in 1997 JET produced 16MW which was 65% of input (210 seconds sustained)
16/.65 = 24.6MW INPUT
*3 minutes, 30 seconds (.0583 hrs)
= 1.434 MWh input power
* $0.08/kWh * 1000 kWh/MWh
= $114 in power consumed in 210 seconds.
wow. That's a lot of power in 3 and a half minutes.
"Actual Confinement time vs Predicted Confinement time graphs show damn close to 1:1"
So, the heat transfer models used to figure out when the container would crumble are pretty accurate...great, still does nothing for making the container last longer. Engineers are good at predicting when the containers fail. Cool.
But so far 16MW of REAL POWER was created in 1997. The rest on the list is...HYPOTHETICAL. Hypothetically, I plan on generating 2 GW from my Mr. Fusion (anyone remember THAT from Back to the Future ??:) by the year 2020. Great. Doesn't mean I CAN, just means I know how to set goals.
At any rate, I'm more convinced now, especially knowing about the 3 and a half minutes...30-50 years seems like a good ballpark, but the question now becomes "Why He-3???" Wouldn't that just make Lithium, and wouldn't they be better off with Hydrogen as a fuel anyway? Seems pretty crazy to spend upwards of $1B per shuttle mission to the moon, just to bring back a couple tons of He-3, when thousands of tons of hydrogen could be produced for that price.
My verdict? Not economically viable. Mining the moon becomes a convenient excuse for the militarization of space...damn that GW...
but the fact remains that fusion is still a way off.
here's some info:
hydrogen bombs work by fusion. The fuse for an H-bomb is an A-bomb. Why? To get to the temperature of the sun (which, of course, runs on fusion).
Now, how to get to the temperature of the sun (1,000,000 K) without burning up the container? Suspend the h2 in a magnetic field, of course, and fire lasers at it and hope. But once the reaction starts, the cooling required is massive (cool the reaction with water/liquid sodium, which becomes steam, which powers your turbines, which give the power, and recycle the water back to the container to get heated again -- a thermodynamic cycle)
The cooling/energy extraction process has to be 'contained' somehow, and therein lies the stumbling block. If you can sustain the reaction long enough (ie your cooling fluid container _lasts_ long enough), a net energy output can be realized. But I seem to recall the record for sustained fusion being somewhere on the order of 110 seconds, whereas net energy OUT takes at least a few minutes to happen. Because one hell of a lot of power is needed to get to 1 million degrees K in the first place.
Ummm, those are the basics, anyway. And that's why He-3 is still only a HYPOTHETICAL fuel source. Hell, we can't get hydrogen to fuse yet. What was that about GW's cart? Where is it?
But once these stumbling blocks are overcome, He-3 could be viable, so maybe GW has something there. I'm so undecided, yet I know GW is an idiot. Therefore, I'll take a stand and say 'no way', and hope I'm right. Because ultimately, moon energy can only get to earth via the USA (in the near future), and wouldn't that be a pain in the ass:)
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in 1997 JET produced 16MW which was 65% of input (210 seconds sustained)
16/.65 = 24.6MW INPUT
*3 minutes, 30 seconds (.0583 hrs)
= 1.434 MWh input power
* $0.08/kWh * 1000 kWh/MWh
= $114 in power consumed in 210 seconds.
wow. That's a lot of power in 3 and a half minutes. "Actual Confinement time vs Predicted Confinement time graphs show damn close to 1:1"
So, the heat transfer models used to figure out when the container would crumble are pretty accurate...great, still does nothing for making the container last longer. Engineers are good at predicting when the containers fail. Cool.
But so far 16MW of REAL POWER was created in 1997. The rest on the list is...HYPOTHETICAL. Hypothetically, I plan on generating 2 GW from my Mr. Fusion (anyone remember THAT from Back to the Future ?? :) by the year 2020. Great. Doesn't mean I CAN, just means I know how to set goals.
At any rate, I'm more convinced now, especially knowing about the 3 and a half minutes...30-50 years seems like a good ballpark, but the question now becomes "Why He-3???" Wouldn't that just make Lithium, and wouldn't they be better off with Hydrogen as a fuel anyway? Seems pretty crazy to spend upwards of $1B per shuttle mission to the moon, just to bring back a couple tons of He-3, when thousands of tons of hydrogen could be produced for that price.
My verdict? Not economically viable. Mining the moon becomes a convenient excuse for the militarization of space...damn that GW...
but the fact remains that fusion is still a way off. here's some info: hydrogen bombs work by fusion. The fuse for an H-bomb is an A-bomb. Why? To get to the temperature of the sun (which, of course, runs on fusion). Now, how to get to the temperature of the sun (1,000,000 K) without burning up the container? Suspend the h2 in a magnetic field, of course, and fire lasers at it and hope. But once the reaction starts, the cooling required is massive (cool the reaction with water/liquid sodium, which becomes steam, which powers your turbines, which give the power, and recycle the water back to the container to get heated again -- a thermodynamic cycle) The cooling/energy extraction process has to be 'contained' somehow, and therein lies the stumbling block. If you can sustain the reaction long enough (ie your cooling fluid container _lasts_ long enough), a net energy output can be realized. But I seem to recall the record for sustained fusion being somewhere on the order of 110 seconds, whereas net energy OUT takes at least a few minutes to happen. Because one hell of a lot of power is needed to get to 1 million degrees K in the first place. Ummm, those are the basics, anyway. And that's why He-3 is still only a HYPOTHETICAL fuel source. Hell, we can't get hydrogen to fuse yet. What was that about GW's cart? Where is it? But once these stumbling blocks are overcome, He-3 could be viable, so maybe GW has something there. I'm so undecided, yet I know GW is an idiot. Therefore, I'll take a stand and say 'no way', and hope I'm right. Because ultimately, moon energy can only get to earth via the USA (in the near future), and wouldn't that be a pain in the ass :)