The Quest For Fusion 176
Richard Finney writes: "Michael Paterniti, writing for the UK's Observer , writes about a machine called Z : an inertial confinement fusion machine. This is a well written explanation for the lay person and a philospophical look at the personalities driven to create the power of the Sun on Earth. Can these dedicated heroes reach 1,000 trillion watts and high yield fusion?"
What? (Score:1)
Re:Unlimited Power = Unlimited Heat (Score:1)
Any why are there so many cows... (Score:1)
...because of all the people who love their Big Macs and the like.
Too bad almost all of this is wrong (Score:1)
First of all, D-T fusion reactors will all breed their own Tritium. The reaction you mention:
D + T = H-2 + H-3 -> He-4 + n + E
Is accompanied by two reactions in a surrounding blanket where the tritium is bred:
Li-7 + n -> He-4 + H-3 + n'
Li-6 + n -> He-4 + H-3
The n' above denotes that the neutron has lost kinetic energy in an inelastic collision with the Li-7 nucleus (which later fissions into the He-4 and the H-3), or is a less energetic neutron ejected from either a Li-8 or He-5 compound nucleus. The blanket material is usually either molten Lithium or molten 'Flibe' (Lithium-Beryllium Fluoride), where the Lithium may be partially enriched in Li-6. A good design will produce as much Tritium in the blanket as it fuses in the plasma core.
Contrary to your statement, the primary reaction produces *no* gammas directly - 80% of energy yield is neutron kinetic energy, 20% is alpha (He-4) kinetic energy.
Furthermore, the reaction you showed for D-D fusion:
2D = 2H-2 -> He-4 + E
Has a low branch probability (several percent?). D-D fusion is dominated by the following reactions:
H-2 + H-2 -> H-3 + H-1 (all kinetic)
H-2 + H-2 -> He-3 + n (all kinetic)
H-2 + H-3 -> He-4 + n (same as in D-T fusion)
H-2 + He-3 -> He-4 + H-1
This is usually known as 'Cat-D' (catalyzed D-D fusion) Average overall reaction is:
3 H-2 -> He-4 + H-1 + n
Thus D-D reactors do deal with some Tritium, and produce *plenty* of neutrons (40%? of total energy, versus 80% for D-T).
I won't even begin to comment on your Protium (H-1) fusion reactions (like those that occur in the Sun). They are even more complex and run 10^20 too slow to ever be useful for power production. Whether Protium could be more rapidly fused by reactions that do not seem to occur naturally is yet another matter.
As a further aside, nuclear fission and fusion are the *only* sustainable, expandable, portable (like in a star drive!) energy sources in our future.
Numbers vary (Score:1)
http://www.fas.org/nuke/hew/Nwfaq/Nfaq8.html
Show predicted yields of 5 Mt (1-10 possible) and 6 Mt (4-8 "possible") for Mike and Bravo respectively, versus 10.5 and 14.5 Mt actual. In other words, both achieved more than double predicted yield. Bravo is only unusual because it exceeded it's "possible" yield range. And Hansen's book documents many tests of that era falling far awry (often on the high side) of yield predictions.
BTW, the *real* reason that Bravo became so infamous was that the wind was blowing in an unexpected direction that day. It's inherent radiological hazards (10 Mt fission yield) are not significantly different from Mike's (8 Mt fission yield).
This is all still partially obscured by the cloak of secrecy, and the mistaken speculation that a cloak of secrecy always stimulates. So neither of us will ever know the answers with certainty.
But these are the reasons for my original guesses about reaction branches, and my memory seems to have failed me on this original point anyway.
My *real* points were *correct*, and relate to fusion fuel breeding only.
Re:Too bad almost all of this is wrong (Score:1)
I had been told (*not* sure if this is correct) that the D + D -> He-4 + 20MeV gamma reaction proceeded much faster at the high temperatures (maybe a billion K?) which occurred in the device than was anticipated. And those 20 MeV gammas will fission U-238 just like fast (> 10 MeV) neutrons are prone to. This was purportedly the cause of the extreme yield.
But this source could have been *quite* wrong (as now seems likely to me). Perhaps the reaction in general just went faster than anticipated (denser than expected assembly?). But note that they *did* know about the 14 MeV (D-T origin) neutrons and had factored them into the yield estimates.
Oh well. Not relevant to practical power production anyway.
Re:Too bad almost all of this is wrong (Score:1)
To be clear: Much more energy came from fast fission of U-238 in both Mike and Bravo, than came from fusion. Most "fusion" bombs get half or more of their energy from fast fission in the tamper. So I'm not sure what:
"achieved exactly its theoretical yield for burning 1 cubic meter of liquid deuterium"
actually means. Mike clearly didn't "burn" *most* of the deuterium - never mind all of it - and it didn't get most of it's energy from deuterium *at* *all*.
BTW, to bad we haven't had as much success with fusion in power plants as we've had in weapons - all agreed?
Re:Getting carried away with Lithium (Score:1)
Nice work if you can get it
I used to read alot about machines like the one you're working on - and liquid metal MHD used to *really* interest me.
And here I am working with computers all the time nowadays 8-/
Believe it or not, I'm actually going to kinda disagree with you. Molten alkali-metal systems are not *that* exotic - they've been in use for about 50 years. Granted that what you're doing *is* exotic! There's no containing wall between the Li and the plasma!
Note that I never said anything about Li "walls", only Li blankets, and I was not visualizing what you are doing at all. You can have an Li or Flibe blanket between double walls - i.e. completely separated from the plasma chamber by a wall of vanadium or niobium, or even stainless steel or something. This requires only "conventional" know-how and such systems could be designed today with little need for experimentation.
They just won't work as well as a bare Li wall. If I'm not mistaken, you're getting around "first wall" heat transfer limitations, right?
