What you say is evident and there is nothing in my post saying otherwise. I was plainly highlighting what I considered beyond gross negligence and the fact that I found kind of curious that a company was openly recognising it. No critic, no attack, no complain, no doubts on any front; just a mere humorous and in-principle-easier-for-everyone-to-understand observation, which has been proven as more confusing and misunderstanding-prone than what I was expecting.
I have never worked on a manufacturing environment, but my impression is that random workers freely using the products to be sold is an unlikely scenario. The only logical way for the infection would be via corporate software, from IBM or from a contractor. I also assume that the software is being treated very carefully as far as it is used in many machines and even the slightest problem might become too relevant. Additionally, the whole process is likely to be closely controlled/tracked and all the people/companies involved are completely aware of that (who would consciously take the risk of infecting the machines by knowing that they will probably get caught?).
I might be overlooking many things but my impression is that having any piece of malware near a ready-to-be-sold unit is beyond standard negligence, because it implies mistakes at different levels. I am not trying to attack IBM, but just to justify why I found the announcement so brave; not the kind of thing that a big company usually does.
PS: your nick, the grumpy part, is descriptive of your personality, right? Would you mind to avoid dealing with me, misinterpret my actions and randomly getting angry with anything I do or say as being related to you at all? There are lots of people here and I am sure that many of them would enjoy all what you deliver, but I don't think that I do. Become my foe if that makes you happy (yesterday, I got my first one!).
Are you suggesting that IBM created the Reconyc Trojan that's been circulating in the wild for half a decade? Or are you just demonstrating that you didn't bother reading the article before making blatantly false accusations?
I am clearly not. This was a funny (at least, this was my intention; some people here have a quite different than me sense of humour) way to illustrate the differences between having an innocent error, having an error with high negligence and having an error with much more than high negligence (why were they dealing with malware in the products to be sold?). Hopefully, now everything is quite clear.
I am all for honesty and companies recognising their mistakes. I also consider myself very honest and good-faith-driven, but don't know if I would have been able to recognise a "mistake" like this.
1. Food company saying that some drinks might be poisonous. Error.
2. Food company saying that some drinks might contain ebola. Error + many questions.
3. Food company saying that some drinks might contain a rare disease which they have created in-house. Seriously?
I have got my first Slashdot foe (one of the ACs replying to some of my comments here?)! There are only two major milestones left for me to become a proper Slashdot member: being mentioned in a conversation where I am not participating by a person not knowing me at all; and (by reaching the Slashdot's Olympus) someone creating a nickname after me! For anyone planning to do so now or in the near feature, here you have some suggestions: "CustomSolvers2IsAnIdiot", "ThisAlvaroGuyIsAFuckingMoron", "VarocarbasIsDumbAsARock" (someone creating a nickname after me by following one my suggestions would be the Olympus of the Olympus!).
Seriously now: I always try to not offend anyone and to not get involved in faith-based discussions not heading anywhere. That's why I don't want to take part in certain threads. Look at this one! So many comments! So many misunderstandings! So many people getting offended (even though this was a very mild version of my opinions!)! Warning for anyone interested in knowing a bit more about me and about my probable reaction in certain situations: I don't want to waste my time on what I consider useless like too evident stuff or people not willing to adequately understand, but will never agree on what I don't consider right either. I will try to avoid threads/people likely to provoke situations on these lines, although without ever being afraid of anyone/anything and much less of ignorance/fanaticism. Please, understand this warning as per my intention: providing some valuable information for self-conscious and reasonable people applying live-and-let-live ideas who aren’t interested in getting involved in not-beneficial-to-anyone situations.
Erm, I read the article just not in depths. So I have to contradict you, it looks very promising for a sustained reaction. Not sure if it would be net positive so.
Thanks for the info, but I am not interested. Although I try to be a reasonable person, not fanatically-believing-in-anything and ready to be proven wrong as many times as required, I think that I will pass on this one. The sole intention of my comments here was to clarify some aspects which might not be too clear to some people, but I don't want to get involved in certain discussions (+ reading about certain issues). In fact, this will be most likely the last Slashdot fusion-related thread in which I will participate.
Sure, if there's less of it. Fusion reactors operate at conditions best described as a very good vacuum.
OK. Let me try one last time and I am done with all this let's-talk-say-random-nonsense-about-basic-physics. Heat is a form of energy and the energy is the result of a variation which, when talking about thermal aspects, is a temperature variation. If you do a quick research about heat you would see how all the formulae depend upon either temperature (direct relationship with the temperature variation; meaning that the higher the temperature increase, the higher the generated energy) or other form of energy (which might be ultimately converted into heat and, consequently, into the aforementioned temperature-based formula). What all this means that heat is precisely defined by a variation of temperature or, in other words, without a temperature variation (= having something hotter/colder) there will be no heat. In summary and by adequately understanding my not too precise first statement (where I didn't mention mass/density), under equivalent conditions a higher temperature would imply a higher generation of heat/energy.
I'm sorry you find all of this so difficult to believe, but there's plenty of resources on the 'net you can read on the topic.
