Fusion's promise

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
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Richard Hull
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Fusion's promise

Post by Richard Hull »

I have always been fascinated by fusion. I suppose everyone here is fascinated in their own way. Fusion is an odd fish, to say the least.

Fusion powers the universe, at first glance.

It would seem that fusion is the final and ultimate energy source. Fortunately for us, its basic rules and tenets of operation are not easily met in useful situations between the microscopic and macroscopic extremes. If fusion is a release of potential energy at any core level, it is far beyond our kin as potential energy release kings on this planet to squeeze it out of a controlled release system or mechanism at a useful level and rate.

Man has typically blundered onto or noodled out every conceivable source of potential energy on earth and bent them to his will and net profit. It is only of late that we realize that all these little nascent potential energy sources, so cleverly handled by us, are the result of fusion in stars obtained from either current or past fusion related events.

We are getting smarter in some ways, let us posit.

Traditionally, we blundered onto energy sources by some fortunate accident and figured out improved methodolgies for their use very rapidly. Almost unerringly, we noodled out the core level principles much later. The last great blundering involved the nuclear process.

We tripped on the door sill of a great hall of energy. Armed with clever minds and advancing science, we noodled out how to extract vast amounts of energy from the atom by hunter-gathering uranium. Uranium atoms have housed vast amounts of potential energy that lay dormant for untold epochs of time, awaiting the slow, yet natural, assemblage of water filled-meat engines composed of carbon, nitrogen, calcium and a few other trace elements to unlock their stored potential energy.

As we noodled the mysteries of radioactivity it took only a few years to understand what we had stumbled onto. A few short years after this epiphany, and we were on a quest to release this "new energy". This effort culminated in the discovery of fission. So great was our cleverness that in only 20 years from fission's discovery, we knew everything about it and had already used it to snuff out about 500,00 lives in a couple of days, launch a couple of submarines totally powered by uranium and had constructed a power plant to supply megawatts of elelctrical energy to nearby homes.

It turns out that we were now starting to use science to fully understand core principles and only then put the final potential energy engines on line via technology.

About 40 years after the discovery of radiation, we discovered fusion. By 1950, we understood virtually every thing related to the theory of the fusion nuclear reactions and by 1954 had created bombs based on this now fully understood process capable of obliterating tens of millions of lives in seconds. We had the massive power of fusion in the grip of our hands!

Yet, here we are standing on an energy starved planet with no future assured path to useful, controlled fusion energy 80 years after its discovery and nearly 60 years after actually using its tremendous released power to demonstrate a willingness to destroy entire nation states.

What gives? We have conquered all potential energy forms known via our hunter-gathering efforts and energy related blunderings. We have recently refined all methods to simple engineering efforts very rapidly after fully understanding core principles. Why the stall? Is it a matter of nature keeping this one to herself? We would like to think this as being unlikely. Is it a matter of deeper core prinicples yet to be uncovered? Why hasn't engineering won this battle which now seems to be one of application engineering and technology? Science has layed out all the principles long ago. We can do fusion easily in the lab. We can release vast amounts of fusion energy in bombs. Very straight forward stuff. Engineering has proved up to the task both in the lab and on the battlefield.....just never in a way that benefited the common man in a positive way.

The fission battle was won on all fronts from discovery to a full understanding of principles, to laboratory demonstration of fission, to battlefield delivery of massive destruction and to electrically powering homes, all in 20 short years.

Do we know all we think we know about fusion? Is fusion energy a release of potential energy? If it isn't, perhaps we are bull heading a dead horse as currently practised. Remember, we are traditionally good with potential energy stuff. Why is what appears to be the "last hurdle" in a supposedly well understood process defeating us at every turn.

We have always released potential energies by pulling a trigger on a P.E. gun. Some few triggers were "hair triggers" requiring almost no trigger pull energy on the part of the shooter. Others processes required a little stiffer pull to release even greater blasts. As long as we kept the ammo supplied, the gun worked like a machine gun requiring only a single pull to supply a continuous stream of energy bullets. Unfortunately, in the energy battle just as in a real battle, ammo can run out or get in short supply. Better guns and ammo are a constant quest both on the real battlefield and the potential energy battlefield as well.