Good luck in your work!
Re:A Machine Called Z (Score:1)
- there was no understanding of how the energy was created
- the use of tungsten in the Z machine was not applied scientifically
There must be some very smart people working on this, but I don't think the reporting has been especially thorough. Paul.Re:Climate change (Score:1)
The comparison to Pittsburg is completely irrelevant. In the 1890's global industry was many orders of magnitude smaller. They could be much, much more dirty without approaching the scale of global climate. Today, people regularly generate pollution on the same scale as the global climate.
ostrich feathers (Score:1)
You do not appear to have grasped either the seriousness of the problem or any of the views that you're trying to discredit. Perhaps that's why you haven't seen more 'substantive' evidence?
This is not about smog, or smoke, or anything you can dig up and look at. It's about the impact of industrialisation and, indirectly, capitalism on the equilibrium of the planet.
Which isn't an intrinsically bad thing, morally, except for the fact that we depend on that balance for our survival.
Global warming is not a synonym for climate change, it's just a particular example. The most severe problems we face are not simple sea-level issues but complex climatic phenomena like the direction and strength of the gulf stream and the migration of krill in the antarctic. These are the roots of the food chain and we're not going to like it much when they're cut. There are respectable, peer-reviewed studies [nature.com] (reg required) of these basic cycles which show them to be disrupted by our blundering.
There's a hundred-year lead time on this one. The changes we are seeing now have been accumulating for a century, and even if we all suddenly started conducting ourselves like a sane species instead of fouling our nest and flinging it around, we would still see terrible effects for decades.
So you're right, up to a point: the ability of people to fix this is highly questionable, their possession of the necessary insight even more so. But to deny that we are responsible for careless changes to the global ecosystem with unpredictable effects is the worst kind of head-burying [greenpeace.org].
Knife switch (Score:1)
[leonb@marx leonb]$ wattroute --level=50 albuquerque.nm.us marxgen
Actually, I'd prefer a long bank of big, ugly-looking bakelite-handled knife switches, with lots of arcing and spitting. And a pipe organ. (-:
Really big pinch bottles (Score:1)
I think that a better question is if they can keep the plant from self-destructing every ~100 years or so
Actually, there may be a much [holoscience.com] easier [electric-universe.de] way [kronia.com]. There are many more pages on this [google.com] out there. Did anyone else notice the solar wind stopping for two days last March? (-:
Re:Salvation or Damnation? (Score:1)
Re:Salvation or Damnation? (Score:1)
We've Already Got One! It's called the Sun (Score:1)
Even the cheapest conceivable fusion reactors would be many (hundreds? thousands?) times the cost of a large solar energy installation. Wake up people. $15 Billion to do a proof of concept that has proven that we might be able to generate more energy than we put in. So? We still have to convert that useless gamma+kinetic energy into electricity.
That $15 Billion could have gone a long way to building/maintaining a profitable solar energy installation in the desert somewhere...
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
Re:The Holy Grail?? (Score:1)
About the promise of this energy source. Why would the US have to hand over the plans to it. It's already in the scientific community. Anyone with an advanced physics degree can understand it. There's enough detail in the article itself to get a sufficiently funded effort underway doing the same thing.
--
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
25: ten.knilrevlis@wkcuhc
Just in case......... (Score:1)
Justa karma-whorin' this morn.
--
Salvation or Damnation? (Score:1)
If they do manage to achieve this, the question will be what is the impact? Will it be similar to the liberating effects of the printing press, or to that of Dynamite and other high explosives turned to war?
Or perhaps it will have more of the impact of Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses [cuny.edu]?
Re:Salvation or Damnation? (Score:1)
I'd might agree with that in principle, but not with those two you cite. I'd say that those had correlation but not causation. Definitely in the first case it was the man behind that book and his charismatic presence that were the real cause. Without him (or someone very similar) driving it, I'm sure that we never would have seen what we did in with Germany in WW II.
However, as someone already pointed out, The Bible has been the cause of some quite large conflicts.
Re:Unlimited Power = Unlimited Heat (Score:1)
Excellent link! Love the idea of searching for spectral lines indicating the dumping of nuclear waste in stars.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
The Machine (Score:1)
Re:Straight Out of Science Fiction (Score:1)
Face it, we should keep the system in working order, but by no means should the environment take precedence over human needs.
Re:Straight Out of Science Fiction (Score:1)
And, of course, there is a certain amount of energy we can release to the environment without doing too much damage. We just don't know how much yet.
But I can't agree to your saying that "by no means should the environment take precedence over human needs." That depends on the needs, of course. We don't do much real damage to the environment when we fulfill basic human needs. But sacrificing the environment for pure luxury (and much of the power we use is used for that) should be weighed against the fact that we need the environment
I am not saying "let's get back into the caves" or something like that. But I do think we need to be a bit more considerate of the effects such things a electrical power consumption have on the environment.
Re:Straight Out of Science Fiction (Score:1)
Re:Straight Out of Science Fiction (Score:1)
Well thanks, I know that much ... but the heat is released by all kinds of devices using the energy. All the eletricity the power plant generates eventually ends up as heat - a light bulb produces heat and light, the latter is absorbed by objects and converted into heat. So heat is released into the atmosphere, and the more energy there is, the more heat is released.
And when I said this might not be so desirable, I meant that it would lead to much more wasting of energy, which might not be a good thing - but not because there was any shortage of energy, but because that energy has effects on the environment. Today, the average temperature in cities is already higher than in the surrounding country. We are producing enough energy to really influence the environment, even if there was no global warming. It's not because I am entirely against technical progress ...
A Machine Called Z (Score:1)
The topic is so huge in its implications that it deserves Paterniti's over-the-top writing style. If I recall correctly - this article is from the same author who wrote "Driving Albert's Brain". In my opinion - this piece is much better.