To believe what? I am an engineer with a very solid background in physics (learned in the university, through personal research and in my work; curiously, I specialised in energy/nuclear engineering when studying for my MEng). I don't need to believe in anything/anyone when talking about physics, I know or I don't know (in that case, I try to know it). Here, I know enough to not need any further literature on this specific implementation or in equivalent ones; I certainly don't require any kind of support to understand basic physics.
I've written extensively on fusion technologies, and you've probably read some of those articles (assuming you've read any).
That explains quite a few things. No, I am sure that I didn't read any of your articlest.
So go ahead, tell me all about how wrong I am...
After reading my other posts you should be able to easily understand my position regarding fusion power/research/work and also why answering this is kind of uncomfortable to me. Bear in mind that I am a kind of person who prefers to live and let live; don't need to convince you of anything (at least, not here and now where I don't see what would be the benefit/prejudice for anyone). Why not focusing on dealing with compatible-with-us people:)
Evidently they are simply non comparable. The heat stored on sea is orders upon orders of magnitude bigger than that of a burning match despite its much lower temperature so, your point is?
What?!
"The heat (= energy) generated by a plasma at millions of degrees is much higher than what would be generated by the heat source of a conventional power plant (around 100 degrees);"
That's so obviously false it hurts. I can produce plasma in my backyard using, say, a Fansworth fusor but you can bet I can't produce a Terawatt by boiling water as lots of power plants can.
Although my original statement wasn't too accurate, any properly-understanding (not your case right?) person with a basic knowledge (neither) should be able to get my intention right. Logically, the associated mass has lots to say there. I meant under equivalent conditions: same mass via fusion requiring a much higher temperature would generated much more energy/heat than the same mass under the conventional 100 temperatures. This was pretty evident, but I was trying to address the claims of the other guy (your pal?).
Sorry, man, but after reading some of your messages on this thread and despite you not being conscious of it, you are talking about things that are miles above your head.
Do you know the most ironic part of this? You are the one who isn't in the right place. Your knowledge and understanding capabilities seem so low that I cannot even believe that I have answered your whole post (I was really close to stop reading right after your first sentence). Please, don't bother me anymore.
Perhaps you are right. I was trying to keep my ideas as abstract as possible without coming into specific implementations. And generally speaking, the main problem of fusion is the huge temperatures which are required. This is something which will remain no matter what and independently upon your approach to the problem: the only way to fuse atoms is by increasing their temperatures a lot. Additionally, you want self-sustaining chain reactions, what means that the high temperatures have to be kept high enough for all the involved atoms (= the plasma). You can play with that reality as much as you want to come up with the most adequate way to get what is expected, but the huge-temperatures will always be an issue. This was my point.
objection to high temperature being dangerous is preposterous
I also think that high temperature is the main problem here. In fact, this aspect is what explains the design of the fusion reactors so far, including the problems you are referring (not intrinsically associated with the fusion concept, but the attempted implementations precisely concerned about the high-temperature problems).
High temperatures is the most important problem with nuclear-fusion electricity generation and what explains the tremendous difficulties associated with this approach. If some implementations have converted this into a somehow secondary concern, it has been via creating other problems. In any case, an equipment able to generate the high temperatures and to confine the plasma (both issues being a direct consequence of the high-temperature requirements) will always be required and just this fact provokes many problems like lack of adaptability.
In any case, it seems better to not forget that there hasn't been yet a single operative nuclear-fusion power plant and, consequently, all the theories so far regarding how to proceed might not even be the best ones. So, rather than focusing on very specific problems of very specific (failing) approaches, it might be better to keep looking at the big picture as defined by the simple: you have to deal with a high-temperature mass, but are only interested in a small fraction of the associated heat.
Thanks for helping me see the light! Because something changed once, everything might change! Everything is possible! Everything might be right or wrong just because of whatever! You are right! (Is it required? pfff... Sarcasm!!).
Remind a lot what was said of computers in the '60...
Yes, because the space requirements of power plants and, mainly, of the equipment required to reach millions of degrees is likely to shrink by orders of magnitude within the next few years. Because what applies to electronics and computer chips applies to everything else. Because there is a huge probability of finding ways to allow smaller masses to release equivalent amounts of energy. Sorry for not having realised about all this before! (Sarcasm)
You understand that temperature and heat are two different things, right?
Evidently, I do. In which part of any of my comments isn't this point clear? (Because I guess that my reference to powering a time-machine with love was clearly understood as a joke. Yes, I know, I should explain every not extremely evident reference on the same spot, but what can I say? Some times I do make the terrible mistake of trusting in people's proper understanding).
Fusion takes place at high *temperatures*, but the *heat* loads are about the same as fission. That should not be surprising given that it outputs about the same amount of *power* (the rate of energy).
Are you saying that the heat generated by millions of degree temperature is the same than the one generated by about 100 degree?! Evidently, they are not. It seems that the only one with problems to understand heat/temperature (and quite a few other basic concepts) is you. The heat (= energy) generated by a plasma at millions of degrees is much higher than what would be generated by the heat source of a conventional power plant (around 100 degrees); but, as explained in some of comments, all this energy cannot be directly used, that's why the temperature would have to be highly decreased (= lots of heat/energy would be lost in the process) to reach a level which might output actually usable energy, for example, via boiling water.
