No, its bunker mentality. Same in the fission world, maybe worse there though.
Commissioned PV is under $1.25 a watt. If you don't understand what that means, then you should go look it up.
There is no way that any of the fusion devices anyone is working on will ever be able to match that, even if they do get it to work. And so far, they can't even do that.
So it would have had about 900 hp, required two enormous drive shafts (never good for your P/W), used fixed pitch props, was built of wood so you're compound curves suck, and this was supposed to reach 500 mph?
Total BS.
Props, pistons and shafts don't like each other, every aircraft that tried it either failed to mature or was a mediocre performer. P-39. BD-5. etc. The singular exception is the Pfiel, which took the most of war to get working.
Spitfires would have eaten this thing's breakfast.
> To name a few: Ariane, Concorde, nuclear reactors and nukes
Well Concorde was pretty much entirely Bristol Aerospace, in the UK.
They designed it as the Type 223 and submitted it to the Air Ministry, who promptly (and secretly) gave the document to the French, who passed it to Sud. A few months later the Ministry arranged a meeting between Bristol and Sud, suggesting they share development costs, and the Bristol team were presented with a design that appeared all too familiar.
It was years later when they found the proof that this had occurred, but everyone kinda knew it all along.
On page 5 (you'll have to count, there're not labeled) you'll see the key point. Nuckolls predicted, using simulations, that break-even/ignition could be achieved with a 1 kJ driver. This prediction was made long before they had drivers of that power. When they eventually made one, Shiva, in the mid-1970s, it was clear that they were nowhere near ignition, and had to change the simulations. Now they predicted they needed 100 kJ. When they eventually made one, Nova, in the mid-1980s, it was clear that they were nowhere near ignition, and had to change the simulations. Now they predicted they needed 1 MJ. When they eventually made one, NIF, in the mid-2000s, it was clear that they were nowhere near ignition, and had to change the simulations. And now you're up to date.
This is the story of *every* fusion effort going right back to Tuck and Ware. It is, simply, a very difficult thing to understand, and even more difficult to actually *do*. You can fund this all you want, it still won't change the physics involved, and those physics are going to make any practical fusion machine fantastically complex and expensive. There is simply no way around this.
3. A theorem by Emmy Noether, says that continuous symmetries of the Lagrangian create conservation laws: Time shift = Conservation of energy. Translation = Conservation of momentum. Rotation = Conservation of angular momentum.
I've always felt a little uncomfortable with this "direction", from the symmetry to the conservation.
We wouldn't have conservation of momentum if one side of the universe was heavier than the other. There's no "law" that says it has to be so. This is an observational fact, not an absolute truth.
So I've always felt more comfortable saying that *because* we *observe* a symmetry, we can conclude there will be a conservation law.
or any one of dozens of other theories that likewise generate mass using alternate methods. Yes, I am aware that none of them have been terribly successful, but they haven't been terribly popular either - and that's often the difference.
The long and short of it is that any soft of SBSP loses about 1/2 of the power during transmission and grid conversion. There's no way around this, it's basic radio physics.
So to make it work in your favour, you need to generation at *least* twice as much energy. And that's assuming your shipping costs are zero.
An SPS in GEO *might* be able to do that. That's because they get about five times as much light as a panel on the earth - day/night, clouds, cosine angles, etc.
But on the moon you have the same sorts of effects as the earth, with the exception of weather. The panels will cycle under the sun as the moon rotates, and spend half their time on the night side.
There is absolutely no way such a system can make up for the losses in transmission. Period. Do the math yourself if you don't believe me.
PV is the fastest growing power source in history. Last year 35 GW (a reactor's worth) went in, this year the projections are for another 50. However, due to rapid price declines, more recent projections are for 60 to 100 GW. There are about 400 reactors in the world, built over a period of 40 years. At the current rate, PV will outstrip nuclear before 2020.
