British Researchers Say Fusion Is Close 443
sh00z writes: "The article quotes a leading scientist saying that Fusion power is 'within reach' in the next decade, with commercial plants to follow within another 10 or so years. Shhhh. Don't tell anyone at Texas A&M. They might just jump the starting gun again."
A&M?? (Score:2)
ten years == we don't really know (Score:4, Troll)
Note to future readers of ambitious scientists: ten years means, "we don't really have any idea where we are, but we're getting really close!"
I guess that I kind of feel for them (the scientists), since the public is really unwilling to fund "blue sky" research, but to keep prognosticating like this is irresponsible. Predicting timelines is best left to engineers.
Re:ten years == we don't really know (Score:4, Funny)
Just not software engineers! ;^)
Re:ten years == we don't really know (Score:2)
- Predicting timelines is best left to engineers
Just not software engineers!Speak for yourself. I'm very good at estimating timescales. "This project will never be finished" is my favourite, and I've yet to work for a company that's proved me wrong.
Re:ten years == we don't really know (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me start by saying that cold fusion != fusion research. Cold fusion as popularly described has been debunked. The researchers in question were good people who were mistaken about what they observed, unfortunately when they were given proof of their mistake they chose to disappear from the public eye rather than admit their mistake. No low temperature fusion has ever been verified, though occasionally you will see new proposals for how it might be possible.
Now the real stuff. This means high temperature, high pressures, and almost exclusively isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). There are three successful ways that man has produced fusion: Hydrogen bombs which are heated by one or more fission bombs, confined plasma (ie. tokomaks), and pulsed laser pellet experiments.
H-bombs are pretty useless because there is no way to make a small controllable explosion. All you can ever get is really big ones that would be impractical as a power source.
Pulsed laser experiments experiments involve using arrays of uber lasers to heat and compress solid hydrogen pellets so fast that they reach the point of fusion before the gas can dissipate. People in the physics community generally see this tech as a dead end because the technical requirements seem to scale exponentially with linear increases in power output. There is still research being done, but the power consumption of the lasers is orders of magnitude more than what little energy the fusion generates right now, so it's unlikely to see this being practical in the next half century.
Tokomaks are the standard in confined plasma fusion, though there are a couple alternatives that have some physicists excited. Tokomaks work; they just don't work very well. Right now we have machines that about break even, ie. they generate enough energy to run themselves. Given how much energy is involved just running the machine, if you can get another factor of 10 out of the best machines of today, you'd have enough for a useful small-medium scale power plant.
Confined plasma fusion is alluring for a number of reasons. The source hydrogen is easy to obtain or make (tritium is often created in fission reactors by exposing deuterium to nuetrons). The radiation is very safe compared to fission reactions. In both fission and fusion the components of the reactor itself will pick up some radioactivity, but the real concern in fission is all the spent fuel. You can't keep it where it is because it's no good as a fuel source and you don't want to dump it anywhere else either. In fusion reactors, the spent fuel is typically less rather than more dangerous when compared to the fuel itself, and contains no mid-range decay lifetime isotopes of the type which are most troublesome in fission reactors. Lastly, confined plasma can't have a "melt down", if the plasma gets too hot or electricity is turned off, the fusion reaction stops itself.
Contrary to popular belief, it's not just output that's a problem, the things are very large and complicated. I remember a story I heard about a group who spent 2 months taking apart, fixing, and putting their machine back together again, despite knowing at the start what piece had broken. If it's going to be profitable you need technology that is stable, long-term and easily repairable. Right now, fusion is none of these. Part of the drive for smaller machines is that they should be easier to maintain and less prone to fail. The trade off is that smaller machines need tighter confinement than their large cousins and thus are harder to engineer.
Two decades is somewhat optimistic for commercial appliations, but the state of technology is such that the next generation machines by the end of the decade should be a good 20% or so above break even (not wide scale useful but something to notice). If we can keep progressing at the current rate (and there is enough inventiveness and creativity in the field to suggest that's possible) then I would think prototypes for small power plant type models might be ready by 2040 or so.
Of course then again I'm a physicist and we have a horrible track record in predicting the rise of fusion technology.
Re:ten years == we don't really know (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I work at a nuclear power plant and sometimes it can take two weeks to dissassemble the systems enough to "get at" the faulty part. And any well designed power plant (of any energy source) well have sufficient monitoring and analysis systems to allow you to diagnose an impending failure and to know the exact (or very close) cause of the problem before you begin the expensive process of shutdown and dissassembly. So two weeks wouldn't be out of line with current large baseloaded power plants. It's not good by any means, but not excessive compared to whats out there right now.
Re:ten years == we don't really know (Score:4, Informative)
Each camp is entrenched and there is little money left over for persuing alterative machine designs. For one thing, plasma-shock approaches have been totally ignored.
Million degree plasmas are terribly unstable for a whole assortment of reasons (magnetic, viscous, chemical, thermal, etc.) and yet the goal of Tokamaks is to run the plamsa hot continuously, all kinds of bandaids have been applied to 'smooth' out the plasma, and it STILL doesn't work. Look at Tokamak articles from the 70's and they will say the same thing we read now: "Fusion is expected to viable in a decade. We have learned so much about plasmas that we are sure to succeed... "
Maybe it will be possible eventually, but I just don't see it as a reliable method. (I wouldn't bet on this horse!) Predictions of success in a decade are intended to secure another 5 years of funding for this pipe dream. Unfortunately the hardware and computing power required for these machines soak up most of the fusion research money.
Inertial confinement is used to get around nuclear test-ban treaties. It is not intended to be a renewable energy source.
Another approach is the Farnsworth fusor. A table-top fusion machine that works by electron bombardment. VERY little research money has done to this to try to figure out better designs for this inovative approach. (less than a hundred people are involved with Farnsworth Reactors, compared to 1000's on tokamaks:
http://www.richmond.infi.net/~rhull/highenergy0
Perhaps a combination of a Farnsworth electron bombardment with a shocked plasma core would work? (I don't have a clue) All I know is that such ideas won't see the light of day.