I will try an easier summary for you (and for any other equally-confused person feeling like wasting my time with nonsense): all your abstract words have no real meaning when talking about comparing fusion-nuclear power to any other way in which a power plant generates electricity. Roughly speaking, you have a source of heat + a conversion of this heat into mechanical energy (e.g., via boiling water which is converted into steam which moves a turbine which moves an electricity generator); and all the fusion research is exclusively focused on having a source of heat ready!! Nothing else! There is no conversion to mechanical energy (nobody has ever worked on that part because nobody has completed the first step yet) and, consequently, no electricity is generated, what means no power to measure/compare against what a conventional power plant does. Any claim of a fusion reaction delivering x GW has nothing to do with what a power plant does and it can only be compared with other outputs under equivalent conditions (e.g., other fusion reactor). Nobody knows the electricity/electrical power that a fusion reaction might generate because nobody has ever created such a thing; they are still stuck in the first step of creating a stable source of heat (whose power will have to be highly reduced to ever become usable anyway).
Small fusion is not a violation of nuclear physics. It's just we have no clue how to do it yet.
The minimum mass size is also an issue but this wasn't my point. I meant all the equipment and conditions which are required to reach the target temperatures. With fission you just need fissionable material, proper isolation and throwing some particles to start the process. With fusion you need the material to reach very high temperatures, what requires a relevant amount of additional equipment (to increase/maintain the temperature and to isolate the plasma) and stable enough conditions.
temperature is high, energy density is low. There's no danger of the plasma melting anything.
These are just experimental implementations (almost trial-and-error) to accomplish certain goal: using the residual heat generated by chain reactions of atoms being fused, a process which requires tremendously high temperatures to be started. Any version of nuclear fusion will always be associated with those temperatures and, consequently, with a huge risk.
You said in your previous post: we started with fission because it is 'easier, safer and cheaper'.
I meant the most likely requirements to accomplish the intended goals, not plants because there are none. Anyway, this was just a secondary clarification.
Well, I only glanced over the article, but it looks like they are pretty close to have a long running probably even net positive fusion reaction soon. I wonder how their design differs from ITER.
I haven't read the article either, but have read quite a few ones before and am quite sure about what they have: nothing. They can keep the plasma for a short while (if you want to emulate what a power plant can deliver, the target performance would be months non-stop) and nothing else.
We are still very far from having a fusion power plant (most likely, it will never happen). The more serious and better funded attempt is ITER, so the best way to get a proper idea about what to expect from all this is to take a look at them (+ at the multiple delays which they will be having during the next years until reaching the probable outcome of running out of funding/credibility).
I do agree with most of your post except for that starting part which includes a pretty arbitrary reference. "Programmer" is a quite generic label which applies to a wide variety of people with different backgrounds and expectations. I am a programmer myself, but I am also a mechanical engineer and a very practical guy. Also I haven't ever seen the kind of big salaries and ideal conditions about which I read here or in other sites.
I think that you meant "programmers living in a bubble of ignorance because of having learned/experienced a few things in their lives but who, due to the perhaps-not-completely-motivated relevance of their environment, seriously think that the conclusions outputted by their limited understanding of virtually any situation are much more accurate than what they really are". It is also called (unaware) ignorance, living in a bubble/in denial or even stupidity.
This doesn't happen just with programming, but almost everywhere. Some people complain about non-technical CEO/managers, others about VCs, others about rich people, others about theoretical physicists, others about rednecks, etc. All those are just specific conditions under which the aforementioned attitudes are likely to appear, but the underlying reality is always the same: pure and simple ignorance exclusively associated with the given person.
What exactly makes a fission plant safer than a fusion plant?
Firstly, I didn't use those words, mainly because no actual fusion plant has ever been built and I am not the kind of person who likes throwing blind guesses at what doesn't exist. But by assuming that fusion power will ever exist under the current expectations, it would likely be much unsafer than fission because of this having-your-own-sun requirement (you know? Dealing with temperatures able to immediately melt any existing material for long periods of time is the kind of situation which I consider quite dangerous). Even despite not being pro-fission and thinking that it is a quite dirty alternative, I do consider it acceptably safe. In case of assuming equivalent requirements, fusion power would have to go through its whole evolution (+ 50 years + lots of problems) to reach a stage of equivalent safety. But fusion requirements (again: dealing with sun-like temperatures) sound intrinsically much more dangerous to me than fission ones and that's why I assume that an actually working fusion plant would be much unsafer than a fission one.
Eventually fusion will have a role in special applications
A magic wand would also be useful there. Unfortunately, the transition from dreaming about an ideal solution and actually creating such a solution is quite difficult or even completely/practically impossible.
In any case, if you want to go deeper into elucubrations about the possible applications of what doesn't exist (and perhaps will never do), you should bring both positive and negative issues into account. For example, even by assuming that you are able to safely generate electricity from fusion power, you should bear in mind all the problems which that alternative will always provoke. Even in an ideal scenario, it will have to be used under very specific conditions (we are talking about sun-like temperatures!!! Something extremely dangerous whose confinement will certainly imply lots of constraints on many fronts). So, forget about putting all this in a spaceship or creating a portable device which you might bring anywhere. It will require extremely-expensive, huge, non-moveable facilities under constant surveillance and located in very specific areas. A particle accelerator or the whole CERN probably represent the best present-day examples of how an eventual fusion power plant might look like.