Never mind the hidden corporate agenda and the science of this Quest for the Holy Grail. Like Coupland's original short story "Microserfs" in Wired many years ago, *this* short piece by Paterniti demands to be a book.
Paterniti may sometimes look for meaning where there is none - but damn it - he does come close to finding it just the same. Very well written piece. This article is worth doing a "save as" folks.
.Robert
Re:Too bad almost all of this is wrong (Score:1)
Re:After The Horrible Mishap! (Score:1)
Firstly his name was Gordan Freeman.
Secondly that accident was at the Black Mesa facillity not at the Sandia National Laboratories.
Re:The real social implications of fusion power. (Score:1)
Somehow I think there's an easier way but only (Score:1)
Don't get me wrong. Corporate interest is fine. It's just that the morons who seem to hate any sort of profitmaking and the morons who piss them off have committed the perfect murder of progress and ingenuity. We'll just call the former morons for now and the latter are none other than your favorite Ayn Rand Club "meme"bers who couldn't even quote Ayn Rand to save their necks. For the slow, I love Ayn rand dearly... I hate her followers with a passion.
See it works like this:
1. Morons have made a devil in the image of what they hate. It's really just a collage of factories, smokestacks, jargon filled voice overs, and all sorts of other stereotypes.
2. Then they've created a culture, infectious one at that, that associates science and profit with the above devil.
3. That notion, especially the bit about difficult work, expensive projects, and technologies generally inaccessible to the public, has spread.
4. It has poisoned another culture (the Ayn Rand Clubs) with all sorts of ideas about corporate organization charts etc., the perfect blueprint for the 20th Century Corporation, the one whose fall Ayn Rand describes as being caused by to much dependence on trademarks, looks, and unearned pride.
5. The New Ayn Rand Clubs irritate the morons and vice-versa further entrenching their notions of good and evil into the general public's mind.
The result:
Any ingenuity and clever design is overlooked and ignored over clunky expensive overly developed hardware. Why? Cuz you know... the bigger it is the better, the more expensive the more serious the work, you know it's working because it makes more noise, etc.
And to top it off, even though a significant number of people had a computer at an early age and the first thing they did was program, computer design and programming and related technologies are considered Masters or Phd topics. Go figure.
Expect the best ideas to be ignored for at least another quarter century until we are about 50 years old and our revenge against those 50 years old in 2001 will be completed. For the slow, that means we'll have our own kids while the current day morons are scrounging for social security. Social security hopefully will have been cancelled so we can give our children the future we had briefly. The one which these morons came in and destroyed through all their moaning and groaning. Oh and a great big thank you to the Clinton family for suggesting NASA's budget should be increased.
Incidentally the reason the sound theme in most complete Windows based systems clicks when you click the mouse (in addition to the clearly audible click of the mouse button itself) is because Bill Gates is a genius! I hate his software because of the design philosophy and constant astral transcendence I have to achieve to get results from it. But mark my word, the guy knows his market. Morons need to know they clicked when they clicked. Sadly I think some who didn't hear it the first time (the mouse button), refuse to acknowledge the second click (the sound theme) and continue to miss out on the benefits Bill Gates had intended for them. Nice try Bill.
So what am I getting at? Simply this: If we weren't all gawking at all the shiny chrome on our so-called marvelous inventions we might come up with something truly useful and accessible to anyone willing to study it.
/end rant
Simple answer (Score:1)
Teach students science that's current.
Exciting times indeed. In the court room that is. (Score:1)
I'd add more but I really don't know what will happen afterwards.
Re:Somehow I think there's an easier way but only (Score:1)
Re:The Machine (Score:1)
Re:tp (Score:1)
I'd rather have a wank /this/ year, thankyouverymuch.
Re:Cold Fusion (Score:1)
Re:Cold Fusion (Score:1)
That was a mild bit of sarcasm on my part. Personally, I'm a cold fusion agnostic, but then I'm a mere engineer myself and not a *ahem* real physicist either.
Re:I have two reservations about hot fusion resear (Score:1)
I seem to recall hearing that, but I didn't want to claim it without proof.
The issues of radioactivity are important, but you have to remember that the induced radioactivity is not as severe a problem by a long shot as that of spent fuel.
Mmmm, without a working fusion power reactor design to compare, I can't be certain that will be the case. I'm not a nuclear power engineer, but it seems to me the inside of a fission power reactor is relatively mild compared to the inside of a fusion power reactor. The radioactive flux (for lack of a better term) on the internal components will be much, much higher, so we have little idea on how much radioactive waste a fusion plant would create. But again, we have nothing to compare it with yet.
Another interesting benefit of this technology is that if there is a failure you can easily turn it off.
In theory anyway.
There is no problem with potential thermal runaway, ...
There are fission reactor designs that solve the thermal runaway problem, like the CANDU [www.ieee.ca] previously mentioned on Slashdot.
I'm not certain I'm completely in agreement with this anymore. Not that I want to shutdown hot fusion research, but I've been hearing this argument for the last 30 years and it's wearing a little thin.
I have two reservations about hot fusion research. (Score:1)
The proof of concept machines, like the Z-machine are extremely expensive, extremely complex and delicate, and they haven't even reached break-even yet. Unless there are orders of magnitude simplifications, I imagine a practical fusion power reactor would be even more expensive because it would have to be built rugged enough to operate 24x7 (which blows away the hope for cheap, limitless power).
The inside of a fusion power reactor would be a hellishly radioactive environment. Even assuming you don't have the nuclear fuel disposal problems you have with a fission reactor, you still have problems with storage and disposal of the highly radioactive internal reactor parts; injectors, heat exchangers, reactor walls, etc..
