Biggest Obstacle of Nuclear Fusion Overcome? 444
Yetihehe writes "Nuclear fusion could become a more viable energy solution with the discovery of way to prevent super-hot gases from causing damage within reactors. The potential solution, tested at an experimental reactor in San Diego, US, could make the next generation of fusion reactors more efficient, saving hundreds of millions of euros a year."
Err... (Score:2, Insightful)
Still nifty, though.
Biggest obstacle? (Score:5, Insightful)
biggest obstacle will be environmentalist. (Score:2, Insightful)
Hell, if the environmentals don't get it the rich NIMBYs will.
So while we have overcome another technical hurdle its the legal, disinformation, and fear, hurdles that will be harder to get around
Next generation? (Score:1, Insightful)
There's a current generation of fusion reactors?
Re:hmmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
FTFA, "...the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (ITER) - which is to be built in Cadarache, France, from 2008 at cost of 10 billion Euros." The experiment was completed in the US. The reactor's use will be in France and probably service, oh, I don't know...Europeans.
The medium shapes the message (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, far more interesting, is how this article is an example of the effect television has had upon the reporting of news in all mediums.
The medium through which a message passes shapes the message being transmitted.
You can't discuss philosophy using smoke signals; looking at a picture is utterly different to reading a discription of a picture, being in a church for a ceremony is entirely different to watching it on TV in your kitchen.
Television as a medium can only show entertainment.
As such, all messages shown on television are shaped into entertainment.
Unfortunately, where TV *is* our culture (do you remember back when the debate was merely if TV would reflect culture or shape it?) it strongly influences all other mediums as well.
As such, we *cannot* have an article which simply says: a researcher has made a small step forward, solving a possible problem with fusion technology.
No. What we get is "BIGGEST OBSTACLE OVERCOME!!? NUCLEAR FUSION NOW ON THE TABLE?!"
It has to be exciting. It has to grab the reader. It has to be *entertaining*.
And still people will complain... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:hmmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Daniel
you are wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And still people will complain... (Score:2, Insightful)
"See that? it's radioactive! don your radiation suits sisters!"
*blinks*
But those things don't *stop* gamma... and
"You're gonna make this place uninhabitable for the next tenthousand years, MURDERER!"
That didn't even make any sense... gamma rads don't hang out like alpha or beta... *brain snaps* ARRGGHHH!! KILL!!! *whips out his 'Environmentally Friendly Shotgun (TM)'*
Re:The medium shapes the message (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure there are plenty of minor breakthroughs in all sorts of fields that get reported responsibly, or not at all. But nobody pays attention to those stories enough to submit them to Slashdot. And if they DO, no doubt Zonk or whoever passes over them as small beans compared to the big stories Slashdot has to tell, like "Linux text editor you've never heard of may fork, says analyst!" The only stuff that makes the grade is the stuff with nice, attention-grabbing headlines.
SO all we see on Slashdot is the sensational stuff, which leads to lots of complaints like yours.
Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Biggest obstacle? (Score:3, Insightful)
My take is that nuclear fusion has had the necessary backing since the 70's. The real problem is that it hasn't shown sufficient returns on that investment to warrant increasing the budget by an order of magnitude or more. Even when fusion generates more energy than it consumes (including fuel acquisition and processing), we still have the problem of making the technology economically viable. I might approve an order of magnitude increase in funding at that point, but I see no reason to do so now when there are technologies, particularly fission, wind, and solar power that are becoming viable.
Strange summary... (Score:3, Insightful)
Brett
Re:biggest obstacle will be environmentalist. (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, but in the current political climate, you can nail opposition to fusion as anti-environmental, and that should hopefully at least confuse some opposition enough to make them check facts. After all, anyone who opposes fusion is encouraging the use of fossil fuels. :)
And if you really want to make fusion sound like a clean energy source in the current political climate, stop referring to it as a "nuclear fusion power plant" and start referring to it as a "hydrogen fuel power plant". After all, in the current public view, "nuclear"=bad and "hydrogen fuel"=good. And of course, you wouldn't be lying, since fusion runs on hydrogen, and would also be very handy for running large scale electrolysis of water.