Fission power is much more adaptable than what the fusion power would ever be: on one hand, you have some dangerous materials which only need to be adequately contained; on the other hand, you have theoretically-much-less-dangerous materials but needing crazily high temperatures, what can only be generated with very expensive and complex equipment under very specific conditions. There is a very good reason why we first tried fission power: it is orders of magnitude easier, safer, more certain, controllable and adaptable than what fusion power will ever become; it is dealing with dangerous stuff vs. dealing with a whole sun!!
The problem for basically every source of energy is that renewables are cheap and growing rapidly, and so is storage. It's very hard to compete with that.
Why do you complain about objectively better alternatives outputting better results? Why do you think that you have to invest lots of money in something when you can get the same for a fraction of that? To accomplish a dream of someone? Even though that dream might be a pure nonsense and/or extremely dangerous (another very important issue: we will not know the real problems of fusion until after having suffered them; exactly the same than happened with fission, originally also assumed to be a magic wand expected to solve everything, and with any other innovation ever)? What you want is a cheaper way to generate cleaner energy, not to make something happen no matter what. If renewables are cheaper and easier why don't you spend all the planned-in-fusion huge amounts of money on them? Why not over-optimising what certainly works or adapting your needs to what you can get rather than pursuing the magic-wand solution? Or what is even worse: why complaining about the most practical alternatives to be much more affordable than the magic-wand research and seeing that as an excuse to continue their unmotivated over-funding?
Sorry to blow your bubble but, until this moment, there is only one good reason for continuing the tremendously-expensive-and-far-from-practical research on fusion energy: supporting theoretical/dreamy/other expectations for whatever reason, where practical and objective concerns are being (not sure if consciously) plainly ignored.
Whether it produces more energy out than it takes to maintain tells you it can run.
After all that, it proves it's commercially viable.
Your abstract words seem to be assuming many premises which aren’t still there. Bear in mind that all what they (+ and all the fusion-power research since quite a few years ago) are doing is plainly working on getting a stable- and controllable-enough source of heat (= the first input of any thermodynamic cycle).
After making the aforementioned preliminary step work (if possible at all under the current technology/budget/expectations), they will have to come up with a reliable way to convert that stable source of heat into electricity. In principle, they should be relying on the typical thermal-power-plants approach which basically consists in using that heat source to boil water (which moves a turbine coupled with an electricity generator). The problem here is that the ranges of temperatures of the heat sources in conventional power plants (including nuclear-fission ones) are very similar to the target 100 degree and they don't have to deal with the "tiny" issue of hugely decreasing the temperature. So, even after being able to reach a stage where they can get plasma reliably and securely, they will still have to work a lot in order to actually generate electricity from all that heat. To not mention the small detail that power plants are expected to deliver stable loads during months, what forces any replacing alternative to deliver something equivalent.
In summary, your "commercially viable" actually means "making work something extremely complex and expensive which has never been accomplished before, under very demanding conditions and whose exact motivation isn't completely clear as far as many other much simpler alternatives can do the same".
... but it is a quite good reason to assume certain basic knowledge and attitude. On the other hand, thinking that a specific degree provides all or most of the required knowledge to perform a given work is far from being true; even pure nonsense when talking about highly specialised positions. A misconception which only seems possible in people with low-to-no actual experience in the given work.
I have worked with computer-engineering recent graduates who weren't able to do virtually anything (or a few things under very specific conditions). Even after working for quite a few years under not too demanding conditions, a person with a CS degree might be a bad programmer. Same ideas apply to virtually any field, like mechanical/industrial engineering (what I studied at university): actual work experience is the most relevant factor.
Personally, I do prefer to work with university-degree holders (in a technical/scientific/engineering field), but am also sure that just the degree isn't a relevant factor to adequately assess the software development skills and related issues (i.e., learning capability, adaptability, working attitude, etc.). For senior/highly-specialised positions, the actual work experience/outputs and attitude (+ hiring people being able to adequately assess them) are almost everything.
As far as many people aren't just talking about their first languages, I clarify that I currently don't use much any of the aforementioned ones. Most of my programming work since various years ago has been focused on.NET (C# & VB.NET desktop and web), PHP (a bit of JavaScript), VBA/Office macros, VB6, Java, some C-based (a bit of C, a bit of Perl, a bit of C++, etc.), etc.
In fact, using a given programming language isn't precisely a problem to me because of my experience (+ being quite good at learning); and, mainly, because most of my work is focused on efficiency-concerned algorithms and I rarely use too fancy programming features, what makes most of my code quite similar in different languages (loops, conditions, methods, basic collections, some not-too-complex lambdas, etc.).
Ah memories...late night coding sessions in the old college computer lab. Those were the days.:)
Our lives are inversely related: I am currently doing the long coding sessions; at college, I wasn't too much into programming (although always liked it). BTW, my first Basic experiences weren't actual programming not just because of being a crappy language, but also because of really not doing anything relevant (even before high school with a cassette Sinclair Spectrum).