Oddly enough I'm not against research into hot fusion reactors, but I cringe everytime some journalist writes about fusion research promising "limitless, cheap energy". I especially remember that's what they promised about fission reactors.
I liked that article (Score:1)
---GEEK CODE---
Ver: 3.12
GCS/S d- s++: a-- C++++ UBCL+++ P+ L++
W+++ PS+ Y+ R+ b+++ h+(++) r++ y+
Re:Climate change (Score:1)
Re:Straight Out of Science Fiction (Score:1)
Um...no. While the heat produced by the reactor may be contained and converted into electricity, eventually all of that electricity will be turned back into heat again, warming the Earth...Basic thermodynamics, mate.
Re:The real social implications of fusion power. (Score:1)
The have-not's of the world exist because of social and political issues, like corrupt third world governments and growing cash crops for export instead of food for self-sufficiency.
Re:If only it were that simple... (Score:1)
Re:Straight Out of Science Fiction (Score:1)
Re:1000 trillion is the equivalent of one quadrill (Score:1)
neutron bomb (Score:1)
I'm too lazy to prove it for myself, so I'll let you do it. Try computing the source required to deliver a fatal dose of neutrons at say 1000 yards from a point source. Then consider the energy that would be released creating those neutrons. Do you really have a device that will kill people without destroying property?
Re:Definitive ref on "cold fusion" (Re:Too bad...) (Score:1)
It's not to say that there's no recogniton of the value and difficulty of what's going on at Sandia and elswhere. It's just that cold fusion would have solved more problems than hot fusion.
If hot fusion is the Holy Grail, Cold Fusion would have been like the resurrection itself. It's just too bad that it doesn't seem to work. (not to say that some people aren't still trying [std.com]).
`ø,,ø!
Re:Lofty goals... (Score:1)
Re:Lofty goals... (Score:1)
What was the cheat to get free cash though in Sim City 2000? I used to know this one...
Re:CA nearly power plant free! Now wants to steal (Score:1)
Hey, it worked in Spaceballs, didn't it?
For God's sake, please don't tell me a Mel Brooks movie was a visionary look at the future.
Re:white and blue jumpsuits (Score:1)
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
Re:Salvation or Damnation? (Score:1)
Re:The real social implications of fusion power. (Score:2)
Yep; everyone will benefit, and the people who spent the hundreds of billions of dollars to make it happen will benefit the most.
Is that somehow a bad thing?
If a hunter shoots a deer, and cuts it up into enough portions for the entire family plus two for himself, is that somehow wrong?
Of course we should benefit the most; we spent all the money. Of course others should benefit as well; we're human beings.
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Re:The real social implications of fusion power. (Score:2)
Irrelevant. The more fusion power we use, the more oil will be available for those third world nations to generate their own power, and the cheaper that oil will be (due to decreased demand.)
In the long term, the cheaper power will decrease the cost of American goods, which will increase the ability of the First World to aid the Third.
The people using the non-renewable resources will benefit from this. EVERYONE will benefit from this.
Assuming it works.
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On the Heat Pollution Problem. (Score:2)
Actually, you do get a heat pollution problem with any power source that isn't recycled solar (i.e. solar, wind, biomass). This is due to the fact that whenever power is _used_, the energy usually winds up as heat at the end of the road. Already, this causes local problems (cities heat up their local environment and any adjacent body of water), and when/if humanity consumes an amount of power comparable to that received by the earth from the sun, it will become a global problem.
That having been said, by the time this is a concern, we'll have the industrial capacity to get rid of it. It's straightforward to dump this heat into space; just set up a few square kilometres of piping and mirrors next to each city, and put it on the "hot" end of a heat exchanger. Compared to the cost of the city, it's cheap, and it solves any heat pollution problems associated with the city.
Re:Fission holdback legit paranoia, not conspiracy (Score:2)
There's what, maybe a dozen countries in the world that have fission power and three of them have had serious accidents -- Three Mile Island, which was serious but not catastrophic, Chernobyl which was about as serious an accident as you can have, and Japan's Tokaimura uranium processing plant which ultimately killed a few people. This doesn't count the untold thousands of deaths from "everyday" hazards like the Hanford site and other low-level contamination workers and nearby residents have been exposed to.
Of the dozen or so with fission abilities, two of the three are probably considered the most technologically sophisticated in the world. If they have screw-ups and "perfect" knowledge of their own abilities, how eager do you think they are to pass out fuel rods to places that still think DDT is great for indoor pest control?
This of course is completely ignoring the other major contributor to fission holdback, nuclear weapons. Tons of countries would love to get ahold of nuclear power plants so that they can use them for their weapons programs. All the world really needs is another Iran-Iraq war, this time with nukes.
Re:Fission holdback legit paranoia, not conspiracy (Score:2)
Let's also not forget the extent to which organizations like Kerr-McGee were willing to go to silence people like Karen Silkwood who wanted to expose their sloppy, profit-happy management.
All of this only underscores the rationale for keeping these kinds of materials out of the hands of third-world states where corruption and incompetance are rife.
Re:I'm disappointed... (Score:2)
If the scientists do have that kind of attitude, it's a recipe for failure. You don't want people who sit back in awe and say "My god, this could really work" when they achieve 20% of the required power. You want them to say, "Shit, we've got a long way to go! We're doing something wrong. Must try harder!"
That said, though, a working fusion reactor would be a Pretty Damn Big Deal. It could give us the ability to power the globe without pollution, without contributing towards global warming, and with ultimately lower cost. The role of electricity would change: it would probably no longer make sense to heat our houses with oil or gas. Battery-driven cars would get their energy from a clean source, rather than ultimately from dirty hydrocarbon-powered plants. The dependence on oil could be dramatically reduced.