Re:Tested in San Diego? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a scientist either, but I have read a little on the subject....And from what I understand, the reaction would peter out and die very quickly - very little fuel is used in comparison to a fisson reactor, and the reaction itself requires very precise control to happen at all.
Comments like yours are part of the reason there's so much nonsensical backlash against this sort of technology - "I have no idea what i'm talking about, but it must be bad just because! Nuclear bombs are evil, so this must be the same!".
Couldn't they have done this in some place a little less populated? Like North Dakota or in the area near Area 51?
I would have one of these reactors in my backyard (well, if I wasn't in an apartment right now, anyway) with no reservation whatsoever.
Re:you are wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, that's not such a big obstacle... you can fix that simply by choosing a different name. For example, when everybody was having a snit about "Food Irradiation" [wikipedia.org], they simply relabeled it "cold pasteurization", and presto, problem solved.
As for what to call this technology? I think "hydrogen power plant" would be a fine name. But this all assumes it can be made to actually work... that is the big obstacle.
Just Around the Corner... again. (Score:3, Insightful)
And we are always told that fusion power will be safe because, uh, well, because, well, it's not fission. It's completely new and totally different, so it must be safe. (Not that fission isn't safe, mind you, but fusion will be even safer). And it won't produce any radioactive waste. To speak of. Not from the actual fusion reaction. Well, sure, the neutron flux may make a lot of other things radioactive, but that's big deal. Why, in fact, the government has promised that Yucca Mountain will be ready by 1998. If you want to pick nits it isn't, uh, actually in operation yet, but it's Just Around the Corner.
Also Just Around the Corner: helicars and moon colonies.
Re:1:1.2784 (Score:2, Insightful)
So yes, the dollar WILL be the new dollar, for a while. And after that, the economy is going to shift to the East.
Re:crap! (Score:3, Insightful)
You can also just pull a fuel element from the reactor when it has only been in there for a short period of time - this will contain a high percentage of Pu239 as opposed to Pu240. Pu is easy to chemically separate as well. It is an effective material for making bombs which "we" demonstrated on the Japanese.
The actinides can be burned. All you need is a neutron flux. This gets rid of the 1000++ year radioactive wastes - and we get power from this as well. This is what the IFR does in fact.
The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and has been for a long time. I personally do not think that our "misguided" decision to not use these fuel cycles will delay India, Pakistan or China from pursuing them.
OTHO, we are presently burning over 25% of the world's oil production and we have alternatives which we are not pursuing. Instead we are pursuing along with the UK - a misguided war in the middle east that is clearly based on our desire to control (you can read steal) their oil.
The middle east is living in part in the middle ages and they have an egaggerated view of the value of their oil. But of course - the price at the pumps has everything to do with our desire to buy it. Last time I filled up my car I bitched at all the other people in the service station that if they weren't so eager to full up their cars I wouldn't have to pay so much for the gas!
The point is that still people are looking over their shoulder at the next guy and playing a game of economic brinkmanship - wondering when the next guy will stand down and take the bus or ride a bike. As part of this game we send a lot of kids to the middle east to "stablise it". Some come back in body bags. We should add to this count the number of kids in the middle east who are killed - but somehow that number isn't worthy of the media's attention.
The issue is that we have all the energy we need right here at home and we are not using it. Instead we are the ones pursuing a war.
We have 1.8 trillion barrels of oil in the tar sands. We need hydrogen. We don't have it. We need about 75 nuclear reactors in the GWe range. We don't have them. The reason we don't have them in part is because as you point out - someone overseas might want to build a weapon.
The truth is that many people overseas already have built all the weapons they want. Furthermore in the middle east the main reason they want to build the weapons is because we're over there attacking them.
Insanity rules!
Garbage -Hydrogen-Energy (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe camping equipment manufacturers would sell it to the yuppies of tomorrow who would like to go off the grid during vacations.
1.54350997 (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't be "sarcastic" simultaneously about both a false euro introduction rate of $2.00, and predicting the imminent supremacy of the euro. Especially when getting the intro rate wrong isn't sarcasm.