This shouldn't be surprising. CAPEX on PV is about 1/6th of nuclear. Systems can go in in months, start to finish, so the banks love you. Scales smoothly from 250W to 400MW with only a two-fold reduction in price over that range. Permitting is a snap.
"Your example would work if the reactors only ran in the day time"
It's the other way around. Reactors supply base load because they can't throttle. The daytime load has to be offloaded to something that can. That used to be coal, now it's gas.
Notice that the daytime peak is about twice the nighttime base load.
So in order to supply this sort of demand, which is typical around the world, you need to either have highly "dispatchable" power, like hydro and gas, or have multiple power sources that can be used in concert to fill in the peaks.
Nuclear is not very throttlable, on the order of 20% on a per reactor basis. That means nuclear alone cannot follow our loads. We need something to fill in during daytime peaks.
What we have been doing so far is using coal, and more recently, switching to gas. However, we are all aware of the problems with this approach, namely CO2.
So what power source is primarily available during the day and doesn't give off CO2? Solar. Solar and nuclear are fantastic together.
Yes, we still need gas as a backup when the entire CONUS is covered in cloud, it will happen. But because we've already built all those gas plants, we already have this covered. All we need is more panels.
When faced with this obvious fact, the haters started coming up with new excuses. For instance, solar is bad because now the gas plants have to spin up. We know this isn't actually the case, as study after study has demonstrated, but that's not the point, this is all about FUD.
FUD for whom? For people who think energy policy is a political issue, one that it's perfectly OK to form on the basis of what the people look like. "I notice a lot of liberals like solar, so I'll look for every excuse to hate it". I don't tilt at that windmill, it's the way the world has always worked, but it's sad to see in such obvious fashion.
"The renewable generation of power tech exists, but we don't have any way to store base line grid power yet. The super simplified example, is night time. How are you going to store enough energy to power the US while it's dark?"
Reactors can throttle about 10% on a daily basis. Night time loads are about 55% of daytime. So where are the reactors storing that power now?
Oh what , they don't do that? They actually use other forms of power to fill in?
"Now, in a provocative study that raises unsettling questions about the widespread use of vitamin supplements"
I believe that should be worded, "Now *another* provocative study" After all, there's been a continuous stream of these. For whatever reason, the human body doesn't like being dosed with massive amounts of chemically reactive substances, gee, what a surprise.
You can get the same dose from eating fruit, but that has no known downsides in multiple studies. If you're worried about your health, eat your fruit and veg - like they've been saying forever,
Slashdot Mirror
> Yeah, fusion is a pipe dream
Indeed.
> and these researchers are all losers
No, its bunker mentality. Same in the fission world, maybe worse there though.
Commissioned PV is under $1.25 a watt. If you don't understand what that means, then you should go look it up.
There is no way that any of the fusion devices anyone is working on will ever be able to match that, even if they do get it to work. And so far, they can't even do that.
> Maybe advanced computing can be used to simulate fusion reactors
They've been doing that since the 1960s. The simulations say it all worked 25 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LASNEX
I'm not convinced more simulations will help.
"Democratic representative with no seniority. Not good for fusion funding."
Soooo you're freely admitting it's nothing more than pork? Because it is, at least in the case of NIF.
So it would have had about 900 hp, required two enormous drive shafts (never good for your P/W), used fixed pitch props, was built of wood so you're compound curves suck, and this was supposed to reach 500 mph?
Total BS.
Props, pistons and shafts don't like each other, every aircraft that tried it either failed to mature or was a mediocre performer. P-39. BD-5. etc. The singular exception is the Pfiel, which took the most of war to get working.
Spitfires would have eaten this thing's breakfast.
> You don't talk about a "fleet" of reactors unless you mean a nuclear-powered Navy
Everyone calls it a fleet.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/France/
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-Cool-running-reactor-fleets-0801141.html
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/China--Nuclear-Power/
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-G-N/Japan/
I like that righteous indignation you used while illustrating that you know absolutely zero about the topic you are pontificating on.