Slashdot Mirror
What you say is evident and there is nothing in my post saying otherwise. I was plainly highlighting what I considered beyond gross negligence and the fact that I found kind of curious that a company was openly recognising it. No critic, no attack, no complain, no doubts on any front; just a mere humorous and in-principle-easier-for-everyone-to-understand observation, which has been proven as more confusing and misunderstanding-prone than what I was expecting.
I have never worked on a manufacturing environment, but my impression is that random workers freely using the products to be sold is an unlikely scenario. The only logical way for the infection would be via corporate software, from IBM or from a contractor. I also assume that the software is being treated very carefully as far as it is used in many machines and even the slightest problem might become too relevant. Additionally, the whole process is likely to be closely controlled/tracked and all the people/companies involved are completely aware of that (who would consciously take the risk of infecting the machines by knowing that they will probably get caught?).
I might be overlooking many things but my impression is that having any piece of malware near a ready-to-be-sold unit is beyond standard negligence, because it implies mistakes at different levels. I am not trying to attack IBM, but just to justify why I found the announcement so brave; not the kind of thing that a big company usually does.
PS: your nick, the grumpy part, is descriptive of your personality, right? Would you mind to avoid dealing with me, misinterpret my actions and randomly getting angry with anything I do or say as being related to you at all? There are lots of people here and I am sure that many of them would enjoy all what you deliver, but I don't think that I do. Become my foe if that makes you happy (yesterday, I got my first one!).
Are you suggesting that IBM created the Reconyc Trojan that's been circulating in the wild for half a decade? Or are you just demonstrating that you didn't bother reading the article before making blatantly false accusations?
I am clearly not. This was a funny (at least, this was my intention; some people here have a quite different than me sense of humour) way to illustrate the differences between having an innocent error, having an error with high negligence and having an error with much more than high negligence (why were they dealing with malware in the products to be sold?). Hopefully, now everything is quite clear.
I am all for honesty and companies recognising their mistakes. I also consider myself very honest and good-faith-driven, but don't know if I would have been able to recognise a "mistake" like this.
1. Food company saying that some drinks might be poisonous. Error.
2. Food company saying that some drinks might contain ebola. Error + many questions.
3. Food company saying that some drinks might contain a rare disease which they have created in-house. Seriously?
I have got my first Slashdot foe (one of the ACs replying to some of my comments here?)! There are only two major milestones left for me to become a proper Slashdot member: being mentioned in a conversation where I am not participating by a person not knowing me at all; and (by reaching the Slashdot's Olympus) someone creating a nickname after me! For anyone planning to do so now or in the near feature, here you have some suggestions: "CustomSolvers2IsAnIdiot", "ThisAlvaroGuyIsAFuckingMoron", "VarocarbasIsDumbAsARock" (someone creating a nickname after me by following one my suggestions would be the Olympus of the Olympus!).
Seriously now: I always try to not offend anyone and to not get involved in faith-based discussions not heading anywhere. That's why I don't want to take part in certain threads. Look at this one! So many comments! So many misunderstandings! So many people getting offended (even though this was a very mild version of my opinions!)! Warning for anyone interested in knowing a bit more about me and about my probable reaction in certain situations: I don't want to waste my time on what I consider useless like too evident stuff or people not willing to adequately understand, but will never agree on what I don't consider right either. I will try to avoid threads/people likely to provoke situations on these lines, although without ever being afraid of anyone/anything and much less of ignorance/fanaticism. Please, understand this warning as per my intention: providing some valuable information for self-conscious and reasonable people applying live-and-let-live ideas who aren’t interested in getting involved in not-beneficial-to-anyone situations.
Erm, I read the article just not in depths. So I have to contradict you, it looks very promising for a sustained reaction. Not sure if it would be net positive so.
Thanks for the info, but I am not interested. Although I try to be a reasonable person, not fanatically-believing-in-anything and ready to be proven wrong as many times as required, I think that I will pass on this one. The sole intention of my comments here was to clarify some aspects which might not be too clear to some people, but I don't want to get involved in certain discussions (+ reading about certain issues). In fact, this will be most likely the last Slashdot fusion-related thread in which I will participate.
Sure, if there's less of it. Fusion reactors operate at conditions best described as a very good vacuum.
OK. Let me try one last time and I am done with all this let's-talk-say-random-nonsense-about-basic-physics. Heat is a form of energy and the energy is the result of a variation which, when talking about thermal aspects, is a temperature variation. If you do a quick research about heat you would see how all the formulae depend upon either temperature (direct relationship with the temperature variation; meaning that the higher the temperature increase, the higher the generated energy) or other form of energy (which might be ultimately converted into heat and, consequently, into the aforementioned temperature-based formula). What all this means that heat is precisely defined by a variation of temperature or, in other words, without a temperature variation (= having something hotter/colder) there will be no heat. In summary and by adequately understanding my not too precise first statement (where I didn't mention mass/density), under equivalent conditions a higher temperature would imply a higher generation of heat/energy.
I'm sorry you find all of this so difficult to believe, but there's plenty of resources on the 'net you can read on the topic.
To believe what? I am an engineer with a very solid background in physics (learned in the university, through personal research and in my work; curiously, I specialised in energy/nuclear engineering when studying for my MEng). I don't need to believe in anything/anyone when talking about physics, I know or I don't know (in that case, I try to know it). Here, I know enough to not need any further literature on this specific implementation or in equivalent ones; I certainly don't require any kind of support to understand basic physics.