Re:And still people will complain... (Score:4, Insightful)
We Already Have a Working Fusion Reactor (Score:2, Insightful)
It is called THE SUN. The only problem with the Sun is that you cannot charge people for using its energy. This is why they are trying to put it (the sun) into a proverbial bottle, so they can sell it to you for big ca$he.
Re:And still people will complain... (Score:2, Insightful)
But it does produce a bunch of neutrons that convert non-radioactive materials to particle emiting isotopes. It's not that big a deal I think, but fusion reactors are going to generate some radioactive waste. If (OK, when) a fusion reactor manages to blow up there may well be some radioactive contamination of the neighborhood. The party line here is that at any given time, there won't be much fuel in the reactor core so the explosion can not be all that devestating. It'd be interesting to see a comparison of radioactive contamination from say one thermonuclear accident a decade to the steady release of minute amounts of radioactives from coal and petroleum. I'd bet that fusion wins out on that score.
Anyway, the tree huggers are (slowly) coming to comprehend that nuclear and thermonuclear power are probably LESS polluting than fossil fuels. It'll be a few decades before they figure out that the world economy really can not be run on the methane emitted from fermenting dandelion greens, but eventually they will come around. Who knows, in a couple of decades, you and your environmentalist neighbors may yet find true love.
Re:1:1.2784 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Garbage -Hydrogen-Energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:crap! (Score:3, Insightful)
Bollocks.
By far the biggest problem with fission is not neutron activation of the machine itself but rather the creation of unstable intermediate-mass daughter atoms. The problem is that the neutron-proton ratio of heavy stable elements is slightly higher than the neutron-proton ratio of lighter stable elements. Hence if you break apart a heavy nearly-stable nucleus you get very unstable isotopes. A few of those isotopes have half-lives measured in hundreds to thousands of years, causing a big problem because you have to store the waste a long time.
Neutron activation of the machine itself is not a big deal. Fission reactors are largely made of aluminum and water. Aluminum that absorbs a neutron ends up (after a short-lived decay chain) as stable. The oxygen in the water produces mostly the heavier stable oxygen isotopes and a small amount of stable fluorine. The hydrogen produces mostly deuterium and a tiny, tiny amount of tritium (from neutron absorption by deuterium). Tritium is messy but not a long-term problem as its half-life is only 12 years.
Existing fusion machines have neutron-activation problems largely because they are experimental rigs, composed of lots of materials that are not particularly well selected for neutron absorption or non-activation. If tokamak technology becomes an engineering reality, tokamak plants will be engineered for minimal neutron activation.
Re:Biggest obstacle? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, since they've been trying to develop fusion power since the 50's, that sounds about right. If it was so darn easy to make, we'd have one by now. Fusion power would have all the advantages of fission power, but far fewer disadvantages. Even the environmentalists could like it.
Interesting factoid: Philo Farnsworth, widely recognized as the inventor of electronic television in the 20's was a bigshot in fusion research in the 50's. He helped develop a device called the "fusor", but as we all know, while they did get fusion, they were never able to reach the break-even point.
Re:OT: Trojan cooling tower demolished (Score:4, Insightful)
But yes, nuclear power plants are all one-off designs with no "off the shelf" replacement parts available, unless you count the doorknobs and lightbulbs. Toshiba seems to be testing a novel new approach [adn.com] to distributed nuclear power that makes a lot more sense. It'll do battle with the NIMBY crowd, but you can't please everyone.
One advantage to designs like Toshiba's is that they're small. Yet another issue with Trojan was that if it was cranking out power at it's peak (1100 MW) and it suddenly went offline, the whole Western U.S. felt the hit. Smaller plants cause less havoc when they trip. Furthermore, economic right-sizing for plants seems to be at about 500 MW. Power traders seem to like to manage plants of that size, though I can't say I completely understand why.
In all, I hope to see something of a resurgence in popularity of nuclear power, particularly as we see rising fuel costs for gas fired plants and continued environmental issues around the existence of hydroelectric dams. I don't think we know much at all about the long-term impacts of wind farms.