I certainly don't know what the catch in the fusion energy process is and it appears no one else knows, either.

It reminds me of the perpetual motion folks with their tedious magnets-chasing- magnets motors and other claimant mechanisms. Ask them and they respond, if only I had stronger magnets, this sucker would turn on its own forever.

So close, yet seemingly hopeless in many ways.


Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Mike Beauford
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Mike Beauford »

Hi Richard,

Another guy has his hand out at the fusion trough. Don't get me wrong, I want it to happen, but I just don't see it happening with the current ideas out there now.

http://phys.org/news/2013-02-potential- ... nergy.html

Mike Beauford
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Richard Hull
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Richard Hull »

NIF has recently shut down its inertial confinement-laser blasted, fusion power quest. ( served up as a small side part of its reason for being)

It appears it is just not practical from their perspective.

This URL piece that you supplied is just another massive hunk-o-fluff shoehorned into the fusion mattress to make those already asleep even more comfortable in their slumber.

The original post in this thread is not intended as a negative one, but a questioning one designed to provoke, stimulate or jumpstart the thinking process by others who are interested in a fusion powered future.

Richard
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
JamesC
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by JamesC »

I think humans are just not that 'organisationally' smart.

I can't think of any examples of success in energy that are not iterative improvements of already net positive energy. A uranium lump is already net positive - just refine. Oil is already net positive energy - just burn. Wind, Sun, etc. All these are examples of iterative improvement. We understand iterative improvement. Although it looks impressive once scaled up its just iterative. Little wonder we 'get' iterative, that's how we evolved to be here.

When it comes to step change, its not something we know how to do. We are not organisationally prepared to take the risk. We need to see the path first and then build a super-highway along that path.

Fusion just doesn't have an iterative pathway so we won't risk the science to pursue it. Its outrageous really, we will sink a trillion dollars into a housing bubble because we know housing iterative goes up in value ( until it doesn't) but cannot justify the pure research needed to save us as a technologically advanced species once the oil dries up. And dry up it will.

The govts around the world are printing trillions.. trillions with a T just to buy a few more years of status quo before our societies are forced by simple arithmetic to spend less than they earn. Basic household finances math 101 is too much for people let alone getting them to understand the need to launching a moon mission to crack fusion to ensure the survival of future generations. Actually if they were allowed understood that need the status quo would not be the status quo..

Our one in a species gift of the landlocked energy of oil has created a precious oasis of net energy surplus of perhaps 2 centuries before its gone along with the social stability needed to develop and mature the science needed to crack fusion and distribute its benefits.

Now is by the best time. The moment is now for the lucky donkey but this juncture I am not optimistic and we don't have long.

I guess we can get pragmatic and boil water filled caverns with small fusion bombs but that sort of 'big engineering' is unlikely to be sustainable in the long run.

Does this mean we need to embrace the crackpots and frauds who want to ride audacity of the fusion hope? Well fusion is not alone in that but unfortunately the fusion dreams need to actually work. Ultimately frauds will be exposed by fact and measurement. Can the Taylors of the world do it? Maybe but probably not unless they are trying something genuinely new but based on deep thinking about the problem, a pollywell or F.I.C.S. But perhaps the social media aspect , the crowdsourcing, the crowdfunding, sharing the risk with everyone who needs to take it. Maybe there is something in that. But it needs to be organised, it needs structure and strong filters for fraud.

I just don't believe institutions are going to solve these problems. They are not organised that way but equally what talented individual is going to risk their entire career let alone find the resources to challenge what's been impossible for the greatest minds in history to solve. Yet we need them to. They must not be thought of crackpots when they take on new ideas that seem impossible based on what we think we already know, but as heros ( shout-out steven.s) yet how do you separate hero from fraud or opportunist.