Fusion at low temperature: Muon-catalyzed fusion. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, muon-catalyzed fusion at low temperature has been verified and is well-understood. The problem is that we don't have an efficient enough way of making muons to make this give a net energy gain.
Muon catalyized fusion works by firing a beam of muons at a pellet of frozen hydrogen. Muons will displace electrons in the H2 molecule. As muons are far heavier than electrons, they have a much shorter wavelength, which means that their molecular orbitals are much smaller, which means that the resulting hydrogen molecule is much smaller.
This puts the hydrogen nuclei close enough to have a reasonably good chance of tunnelling through the Coulomb barrier and spontaneously fusing.
The problem is that muons decay after a little while. In order for muon-catalyzed fusion to be energy-efficient, a muon must catalyze enough reactions in its lifetime to produce more energy than it took to create it. With current experiment setups and current methods of producing muons, this isn't the case.
[In case anyone's confused, this is completely unrelated to the "cold fusion" that caused such a stir a few years back and was mostly debunked.]
If you could find a magical way of producing a thermal neutron beam for less than, say, 100 keV per neutron, you could also get what amounts to catalyzed fusion just by firing the beam at a block of lead. Four neutrons being absorbed by the same lead atom results in two beta decays and one alpha decay - emitting the components of a helium-4 atom. This isn't time-sensitive, so you don't need a terribly intense neutron beam or any other special conditions. Unfortunately, I know of no way to produce neutrons out of thin air (or thin hydrogen) at a cost lower than a few MeV per neutron.
Re:ten years == we don't really know (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ten years == we don't really know (Score:3, Informative)
Pardon me, but I don't see anywhere in this article where a scientist says we're only a decade away. The submitter (not the scientist) said,
But all that proves is that he was more eager to submit the article than actually understand it.All the scientist said was that fusion power was "within reach" (which could hardly be more vague) and that
"Perhaps in a few decades" doesn't sound like wide-eyed optimism to me. And it certain doesn't mean "commerical plants in another 10 or so years."
Re:ten years == we don't really know (Score:2)
time_to_implementation == localtime + 10 years
Re:ten years == we don't really know (Score:2)
Definition of "Real Soon" (Score:5, Funny)
Of course in 2051, fusion will still be 50 years away.
Amazingly, by calculating the density and power requirements of the latest and greatest CPUs from Intel, we get the same number. By Moore's law of fusion, the heat and energy available to start a fusion reaction in a typical Intel processor doubles each year. By a simple formula, you can determine that in the year 2051 Intel CPU's will be so hot they can fuse hydrogen! This amazing calculation through two independent means confirms the majority opinion: fusion is still 50 years off.
I'm sure there's somebody out there trying to imagine a Beowulf cluser of fusion processors.
Re:Definition of "Real Soon" (Score:5, Insightful)
Compared to the total amount of money governments around the world piss away on totally useless pork-barrels, the amount of money spent on fusion research is trivial, and the payoffs potentially huge.
Re:Definition of "Real Soon" (Score:3, Informative)
Extremely trivial considering that according to Physics Today President Bush's budget cuts nuclear energy research by 29.4%. Of course that article was in June, who knows how much more he plans to take out for other projects? Cutting a budget by over 1/4 tends to send the message that it is not considered important.
Re:Definition of "Real Soon" (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm surprised that you think that research money funds an extravagant lifestyle for academics. As someone who is in reasearch, I'd like to point out that I've had job offers in industry, paying double what I currently get. My friends in accounting and managment couldn't belive how little I was offered, never mind how little I get at the moment. If you want to look how the money is spent, don't claim it goes to all to the academics.
Oh, and how much interest do you think there is in sodium ion desnsity in the upper atmosphere? Or electron interaction with air? Pretty useless, right?
Excpet that the first led to radar, and the second was the work the was pivotal in electron microscopes.
Here we go again (Score:2, Insightful)
For years I hear the same, fusion/cloning/AI/whatever will be available within a decade. Of all that, cloning is the only thing that materialized so far.
Show me the proof or go away. Now.
(No proof? I'm hardly surprised.)
Re:Here we go again (Score:2, Insightful)
I sure hope that the cold fusion part is going to be more stable. If you know only 5 out of 100 cloning test is a success, that is, the animal will be born but could still die in the days, months, years after being born.
Re:Here we go again (Score:3, Funny)
summary of article (Score:4, Funny)
- commercial fusion may be possible in "a few decades"
- that is all
Fusion within a realistic timeframe (Score:4, Interesting)
Flieshman and Pons were out there (Score:2)
Re:Fusion within a realistic timeframe (Score:2)
(Pons and Fleischmann)
First, it became instantly clear that, whatever was, it probably wasn't fusion. (Fusion would yield energy and other stuff; the other stuff wasn't there.)
Second, the effect wasn't reproducable at will. This is a death knell for both scientific research (since research needs to be confirmed by others reproducing the original work) and practical applications.
There's a great "Ask The Experts" discussion at the Scientific American site here [sciam.com] (Google cache [google.com]).
Pollution-free? (Score:5, Insightful)
IIRC, these folks are all using a tritium-deuterium reaction, which yields helium and a neutron. For one thing, it's a much easier reaction than, for instance, deuterium-deuterium, and, for another, the neutrons give you a way to extract the energy and manufacture tritium. Of course, the other thing the neutrons do is irradiate the structure of the reactor, which ends up leaving you with all sort of fun radioisotopes to dispose of later.
Of course, that probably pales by comparison to the amount of waste generated while refining fissile fuels, and you completely avoid the possibility of a meltdown, but still, I might not go so far as to claim it's 'pollution free.'
Re:Pollution-free? (Score:2)
Re:Pollution-free? (Score:2)
IIRC one of the uses is deep sea diving, where you want things to be as robust as possible and having an always on display is considered a plus. The radiation in question is such that the glass cover stops all but what is considered a "neglible" amount.
