt reactor, and there is also no water and no pressurisation of the containment structure (what's the vapour pressure of Lithium Fluoride anyway? ;) ).
The danger of overheating is also removed - the fuel is already molten *by design*, and is contained in the system by a plug of solid fuel that is kept below the melting point by active cooling. Should the power fail (or the temperature of the fuel go too high for the cooling if the plug to cope), the plug of fuel melts and the whole primary loop drains off and settles in a non-critical arrangement run off area. It will then either solidify, or remain as a liquid if the temperature is high.
The UK spent more on ringtones for cellphones in 2010 than they did on fusion power research, despite having the JET in Oxford where a lot of heavy lifting in the fusion world has been done (among many other excellent research groups).
It will be forever just out of reach unless we stumble across a needle in a haystack or we actually put some worthwhile money behind it. Once we crack it (and we will, eventually, but infinitely faster if we fund it properly) then energy independence is solved forever. That sounds like hyperbole, but it's really not - if you can generate power by nuclear fusion on the Earth then we have unlimited fuel and endless power.
I mean, the US spends more money per year air conditioning tents in Afghanistan than they do on NASA's entire budget. Priorities. Wonky. The US put a man on the moon in 9 years because the Soviets launched a tin can into LEO that did nothing but go "beep beep". Maybe I should start a rumour that the Chinese have built a prototype fusion reactor and might someday get it working...
http://pop.aip.org/resource/1/phpaen/v2/i6/p1853_s1
http://pop.aip.org/resource/1/phpaen/v2/i10/p3804_s1
Seems like there are plenty of Papers on it.
It makes a nice neutron source but a terrible fusion power plant because it will always take more energy to run it than you will get out.
There is a very good reason for ITER.
Agreed. I've never seen anywhere where someone is claiming that inertial confinement will one day provide us with energy.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
So... if you want a nuclear reactor flying around over your head ready to spread itself out over the countryside due to a moment's inattention, I hope that you live in a different country than I do, regardless of the relative safety of different reactor types.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
there goes dumb_registrars, getting her panties all up in a bunch. she even got so much sandy in her vagina that she commented first from her fake account, and then later in the day from her first account. probably just got home from a junior obamunist ss rally or something; its butthurt central there right now.
did anyone tell you that your new signature isn't readable?
logical_failure = damn_registrars
I wouldn't say Libya counts as an Obama *started* war. Now, did participate. That's a huge difference.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I would of course oppose it; indeed, it would be easier for me to change the local mindset than the national mindset. Indeed, it would be easier for me to move from one locale to another than to move out of an entire country.
To argue further would be to repeat myself in various ways; sorry that you don't understand what I'm saying.
I've heard multiple people tell me the majority of NIF funding is intended as an end run around nuclear test ban treaties and commercially viable fusion is not the primary goal..
NIF is better than nothing but the targets cost $30k a shot to fabricate...and you'll need a whole lot of them per second of operation... Even if you were to break even the real question is commercial vaiability...NOT the ability to generate net energy.
Unfortunately Thorium is naturally found in a highly insoluble state so does not concentrate well into ore seams as does Uranium; instead Thorium generally finds itself dispersed as sands. Extracting the Thorium requires extensive mining and intensive processing, producing byproducts worse than Uranium mining. Processing Thorium ore into more useful fuel pellets for HWR or graphite moderated adjustable piles is only marginally better (energy, pollution, cost of plant) than processing Uranium into SEU, even though Thorium does not require enrichment (i.e., the processes are based on chemistry rather than isotopes). Thorium forms awkward compounds in chemical slurries - daughter products in LFTR were chemically hazardous, an explosion and corrosion risk, radioactive and had a tendency to decay into even more awkward compounds during cooling (not what you want in a SCRAM).