Is it going to cure all of society's ills? Obviously not. However, it represents a kind of wealth which allows us to concentrate our energy and resources on other, more important things. As other technological advances have allowed us to build societies which are healthier, more free, and better educated, so this has the potential to allow us to take another step forward in a direction that is actually, for a change, sustainable.
No, it won't solve all our problems, but it has the potential to make our lives easier and better, if we let it.
I think this is a very simplistic view. Go and spend some time in a poor African country, say, and see the problems involved in lifting "much of the lower-class portion of our billions from their squalor and ignorance", and you might come to a different conclusion. You can't fix someone else's problems from the outside, any more than technology can cure all society's ill's. All you can do is help to enable people to help themselves.
And if cheap, clean power isn't an enabling technology, I don't know what is.
Re:Unlimited Power = Unlimited Heat (Score:2)
No such thing as a "Dyson" ring (and a ring is unstable even in literary daydreams), and a Dyson sphere is not a solid structure, but rather a myriad of habitats and other artifically constructed objects in orbit around a sun so as to capture most of the radiated energy.
If they were a blackbody, they would be invisible, but we're looking for them [seti.org] (do a search for "Dyson").
Obviously they would encounter the issue of radiating waste heat[...]
Actually, that's not a huge issue [d.kth.se]. Especially when you consider that you can choose the distance (and thus energy per square unit of surface), and deal with radiating that amount out the back for each section of the sphere you build.
--
Evan
Re:I have two reservations about hot fusion resear (Score:2)
Actually that is not correct - several of the protype machines have reached or exceeded break-even. The issues of radioactivity are important, but you have to remember that the induced radioactivity is not as severe a problem by a long shot as that of spent fuel.
Another interesting benefit of this technology is that if there is a failure you can easily turn it off. There is no problem with potential thermal runaway, or accidental critcality events like the one that occurred in Japan this year.
Cost is perhaps the biggest long term issue - but the potential impact of the technology is so great that we are foolish to not be spending more on it.
Re:Unlimited Power = Unlimited Heat (Score:2)
Re:Climate change (Score:2)
However, to suggest the carbon pollution (including methane gas from third world farming concerns) we've thrown up in the last century will affect the weather in a substantial way, while one good volcanic erruption which throws out more carbon pollution in a few weeks than we have in the last century will not cause weather pattern changes strikes me as incredibly silly.
I have always been concerned with the politics of global warming, because it could distract attention from the environmental problems that really do need fixing, such as local air quality and local water quality.
Re:Unlimited Power = Unlimited Heat (Score:2)
Dumping waste heat wouldn't be much of a problem for a highly technological civilization - there's a 3K heat sink available. You just have to radiate away your excess energy at a wavelength that isn't absorbed by your atmosphere; much much easier than building a Dyson ring!
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:The Machine (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
The same author wrote Driving Albert's Brain. He isn't a reporter - he's a *writer*, and an excellent one at that.
In my opinion - the piece is brilliantly written and is easily on par with Douglas Coupland. To be honest - I >>WISH I could write this well.
The original poster's comments were appreciative and insightful - your reply is the usual kneejerk reaction that twits make when look at a painting beyond their comprehension.
Turn your computer off for a week - you need to go read a real book - something not published by Tor, okay?
.Robert
Some questions for scientific validity (Score:2)
I will say that I feel there are legitimate issues regarding pollution that can and should be addressed, and local pollution problems should clearly be addressed. The point I'm making is that most climate models that are being used to proclaim "Global Warming" don't usually take into account the factors I mentioned. This is even worse when you get "global warming" stories in the popular media (which in regards to climatology you must regard Slashdot as a general news source).
One particularly disturbing instance of fraudlant data collection is in the case of current weather data gathering systems: When temperature data is recorded, for the most part the weather station data is recorded on paper logs. This is going more toward automated systems, but many historical records (as in most of them) are done on paper.
Anyway, when somebody writes down the daily high and low temperatures for a station, sometimes the numbers get inverted (a daily high of 92 degrees gets recorded as 29 degrees... in July for a North American desert) Based upon what surrounding weather stations are recording and historical records for that station (including the previous day's data) a determination is made to accept or reject this data as accurate. If the data is rejected, sometimes an approximation is made for that station and date, or it is simply not including in calculations (for temperature averages, ect. based on the intended purpose of the data)
Where the real problem comes is that much of the weather data used in these models has to be painstakingly entered in by hand one daily temperature at a time. A very expensive and slow procedure at best for what is not immediately useful information by itself. This also means that most climate data before 1950 (and 1970 as a real benchmark) has not been digitized for some serious number crunching, although there are some remarkable exceptions. In many cases researcher are aware of this fact and try to do alternative forms of data collection such as ocean floor sediments, glacial core tests, and geologic queries to try and pull some longer-term information.
Now imagine if you would, that the algorithms trying to determine if the recorded temperatures are accurate, as listed above, had been tweaked by a somebody trying to prove the point of global warming. (And don't tell me that scientific data doesn't get faked or bent... even in peer reviewed journals) How could you prove that the data was fraudlent? By challenging what was rejected.
Here is the real killer: The original unmodified temperature data for most of the United States has not been preserved, and instead the researchers are using filtered data to make all of their calculations. The original data is available in paper form... usually, but imagine the expense of having to re-enter the data all over again. For very little real value besides trying to prove a poltical point.
The other aspect that I question regarding data collection is the location of the weather stations. Many times the monitoring stations are placed in locations that are:
Near population centers - Much of the weather reporting is done by volunteers, many of whom even pay for the equipment themselves. Even if the equipment is donated, it is placed near schools or businesses that have a steady supply of consistant volunteers who can constantly monitor a station. This becomes a problem in rural areas in particular (even though some land-grant universities do have rural weather station programs.... still, you gotta consider how many grad students really want to trek out to the middle of nowhere just to get a bunch of weather data)
What I'm getting at is that the collecting of the weather data can be problematic, even if everybody is sincerely trying to do their best and report the data honestly. I sincerely believe that there are _**SOME**_ individuals that have a political beef and believe that the ends justify the means, so at least some of the data may not be as accurate as you may want to believe.