Re:Pollution-free? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pollution-free? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pollution-free? (Score:4, Informative)
The tritium in modern watches is much safer
http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/phb/hprot/rsu/pubs/tr
Typical annual dose from wearing a plastic watch containing tritium - 4 microsieverts
Average annual dose from natural background radiation - 2100 microsieverts
Efficiency vs. Sustainability (Score:5, Interesting)
What needs to be understood is that they've managed to use a fusion generator to generate electricity. However, they've never managed to create electricity in a useful fashion.
As it stands, they can create an efficient reactor that is not self-sustaining or a self-sustaining reactor that is not efficient. In other words, the former uses very little outside power, but isn't stable and ceases to function. The latter is more stable, but uses more fuel than conventional means.
Fusion power is not a pipe dream. Just as conventional power reactors have been improved over time to produce electricity more efficiently, so will fusion reactors eventually be improved to the point where they're useful. Will it be in the next decade? It may well be, but regardless of when it will happen, it will happen.
Codeposition fusion is happening today (Score:5, Interesting)
Codeposition fusion might not only relieve a significant portion of our dependence on foreign oil (and we all know how important that is), but it might also be a natural way to retrofit our dangerous, dirty fission nuclear plants. Codeposition fusion produces nearly zero ionizing radiation of any kind, and no nuclear waste products.
Here are three good references:
"Calorimetry of the Pd + D Codeposition," by S. Szpak, P. Boss, and M.H. Miles, in Fusion Technology, volume 36 (Sept. 1999), pp. 234-241. search near the end of this page for the abstract ("...excellent reproducibility, high power outputs....") [ans.org]
"On the behavior of the cathodically polarized Pd/D system: Search for emanating radiation," by S. Szpak, P.A. Mosier-Boss, and J.J. Smith, in Physics Letters A, volume 210 (1996) pp. 382-390. (Phys Lett A is much easier to find than Fusion [Science and] Technol.)
"Calorimetry of Pd+D Codeposition in a Fleischmann-Pons Dewar Cell," by M.H. Miles, S. Szpak, P. Boss, and Martin Fleischmann (March 2001) abstract on web only [aps.org]
In short, codeposition fusion reliably produces a 500% power gain without fast neutrons, high-energy radiation, or radioactive waste. The peak of the energy produced is in the infrared, with x-ray production just 9% above the baseline in a lead cave, and gamma-ray production only 2% above a lead cave's background levels. There is a very high likelihood that codeposition fusion will soon be commercialized to drive electrical generation turbines, helping to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and, given sufficient electric vehicles, foreign oil. The cost of codeposition fusion electricity is likely to be less than one cent per kilowatt hour.
You may have heard that cold fusion was discredited. Early experiments used smooth, solid palladium cathodes, which did not produce reliable results. Some such smooth, solid cathodes would run for weeks without producing excess heat, and then would do so for perhaps a few days, and often would never do so again. Over 400 studies in the peer-reviewed scientific literature -- see: the Dieter Britz bibliography [about a megabyte] [chem.au.dk] -- have confirmed that the effect is certainly real, but is only reproduceable in less than one out of ten attempts. Those who have studied codeposition fusion get 99+% reproducibility, and precise control of the effect. The crucial difference is that codeposition cathodes are mossy and dendritic, instead of smooth and solid. Any kind of mossy, high surface area cathodes produce much better results than any smooth cathodes, but they were not in common use until a couple years after the poor early results had discredited the entire field.
Of the six laboratories in the U.S. publishing cold fusion research, three are in California, one is in Mountain View (First Gate Energies), and one is in Menlo Park (SRI International.) Szpak et al's lab is in San Diego. The governments of Italy, France, Russia, Japan, and China all sponsor cold fusion research in their own national laboratories. However, the budget for cold fusion here in the U.S. is very small, because the entrenched plasma fusion "big science" community (whose most optimistic estimates indicate that plasma fusion will not be viable for another thirty years -- and even then it will produce nuclear waste; perhaps more than fission does) keeps funding away from cold fusion (which does not produce nuclear waste or dangerous radiation) through continued, unfair ridicule.
Cheers,
James
Re:Codeposition fusion is happening today (Score:3, Informative)
This is wonderfully convenient. Care to offer a theory why? Last time I checked no one actually had a good reason why the energy released is incredibly different than what would be expected from fusion. It's lucky for the researchers though. If that original cell actually produced as much energy as they said, you would expect the cell to be hot as Hades. Not only would it have killed everyone in the room, but it should have still be hot enough to fatally irradiate everyone at the press conferences and tv interviews where they showed it off.
While were at it, where is the Helium? If it works, I expect your fusion apparatus to make helium right? There was no He found in the original cell and to the best knowledge no independant lab has ever found He embedded in a Pd cathode where the cold fusion people say it should be.
Maybe I'm totally wrong about cold fusion, but at this point I think you're going to have to come along with a marketable product before I going to believe it. BTW, if it works, why wasn't it on the market almost immediately? Codeposition on spongy Pd didn't take that long to think up.
Re:Codeposition fusion is happening today (Score:3, Insightful)
While were at it, where is the Helium? If it works, I expect your fusion apparatus to make helium right?
Correct; all cold fusion cells produce easily detectable, large quantities of helium. The first use of palladium to transmute hydrogen into helium was seventy-five years ago:
BTW, if it works, why wasn't it on the market almost immediately?
Lack of funding.
Cheers,
James
This is why I never believe you people. (Score:3, Interesting)
Lack of funding.
It's always, "I just need your signature on the cheque, sir, before we can show you that miracle." If there was only one man in the field, I'd consider it that claim, but with hundreds allegedly working on it, the lack of funding would really be more of a private investment opportunity for those involved than an insurmountable obstacle.
You claim to have a compact, safe source of power that could easily be built in a garage. Yet not a prototype of a practical generator to be seen. With 5X over electrical input, you could just run a damned steam engine turning a generator to feed itself and have a virtual perpetual motion machine. Any backyard tinker could build such a device for a hundred dollars or so, given the heat source you claim to offer. There is plenty of video of electrolysis tubes bubbling away, but the only evidence we are given are your claimed readings, which may be intentional fraud or simple incompetence.