> To name a few: Ariane, Concorde, nuclear reactors and nukes
Well Concorde was pretty much entirely Bristol Aerospace, in the UK.
They designed it as the Type 223 and submitted it to the Air Ministry, who promptly (and secretly) gave the document to the French, who passed it to Sud. A few months later the Ministry arranged a meeting between Bristol and Sud, suggesting they share development costs, and the Bristol team were presented with a design that appeared all too familiar.
It was years later when they found the proof that this had occurred, but everyone kinda knew it all along.
> More promise in the near to medium term" still has us running out of fuel
Ummm, solar panels?
> Fusion is very necessary for our long term survival
No its not.
> for what little "green" power
You mean "all the power would could possibly ever want"? You are aware there's 1000W/m^2 on a sunny day, right? Here, do the math yourself:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/revenge-of-the-electric-oil-sands/
> And if the Apollo program had been budgeted in the same way as fusion in this country
This is *not* a budget problem, don't let the people justifying their existent fool you into believing that.
Let me illustrate the actual problem with the best example I can think of. In 1972 John Nuckolls published this paper:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v239/n5368/pdf/239139a0.pdf
Unfortunately, you can't read it without paying, but here's a paper that reviews it:
http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/10126383
On page 5 (you'll have to count, there're not labeled) you'll see the key point. Nuckolls predicted, using simulations, that break-even/ignition could be achieved with a 1 kJ driver. This prediction was made long before they had drivers of that power. When they eventually made one, Shiva, in the mid-1970s, it was clear that they were nowhere near ignition, and had to change the simulations. Now they predicted they needed 100 kJ. When they eventually made one, Nova, in the mid-1980s, it was clear that they were nowhere near ignition, and had to change the simulations. Now they predicted they needed 1 MJ. When they eventually made one, NIF, in the mid-2000s, it was clear that they were nowhere near ignition, and had to change the simulations. And now you're up to date.
This is the story of *every* fusion effort going right back to Tuck and Ware. It is, simply, a very difficult thing to understand, and even more difficult to actually *do*. You can fund this all you want, it still won't change the physics involved, and those physics are going to make any practical fusion machine fantastically complex and expensive. There is simply no way around this.
> Because its not a spelling error. 'wold' is a word.
Which demonstrates that *smaller* spelling dictionaries are normally better. Yet every word pro bragged about how many words were in it.
3. A theorem by Emmy Noether, says that continuous symmetries of the Lagrangian create conservation laws:
Time shift = Conservation of energy.
Translation = Conservation of momentum.
Rotation = Conservation of angular momentum.
I've always felt a little uncomfortable with this "direction", from the symmetry to the conservation.
We wouldn't have conservation of momentum if one side of the universe was heavier than the other. There's no "law" that says it has to be so. This is an observational fact, not an absolute truth.
So I've always felt more comfortable saying that *because* we *observe* a symmetry, we can conclude there will be a conservation law.
> made up of the same [previously undiscovered] ultra-heavy quarks
It's relatively easy to demonstrate that there are no ultra-heavy quarks. This was a key development in the 1970s (80s?)
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/why-do-we-think-there-are-only-three-generations-of-fundamental-particles
"without the higgs field, there would be no mass terms in the equations"
*sigh*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor_(physics)
or any one of dozens of other theories that likewise generate mass using alternate methods. Yes, I am aware that none of them have been terribly successful, but they haven't been terribly popular either - and that's often the difference.
Here's the math:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/the-maury-equation/
and:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/the-maury-equation-redux/
The long and short of it is that any soft of SBSP loses about 1/2 of the power during transmission and grid conversion. There's no way around this, it's basic radio physics.
So to make it work in your favour, you need to generation at *least* twice as much energy. And that's assuming your shipping costs are zero.
An SPS in GEO *might* be able to do that. That's because they get about five times as much light as a panel on the earth - day/night, clouds, cosine angles, etc.
But on the moon you have the same sorts of effects as the earth, with the exception of weather. The panels will cycle under the sun as the moon rotates, and spend half their time on the night side.
