Another huge problem in the US is the way power plants are billed for waste. They are charged per kWh of *electricity* produced. So there is no financial incentive to reduce waste per unit electricity being generated. Its no surprise that once through PWR are the most popular choice.
Things would look very different if they were billed per kilogram of waste produced.
I agree which is why i defined ignition in terms of plasma energy loss. I don't think they are being deliberately misleading. It is what ignition means in the field, and they probably don't get out much;). Hell they probably even explained to the reporter! However the next step is technically much easier, since the heat can come from the fusion itself rather than bigger lasers.
If/When the manage ignition it will be a big deal. It will be the first time that has been achieved without a fission trigger and in a size that allows for much easier study. Yes this does have definite applications to both current bomb stockpile stewardship, and even designing better bombs. But it also has direct application in terms of study to civilian applications.
No they didn't. We have got close, but no one has got ignition yet. Break even at the "wall" is even harder. But technically a much smaller step to take one you have achieved ignition.
You what the difference between tap water and deionized water osmotic pressure is? Its for the proposes of this discussion equivalent. We often drink the deionized water in lab. I am quite healthy.
plain old fission reactors produce neutrons up in the 10MeV range. However per unit heat output its much less than a fusion reactor. But the experience with fission materials does in fact help us. Also we have more flexibility with a fusion reactor since you don't need to worry about neutron economy.
The line of "getting more power out than we put in" for fusion in the lab was crossed decades ago..
Care to back that up. Other than nuclear bombs, there is no fusion device that has achieved ignition (which is not the same as getting more power out than you put in) that i am aware of, and i keep up with the field.
Ignition can be described as fusion energy output is higher than losses from the plasma.
Turns out the probability of just bouncing off each other in random directions is about a millions times more likely than fusion. Thats why just devices are not energy positive.
Its doesn't produce fusion either. Considering pB fusion is 2000 harder *at least* and needs 10x the heat. The system that can produce 1 watt with pB fusion could produce 2kW with DT fusion without breaking a sweat. In fact it would work wonderfully with DD fusion. You also need to believe quite a bit of BS from the founder with regards to Mega Tesla magnetic fields....and never mind that all the other dense plasma focus produce very very low yields of DD fusion thats 1000x easer than pB.
Why dose the universe need to provide a better way? We have improved heat engines quite a bit over the years.
Oh and hotter power stations use gas turbines (both open and closed, still a heat engine) and a steam bottoming cycle getting about 50% efficiency.The low level waste heat is sometimes sold to the neighboring areas for heating in some places..
Well other than orders of magnitude increase in confinement and understanding, i guess its "glacial" (compared to what? Improvments in coal burning?). The whole point of research is to find out what you already know, what you don't know, and what you need to find out. It turns out plasmas are bloody difficult to deal with and there was a lot to find out.
Our energy future need to lose this horrendously short sightedness. Its rather short sighted to assume nothing is been done just because you have no idea about the research. Its also short sighted to only consider research useful if you make money off it (now!). We are in this for the long haul, and 50-100 years to develop fusion is well worth it. A 1GW thermal power station using a 2nd gen fuel of DD, will consume just 93 kg of Deuterium fuel per year!
As for your best bet for fusion, tokamak's are still getting the best triple products. But ITER may not be the best next step. I think edge localized modes need more work and this can be done with existing machines much cheaper than ITER. Active control is getting some work now, but again this should be done properly rather than have a huge money sink like ITER swallowing the budgets.
For a dark horse bet, I would look at Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF). Notably General Electrics approach seems interesting and solves the first wall problems more or less, but there are a few groups working on it.
There have been a few other things proposed, but the bulk fall into the ITER type, the MTF type and of course the ICF type of devices.
I know people love the Buzzard polywell and Fusion Focus, but they need previous experiments to be *wrong* in order to work. The Fusion Focus at least deals with the standard issues, but really jumping straight to pB fusion when you can even demonstrate DD fusion is a bad sign.
People license stuff all the time, even standards. Mozilla needs to get over themselves and provide a way to play standard H.264 videos.
Licensing something like h264 is very different. Its not just the fee (about 5Million pa for FF popularity) its the restrictions that the contract has. Like promising to enforce DRM or not permitting redistribution. These licenses are simply not compatible with GPL 2 or 3. Since I am not free to redistribute FireFox without getting a license from MPEG-LA.
And proving a H.264 *content* will require licenses after 2010. Have fun with that
In the EU a bank account number works pretty good-Direct transfer with no fees. I would donate to account. But i don't use paypal. So they loose my donation, as does any OS software I use that has only paypal.
/. is anything but a scientific-method minded folks... more like a truthiness-mined folk, and often quite uneducated/ignorant in fields that they comment on.;)
And what does faith have to do with science anyway? I mean everyone knows we are just in a big simulation run by aliens and we only get to have a sentient existence outside this simulated universe when a large enough number of the simulated sentient forms believe...
Slashdot Mirror
Another huge problem in the US is the way power plants are billed for waste. They are charged per kWh of *electricity* produced. So there is no financial incentive to reduce waste per unit electricity being generated. Its no surprise that once through PWR are the most popular choice.
Things would look very different if they were billed per kilogram of waste produced.
I agree which is why i defined ignition in terms of plasma energy loss. I don't think they are being deliberately misleading. It is what ignition means in the field, and they probably don't get out much ;). Hell they probably even explained to the reporter! However the next step is technically much easier, since the heat can come from the fusion itself rather than bigger lasers.
