Could 10,000 square kilometers do it? Yes, absolutely, in theory.
How much would it cost to build 10,000 square kilometers of solar cells, how long would it take, where the hell would we get that much manufacturing capacity for these semiconductor devices from? And how many poor bastards would get a face full of HF or a breath full of Arsine in the process? And what happens to the ten thousand square kilometers of pristine desert habitat you've just paved over and destroyed?
How close TMI came to being Chernobyl? Bullshit. It didn't even breach the reactor pressure vessel, let along the containment building. Even if the molten fuel somehow, magically got outside the containment building, it's hot, radioactive lava - how is the radioactivity going to be dispersed out into the atmosphere the way it did at Chernobyl?
In the real world of engineering and physics, we don't normally rely on imagining such things.
Let's say that your industrious local al-Qaeda cell rocks up at the gates of your local nuclear power station.
What exactly are the terrorists *actually going to do* to "cause a melt-down"?
This is the real world, not the world of Jack Bauer.
I agree. It's an extremely promising technology. Strangely, it seems that South Africa and China might beat the US and other major industrial and nuclear engineering leaders to become the world leaders in using this tech.
Human error never trumps the laws of physics. It's that simple.
We saw a "meltdown" at TMI Unit 2 in 1979 - incalculable loss of human life? I don't think so. *Zero* loss of human life or health.
Not true. Boiling Water Reactors - as well as more modern designs such as the PBMR/HTGR - circulate the coolant from the reactor straight through the turbine. In the case of the BWR, this means that there is considerable radioactivity within the turbine system during operation, but it decays very fast when the reactor is shut down - Nitrogen-16, one of the primary activation products within the water, has a half-life of seven seconds.
A nuclear power plant obeys the laws of thermodynamics, just like every other energy system, every fossil fuelled power plant, and everything else.
If you don't agree with the laws of thermodynamics, go and invest everything you have in Steorn Ltd.
A nuclear generator is a thermal engine - it has a heat source, and it has a heat sink.
Fossil fuelled power plants need cooling water, or cooling towers, or whatever, just like their nuclear alternatives. In the recent summer in Ontario, high temperatures forced many fossil-fuelled power plants off-line.
This isn't because there's "not enough water to cool them", but because there are legislatory limits on how warm the water discharged into a river, or whatever, is allowed to be.
The geological disposal of radioactive waste - such as Yucca Mountain - is paid for, in the cost of nuclear electricity.
Terrorism? Security at nuclear power plants? Guess what - it's paid for, in the cost of nuclear electricity.
What exactly do you imagine that terrorists are going to *actually do* to a nuclear power plant, and what are the consequences, in the real world, going to be?
History is not against nuclear power at all.
The evidence from history is that nuclear energy is a developed, proven, safe, economically viable and clean source of large quantities of baseload electricity generation.
30,000 people die prematurely in the US alone as a result of air pollution, predominantly caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.
What causes the cost overruns? We know quite well what caused them. Design nonuniformity, regulatory ratcheting after the TMI-2 incident, litigation, legal opposition at a time of very high interest rates, and Jane Fonda.
"Besides, I doubt that a fusion reactor will solve the radioactive waste problem. More than likely it will add to the waste problem because all it takes to create radioactive particles is to heat any matter to extremely high temperatures."
Please excuse me for putting this a little bluntly.
What the fuck are you talking about?!
If you don't know anything about the physics involved, then please don't pretend that you do.
It's in a basement, so there's already lots of concrete and earth shielding between the fusor and the outside world.
By avoid proximity to it whilst it's operating, i mean don't stand right next to it. If the operator is sufficiently distant so as to reduce radiation exposure, what makes you think there would be any risk to someone in a house next door?
Even without accurate neutron metrology, the neutron flux could be predicted fairly well, based on the knowledge base that surrounds amateur Fairnsworth-Hirsch fusor construction. It's quite a straightforward issue to shield the device.
Construction of these devices in the garages and basements of physics geeks is nothing new, and nothing that poses an excessively grave danger to the knowledgeable people that peform it, and absolutely not to the community at large.
It's only frightening if you're one of these types that fears and doubts anybody experimenting with physics, high voltage electronics, chemistry etc in their basements.
Deuterium is not a regulated material, and is available off the shelf (essentially) from scientific and industrial suppliers. It's no more dangerous than regular Hydrogen gas.
Neutron radiation can be very nasty. And of course the 2.45 MeV neutrons produced in D-D fusion are the characteristic signature of such a reaction - if he has confirmed that fusion is occurring, then he has detected neutron radiation outside the apparatus.