Worse are the constant claims about "peer-reviewed journals" and patents, as if these constitute any sort of evidence. Everyone knows that the patent office never bothers to confirm that an invention works before registering it, and patenting a non-marketable device is the very hallmark of crackpotism. Any two people can start a "peer-reviewed" journal, it doesn't mean anything unless you already respect the people doing the reviewing. Such cargo cult science is done by ufologists, astrologers, designers of perpetual motion machines (a large number of whom I see moving to cold fusion research), etc. It means nothing by itself.
Briefly, you make these claims:
-you have a working power source
-it is simple enough to build at home (no moving parts, simple structure)
-it is thousands of times cheaper than hot fusion devices
-you need loads of money to make any kind of usable product
Hmm...
Another thing about fuel cells. (Score:3)
Then we can run electric cars off gasoline etc. They'll run a lot more efficiently and produce a lot less pollution.
Don't let the typical bias against fossil fuels stop you. They make distributing and storing hydrogen a lot easier.
And when fossil fuels become expensive, you can easily switch to plant oils using the same distribution system. OK so plant oils aren't hydrocarbons but I figure by then the switch shouldn't be too much of a problem.
So any reason why the focus seems to be on pure hydrogen or at best methanol?
Re:Still fringe science, new name. (Score:3, Insightful)
You silly git. When will you get off that kook science dream train and join the waking world?
Let's address your paranoid conspiracy mania point by point, shall we?
Who the hell cares how he logged in? And what deep, deep nerve did he touch which so drove you to go all 'investigative reporter' on his ass? That is what we call, 'Misdirected Energy.' Do some healthy research some time rather than spend all your powers holding up the popular kid's paradigm.
This is a valid observation. (Though I did count a few other different names unique to two of the articles.) And while we would all like to see long lists of references, you must still answer this question: If the science is good, then who cares how few people are involved? Marginalized areas of study are nearly always tended to by small numbers of public researchers. The history of science confirms this pattern MANY times over. Remember: 'Popular' does not mean 'right'. In fact, it usually means 'Lowest Common Denomonater'.Now you're just acting foolish. First of all only one of the people involved wrote for "Ininite Energy Magazine". And secondly, why the heck is this bad? Of COURSE people who study marginalized areas of science are going to want to speak in forum, especially when they believe that the world is being manipulated by greedy people who want to see noble ideas perish.
Basically, you're doing it again; just because you've been told by the popular kids that certain things are 'uncool,' you blithely go about bullying the kids who have enough self-resolution and guts to act like individuals. This is, in fact, why you felt impelled to go all 'investigative reporter' on James; you obviously squirm in fear at the idea of having your own name associated with 'uncool' science, and you automatically assume that James would feel the same way too. And so you attacked him with the same ammunition that you have been kept in line with. You silly dork. Grow a damned spine.
It is obvious that you are just another sheep scared of an open gate in the pasture. TRY for once to act like you're not.
Remember; Sheep get fleeced. And eaten.
-Fantastic Lad (A.K.A., Fuck You. --People get shot by morons like you for thinking different, and I think REALLY differently. I may be brave, but I'm not stupid. Anonyminity is one of the great powers of the web! People can speak freely without fearing bullets.)
Fusion != Cold Fusion (Score:4, Funny)
Fusion and Cold Fusion ARE NOT THE SAME THING!
I mean, really... What more can I say?
Re:Fusion != Cold Fusion (Score:5, Funny)
Well.... cold fusion is already commercially available [allaire.com]
There are other ways to get fusion (Score:4, Informative)
Cold fusion may or may not work, however there is more than magentic containment. Try electrostatic. You could build a small (very ineffcient) fusion reator in you garage. They do away with using 'hot' plamsa and just go for ionized hydrogen being accelerated towards the middle of the reator. It works like a champ. And depending on the design of the reactor you can directly convert the energy released by the fusion reactions to (high voltage) DC (electricity).
More info at fusor.net [fusor.net]
Re: Fusion by acceleration. (Score:2)
The problem is that with a scheme like this you end up with difficulties surprisingly similar to magnetic confinement fusion if you're operating in a regime that produces useful power.
If your particle streams are fairly tenuous, they pass through each other with few reactions, and you operate at very poor energy efficiency (most of your input energy is wasted).
If the particle streams are dense enough that most particles interact, then shortly after impact you have an ordinary cloud of hot plamsa. This will disperse very quickly, leaving only a very short time for interaction, which again results in very poor energy efficiency.
You can try to confine the resulting plasma with magnetic fields to get a longer interaction time... at which point you're dealing with magnetic confinement fusion with a novel injection and heating scheme. Still interesting to build, but not as completely different from magnetic confinement fusion as your post suggests.
Call me a cynic... (Score:4, Insightful)
...but we see these stories appearing in the news media every time fusion researchers get a little concerned about their funding. It seems that the main reason these stories appear is to drum up some public support for continued funding (as with all sorts of long-term science research that's mostly funded by public money).
It's sad that public-funded science has to do this, but this is just how it is in modern Western society. This is one area where I have resigned myself to the fact that it's not worth trying to change the system - it's just not going to happen. At least a reasonable level of public funding is available for such research, even if it's never quite enough.
Anyway, fair play to the researchers, they've got their media coverage, their funding is assured for a little longer.
I hope that the great dream of widely-used fusion power is something I will see within my lifetime. Perhaps people in future centuries will then look back on our lifetimes and know that not everything that we did harmed ourselves, our rights and our planet.
Re:Call me a cynic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Call me a cynic... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Call me a cynic... (Score:4, Interesting)
Designing fusion reactors is a business just like any other: turn off the PR and the venture dies.
...which is precisely my point. We live in a world that has allowed PR to become the be-all and end-all of everything. If you don't look like a god, if you're not perfect at explaining things in terms understandable by the average Joe, if you do not make yourself heard forcefully, then people just ignore you and your ideas. I find that sad, because it means that all sorts of really interesting thoughts and ideas just get ignored, simply because the people who have come up with them aren't very good at PR.