We desperately need fusion. Its not even a want IMO. Its a must simply because our future net energy just cannot support our existing global population today let alone another 10 years of population growth . World War 2 was at the loss of 50-70 million lives. Can you imagine the horror of shedding 1 or perhaps 2 billion lives over a couple of decades starting in about a decade from now. If you doubt that possibility realise that energy = food and then take a very close look at the forward forecasts for oil supplies

Without solving this problem that's our future.. get to it lucky donkey and good luck! We need you.

JC
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Thermo-nuclear fusion energy is the conversion of some atomic mass into energy (the old E = mc^2 equation.) As for potential energy release, that is true in a book keeping sense relative to all light atomic nuclei. These special nuclei have available mass which can be converted into 'extra' energy after they reform a heavier nucleus: that is why fusion energy release stops at iron (and super nova occur in stars when they reach that point in their life cycle.) For iron nuclei, fusing no longer provides net energy release. Good news for us since this then requires those stars to explode in that same super nova creating the heavier elements like Pb or U that created us to talk about this subject.)

Besides the Hydrogen Bomb (triggered by a atonic or fission bomb), most successful thermonuclear fusion experiments have created very minor energy releases compared to energy input. That may change once laser fusion (done with the correct laser and geometry - a KrF laser using direct drive!) is finally done - unlike NIF which is purely a weapons program and unlikely to ever achieve real ignition. Check out the NRL (Naval Research Laboratory) Nike Laser program (barely funded - soon to be zeroed out yet again) for an example of the correct approach to inertia based fusion.) They only have a very a tiny system compared to what would really be needed and is solely used for specialized research in laser/target interactions, not fusion.

By the way, NRL's program was eating at the "fusion trough" tens years before the worthless NIF program was given the tough, all available food, the barn, farm and local county just to waste it all on their failed system. Now, interia fusion has been dis-credit through their greed and stupidity. The article cited by Caska was an attempt to point out that the interia drive system is still viable if done with the correct laser (248 nm, 20+% effiecent) and illumination geometry (4Pi sterradians). NIF was also supposed to help make new bombs (besides their utter lie to do breakeven fusion) but that, too, has bombed ... .

Maybe, in time General Fusion will workout their issues! It is a very good and far too simple an approach (elegant) not to think it is worth trying (strangely, created at NRL but never followed up there - I guess lack of vision.)

Just a minor point – really, the fundamental source of all energy is gravity – through gravity, hydrogen (and other lower mass nuclei) are compressed and heated to nuclear temperatures that allow fusion to occur. Of course, the incorrectly named and rather completely unknown event some call the "Big Bang" (award for most incorrect and stupidly name idea ever used) could be called the source of all energy since it 'created' all matter, space, time and physical laws that make energy available.
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Richard Hull »

The hard reality is economy and net returns from any fusion system or process.

Without full, self-sustaining ignition there seems to be no path to useful electrical generation from fusion at all, even with a COP of 200%! It is just not a good enough return, especially if the fusion plant is monsterous and horribly expensive.

As mentioned in this thread, probably the rapid death of 2 billion plus humans might start to solve many problems facing earth. We actually had a guy talk to us about the critical energy shortage yet to come at HEAS. He opened the floor for Q and A following his exposition. He launched a first question, asking all assembled, what would be a solution to the world's problems. I answered "the death of 2 billion human beings." He had to admit that such a draconian measure would indeed relieve a number of issues facing us, but he was looking for an answer that was more inline with reality. I replied that maybe my scenario is already in motion along several lines and perhaps just sitting and waiting would see my solution unfold. I sensed he was a bit flustered and upset with such a cold thought. He moved on to other's ideas.

We all want the world to improve with all folks in good health, happy and with incomes appropriate to survival. Right now, that is a dream as we can't hope to support the status quo as about 5 different freight trains are coming at us full tilt at 60mph as we back away from the inevitable onslaught at 10mph.

Successful fusion will stop only 1 freight train.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Mike Beauford
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Mike Beauford »

Well, as cold as it may sound, any system will tend to find it's equilibrium point not with standing the moral implications and consequences. Like bacterial blooms that grow uncontrollably until the food/energy/environmental supply runs out or is no longer able to sustain them. These things tend to run in cycles. I'd like to think we have more brains then bacteria and can better manage our fate more appropriately.