There is absolutely no way such a system can make up for the losses in transmission. Period. Do the math yourself if you don't believe me.
> I can't recommend FTL enough.
Meh. After 90 hours or so I still hadn't won once.
"Now they can get back to their mission of advocating openness."
That was never the mission. This is what they call "mission creep".
As someone that is responsible for creating more content than most of the "no votes" put together, I shake my head in shame.
> Gold is worthless except as a very conductive metal
It's not very conductive, at least compared to aluminum, copper and silver.
The real value is that it's non-corrosive and soft. Makes it great for connectors and sockets.
So the focused ones that blind me every time they go over a bump in the road is now going to be even worse?
Great.
"Meh, all that crap will take to long."
PV is the fastest growing power source in history. Last year 35 GW (a reactor's worth) went in, this year the projections are for another 50. However, due to rapid price declines, more recent projections are for 60 to 100 GW. There are about 400 reactors in the world, built over a period of 40 years. At the current rate, PV will outstrip nuclear before 2020.
This shouldn't be surprising. CAPEX on PV is about 1/6th of nuclear. Systems can go in in months, start to finish, so the banks love you. Scales smoothly from 250W to 400MW with only a two-fold reduction in price over that range. Permitting is a snap.
"Your example would work if the reactors only ran in the day time"
It's the other way around. Reactors supply base load because they can't throttle. The daytime load has to be offloaded to something that can. That used to be coal, now it's gas.
"Wind and solar have variable output"
And the world has variable input. Go here and look at the graph:
http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/marketdata/markettoday.asp
Notice that the daytime peak is about twice the nighttime base load.
So in order to supply this sort of demand, which is typical around the world, you need to either have highly "dispatchable" power, like hydro and gas, or have multiple power sources that can be used in concert to fill in the peaks.
Nuclear is not very throttlable, on the order of 20% on a per reactor basis. That means nuclear alone cannot follow our loads. We need something to fill in during daytime peaks.
What we have been doing so far is using coal, and more recently, switching to gas. However, we are all aware of the problems with this approach, namely CO2.
So what power source is primarily available during the day and doesn't give off CO2? Solar. Solar and nuclear are fantastic together.
Yes, we still need gas as a backup when the entire CONUS is covered in cloud, it will happen. But because we've already built all those gas plants, we already have this covered. All we need is more panels.
When faced with this obvious fact, the haters started coming up with new excuses. For instance, solar is bad because now the gas plants have to spin up. We know this isn't actually the case, as study after study has demonstrated, but that's not the point, this is all about FUD.
FUD for whom? For people who think energy policy is a political issue, one that it's perfectly OK to form on the basis of what the people look like. "I notice a lot of liberals like solar, so I'll look for every excuse to hate it". I don't tilt at that windmill, it's the way the world has always worked, but it's sad to see in such obvious fashion.
"The renewable generation of power tech exists, but we don't have any way to store base line grid power yet. The super simplified example, is night time. How are you going to store enough energy to power the US while it's dark?"
Reactors can throttle about 10% on a daily basis. Night time loads are about 55% of daytime. So where are the reactors storing that power now?
Oh what , they don't do that? They actually use other forms of power to fill in?
Exactly.
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/why-solar-is-nuclears-best-friend/
Been obvious to everyone from the start.
Valerie Plame, enough said.
Actually, the good news here is that there is a widespread discussion about the story. And it looks like something will come of it.
"Now, in a provocative study that raises unsettling questions about the widespread use of vitamin supplements"
I believe that should be worded, "Now *another* provocative study" After all, there's been a continuous stream of these. For whatever reason, the human body doesn't like being dosed with massive amounts of chemically reactive substances, gee, what a surprise.
You can get the same dose from eating fruit, but that has no known downsides in multiple studies. If you're worried about your health, eat your fruit and veg - like they've been saying forever,
I recall Canadian Echelon operators spying on their US counterparts to win a grain trade deal with China in the 1970s.