Does this mean you can sit back and dismiss global warming completely? Absolutely not!
Does this mean we have to immediately shut down the entire petroleum, automotive, avation, and any other industry that uses or releases any chemicals that are proven to produce greenhouse gasses (which also includes mass genocide because you can't have all of these people breathing CO2 into the air either)? Absolutely not!
This is a public discussion that requires accurate information, and as an ordinary citizen who as a minority actually understands the scientific method believes that the researchers discussing global warming and climate changes should do a better job of convincing me that we should undergo massive changes in our society with new laws and customs.
interesting topic, but... (Score:2)
The reporter's writing style destroys much of the credibility this project has, IMHO. This really sounds like pulp science.
Besides, there is two important issues I didn't see addressed in the article.
It is one thing t create fusion circumstances for a very short period of time, using huge amounts of energy.
But once your wires have exploded, how are you going to maintain the temperatures and pressures needed for fusion?
And even if you reach sustainable fusion, how are you going to channel the produced energy into electrical power?
Roland
Re:Cold Fusion (Score:2)
Infinite Energy [mv.com] magazine seems to keep up to date on cold fusion research. It's not exactly a main-stream scientific journal, so take it with a grain of salt.
There's couple of older articles on research at SRI here [sfgate.com] and here [sfgate.com].
Allegedly there are reports of fusion byproducts from cold fusion experiments. Dr. McKubre from SRI has reported elevated levels of helium-4 in cold fusion cells, for example. Of course, he's merely an electrochemist and not a *ahem* real physicist, so his experiments can be discounted.
Cold Fusion (Score:2)
After that incident when two guys said that they had gotten cold fusion to work but it turned out they hadn't, cold fusion has been a taboo subject. However, there is research going on and they are getting results (more energy out than in), though nobody seems to know why.
Re:1000 trillion is the equivalent of one quadrill (Score:2)
No matter how you slice it, 1000 trillion is 1.0e15. There! no more need to argue about how to say it. Isn't scientific notation great?
Getting carried away with Lithium (Score:2)
I need to interject here, I think "usually" is a pretty strong word to use about Li walls in a layperson discourse. The implication is that a molten Li wall is common. It isn't. Molten lithium has only been used in very theoritical reactor design mock-ups and has not been place in any large-scale plasma experiments yet.
I'm currently working on CDX-U, a small spherical torus [pppl.gov] at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, which will be the first device to seriously look at global plasma/molten Li interactions. I have great concern over how a liquid metal such as molten Li behaves in a large plasma device. The molten Li can be pushed around by currents and fields, and could potential be pulled off the walls into the plasma core. In the core Li is an impurity and serves only to reduce energy output. Not to mention that having Li coating all the diagnostic windows is a huge problem, even in a well understood reactor.
Don't get me wrong, molten Li has been theorized to have several nice properties. But one needs to remember that molten Li walls are untested experimentally. The least interesting property to me is tritium production. More interesting are the great thermal and MHD stability properties that a flowing molten Li wall surface provides.
Re:I hope that the gov't grants the money (Score:2)
In the late 1800's, there was DC, the virtual child of Thomas Edison. He founded the Edison Electric Light Company based upon it. He made ridiculous amuonts of money off of his idea, being the only provider, even though there was nearly no demand. (Especiially compared to California now, see my previous comment).
After Edison's company had been founded, there was another scientist continuing the search for power, though Edison had already found it. It was Nikolai Tesla, and he was developing AC (the current standard). He couldn't get funding for his project because Edison used much of his sway in the business to fight him,or what little he actully had to do since Tesla was a minor scientist, albeit with a great idea. Eventually his idea was discovered and his ideas overcame Edison's, but wouldn't it be a shame if fusion went the way of the dinosaur? It is possible, it happens on the Sun constantly, we just have yet to reproduce the effect.
I suggest reading about Tesla on your own, they're tend to be quite fascinating, especially "The Philadelphia Project", even if they do seem a bit outrageous.
My opinions are better than yours.
The Holy Grail?? (Score:2)
On the other hand, I find the idea of fusion power as a source of wealth and egalitary for the whole world to be naïve bs. The reasons of poverty are political and are not swept away with technological solutions, quite on the contrary. There's no way the rich governments and corporations which have invested gazillion dollars in this technology are going to just hand it over to the poor. It'll rather end up to be a new and powerful gadget in their toolbox of economical oppression. What the third world countries must do is to build dispersed power networks utilizing various sustainable sources (wind, solar, bio, hydro...) to make them indepedent of the fuel recources and technology possesed by the first world.
---------------
Fire Your Boss!
Re:Um, no one is talking CONTINUOUS fusion reactio (Score:2)
Re:Power Source (Score:2)
I believe that figure is actually what it sucks down (which may, in your mind, be worse). On the other hand, what the machine produces, according to the article, is 80x what the entire planet produces now (for a very short period, anyhow). The scary part is, they need three times that and then some before the "Machine" is supposed to work.
I don't suppose there's anyone around who knows much about fusion, huh? How much of this energy would be sucked back into maintaining a steady...um...fusing...and how much would actually be usable?
Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Wow (Score:2)
Now.... (Score:2)
oh no, not again (Score:2)
Crap, cause i've been seeing smaller versions of these guys running around on my desk. Maybe I need to get some sleep or raise my refresh rate.
Re:The real social implications of fusion power. (Score:2)
And not all third-world nations have these fuels in their soil.