I've written extensively on fusion technologies, and you've probably read some of those articles (assuming you've read any).
That explains quite a few things. No, I am sure that I didn't read any of your articlest.
So go ahead, tell me all about how wrong I am...
After reading my other posts you should be able to easily understand my position regarding fusion power/research/work and also why answering this is kind of uncomfortable to me. Bear in mind that I am a kind of person who prefers to live and let live; don't need to convince you of anything (at least, not here and now where I don't see what would be the benefit/prejudice for anyone). Why not focusing on dealing with compatible-with-us people :)
Evidently they are simply non comparable. The heat stored on sea is orders upon orders of magnitude bigger than that of a burning match despite its much lower temperature so, your point is?
What?!
"The heat (= energy) generated by a plasma at millions of degrees is much higher than what would be generated by the heat source of a conventional power plant (around 100 degrees);" That's so obviously false it hurts. I can produce plasma in my backyard using, say, a Fansworth fusor but you can bet I can't produce a Terawatt by boiling water as lots of power plants can.
Although my original statement wasn't too accurate, any properly-understanding (not your case right?) person with a basic knowledge (neither) should be able to get my intention right. Logically, the associated mass has lots to say there. I meant under equivalent conditions: same mass via fusion requiring a much higher temperature would generated much more energy/heat than the same mass under the conventional 100 temperatures. This was pretty evident, but I was trying to address the claims of the other guy (your pal?).
Sorry, man, but after reading some of your messages on this thread and despite you not being conscious of it, you are talking about things that are miles above your head.
Do you know the most ironic part of this? You are the one who isn't in the right place. Your knowledge and understanding capabilities seem so low that I cannot even believe that I have answered your whole post (I was really close to stop reading right after your first sentence). Please, don't bother me anymore.
This is misleading.
Perhaps you are right. I was trying to keep my ideas as abstract as possible without coming into specific implementations. And generally speaking, the main problem of fusion is the huge temperatures which are required. This is something which will remain no matter what and independently upon your approach to the problem: the only way to fuse atoms is by increasing their temperatures a lot. Additionally, you want self-sustaining chain reactions, what means that the high temperatures have to be kept high enough for all the involved atoms (= the plasma). You can play with that reality as much as you want to come up with the most adequate way to get what is expected, but the huge-temperatures will always be an issue. This was my point.
objection to high temperature being dangerous is preposterous
I also think that high temperature is the main problem here. In fact, this aspect is what explains the design of the fusion reactors so far, including the problems you are referring (not intrinsically associated with the fusion concept, but the attempted implementations precisely concerned about the high-temperature problems).
High temperatures is the most important problem with nuclear-fusion electricity generation and what explains the tremendous difficulties associated with this approach. If some implementations have converted this into a somehow secondary concern, it has been via creating other problems. In any case, an equipment able to generate the high temperatures and to confine the plasma (both issues being a direct consequence of the high-temperature requirements) will always be required and just this fact provokes many problems like lack of adaptability.
In any case, it seems better to not forget that there hasn't been yet a single operative nuclear-fusion power plant and, consequently, all the theories so far regarding how to proceed might not even be the best ones. So, rather than focusing on very specific problems of very specific (failing) approaches, it might be better to keep looking at the big picture as defined by the simple: you have to deal with a high-temperature mass, but are only interested in a small fraction of the associated heat.
Thanks for helping me see the light! Because something changed once, everything might change! Everything is possible! Everything might be right or wrong just because of whatever! You are right! (Is it required? pfff... Sarcasm!!).
Remind a lot what was said of computers in the '60...
Yes, because the space requirements of power plants and, mainly, of the equipment required to reach millions of degrees is likely to shrink by orders of magnitude within the next few years. Because what applies to electronics and computer chips applies to everything else. Because there is a huge probability of finding ways to allow smaller masses to release equivalent amounts of energy. Sorry for not having realised about all this before! (Sarcasm)
You understand that temperature and heat are two different things, right?
Evidently, I do. In which part of any of my comments isn't this point clear? (Because I guess that my reference to powering a time-machine with love was clearly understood as a joke. Yes, I know, I should explain every not extremely evident reference on the same spot, but what can I say? Some times I do make the terrible mistake of trusting in people's proper understanding).
Fusion takes place at high *temperatures*, but the *heat* loads are about the same as fission. That should not be surprising given that it outputs about the same amount of *power* (the rate of energy).
Are you saying that the heat generated by millions of degree temperature is the same than the one generated by about 100 degree?! Evidently, they are not. It seems that the only one with problems to understand heat/temperature (and quite a few other basic concepts) is you. The heat (= energy) generated by a plasma at millions of degrees is much higher than what would be generated by the heat source of a conventional power plant (around 100 degrees); but, as explained in some of comments, all this energy cannot be directly used, that's why the temperature would have to be highly decreased (= lots of heat/energy would be lost in the process) to reach a level which might output actually usable energy, for example, via boiling water.