This tendency to ignore people who aren't good at PR is, I think, just instinctive. However, we are sentient beings (most of us, anyway ;) and that means we have control over our instincts, at least to a certain extent. The fact that people seem so completely blinded by PR in modern society indicates to me that we are not teaching people to be critical of their instincts. It should be obvious to anyone who has thought about this that our instinctive reactions to things are often not the optimal course of action.
As I said in my original comment, I have resigned myself to not being able to change this, because society has developed another less-than-wonderful trait: people do not like to think for themselves. Again, this is probably instinctive, but we seem to do less to discourage it now than we ever have done in the past. If I could change it, I would, but it seems that this is a feedback loop that we are destined to stay stuck in. The less people want to think for themselves, the harder it is to make people think that they want to think for themselves.
Perhaps this is the kind of intellectual decadence that led to the fall of the Roman Empire and the entry of Europe into the Dark Ages, only writ on a global scale.
The only way it could be any different is to have total centralized economic control, which has historically proven inferior.
Nonsense. Do you only see black and white? Are there always right answers and wrong answers? Or are there shades inbetween?
It is perfectly possible to publicly-fund science in a free-market economy without forcing scientists to resort to PR shenanigans such as this. All it takes is a little vision and willpower amongst the bodies providing the funding. Of course the public should know what the scientists are up to and what their taxes are paying for, but sensationalism and claims without substance help no-one in the long run.
I should point out that your trolling here becomes painfully obvious, as you have used an unrelated argument (free-market vs command economies) to attempt to justify your first position (the requirement for good PR in modern society). I believe that this what's commonly known as a strawman argument.
The rest of your comment I don't disagree with. You're not actually disagreeing with anything I have said. There is indeed little commercial incentive to invest in fusion research, because there is no expectation of return on investment within a reasonable timeframe, and yes, publicly-funded research takes up the slack. But this is a good thing, and precisely why we need publicly-funded science in the first place: to fund things that may be vitally important in the future, but which corporate R&D departments won't touch with a bargepole. Not to mention areas of research where keeping the science public makes sure of certain ethical standards, or where the science is of vital interest to the public.
True, but... (Score:2)
Not everyone by default cares and can fully appreciate good science projects without PR "education", just as not everyone can appreciate good homeless shelters and reading programs without a little PR. Sure, people always seek to know about the stuff they're interested in, but the vast masses have to be convinced that things they care less about are worth sparing a few (taxpayer) dollars for. PR widens the circle of aware people. And it's bottoms-up education rather than top-down. You might think about why such a distributed system has advantages.
--LP, who never thought he'd be defending PR people, on Slashdot of all places
Re:Call me a cynic... (Score:2)
Yes, in the old Soviet Empire, you could walk into any used auto lot and drive away a brand new fusion powered car!
And those ancient Aztecs, it's a little known fact that their pyramids were actually fusion power plants.
Give me a break. Western society is pragmatic in the extreme, we run with what works, and we abandon what doesn't. That's why ancient societies could grasp the basics of math, chemistry, astronomy, etc, but they could never develop it, their societies were constricted by their traditions, by their religions, or other superstition.
The accomplishments of the West make the accomplishments of previous attempts at civilization pale in comparison. Our ways *work*, if they didn't, we'd find another way, and that is why Western capitalist democracy will survive.
fund it. (Score:2, Insightful)
they've already demonstrated that they can create the the field(s), it's just a matter of fine-tuning things. personally, i'd like to help fund their project, seeing as how electical power is the world's life-blood, and this is the best soultion as of yet to help us generate more of it. nuclear war eventually will be inevitable, but personally i'dlike to be in the country that funded powering these things, so that when the sky is so thick with ash you can't see the sun anymore, our country is still capable of heating all of america's homes (as fusion produces enormous amounts of power).
why fusion will change the world (Score:3, Interesting)
If the energy produced by fusion exceeds the cost of producing it (collection and production of fuel, maintenance of energy plant, cleanup and pollution) then we will essentially have a scenario where energy production can accelerate to the point where we can theoretically have all the energy we want, dirt cheap.
After that point is reached, anything is possible. Unlimited food production: Need light? No problem. Need water? Go boil some from the sea. Need fertilizer? Create your own lightning to get nitrates. Unlimited material wealth: need more raw material? Go on dig it out of the ground with your fusion powered machines. Factories can run all day and all night cos energy is free. Incredible high-energy research opportunities. Spaceflight! Basically everything will follow this principle: use energy to collect/generate raw material and use this raw material and energy to create means of production.. and then the final product in great quantity.
Of course, private energy firms will never produce energy in such quantity. but what if the government were to fund this? once energy production reaches a critical mass.. WOW!
Danger in energy with no price (Score:2)
As the Soviet society had free energy. no incentive was there to develop energy-saving equipment and thus all the consumer-goods and high-end technological devices we use today (like cell phones and portable computers). This is also the main reason that the Soviet Union finally collapsed. The Soviet people also wanted the goods the western world had. Had the situation been the opposite, the Soviet Union would be the worlds only superpower today.
This is also the main reason that european people uses only half as much energy per capita as in the US. In the US, energy (especially petrol) is much cheaper than in Europe allowing americans to drive in their crappy old chevy's etc. (although they do look cool i must admit).
Thus as long as there is an incentive to do research into energy-saving technologies, research into those areas will likely be able to spawn lots of consumer-products never thought of before.
My point is, there should be a price on energy and all other resources, otherwise a catastrophical amount of waste of resources is bound to happen and reaserch might not result in new high-tech consumer products that we all might benefit from.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer
OT - Vaccum Tubes in Fighters (Score:2)
By the late 1970s and early 80s, the United States, Europe and Soviet next generation fighters had all progressed from a vaccum tube level of technology to solid states.
The Third Generation Jets
US - F-4, F-111, A-6, A-7, F-8
USSR - MiG-21, MiG-25, Su-17/19
Europe - Jaguar, Mirage III, Buccanner
Were being replaced by the Next Generation aircraft, and at the time (1976) Soviet CPU technology was just as good, if not better than that of the United States (The KGB Archives book talks about this). It was only in the mid 1980s that the economy of scale and massive money put into AMD, Intel, Samsung and Motorola designs began to outstrip Soviet clock-speeds and designs.