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Dennis P Brown
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Richard, the key is who dies - if two billion third world people die, that would effect things very little - they use so little in energy/resources and are, for most area's highly dense in land area and hence, have little footprint on the land area; now if instead, two billion first worlders (is that even a word?) die, now we are talking saving the world. The bad news for the world, they control the nukes (that is, a small number of that group.)
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Chris Bradley »

Ordinarily, I'd chime in to such a thread, but given some of the viewpoints here that have shot off away from fusion, I will resist, other than to make one simple point:

*Without* fusion, humans will inevitably meet their doom ....

....*With* fusion, they stand a chance to delay it for a while !!...
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Richard Hull »

Energy, economics, world politics and population are hopelessly intertwined. It is usually tough to individualize them or isolate them from a bigger picture. I think fusion might slow down the inevitable. But it is more of a "kick the can down the road" approach. I hope we do have a fusion future. Regardless, the solution will occur because of us, in spite of us and to us.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
ab0032
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by ab0032 »

I agree to 99% of what you say, yet I am extremely optimistic about the outcome.

There is one very fundamental flaw in your thinking, that is so prevalent that most people just agree, without questioning it.

We are not energy starved, we have abundant energy, more than we could ever use.
And I dont mean the fracking and shale gas rush that is now approaching and will give us another round of cheap and abundant fossil fuels. I can do the math, we have an exponential growth in energy consumption and no matter how much oil there is, it will run out sooner than most people believe, because it is finite. So this next oil and gas rush may last a century, but who cares.

What we have, and what so many people ignore is fission. We know we have supplies for 1 billion years of uranium at a price of less than 250$ a pound. And that is using only 0.7% of the uranium. And we know how to breed natural uranium and get 100 times more energy from it. So we have a supply of 100 billion years of energy at todays consumption rate, enough to fly to other planets and get more uranium if we really had to and didnt find out how to do fusion by then.

And if that is not enough, we still have thorium, which is much more abundant than uranium, we have stockpiles of the stuff lying around unused, because it is a side product from making neodynium magnets and mining rare earths, which are not really rare despite their name.

So what I really dont get, is why people take: "Energy is running out" as an axiom, when it is obviously and blatantly wrong.

There is absolutely no reason to save energy or be worried. Just look at places like India, China and Brasil, who are all going into nuclear energy, developing thorium reactors and planning their energy independence with nuclear. China has a massive program, just check it out, they say, if they dont have enough petrol or gas, they will make it in nuclear power plants, and they will.

Humanity grew up in the cradle called earth, and it is time we got up and leave and began to become a space faring species.

There are limits, true, like physics, and how great we can dream, but thats it. We may not have fusion powered spacecraft that can go almost to the speed of light yet, but we will one day, and I expect it to be sooner than most think. Maybe we will build matter/antimatter drives first and produce antimatter here on earth with nuclear power, to make spacecraft lighter and faster.

So I expect we will have plasma drives that can cut down times for trips to mars and a moon of jupiter drastically during my lifetime, we will have flying cars and say, where we are going we dont need roads. A trip to mars could be cut down to 3 weeks and a trip to a jupiter moon to 80 days. I will go on a cruise past the moon to mars and jupiter before I die.

How great can you dream? What are the limits to your creativity?
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by ab0032 »

I really fell like puking when I read such stuff. All this negativity. Just entertaining the idea of letting billions of people die is so disgusting.

Take a step back and look at what is happening and why, whose ideology is behind this.

The idea that a human being is like a cockroach polluting its environment and using resources goes back to Malthus. Too many people too little land to feed them, was the grave mistake he put forward.

But is this really true? No not at all, people create resources. Bauxite was just useless rocks, before we turned it into aluminum, iron ore was just dirt without a use, before we did something with it. People do have brains, even if half the population has an IQ below 100. The known resources are not declining but increasing as we go and people are so ingenious as to invent ways of doing so much more with less all the time. That's what happens when you have freedom, free markets and people, people doing things nobody has imagined before. Cars, telephones, airplanes, radio, nuclear power, tv, computers, internet, satellites, rockets, genetics and so on and that was only the last century.

