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If Fusion Is the Answer, We Need To Do It Quickly
Lasrick writes: Yale's Jason Parisi makes a compelling case for fusion power, and explains why fusion is cleaner, safer, and doesn't provide opportunities for nuclear smuggling and proliferation. The only downside will be the transition period, when there are both fission and fusion plants available and the small amount of "booster" elements (tritium and deuterium) found in fusion power could provide would-be proliferators what they need to boost the yield of fission bombs: "The period during which both fission and fusion plants coexist could be dangerous, however. Just a few grams of deuterium and tritium are needed to increase the yield of a fission bomb, in a process known as 'boosting.'" Details about current research into fusion power and an exploration of relative costs make fusion power seem like the answer to a civilization trying to get away from fossil fuels.
As it always has, and likely always will be.
Confusion is correct. This guys damn confused. I'd love to have the problem hes talking about as that would mean that we actually have working fusion reactors. Wake me from my grave when we have one actual working power producing fusion reactor (I'm in my early 30s).
What you've missed about fusion technology could fill a journal. Maybe even more than one.
Fusion would break the stranglehold of petro-exporting countries in the Middle East as well as belligerent exporters like Russia and Iran.
Then? The Banking vampire elite will need to generate new, ethnically-rationalized hate-conflict to keep us all at each other's throats - instead of removing their boot from our collective face.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Why would they need to create a new hate conflict? There's plenty of that to go around as is. Arab vs. Jew, black vs. white, East vs. West...it's not like conflict wasn't around before banking cartels, you know.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The government does 10's of thousands of project a year. ON time, within budget with little waste.
the ITER is using extremely cutting edge experimental reactor. Of course there are unknowns.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Fusion power research is being funded at least $20 billion/year worldwide, and has been for over 20 years. If you can point to some concrete areas where more cash would help?
sPh
Look at ITER: $20B and rising, it will only make 500 MW(th) -- six times less thermal energy than a 1 GW(e) fission reactor -- and it doesn't even include the advanced materials needed to withstand commercial reactor levels of integrated neutron flux.
Well, that's ITER's point now isn't it? We know what is required to make fusion work, we just don't know how long we can sustain a reaction because we do not understand how the large neutron flux will affect the materials in the container and we still have difficulties maintaining the containment. It's an engineering problem now, not something that is clearly impossible.
IMHO, investments in such experiments should be expanded, by both government and industry. Just like getting a man on the moon, We need a JFK'esk commitment to making this work.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That has to be one of the most misguided ideas I've ever seen...
Worry about using deuterium and tritium being used to boost the output of a fission weapon is like worrying about whether a heavily armed maniac's getaway car can do 120mph rather than 115mph. The basic problem isn't the speed of the get away car. If a proliferator can get their hands on sufficient U235 or Pu in the first place, they're 99.99996% of the way towards their goal - the extra .00003 provided by the availability of deuterium and tritium is all but meaningless because when it comes to proliferators it's the mere fact that they have a weapon in the first place that's the problem. That they can now build two or more, or increase the yield of a single weapon simply doesn't count for much when even a low kiloton range weapon is sufficient for their needs. (Which is deterrence generally, or failing that attacks against non military area targets. They aren't trying to crack open Cheyenne Mountain.)
I find it hilarious that the supposed downside of having a future-proof source of energy is that on the unlikely occasion that a terrorist group gets their hand on plutonium, the resulting threat is going to be in the 50kt class instead of 20kt. Any larger entity most likely wouldn't have a problem with generating it for themselves anyway.
Ezekiel 23:20
isn't that an h-bomb?
We do have a functioning fusion reactor. It has about four and a half billion years left worth of fuel. It pours more energy into the earth alone than a hundred civilizations could use, to say nothing of the untapped energy it pours elsewhere.
$22bn is only 0.03 Iraq Wars, so it's really not that much money in the grand scheme of things.
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Could you read that again, please? How is there an average in there? Also, he mixed up density, temperature and energy density without blinking.
I'm not impressed.
Mostly random stuff.