New technology doesn't automagically make the world better, and fusion isn't going to be any different. All in all, if adapted all over North America, it's going reduce emissions, stop some kinds of resource extraction, make energy much cheaper.
And not every sector will be able to switch to fusion power right away. Transportion already accounts for the bulkshare of fossil fuel consumption, and it will be along time before everyone is driving electric cars (just because of the infrastructure changes needed to be made... the cars would need someplace to charge, which requires some sort of industry adoption of electric cars.)
But who knows, maybe in process of discovering that free market economies are disasterous, we'll all learn how to live and work together, poverty and environmental degradation will be eliminated, and fusion will be one of the tools.
Re:Cold Fusion (Score:3)
CA nearly power plant free! Now wants to steal it! (Score:3)
They banned nuclear power, banned coal and petroleum fired plants, hydro is out because it threatens [insert cute cuddly fish of the day], and anything else has to meet impossible-to-meet emmissions standards. What's left has all their eggs on natural gas. Which is now in short supply and sending energy prices through the roof.
Way to go, your air is still no cleaner than elsewhere and now you're running out of electricity to boot. Well, stay the fuck away from our power. Hoover Dam belongs to Nevada.
CA needs to starve for a while to learn a lesson. Namely, that legislation can't fix your air quality problems without causing other worse problems. Stop trying to STEAL people's cars and crush them into cubes (see: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1223/sb42/smo gflyer_5.html). Start drilling for oil again, both on and off shore. Don't just plunder other people's oil. Want energy? Then you have to get a little dirty yourself.
Emissions are already as low as possible of cars that can still do work. More laws can't make them any cleaner. Stop trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.
You want less smog in L.A./S.F./S.D.? Block industry and business from expanding in existing commercial areas and create new commercial areas at the rim of the city. Decentralize business and industry and you won't have so much smog all in one place. In fact, you'll have less because people will be able to get to work faster when they're not all trying to cram into the same place every day.
In the mean time, suffer, you wanted to play in the sun and beach while we stockpiled acorns for winter. Now you wanna leech off of our supply? Screw you CA. You made your mess, now lie in it.
Re:Cold Fusion (Score:3)
Anyway, that one article was so well-written & researched, I've since stopped bitching about Wired magazine. One article of that quality a year is good enough. Sorry, don't have a link to it (don't know if it's even online).
Re:Cold Fusion (Score:3)
Re:A minor point about fusion fuel source. (Score:3)
2D -> He-4 + E is not correct. There are actually two different reactions that may occur, and neither is the one you have stated. These are:
D + D -> p + t + 4.1MeV
D + D -> n + h + 3.2MeV
Where the first byproduct is a proton, a tritium nuclei, and 4.1MeV of energy, and the second is a neutron, a Helium-3 nuclei, and 3.2MeV energy.
Both Tritium and Helium-3 are good fusion fuels in their own right, making the D-D reaction ever more valuable, as it's products may fuel subsequent reactions.
Also note that D-D fusion is the second easiest reaction to produce, after D-T.
This information is mostly from _Principles of Fusion Energy_, by A.A. Harms, K.F. Schoepf, G. H. Miley, and D. R. Kingdon.
Definitive ref on "cold fusion" (Re:Too bad...) (Score:3)
I regard Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times Of Cold Fusion [amazon.com], by Gary Taubes, as the definitive reference on Pons and Fleischmann's "cold fusion". It's exhaustive, but a must-read if you call yourself a scientist and are interested in this subject, or just want insight into the whole "bad science" process.
(Of course if you are bent on believing a conspiracy theory, you will find it entirely unpersuasive...)
Lofty goals... (Score:3)
I think that a better question is if they can keep the plant from self-destructing every ~100 years or so, like they tended to do in Sim City 2000... That was the most annoying problem when "no natural disasters" was set, unless of course you were also using microwave power beaming *shudder*
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Re:Straight Out of Science Fiction (Score:3)
But if we can create as much power as we want, that isn't exactly going to help global warming (well it is, but that's the point
Global warming has hardly been proven to exist. I doubt very much it's existence. I am not an 80 year old Senator from the 80's. I am VERY skeptical though that humans are affecting the temperature of the Earth. I am a bit perplexed how (With little in the way of meaningful studies) Global Warming is no longer talked of as a possibility, but rather an inevitability.
Even if we get rid of the gases that contribute to the glass house effect, simply releasing any amount of heat to the environment is going to hurt it (and already does).
Umm. No. No, it's not. It's beside the point anyway, because the heat of the reactor is contained by a magnetic field. You see, it has to be that way - people don't react well to temperatures found on the surface of the Sun.
So such a power source might not be such a desirable thing after all
Yeah. Who really wants fushion power anyway? The promise of limitless, cheap and clean power. What a silly thing to wish for.
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Re:A minor point about fusion fuel source. (Score:3)
Sounds about as safe as amateur explosives to me!
The real social implications of fusion power. (Score:3)
Sure, I guess this is technically feasible, but really, fusion isn't going to be that cheap... one of them fandangled "Z-Machines" is still going to cost a bundle. The initial investment to give any region fusion power will be enough to keep it out of reach from third world nations for a long time.
Look how the pre-initial costs (research) are being resisted by the gov't of the USA (the richest nation in the world).
Fusion power would be a wonderful advance for the whole world, but to make it accessible for the whole world, there's more to consider than just the technology. We have to start re-thinking third world debt (ie. loaning them more money is not the solution) and reconsidering free-trade in favour of fair-trade.
Only then will we be One World.
Jeremy McNaughton
A minor point about fusion fuel source. (Score:4)
That doesn't seem quite right. The neutron is also a biproduct, and D-T fusion is just a step on the way.
This is what happens in Deuterium-Tritium Fusion.