We have the means to turn the whole of the Sahara into a green oasis with nuclear power and desalinated sea water, this planet can easily hold 50 or 100 billion people. We know how and we could. And we will.

But what do people do instead? We do such stupid things as turn food into fuel, we buy plant oil to make diesel, we take corn and make ethanol, because we are living in a world filled with idiots who have eaten the antihumanist shit criminal environmentalist like the club of rome and greenpeace want us to believe, so they gain more power and influence. Didnt the club of rome predict that oil would run out in the 1980s and 2 billion people would be dead by now? So why do people continue to do immoral and unethical things and take away the food that the poorest billion is in desperate need of? Why do we cut down rain forests to have huge palm oil monocultures to drive around in cars? Why do we take their land and buy away their food? Why do we have to have subsidies on ethanol to starve innocent and helpless children in the third world? What a sick ideology. The greens are killing millions by starvation today for fear of what might happen in the future. And because they are against letting us have all the energy we want and need from nuclear.

You also mention the trillions government is spending to produce bubbles. Yes, it is such a waste, I really cant stand that any more either, what happened to the american dream of freedom and the pursuit of happiness? Government is taking half of what we earn and wasting it. Or even more when you think of the debt they are producing. That is socialism, or statism or whatever you want to call it and it has never worked and it will never work. And it would be so easy, just lower the taxes, let the people keep a little more of what they have created and watch how jobs are created.

Why are we doing the same mistake over and over? The great depression was made worse by government intervention, it lasted longer because of government intervention and what do we do? We do the same again, let the government make things worse than they already where from the government created bubble. And what do people do? They vote for more handouts, more socialism, more fat government.

Tell me, where are the great things government created? The best thing of all is still the NASA and they are a great failure too. In the 60s they send us to the moon, but what now? Private enterprise has to do it, like Branson and SpaceShipOne, Burt Ruton, Paul Allen, Elon Musk, even this Vegas hotelier has put something into space. NASA has failed on the promise of space travel, just like every centrally planed undertaking always fails.

So please please, for the sake of the children starving in the third world, stop the environmentalist in their quest to destroy humans and please stop voting for socialism, so we can all be wealthier and lead a better life.
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by ab0032 »

Yes, the realities of economics and return on investment or on energy invested are vital to any form of energy. That's what the solar and wind proponents love to ignore.

Cheap energy and wealth and longevity directly go hand in hand.

But as I said above, we dont need fusion for the foreseeable future, we already have abundant energy. It would be a nice to have, but it is not essential.

See also above my opinion on "two billion people too much", people are assets, not liabilities, even if only every millionth is an Einstein, or invents penicillin or discovers how genes work. More people means more great ideas, more great things created, and a better life for all of us.

But what are the 5 freight trains heading for us, you see coming? I only see statism and environmentalism as the great dangers of today.

Yes, we all want everybody to be happy and lead a better and healthier life, and we all want to preserve biodiversity. But all the greens are doing is destroy more wildlife faster. The only reason I can find why they are against nuclear power, is that they would not be needed, they would have to admit, that their thinking was based on a fundamental flaw, that it was they, that have caused so much suffering and destruction of nature for no rational reason.

And I am sure humanity will lead a better life, because the grip of socialist and greens may be becoming stronger in the USA and the EU, but globally they will not be able to hold us back from a freer and better life forever. People will start to see through their mean agenda and stop following death and suffering and starvation and poverty and choose life and freedom instead.
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by ab0032 »

Dennis P Brown wrote:
> Richard, the key is who dies - if two billion third world people die, that would effect things very little - they use so little in energy/resources and are, for most area's highly dense in land area and hence, have little footprint on the land area; now if instead, two billion first worlders (is that even a word?) die, now we are talking saving the world. The bad news for the world, they control the nukes (that is, a small number of that group.)

True, but in fact nobody has to die, instead we could aid the third world by providing micro breeders like the Toshiba 4S to them and give them internet. Then - with energy and information - they will do the rest themselves, and we have a great market for new innovative products.