But if you understand what neutrons are, you understand the risks they pose, and you understand what you need to do to ensure safety in such an endeavour.
Shielding, absorption and moderation of neutrons can all be easily accomplished with household materials, and having a neutron counter is a fairly important pre-requisite to being able to demonstrate D-D fusion. Neutron activation could be demonstrated without a counter, assuming that strict precautions are taken to shield or avoid proximity to the Fusor whilst it is operating.
Anywhere where any kind of technological innovation is applied to food, be it genetic engineering, irradiation, anything at all, there will be a dilettante backlash.
It's not difficult to synthesize various organic and inorganic primary and secondary HE's. Hell, i've synthesized several.
I'm talking about the MacGyver-esque, Anarchist's Crapbook inspired, myth of making "plastic explosives in your bathtub" from Draino, lemon juice and baking soda.
The myth of synthesising and drying the various isomers of "acetone peroxide" on a passenger aircraft is a perfect example of this.
Technically, something like Black Powder doesn't detonate either, doesn't mean it's not a potentially dangerous explosive, in the wrong form.
That said, cast into a dense fuel grain, i don't think rocket motors using Ammonium Perchlorate composites are any more dangerous than scaled-up Estes motors... after all, the Estes-style disposable motors use what is essentially Black Powder... and yet they're not classed as explosives.
It seems that this is more in regards to bulk crystalline Ammonium Perchlorate, which is apparantly classified by DOT as an explosive - can someone confirm this?
Bulk AP certainly can be an explosive hazard under the wrong conditions, as the PEPCON incident demonstrated.
The production of positron emitting radioisotopes in a cyclotron, eg. F-18, requires the acceleration of a beam of protons - very different from electrons.
And even if you can produce the isotope in a pocket-sized apparatus, the scanner itself - the array of scintillators, lightguides, photomultipliers, electronics and computers that the patient lays inside, is not exactly portable by any stretch of the imagination.
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Could 10,000 square kilometers do it? Yes, absolutely, in theory. How much would it cost to build 10,000 square kilometers of solar cells, how long would it take, where the hell would we get that much manufacturing capacity for these semiconductor devices from? And how many poor bastards would get a face full of HF or a breath full of Arsine in the process? And what happens to the ten thousand square kilometers of pristine desert habitat you've just paved over and destroyed? How close TMI came to being Chernobyl? Bullshit. It didn't even breach the reactor pressure vessel, let along the containment building. Even if the molten fuel somehow, magically got outside the containment building, it's hot, radioactive lava - how is the radioactivity going to be dispersed out into the atmosphere the way it did at Chernobyl?
In the real world of engineering and physics, we don't normally rely on imagining such things.
Let's say that your industrious local al-Qaeda cell rocks up at the gates of your local nuclear power station.
What exactly are the terrorists *actually going to do* to "cause a melt-down"?
This is the real world, not the world of Jack Bauer.
How are we going to store Plutonium as waste? Why on earth would we do that? Plutonium isn't waste - it's valuable nuclear fuel.
I agree. It's an extremely promising technology. Strangely, it seems that South Africa and China might beat the US and other major industrial and nuclear engineering leaders to become the world leaders in using this tech.
Human error never trumps the laws of physics. It's that simple. We saw a "meltdown" at TMI Unit 2 in 1979 - incalculable loss of human life? I don't think so. *Zero* loss of human life or health.
Not true. Boiling Water Reactors - as well as more modern designs such as the PBMR/HTGR - circulate the coolant from the reactor straight through the turbine. In the case of the BWR, this means that there is considerable radioactivity within the turbine system during operation, but it decays very fast when the reactor is shut down - Nitrogen-16, one of the primary activation products within the water, has a half-life of seven seconds.
A nuclear power plant obeys the laws of thermodynamics, just like every other energy system, every fossil fuelled power plant, and everything else. If you don't agree with the laws of thermodynamics, go and invest everything you have in Steorn Ltd. A nuclear generator is a thermal engine - it has a heat source, and it has a heat sink. Fossil fuelled power plants need cooling water, or cooling towers, or whatever, just like their nuclear alternatives. In the recent summer in Ontario, high temperatures forced many fossil-fuelled power plants off-line. This isn't because there's "not enough water to cool them", but because there are legislatory limits on how warm the water discharged into a river, or whatever, is allowed to be.
The geological disposal of radioactive waste - such as Yucca Mountain - is paid for, in the cost of nuclear electricity. Terrorism? Security at nuclear power plants? Guess what - it's paid for, in the cost of nuclear electricity. What exactly do you imagine that terrorists are going to *actually do* to a nuclear power plant, and what are the consequences, in the real world, going to be?