The primary reason BARC explored the Thorium fuel cycle so thoroughly was that India is very poor in known Uranium deposits, but has an enormous amount of Thorium sands domestically. Before rapprochement with nonproliferation politics, Thorium was its only bet without compromising its particular political neutrality with respect to the declared nuclear weapons states; its access to Uranium was almost certainly entirely reserved for weapons development. Things have changed now, and the Thorium fuel cycle is looking less attractive for several reasons. Cost of fuel is high on that list, since there is now an abundance of SEU to HEU available to it through trade. Consequently, BARC's optimistic projections of large numbers of Thorium fuel cycle civil power generation plants look far too aggressive.
That said, they or the South Koreans might buy AECL and integrate its civil power knowledge, patents, and processes surrounding e.g. CANFLEX, in which case mixed-fuel-cycle HWRs seem almost practical, depending on the capital costs and financing compared to buying an EPR or equivalent. Modern very high burn-up LWRs are more attractive for power generation than modern HWRs for a variety of reasons (cost of moderator, higher thermal output, neutron economy has been getting better in modern LWRs, and so forth).
Meanwhile the most likely use for Thorium fuel cycles is in chained or stacked fast breeders researching the production of higher thermal power and the breeding of weaponizable isotopes. Safety is less of a concern with that particular goal in mind, so molten slurry cores, high temperature highly chemically active coolants, and so forth are more likely to find use (as at ORNL).
Well, if you want to get technical about it, then I guess you have to say Hillary started it.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
So you:
1. don't think all government should be thrown out (what remains? military, police, courts, legislature, etc?)
2. would of course oppose enforcing taxes
Do you want to fund government via donations?
I don't know of any he ended - he followed the game plan in Iraq that was already laid out. If you don't think carpet bombing is starting a war, you'll have to acknowledge he started a terrorist action in Libya. At least in that case the only boots on the ground were mercenaries and CIA. Obama was in office when the war against the American people started in earnest, when they started openly killing American citizens (and their children) without charges or trial (Holder just says "Well due process doesn't mean judicial process" - whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean), and Panetta sat in front of Congress and said that the military start killing people anywhere in the world any time they want without needing permission, but "We may inform Congress about it later".
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Tritium is in no way readily available.
in fact, one of the first big nuclear accidents was a result of retrofitting a research reactor to make tritium. you can't just harvest it from water. and the problem with molecular hydrogen is it's freakishly difficult to store.
lithium deuteride might be easier to manage, but i'm not sure on it's abundance compared to the heavier stuff (U238, Th232)
as compared to a PWR or BWR?
i'm gonna need a citation about the proliferation hazards of these designs, because i'm pretty sure there's none whatsoever (except the "dirty bomb", but a desperate enough trrrst could simply get a few smoke detectors to make one of those).
some thorium designs actually produce near 100% pure U233, which is as good as U235 for blowing things up.
i think you're going to have to re-read the definitions of "Liquid" and "Meltdown".
the fuel is already molten. what's going to melt? the decay heat is not as much of a problem because it's not going to re-melt, or sublimate, or vaporize. it's just going to sit there and eventually cool down.
Of course I'm Libertarian leaning. You're just an impractical, idealistic douchebag, that's all. I grew out of that shit sometime after college, I thought most other people did too.
Right, now do the sums, and we need one new reactor built in the world every 2 weeks to compensate for the steep oil drop off. Oil production follows a normal curve, with sharp declines. Conventional oil It peaked in 2006 (source IEA), they're cracking tar these days to compensate, but that's stop gap.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2010/11/101109-peak-oil-iea-world-energy-outlook/
You need first to get people to realize that subsidizing oil is the dumbest things you can do right now, and they desperately need to invest in alternatives, NOW.
According to the Congressional Budget Office's prelminary report we just set a record in February for the largest ever monthly deficit at $229 Billion. The federal government spent $334 Billion dollars but only brought in $105 Billion in taxes. That works out to a deficit of about $7.9 Billion per day. It is almost comical think about a program with so much potential only needing $4 Billion to advance their work. I guess it would funny if it weren't real life.
You don't understand that I'm not interested in Intelligent Design; I'm not interested in attempting to be the master of a complex system (for which there can never be a master) by giving you copious, detailed specifications. Indeed, I would be very wary of anyone peddling such things. What I can tell you is that I don't like being treated like your slave, a resource that you can exploit coercively for your own little ends.