I will try an easier summary for you (and for any other equally-confused person feeling like wasting my time with nonsense): all your abstract words have no real meaning when talking about comparing fusion-nuclear power to any other way in which a power plant generates electricity. Roughly speaking, you have a source of heat + a conversion of this heat into mechanical energy (e.g., via boiling water which is converted into steam which moves a turbine which moves an electricity generator); and all the fusion research is exclusively focused on having a source of heat ready!! Nothing else! There is no conversion to mechanical energy (nobody has ever worked on that part because nobody has completed the first step yet) and, consequently, no electricity is generated, what means no power to measure/compare against what a conventional power plant does. Any claim of a fusion reaction delivering x GW has nothing to do with what a power plant does and it can only be compared with other outputs under equivalent conditions (e.g., other fusion reactor). Nobody knows the electricity/electrical power that a fusion reaction might generate because nobody has ever created such a thing; they are still stuck in the first step of creating a stable source of heat (whose power will have to be highly reduced to ever become usable anyway).
Small fusion is not a violation of nuclear physics. It's just we have no clue how to do it yet.
The minimum mass size is also an issue but this wasn't my point. I meant all the equipment and conditions which are required to reach the target temperatures. With fission you just need fissionable material, proper isolation and throwing some particles to start the process. With fusion you need the material to reach very high temperatures, what requires a relevant amount of additional equipment (to increase/maintain the temperature and to isolate the plasma) and stable enough conditions.
So just to be clear, you don't think fusion powered warp drive time traveling 3D printers are possible?
Of course not! All my time-travelling 3D-printed warp drives are powered with love.
temperature is high, energy density is low. There's no danger of the plasma melting anything.
These are just experimental implementations (almost trial-and-error) to accomplish certain goal: using the residual heat generated by chain reactions of atoms being fused, a process which requires tremendously high temperatures to be started. Any version of nuclear fusion will always be associated with those temperatures and, consequently, with a huge risk.
You said in your previous post: we started with fission because it is 'easier, safer and cheaper'.
I meant the most likely requirements to accomplish the intended goals, not plants because there are none. Anyway, this was just a secondary clarification.
Well, I only glanced over the article, but it looks like they are pretty close to have a long running probably even net positive fusion reaction soon. I wonder how their design differs from ITER.
I haven't read the article either, but have read quite a few ones before and am quite sure about what they have: nothing. They can keep the plasma for a short while (if you want to emulate what a power plant can deliver, the target performance would be months non-stop) and nothing else.
We are still very far from having a fusion power plant (most likely, it will never happen). The more serious and better funded attempt is ITER, so the best way to get a proper idea about what to expect from all this is to take a look at them (+ at the multiple delays which they will be having during the next years until reaching the probable outcome of running out of funding/credibility).
programmers are prone to fantasies
I do agree with most of your post except for that starting part which includes a pretty arbitrary reference. "Programmer" is a quite generic label which applies to a wide variety of people with different backgrounds and expectations. I am a programmer myself, but I am also a mechanical engineer and a very practical guy. Also I haven't ever seen the kind of big salaries and ideal conditions about which I read here or in other sites.
I think that you meant "programmers living in a bubble of ignorance because of having learned/experienced a few things in their lives but who, due to the perhaps-not-completely-motivated relevance of their environment, seriously think that the conclusions outputted by their limited understanding of virtually any situation are much more accurate than what they really are". It is also called (unaware) ignorance, living in a bubble/in denial or even stupidity.
This doesn't happen just with programming, but almost everywhere. Some people complain about non-technical CEO/managers, others about VCs, others about rich people, others about theoretical physicists, others about rednecks, etc. All those are just specific conditions under which the aforementioned attitudes are likely to appear, but the underlying reality is always the same: pure and simple ignorance exclusively associated with the given person.
What exactly makes a fission plant safer than a fusion plant?
Firstly, I didn't use those words, mainly because no actual fusion plant has ever been built and I am not the kind of person who likes throwing blind guesses at what doesn't exist. But by assuming that fusion power will ever exist under the current expectations, it would likely be much unsafer than fission because of this having-your-own-sun requirement (you know? Dealing with temperatures able to immediately melt any existing material for long periods of time is the kind of situation which I consider quite dangerous). Even despite not being pro-fission and thinking that it is a quite dirty alternative, I do consider it acceptably safe. In case of assuming equivalent requirements, fusion power would have to go through its whole evolution (+ 50 years + lots of problems) to reach a stage of equivalent safety. But fusion requirements (again: dealing with sun-like temperatures) sound intrinsically much more dangerous to me than fission ones and that's why I assume that an actually working fusion plant would be much unsafer than a fission one.
Eventually fusion will have a role in special applications
A magic wand would also be useful there. Unfortunately, the transition from dreaming about an ideal solution and actually creating such a solution is quite difficult or even completely/practically impossible.
In any case, if you want to go deeper into elucubrations about the possible applications of what doesn't exist (and perhaps will never do), you should bring both positive and negative issues into account. For example, even by assuming that you are able to safely generate electricity from fusion power, you should bear in mind all the problems which that alternative will always provoke. Even in an ideal scenario, it will have to be used under very specific conditions (we are talking about sun-like temperatures!!! Something extremely dangerous whose confinement will certainly imply lots of constraints on many fronts). So, forget about putting all this in a spaceship or creating a portable device which you might bring anywhere. It will require extremely-expensive, huge, non-moveable facilities under constant surveillance and located in very specific areas. A particle accelerator or the whole CERN probably represent the best present-day examples of how an eventual fusion power plant might look like.