If/When the manage ignition it will be a big deal. It will be the first time that has been achieved without a fission trigger and in a size that allows for much easier study. Yes this does have definite applications to both current bomb stockpile stewardship, and even designing better bombs. But it also has direct application in terms of study to civilian applications.
No they didn't. We have got close, but no one has got ignition yet. Break even at the "wall" is even harder. But technically a much smaller step to take one you have achieved ignition.
I wish you where wrong... but again the lawyers win! Also a huge cost is compliance, that has little to do with improved safety of otherwise...
You what the difference between tap water and deionized water osmotic pressure is? Its for the proposes of this discussion equivalent. We often drink the deionized water in lab. I am quite healthy.
We drink it all the time in the lab. And we are not even crazy scientists.
"Money is sign of poverty", The Culture.
Ignition is roughly the case where fusion power is larger than losses. So the plasma will heat up with fusion power alone.
plain old fission reactors produce neutrons up in the 10MeV range. However per unit heat output its much less than a fusion reactor. But the experience with fission materials does in fact help us. Also we have more flexibility with a fusion reactor since you don't need to worry about neutron economy.
Your leaving out that a reactor will bread tritium.
Fusion is easy. Fusion with energy gain is hard.
The line of "getting more power out than we put in" for fusion in the lab was crossed decades ago..
Care to back that up. Other than nuclear bombs, there is no fusion device that has achieved ignition (which is not the same as getting more power out than you put in) that i am aware of, and i keep up with the field.
Ignition can be described as fusion energy output is higher than losses from the plasma.
This one is not actually that wild. It uses a thermal plasma and doesn't need black magic to work as some do (aka polywell).
Turns out the probability of just bouncing off each other in random directions is about a millions times more likely than fusion. Thats why just devices are not energy positive.
Its doesn't produce fusion either. Considering pB fusion is 2000 harder *at least* and needs 10x the heat. The system that can produce 1 watt with pB fusion could produce 2kW with DT fusion without breaking a sweat. In fact it would work wonderfully with DD fusion. You also need to believe quite a bit of BS from the founder with regards to Mega Tesla magnetic fields....and never mind that all the other dense plasma focus produce very very low yields of DD fusion thats 1000x easer than pB.
There HAS to be a better way.
Why dose the universe need to provide a better way? We have improved heat engines quite a bit over the years.
Oh and hotter power stations use gas turbines (both open and closed, still a heat engine) and a steam bottoming cycle getting about 50% efficiency.The low level waste heat is sometimes sold to the neighboring areas for heating in some places..
..horrendously glacial pace of fusion research...
Well other than orders of magnitude increase in confinement and understanding, i guess its "glacial" (compared to what? Improvments in coal burning?). The whole point of research is to find out what you already know, what you don't know, and what you need to find out. It turns out plasmas are bloody difficult to deal with and there was a lot to find out.
Our energy future need to lose this horrendously short sightedness. Its rather short sighted to assume nothing is been done just because you have no idea about the research. Its also short sighted to only consider research useful if you make money off it (now!). We are in this for the long haul, and 50-100 years to develop fusion is well worth it. A 1GW thermal power station using a 2nd gen fuel of DD, will consume just 93 kg of Deuterium fuel per year!
As for your best bet for fusion, tokamak's are still getting the best triple products. But ITER may not be the best next step. I think edge localized modes need more work and this can be done with existing machines much cheaper than ITER. Active control is getting some work now, but again this should be done properly rather than have a huge money sink like ITER swallowing the budgets.
For a dark horse bet, I would look at Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF). Notably General Electrics approach seems interesting and solves the first wall problems more or less, but there are a few groups working on it.
There have been a few other things proposed, but the bulk fall into the ITER type, the MTF type and of course the ICF type of devices.
I know people love the Buzzard polywell and Fusion Focus, but they need previous experiments to be *wrong* in order to work. The Fusion Focus at least deals with the standard issues, but really jumping straight to pB fusion when you can even demonstrate DD fusion is a bad sign.
I expect that steam will start to deprecate games that are not longer "worth it". Then we will say to all the steam fans, "told you so".
Why not just mirror the page somewhere else?
They can't pay the license. MPEG-LA will not provide a license that is GPL compatible at any price.
Apple has patents that covers h264 (aka its in the MPEG-LA portfolio). So of course they want to see h264 as the standard.
With software patents there is no such thing as free from patent risk. Both mepg2 and h264 have had litigation threats......
People license stuff all the time, even standards. Mozilla needs to get over themselves and provide a way to play standard H.264 videos.
Licensing something like h264 is very different. Its not just the fee (about 5Million pa for FF popularity) its the restrictions that the contract has. Like promising to enforce DRM or not permitting redistribution. These licenses are simply not compatible with GPL 2 or 3. Since I am not free to redistribute FireFox without getting a license from MPEG-LA.
And proving a H.264 *content* will require licenses after 2010. Have fun with that
In the EU a bank account number works pretty good-Direct transfer with no fees. I would donate to account. But i don't use paypal. So they loose my donation, as does any OS software I use that has only paypal.
/. is anything but a scientific-method minded folks... more like a truthiness-mined folk, and often quite uneducated/ignorant in fields that they comment on. ;)
And what does faith have to do with science anyway? I mean everyone knows we are just in a big simulation run by aliens and we only get to have a sentient existence outside this simulated universe when a large enough number of the simulated sentient forms believe...