History is not against nuclear power at all. The evidence from history is that nuclear energy is a developed, proven, safe, economically viable and clean source of large quantities of baseload electricity generation. 30,000 people die prematurely in the US alone as a result of air pollution, predominantly caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.
What causes the cost overruns? We know quite well what caused them. Design nonuniformity, regulatory ratcheting after the TMI-2 incident, litigation, legal opposition at a time of very high interest rates, and Jane Fonda.
If this physics geek had mod points right now, the above comment would be getting modded up.
"Besides, I doubt that a fusion reactor will solve the radioactive waste problem. More than likely it will add to the waste problem because all it takes to create radioactive particles is to heat any matter to extremely high temperatures." Please excuse me for putting this a little bluntly. What the fuck are you talking about?! If you don't know anything about the physics involved, then please don't pretend that you do.
It's in a basement, so there's already lots of concrete and earth shielding between the fusor and the outside world.
By avoid proximity to it whilst it's operating, i mean don't stand right next to it. If the operator is sufficiently distant so as to reduce radiation exposure, what makes you think there would be any risk to someone in a house next door?
Even without accurate neutron metrology, the neutron flux could be predicted fairly well, based on the knowledge base that surrounds amateur Fairnsworth-Hirsch fusor construction. It's quite a straightforward issue to shield the device.
Construction of these devices in the garages and basements of physics geeks is nothing new, and nothing that poses an excessively grave danger to the knowledgeable people that peform it, and absolutely not to the community at large.
It's only frightening if you're one of these types that fears and doubts anybody experimenting with physics, high voltage electronics, chemistry etc in their basements.
Deuterium is not a regulated material, and is available off the shelf (essentially) from scientific and industrial suppliers. It's no more dangerous than regular Hydrogen gas.
Neutron radiation can be very nasty. And of course the 2.45 MeV neutrons produced in D-D fusion are the characteristic signature of such a reaction - if he has confirmed that fusion is occurring, then he has detected neutron radiation outside the apparatus.
But if you understand what neutrons are, you understand the risks they pose, and you understand what you need to do to ensure safety in such an endeavour.
Shielding, absorption and moderation of neutrons can all be easily accomplished with household materials, and having a neutron counter is a fairly important pre-requisite to being able to demonstrate D-D fusion. Neutron activation could be demonstrated without a counter, assuming that strict precautions are taken to shield or avoid proximity to the Fusor whilst it is operating.
That would be *milli*scopic, would it not?
Sounds like FUD to me.
Anywhere where any kind of technological innovation is applied to food, be it genetic engineering, irradiation, anything at all, there will be a dilettante backlash.
Luckily work hasn't blocked access to ArXiv yet... :D
It's not difficult to synthesize various organic and inorganic primary and secondary HE's. Hell, i've synthesized several.
I'm talking about the MacGyver-esque, Anarchist's Crapbook inspired, myth of making "plastic explosives in your bathtub" from Draino, lemon juice and baking soda.
The myth of synthesising and drying the various isomers of "acetone peroxide" on a passenger aircraft is a perfect example of this.
>> any moron with half a brain and access to google can manufacture plastic explosives in a bathtub with the stuff under their sinks
What nonsense. It's people like you believing fairytales like this that result in the erosion of our civil liberties.
Technically, something like Black Powder doesn't detonate either, doesn't mean it's not a potentially dangerous explosive, in the wrong form.
That said, cast into a dense fuel grain, i don't think rocket motors using Ammonium Perchlorate composites are any more dangerous than scaled-up Estes motors... after all, the Estes-style disposable motors use what is essentially Black Powder... and yet they're not classed as explosives.
It seems that this is more in regards to bulk crystalline Ammonium Perchlorate, which is apparantly classified by DOT as an explosive - can someone confirm this?
Bulk AP certainly can be an explosive hazard under the wrong conditions, as the PEPCON incident demonstrated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJVOUgCm5Jk
No... it might not. 118 might be relatively stable, somewhere around the notable, predicted "island of stability".
I'll pay that :)
I think it's about time we named one of these elements Feynmanium. But they might be holding off for Element 137...
Should be plasuible, but i hope you're not running ARPS 331 :)
The production of positron emitting radioisotopes in a cyclotron, eg. F-18, requires the acceleration of a beam of protons - very different from electrons.
And even if you can produce the isotope in a pocket-sized apparatus, the scanner itself - the array of scintillators, lightguides, photomultipliers, electronics and computers that the patient lays inside, is not exactly portable by any stretch of the imagination.