Fission power is much more adaptable than what the fusion power would ever be: on one hand, you have some dangerous materials which only need to be adequately contained; on the other hand, you have theoretically-much-less-dangerous materials but needing crazily high temperatures, what can only be generated with very expensive and complex equipment under very specific conditions. There is a very good reason why we first tried fission power: it is orders of magnitude easier, safer, more certain, controllable and adaptable than what fusion power will ever become; it is dealing with dangerous stuff vs. dealing with a whole sun!!
The problem for basically every source of energy is that renewables are cheap and growing rapidly, and so is storage. It's very hard to compete with that.
Why do you complain about objectively better alternatives outputting better results? Why do you think that you have to invest lots of money in something when you can get the same for a fraction of that? To accomplish a dream of someone? Even though that dream might be a pure nonsense and/or extremely dangerous (another very important issue: we will not know the real problems of fusion until after having suffered them; exactly the same than happened with fission, originally also assumed to be a magic wand expected to solve everything, and with any other innovation ever)? What you want is a cheaper way to generate cleaner energy, not to make something happen no matter what. If renewables are cheaper and easier why don't you spend all the planned-in-fusion huge amounts of money on them? Why not over-optimising what certainly works or adapting your needs to what you can get rather than pursuing the magic-wand solution? Or what is even worse: why complaining about the most practical alternatives to be much more affordable than the magic-wand research and seeing that as an excuse to continue their unmotivated over-funding?
Sorry to blow your bubble but, until this moment, there is only one good reason for continuing the tremendously-expensive-and-far-from-practical research on fusion energy: supporting theoretical/dreamy/other expectations for whatever reason, where practical and objective concerns are being (not sure if consciously) plainly ignored.
Whether it produces more energy out than it takes to maintain tells you it can run.
After all that, it proves it's commercially viable.
Your abstract words seem to be assuming many premises which aren’t still there. Bear in mind that all what they (+ and all the fusion-power research since quite a few years ago) are doing is plainly working on getting a stable- and controllable-enough source of heat (= the first input of any thermodynamic cycle).
After making the aforementioned preliminary step work (if possible at all under the current technology/budget/expectations), they will have to come up with a reliable way to convert that stable source of heat into electricity. In principle, they should be relying on the typical thermal-power-plants approach which basically consists in using that heat source to boil water (which moves a turbine coupled with an electricity generator). The problem here is that the ranges of temperatures of the heat sources in conventional power plants (including nuclear-fission ones) are very similar to the target 100 degree and they don't have to deal with the "tiny" issue of hugely decreasing the temperature. So, even after being able to reach a stage where they can get plasma reliably and securely, they will still have to work a lot in order to actually generate electricity from all that heat. To not mention the small detail that power plants are expected to deliver stable loads during months, what forces any replacing alternative to deliver something equivalent.
In summary, your "commercially viable" actually means "making work something extremely complex and expensive which has never been accomplished before, under very demanding conditions and whose exact motivation isn't completely clear as far as many other much simpler alternatives can do the same".
... but it is a quite good reason to assume certain basic knowledge and attitude. On the other hand, thinking that a specific degree provides all or most of the required knowledge to perform a given work is far from being true; even pure nonsense when talking about highly specialised positions. A misconception which only seems possible in people with low-to-no actual experience in the given work.
I have worked with computer-engineering recent graduates who weren't able to do virtually anything (or a few things under very specific conditions). Even after working for quite a few years under not too demanding conditions, a person with a CS degree might be a bad programmer. Same ideas apply to virtually any field, like mechanical/industrial engineering (what I studied at university): actual work experience is the most relevant factor.
Personally, I do prefer to work with university-degree holders (in a technical/scientific/engineering field), but am also sure that just the degree isn't a relevant factor to adequately assess the software development skills and related issues (i.e., learning capability, adaptability, working attitude, etc.). For senior/highly-specialised positions, the actual work experience/outputs and attitude (+ hiring people being able to adequately assess them) are almost everything.
As far as many people aren't just talking about their first languages, I clarify that I currently don't use much any of the aforementioned ones. Most of my programming work since various years ago has been focused on .NET (C# & VB.NET desktop and web), PHP (a bit of JavaScript), VBA/Office macros, VB6, Java, some C-based (a bit of C, a bit of Perl, a bit of C++, etc.), etc.
In fact, using a given programming language isn't precisely a problem to me because of my experience (+ being quite good at learning); and, mainly, because most of my work is focused on efficiency-concerned algorithms and I rarely use too fancy programming features, what makes most of my code quite similar in different languages (loops, conditions, methods, basic collections, some not-too-complex lambdas, etc.).
Ah memories...late night coding sessions in the old college computer lab. Those were the days. :)
Our lives are inversely related: I am currently doing the long coding sessions; at college, I wasn't too much into programming (although always liked it). BTW, my first Basic experiences weren't actual programming not just because of being a crappy language, but also because of really not doing anything relevant (even before high school with a cassette Sinclair Spectrum).