I recognize that society is currently organized so as to require things like centralized bureaucracies funded by coercion, but that doesn't mean that I have to acquiesce.
I can still advocate from within the centralized bureaucracy for the further localization and decentralization of the power structure; I can still advocate for reducing and eventually removing taxation while still paying taxes; I can still advocate private property and explicit personal contracts within a system that has widespread public property and implicit "social contracts".
Just because you cannot envision a solution without the intervention of Big Government does not mean that a solution doesn't exist. I don't pretend to be an Intelligent Designer who can tell you exactly what society should look like. Fortunately, even something as complicated as the human brain can be evolved from hydrogen atoms through a largely mindless process of variation and selection. Unfortunately, a large centralized power structure limits variation and dulls selection (which is why societies frequently evolve such tyrannies; they are voracious local extrema in the solution space for governance).
I suppose that's better than being a violent, indoctrinated, nationalistic douchebag.
[T]hat backbone has to put a lot of gigajoules into the system on a 24/7/365 basis.
24/7/365.25, unless you don't mind giving up those gigajoules each February 29th.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
So have you studied and thought this through far enough to know what you want? You did mention eventually removing taxation (presumably altogether, since this is after merely reducing taxation). That sounds like anarchy, but earlier you suggested you didn't want to get rid of government altogether, so I'm not really following your argument. You don't get to keep your private property or get your contracts enforced without some government structure (unless you happen to come out on top in the survival of the fittest).
I get the evolution stuff and think we really should be looking at history and at current examples of government and learning the lessons of what works and what doesn't. Are there places that you think are on a better track than the U.S.? Getting better outcomes? Incidentally, what are your criteria for good outcomes?
The NIF is not about energy research. It's about nuke research: The conditions inside the laser focus resemble the conditions in an exploding fusion nuke. They just don't like to advertise that because fusion energy sounds a lot nicer.
Done: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2008/12/16/4351315-fusion-we-can-believe-in
I can only conclude that science is expensive.
...
You say, that inside this paper, lies the conclusion that the electrostatic confinement method doesn't work?
So, the secretary of energy, selected by Obama together with the rest of the peer panel, have it wrong?
And this conclusion lies inside that document you linked I cannot access?
Could you copy paste the conclusion?
The National Academies is currently reviewing the prospect for inertial confinement fusion (http://fire.pppl.gov/NAS_ICF_interim_review_2012.pdf). There are serious challenges that need to be overcome, but hopefully NIF can ignite this year before the end of the national ignition campaign.
Come amount of hydrogen could be generated via neutron capture from Lithium-6, which produces tritium which in turn makes hydrofluoric acid and wrecks your day.
Isotopic separation of Li-7, woo!
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
About proliferation hazards ... the cat is out of the bag, isn't it ? Except (perhaps) for Obama deciding to invade North Korea and Iran, or outright nuking them, what possible hope is there to contain nuclear weapons today ?
The fact that the only thing separating a dozen states, including a whole lot of very undesirable ones, from working nuclear devices blueprints that a few dozen states possess has been known for 50 years. As long as this was limited to states that have shown restraint there was some hope of containing things, but that time is long gone.
Once a working heavy water reactor design is out there, it's over. If the reactor vessel is designed for breeding instead of for electricity production, those reactors have one single use : breeding plutonium (which is why a large scale tritium-producing heavy water reactor, like Iran built, is conclusive proof of the intention to build nuclear weapons).
The problem is not that there are reactors capable of producing weapons in the United states.Not at all. Adding a few more reactors will not change anything.
You are trying to catch me in an inconsistent statement, but I have not made one. Instead, I have only pointed out inconsistent statements made by other people who are attempting to pigeonhole what I say into a preconceived dichotomy.
Ok. No wonder it was so hard to figure out what your stance was. You were concealing it or hadn't thought it through far enough to know yourself.
I'd gladly see $4 Billion spent on this than more Solyndra stupidity.
So, the secretary of energy, selected by Obama together with the rest of the peer panel, have it wrong?