The older Soviet designs tended to be cheap and disposable aircraft, but by the late 70s, they were building smaller numbers of world class aircraft like the West, and they used advanced avionics and computer systems.
The Fourth Generation Jets
US - F-14, F-15, F-16, F/A-18
USSR - MiG-29, Su-27
Europe - Tornado, Mirage IIIE
(Note the F-14 is something of a bastard that crosses Generations with features of both. And the MiG-31 is just an upgraded MiG-25)
It's true that EMP and TREE has a serious effect on solid state electronics, and it's also true that the West spent billions of dollars hardening thier equipment against EMP.
The myth of Soviet gear being more survivable because of vaccum tubes, for the most part is a myth. The Soviets hung tight with the West until about 1985 in technology, and with each advance the West made, the Soivets matched it or passed it.
Re:why fusion will change the world (Score:3, Informative)
The answer for petrofuels is "limited subterranean reserves of petrogunk". The answer for fusion is "human effort". Petrofuels can only supply the energy needs of the human race for a few hundred years, tops, but fusion will last for at least tens of thousands of years. That's the real gift of fusion: it replaces the hard problem of how to find scarce petrogunk with the easy problem of how to devote a tiny fraction of your population to tending the fusion plants.
There are political ramifications: a considerable amount of suffering comes from the fact that a few tyrannical governments control large reserves of petrofuels. With fusion, OPEC becomes irrelevant, the Saudi oil billionaires turn back into tin pot tyrants, and the rest of the world can tell them to go straight to hell. Nations and even cities will be able to provide their own energy locally. Energy would be a local issue, and not a global military adventure. (No doubt some would manage to screw it up. A fusion-powered California would have just as many rolling blackouts.)
Re:why fusion will change the world (Score:2)
Hmm. I'm just picturing a scenario where the entire power for New York or Washington (or, hell, both) comes from one huge great monster fusion station. Protected by a cadre of geriatric minimum wage security guards.
Hmm, again. 100 million degrees. Liquid or gas cooled. Let's just suppose that your coolant stopped flowing, through happenstance or sabotage. How do you scram a fusion reactor?
No, I think that I'll keep asking my elected representative fund wind, solar, wave and hydro, thanks all the same.
Re:why fusion will change the world (Score:2, Informative)
So as it expands, it also becomes diffuse, and there would be no giant explosion.
Fusion power would actually be relatively safe.
Re:why fusion will change the world (Score:2)
A poster elsewhere suggests that the core walls would be nicely irradiated. I was picturing a venting of superheated plasma scouring the walls and sending the whole lot up into the atmosphere, much like a burning tank sending up DUP dust, or indeed like Chernobyl.
It's just that I've worked in the fission industry and know how much non-worst-case designing and plain old finger crossing goes on. Fission reactors are very safe, but it's impossible to build a completely safe one. I was just wondering what the worst case was for fusion.
On the other hand, maybe I've just been watching too much Star Trek, with its "Warp Core breach imminent" mantra. ;)
Re:why fusion will change the world (Score:2)
It's a big lump of swirly glowy stuff held in a magnetic bottle. That's close enough in Trek technobabble terms. ;)
Re:why fusion will change the world (Score:2)
Well, the thing with fission power is that it's relatively simple to start, but not so easy to stop. With fusion it's the opposite, starting and maintaining the reaction is fiendishly difficult. To stop a fusion reactor, just disrupt its containment, and the plasma will simply dissipate. It is really hot, sure, but there's not very much of it.
Re:why fusion will change the world (Score:2)
Okay, so it's not free, but 5 billion+ years is a hell of a good mortgage.
Re:why fusion will change the world (Score:3, Interesting)
What can (hopefully will) happen is the fairly rapid (over 10-20 years) phasing out of most of the current fossil fuel generators and fission reactors. Some will remain, probably running off industrial byproducts, as incinerators or to crank fusion reactors (they have non-trivial startup requirements). In the third world, the process of switching to fusion power will probably be fastest, since they have less infrastructure to upgrade/replace.
One thing many people seem to miss is the problem of waste heat. Since fusion power still obeys the laws of thermodynamics, waste heat will inevitably flow into the environment. This, along with heat caused by power transmission losses (very significant) will have a significant environmental impact if power use were to drastically rise.
Another thing. Fusion power won't be free. In the short term it might even be more expensive than current power. On the long term though, I agree that it should be cheaper than current power sources.
However, I sincerely hope the Not In My Back Yard effect, environmentalist anti-nuclear scare tactics and patent laws don't throttle fusion power. We need this, and it should be a gift to all mankind.
Spherical Tokomaks can be useful (Score:3, Insightful)
Briefly, the START program proved the advantage of spherical tokomaks over conventional tokomaks. A tokomak is a torus shaped confinement vessel responsible for generating the magnetic field.
START was so successful, that MANY researchers world-wide are now using spherical tokomaks. The issue now is not "can we sustain a fusion reaction" but "can we do so efficiently."
Currently we can't which is why there's been no press releases. At this point it's purely an efficiency problem.
As an interesting aside, I noticed a page with some interesting uses for spherical tokomaks. One in particular caught my eye:
-- QUOTE --
Actinide Burner
Another idea for using the source of neutrons generated by a spherical tokamak is to "burn" unwanted long-lived actinides present in the spent fuel from a nuclear (fission) power station.
By transmuting these into shorter-lived nuclides, the waste burden from conventional nuclear power could be alleviated.
-- END QUOTE --
Now that's a useful fringe benefit.
Cryptimus
developing alternative energy.. (Score:2)
Re:developing alternative energy.. (Score:2)
Physicist or Engineer? (Score:2, Insightful)
It all depends on who this 'scientist' is. When I worked on a fusion power project in the late 70's we had two major milestones:
Even back in the 70's people said that ``Success was just around the corner''. For years now, predictions almost always said ''demo in the next 10 years with commercial plants 10 years after that''.
You will know that significant process has been made when that '10' is reduced to a number such as '5' or smaller. It is my guess that in 10 years they will start saying success is slightly less than 10 years away. At that rate by 2035 hopes and reality will meet.