D + T = H-2 + H-3 -> He-4 + n + E
The result is helium (He-4), neutron (n), and energy (E) in the form of part gamma radiation and (a smaller) part kinetik energy.
That is not the end goal of fusion. There are a couple of reasons for this, first of all Tritium (T or H-3) is not a good fuel source. Tritium is a hydrogen isotope that in addition to a proton and an electron also contains two neutrons. It's radioactive, very toxic, and most importantly EXTREMELY expensive.
A better, but more difficult, solution is to use Deuterium-Deuterium fusion. Deuterium (D or H-2) is a hydrogen isotope with only one neutron. Deuterium is much cheaper to produce than tritium and is perfectly harmless. Furthermore the fusion reaction would look like this.
2D = 2H-2 -> He-4 + E
No free neutron is produced. This is a good thing. Neutron's can't be magnetically confined, so they simply fly out until it hits something, usually the physical confinement of the fusion reaction, wearing it down over time. The energy is released as gamma radiation.
Deuterium is the fuel source we assume will eventually be used when fusion becomes a commercial alternative.
-
But the most effecient form of fusion is neutron fusion. This is when a protium (P or H-1) is used as fuel. Its two components, a proton and an electron, fuse into a neutron.
P = H-1 = e + p -> n + E
This is partly what the sun does, it produces helium from protium. The sun takes two steps, first producing two neutrons and then joining them with protium to produce helium.
4P = 4H-1 -> 4e + 4p -> 2e + 2p + 2n -> He-4
___
Not the power of the sun (Score:4)
Unfortunately, the temperatures necessary to drive the proton cycle are not attainable by any foreseeable human technology, either controlled or uncontrolled.
All of the reactions considered for fusion power require isotopic hydrogen as at least one component (not a big problem, since deuterium is pretty common in ordinary water) and generate copious neutrons (a much bigger problem, as they degrade the structure of the apparatus and induce secondary radioactivity).
This is poetic misinformation, similar to the early line about H-bombs being "clean" because they were driven by fusion. It took Howard Morland to make it public that so-called H-bombs actually derive 80% of their energy output from the dirty fissioning of U238 in a fast neutron flux created by the fusion reaction. Take away this final step, by using a secondary tamper that won't fission, and the neutrons go out into the atmosphere -- making what is called a "neutron bomb." (Remember those?)
Fusion may indeed be an important power source one day, but not if we gloss over the real drawbacks and hazards as the early champions of fission did. No technology that requires high energy densities can ever be entirely safe, and if we promise people that it is then we are only setting it up to be massively rejected in the bitter disillusionment that will follow the first big accident.
Re:1000 trillion is the equivalent of one quadrill (Score:4)
If you want to be a smart ass... at least be smart.
Unit........ USA............. UK
Million..... 1000000 (6 0's). 1000000 (6)
Billion..... 1000 mill (9)... mill mill (12)
Trillion.... 1000 bill (12).. mill bill (18)
Quadrillion. 1000 trill (15). mill trill (24)
quintillion. 1000 quad (18).. mill quad (30)
sextillion.. 1000 quint (21). mill quint (36)
septillion.. 1000 sixt (24).. mill sixt (42)
octillion... 1000 sept (27).. mill sept (48)
so... 1000 trillion is 10exp21, in USA would be a sextillion.
when you read this big numbers in the press you have to be very careful about who wrote it and where. In other countries, like Spain, for example,10exp24= 1000 trillion (UK) would actually be a thousand million billions (Spain)
Now I'm aroused (Score:5)
Damn! Did this guy write romance novels in a previous career?
If I'd have known physics was that exciting, I think I would've chosen a different major in college.
Old info, but very poetic (Score:5)
I can almost hear Bullwinkle saying "This time, for sure". Every time they take another step forward, someone moves the finish line.
It's a really cool story, though.
Re:Climate change (Score:5)
One thing to note about all of these items: There is practically nothing that an industrial society could possibly do to even affect any of these things from occuring.... even with a Manhattan Project style concentrated effort to even try.
Furthermore, there are strong indications that at least some of the meterological data has been manipulated to some extent to "promote" a radical change of public policy to change global warming, when in fact not all of the facts are in.
The only "substantive" climate data that I've seen that would suggest there is some sort of impact on the global climate by the current global civilization is from the ice core samples from Greenland, which can document air pollution levels in Greenland for more than 1000 years. I would like to point out that Pittsburg Pennsylvania used to have air pollution so thick that you couldn't see more than a block (and that was in the 1890's) There are some notable improvements in many industrial centers of production... but that is for another argument at another time.
To suggest that the jury has made its verdict regarding global warming is really not seeing the whole picture.
After The Horrible Mishap! (Score:5)
Re:Old info, but very poetic (Score:5)
I'm disappointed... (Score:5)
The "Machine", as he capitalizes it, may well be a fascinating invention, but all these references that seem to call for its worship as some sort of god really disturb me. He never comes out and says that, but he gets into the subjects of religion and deism, dropping smug references to "Waiting for Godot" and in general, clearing a path for the Lord in the desert. =P
It's just a tangle of wires and some reaaaaally high-tech gadgetry. It's not a god; it's not the final solution. Free, safe, clean power is a Good Thing, that is true. But it won't answer all the problems, and he holds to one of the most common fallacious beliefs in existence today. I quote Poul Anderson, from his short story "Superstition", set in a post-apocalyptic future :
"...But the superstition is this, son: that science could understand everything, and do everything, and make everything good... I wonder how they could have held so odd a belief, even then."
It's a good idea, and a great new technology, and so it deserves a reference on
Before a technological advance can "cure all of society's ills", it first needs to cure the common flaw of society - human nature.
And there's no cure for that.
-Kasreyn.