And this conclusion lies inside that document you linked I cannot access?
Could you copy paste the conclusion?
I don't know what you are talking about. The DOE and Obama administration are behind ITER. Unless the peer reviewed panel was FESAC then they aren't qualified to review electro static confinement as a energy source. Work on these devices is being performed. However, it is limited to just using it as a neutron source.
And they have these things called libraries. I suggest you goto one. But you will lack the expertise to understand it.
First of all that is not a reputable peer-reviewed scientific article. That is a blog.
Second of all
Chu responded that he had been discussing the concept with the folks at Google. "So far, there's not enough information so [that] I can give an evaluation of the probability that it might work or not," he said. "But I'm trying to get more information."
That is a politicians/scientist answer. It in no ways means he thinks it will work or that it will not work. This was Chu trying to be polite to the ding bat that asked it.
The following organizations set us fusion policy and direction.
FES
FESAC
Leave the science up to the scientists. You just make yourself look stupid.
So did the Fukushima reactors.
No, the Fukushima reactors had nothing like the kind of inherent passive-safety features of the MSR/LFTR architecture. The fuel is dissolved in the molten salt. In a shutdown, both the fuel and the heat are dumped to a holding tank which is designed for heat dissipation and neutron absorption. MSR's can't overheat, because the liquid medium expands with heat, which decreases fuel density relative to neutron flux, thus throttling back the rate of fission. Because there's no water in the reactor, there's no hydrogen to worry about.
Also, since salts don't even melt until ~300C, and don't boil until ~1500C (depending on the salt), you don't need a "pressure" vessel at all. The entire reactor runs at ambient pressure, obviating the need for complex, expensive, multiple-redundant cooling systems.
They produce lots of extremely high radioactive waste just like any other type of fission reactor.
No, they don't. MSR's burn most of their waste products. And the ones that are left over are much less in quantity and easier to deal with. Also, the liquid fuel makes it fairly easy to separate things with chemical processes. Not to mention Xenon gas, which is a huge issue with PWR/BWR's... with MSR it just bubbles to the top where you can collect it and sell it.
Spend an hour or two learning about Thorium, it could be a real game changer.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
This seems to be a fairly common mistake in reporting on the NIF. "Ignition" is the term NIF uses for having the resulting fusion generate more energy than the beamlines deliver to the target. However, much more energy goes into generating the beamlines than ends up getting delivered to the target. So even after they have achieved ignition, they'll still be a long way away from true break-even.
-deane
"Libertarian leaning" does not mean "agrees with me completely". And yes, that IS the only possible thing you could have meant. Any claim to the contrary is a lie.
dumb_registrars - i see you fixed your broken sig after it was pointed out to you that it was not legible. the only remaining question then is why you want to take credit for those other crappy account when you have two active crappy accounts of your own already. is this how your new obamunism works, you claim credit for virtual - and virtually worthless - property until you convince someone other than yourself that it is your own?
if that is your goal, you have a long way to go.
logical_failure = damn_registrars.
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Is It Time For the US Government To Back Fusion At NIF Over ITER?
ananyo writes "Laser beams at the National Ignition Facility have fired a record 1.875 megajoule shot into its target chamber, surpassing their design specification. The achievement is a milepost on the way to ignition — the `break-even` point at which the facility will finally be able to release more energy than goes into the laser shot by imploding a target pellet of hydrogen isotopes. NIF`s managers think the end of their two-year campaign for break-even energy is in sight and say they should achieve ignition before the end of 2012. However, with scientists at NIF saying that a $4 billion pilot plant could be putting hundreds of megawatts into the grid by the early 2020s, some question whether the Department of Energy is backing the wrong horse with ITER — a $21-billion international fusion experiment under construction at St-Paul-lez-Durance, France. Is it time for the DoE to switch priorities and back NIF`s proposals?" Perhaps a better idea, given the potential benefits of fusion research, would be for the DoE to throw their weight behind multiple projects, rather than sacrificing some to support others. Read more of this story at Slashdot.by
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What a elaborate method just to call someone stupid.
But on the positive side, I can now dismiss your claim.