No Fun At All (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Fusion = Unix? (Score:2)
(ducks rocks tossed by the faithful)
- Lawrence Person
the famous grain of salt (Score:2, Interesting)
its comparable to the "leading computer scientists" that get interviewed by some big news company and claims "A.I is a couple of years away".
we might get there, but probably not real soon.
Fusion Plasma Shields (Score:2)
Space Travel.
What'll we do with all that energy? (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, we've found a way to use up practically "limitless" data storage and cpu power :)
I'm also concerned with - groan - global warming. After all, when you use any kind of energy there is some loss in the form of heat. When we start using this stellar quantity of power, I hope some of it goes toward the construction of a planet-sized heat sink.
Re:What'll we do with all that energy? (Score:2)
If the rest of the world is going to catch up-- and I won't debate how desirable that is or not here-- energy sources that can accurately be described as "cheap" and "limitless" are crucial.
Oh man (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, heavy water fusion (the fusion of H-2 and H-3) yields an alpha particle and a free neutron. Both of these byproducts are moving really fast after the reaction. The helium isn't much of a problem considering it has a charge and can be confinsed and controlled by magnetic fields. The neutrons however have no charge and thus fly in whatever direction they were originally headed. Thus heavy water reactors need lots of shielding and cooling systems due to the thermal pollution of the energetic neutrons. This adds up to alot of wasted energy in the form of heat (about two thirds of the total energy from the reaction). You can run the coolant through exchangers to get some energy back out of it but you're left with the same radiactive problems fission reactors have to deal with. Namely contamination. CBF's using Boron-Hydrogen or Helium3-Deuterium don't need this sort of extra bulk and also are more efficient since alot of their energy is being directed by the magnetic fields of the reactor and harnessed. They can thus be smaller and more efficient so instead of one big reactor you could have a handful of 100MW reactors distributed in a region. Oh yeah, for nuclear nuts I didn't go into He-3/H-2 fusion because He-3 is so fucking rare on Earth it would literally cost you billions of dollars to collect even a little bit for industrial use. Until we can efficnetly mine the Moon and asteroids and eventually the outer gas giants (Uranus and Neptune first and Jupiter and Saturn when we can have an efficient way of escaping their gravity) we're not going to be using He-3 for industrial purposes.
Re:Oh man (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Oh man (Score:2)
Re:Oh man (Score:2)
Re:Oh man (Score:2)
Maybe they know more about the half-life of the byproducts than you do?
The original poster is correct. Neutron activation of the reactor vessel occurs in exactly the same way as in a fission reactor, and with exactly the same results - the whole reactor becomes low-level radioactive waste. As you'll be swapping out parts every few years (and disposing of old parts), this is a problem.
Lifetime of a neutron isn't relevant, any more than it is for a fission reactor - within a few microseconds the neutron has been absorbed by a nucleus in the reactor housing.
Fusion reactors produce no _high-level_ waste - strongly radioactive spent fuel byproducts - but reactor materials activation is just as big a problem.
[FWIW, cost of shielding *isn't* a problem - it will be far cheaper than the rest of the reactor even if you need ten feet of lead.]
Fusion is close... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fusion is close... (Score:2)
Fusion Safety (Score:5, Funny)
93 million miles and an ozone layer seems about right.
ITER (Score:2, Informative)
the biggest tokamak project and tokamaks in general:
www.iter.org
A global project. Except the US prefers to waste billions ($) in war and space.
What ever happened to the last great fusion hope?? (Score:2, Informative)
When this came out in 1997 it sounded (again) as if smallish, clean power plants were "just around the corner"... but I haven't heard anything much more from it since!
Check out the original article I read [sfgate.com]and its accompanying diagram [sfgate.com].
Or go to the scientists' web site [uci.edu], which hasn't been updated since 1997!
And these aren't crackpots either... they're professors at UC Irvine, Los Alamos National Labs, and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory!
Oh well, I still have high hopes for fusion, but I also have low expectations...
Re:What ever happened to the last great fusion hop (Score:2, Informative)
The idea of colliding beam fusion reactors is not new. In the early 70's Bogden Maglich came of with the idea of using a self-colliding ion beam architecture (based upon his precetron accelerator design which he created to study pion-antipion collisions in the 60's) to trigger aneutronic fusion without the plasma containment instability problems inherent in magnetic confinement fusion reactor designs. The results of his experiments over the years have been very promising, but he has had a great deal of difficulty getting funding for his research since his approach is so far outside of the "orthodox" mainstream fusion being conducted as Princeton and elsewhere. The uninformed also unfortunately tend to lump him in with crackpots such as Cold Fusion researchers and perpetual motion engine designers (and the "free energy" crackpots like to make him out to be one of their own), despite the fact that most experts in the fusion research field acknowledge that his science is sound.
For more info, here are a few links to get started. There was also an interesting article about him in Omni back in the 80's, but I don't recall the issue.
As a A&M Physics grad, (Score:4, Funny)
that it was the chemistry department.
Yes, the guys with the grant
for turning lead into gold.
You think I'm kidding.
fusion is already here (Score:2)
OTOH, whether terrestrial fusion reactors make sense is debatable. Fusion reactors still generate large amounts of radioactive waste. Whether they are any safer than fission reactors also remains to be seen. If we want unsafe, waste-producing energy, however, we still have plenty of fissionable materials for hundreds of years to come, so why bother with fusion?
Dunno, but... (Score:2)
Fusion is the power source of the future... (Score:2)
I've heard that "fusion is ten years away" myth for as long as I can remember. It is right up there with "flat screen TVs" and "the Space Station" for being the most often cited "we almost have it figured out" technology.
Wait a minute...
We finally did get the flat screen TVs and the Space Station. Maybe it is the year 2001 after all. Maybe they will be right about fusion too. On the other hand, I don't have my flying car yet...
Fusion Power in One Year (Score:2)
Here is how it is done. You need two deep wells and a geothermal style power plant. And it all needs to be in someone else's back yard. You lower a handy Hydrogen Bomb (which is fusion powered) into one of the wells and detonate it. The heat from the H-Bomb's fusion reaction turns groundwater around the well into steam, which is turned into power by your nearby geothermal-style power plant. For continous power production, you need at least two wells so that while one is being prepared for a detonation, you can get power from the other one.
Everything is proven technology. We have H-bombs. We have even detonated them underground, so we know how do do that. We also have working geothermal power plants. So what is the hold up? Well, first you have the whole problem of just whose back yard do you put this monster in. Then you have the problem of commercially available H-bombs for "power plant fuel" would make a horrible nuclear proliferation problem. And, of course, the energy industry does everything by cost and since no one has ever done one of these power plants and it contains a LOT of costs that could potentially get very large... no body wants to try it. I can't say I blame them. But it is technically possible. We could have a fusion power plant in the immediate future. But it wouldn't be a fusion power plant anyone would actually want to have.
Fusion != Cold Fusion (Score:2)
Re:DMCA for power industry (Score:2)
Uh-huh.
So they show us some snazzy snapshots, say it's a donut-shaped field that is small and can hold hot gas, and in 20 years your home will be powered by it!
Anyone want a link to a decent site explaining the technical details of how these fields work?
Try here then. [fusion.org.uk]
That's the homepage for the reactor. If there's not tech details there, it's still a pipe dream.
Re:Never first. (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt that fusion will survive implementation without similar scarring.
Re:Never first. (Score:2)
Re:Never first. (Score:3, Insightful)
We have yet to come up with a foolproof anything.
Re:Never first. (Score:2)
All power production has a substantial negative effect on the environment. It strikes me that fission has the smallest effect of all of the working methods of power generation. People just can't put the risks into perspective. Kind of like the person who's afraid of flying, but won't wear a seat belt or have their car's brakes checked regularly.
Re:I hope not. (Score:2)
Read the article. They talk about using water as fuel. Fusion is to fission what hydrogen fuel cells are to petrol generators.
Re:Yes, clean-burning..... (Score:2, Informative)
If we're going to get an energy surplus out of this, we're definately not using plain old hydrogen for fusion. At least, not for a LONG time. Fusion reactors today use a mix of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen. Tritium is quite radioactive, so the inside of the tokamak will also become radioactive. Sooner or later it has to be discarded.
I'm not complaining. A little bit of radiation never hurt anybody, if you ask me
Re:Yes, clean-burning..... (Score:3, Informative)
I believe it is the neutrons that are more worrisome than the deuterium and tritium.
Re:what in the hell (Score:5, Insightful)
anybody got any info on what tech problems?
MAST is a spherical torus....and ST's are suppose to solve a few issues that tokamaks (doughnuts) where found to have. First Tokamaks reuire a very large magnetic field for containment. Producing the magnetic field is probably the biggest overall cost money and energy-wise. An ST, like MAST or NSTX (www.pppl.gov/projects/pages/nstx.html) or the machine I'm chained to NSTX's little brother CDX (w3.pppl.gov/~cdx) use proportionately less external field that a tokamak would need for the same plasma current. For fusion reactor design that's a big advantage for the ST.
The ST also hopes to solve a real plasma physics issue...MHD instabilities. Making cold plasmas isn't all to difficult. Once you start pumping energy into the plasma you get very exotic plasma wave physics that can tear the plasma apart. You can design some of the instabilities away, if your design is clever enough....is the ST a clever enough desgin? I don't know. but ST's do allow access to a new regime of labortory plasmas
There are a lot of unresolved issues in magnetic confinement fusion. The ST machines are definitely worth exploring but it's not clear that a working fusion reactor will be based on anything like MAST.
-jef
im too tired to write anything longer
Re:what in the hell (Score:2)
Picture an apple, take out the core, the resulting
shape is a spherical torus. I.e. You cored a
sphere to make a sphere shaped donut.
Re:How safe would it be? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Any info (Score:2, Informative)
A friend who was doing a post-doc in chemistry here took me for a tour of his lab one night. In one of the rooms, high atop a storage cabinet, was a cardboard file box labelled "Cold Fusion," supposedly one of the last remaining pieces of evidence of the experiments conducted here to (dis)confirm Pons and Fleischmann's results.
Conversations years ago with an aerospace engineer and on a separate occasion with a nuclear engineer indicated that there were some interesting non-fusion things coming out of those experiments, but any and all research in that direction was squashed after the public ridicule and scientific stigma became so great.
We also had an unrelated incident in which one of the senior chemists, after a long and respected career, started soliciting funding for research into transmutation. He was convinced he could get the process working at a net profit (Pb + energy => enough Au to pay for the resources consumed plus a profit). He, er, retired before that got off the ground =)
Re:The risk is just too great... (Score:2, Informative)
Nothing goes wrong if the something goes wrong in the reactor.
The tomahawk fusion reactor performs fusion very, very carefully and it is very delicate. The small quantity of plasma (superheated gas) where fusion occurs is confined within the doughnut shaped reactor using magnetic fields away from the walls. This magnetic field maintains the plasma temperature and pressure that allows fusion to occur. There is no direct cooling like in fission reactors. If the magnetic field were to fail, then the plasma will lose pressure, fall in temperature signifcantly as it expands before hitting the reactor wall. The magnetic field is the only reason why the plasma can get hot enough to fuse, without it the plasma expands and cools to the point where it isn't dangerous. If anything else serious fails in the reactor (ie, the steam turbine cooling), and didn't cause the fusion reaction to be shut down, then the worst that could happen is that the reactor walls will melt. This would cause the vacuum within the reactor to fail, and the resulting inrush of air cools the plasma down and stops fusion from occuring.
Unlike most fission reactors, fusion reactors have to excert a lot of effort to extract energy. If the fusion reactor stops, the fusion stops with it.
Re:The risk is just too great... (Score:3, Interesting)
If something goes wrong in a fusion reactor, nothing happens. The fusion process depends on confinement of a very small amount of very hot gas in exactly the right manner. When something goes wrong this gas disperses. Since the amount is very small it can do no damage.
One of the great attractions of fusion power is that it is fail-safe.