They all want medicine, clean water, heating, education, drive around in cars, fly places and see the world, air con, washing machines and all the rest, and they will have it. No way, we could stop them, even if we wanted, which I dont.
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by ab0032 »

Richard Hull wrote:
> Energy, economics, world politics and population are hopelessly intertwined. It is usually tough to individualize them or isolate them from a bigger picture. I think fusion might slow down the inevitable. But it is more of a "kick the can down the road" approach. I hope we do have a fusion future. Regardless, the solution will occur because of us, in spite of us and to us.
>

Brighten up a little, just keep kicking and see where it will lead us. In the end the universe will end and the sun will go out in a few billion years, but who knows where we are by then.

A few billion years is a very long time for a joy ride, enough not only to colonize the planets around our stars in our galaxy, but even enough to travel to other galaxies on chemically power spaceships.

There are so many things to do, keep kicking. And we will get a grip on energy, economics and politics too, we just have to take responsibility and think for ourselves and not rechew those Marxian, Keynesian and Malthusian lies. I am sure we will get over those sooner or later.
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Dan Tibbets »

I don't know where you get your numbers. I have heard that fission of Uranium may last a few hundred years and thorium a few thousand. This assumes that this fission fuel replaces most of the fixed site fossil fuel consumption. In a similar vein, coal might last us (US) for several hundred years if it replaces gas and oil. New natural gas will ease this situation some as will wind and solar to a smaller degree. Actually, the US is in pretty good shape for several generations, though the cost will be greater. Europe, much of Asia, and Africa may be a different story.

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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Richard Hull »

In spite of the previous five sequential diatribes entered upon previous diatribes, like a belt-fed machine gun, dispensing hope and promise, we will all, in the end, be where events take us.

Current events don't look all that sweet.

Even with the horror of a massive and total thermo nuclear exchange and 95% of earth's population dead, we will survive as a species, that is for sure and for certain....That's as positive as I get......... If the horror occurs, will the survivors be any smarter or wiser? If wiser for the experience, how many generations will it take before we are fat, happy and dumbed down again.

Then there is that "Earth killer" asteroid at some future date which hits and it's only the cockroachs that do survive.

Just like the promise of power-ready fusion, we all must just sit tight and wait to see what gells.

My original post was to suggest that we all might think about the physics of fusion. Is there something we don't understand, something that has not been revealed, some avenue or approach that is not even thought of yet?

Is fusion an inate potential energy source at all, and if it is, does it just have a monsterous trigger pull nearly equaling the energy we seek to get out of it? Why haven't we even come close? These are fusion related issues worth consideration.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Chris Bradley »

Richard Hull wrote:
> Why haven't we even come close?
Of course we have come close! That is why fusion energy has been so tantalising! We know what fuel to use, and can manufacture it. We know what temperatures to make the reaction happen, and we can create such temperatures. We know the density needed to achieve a 'pay-back' reaction, and we can get that density. We know how stable a thermo-nuclear fusion reaction needs to be, and can achieve that.

We've even made exothermic fusion reactions, but we just don't know how to slow them down to control them for our own purposes!

We know how to do all the things we need to know ... except, it seems, how to do all the things we need to do all at once! That is why it is so tantalising.

And above all, we [mankind] *need* to figure out how to do it. Solar power and all those appealing 'renewables' may well do for a much smaller Earthly population, but we would put ourselves at the whim of our environment. The whole basis of human progress in the last +7000 years, and especially in the last 500 years, has been to get to the point where we control and manipulate the environment to *our* purposes, *at will*, and to no longer presume our successes or disasters are driven by loving and/or vengeful gods.

'Oil' will have made this possible for the first 1,000 years or so since our 'enlightenment', and nuclear (breeding) will do it for the first 10,000 years. After that, it's fusion or it's back to eeking out a mediaeval life at the whim of what the fields/forests/jungles/seas allow us to take, without unbalancing their naturally-bestowed equilibrium. Some long for such times, but that'd be the end of technologically civilised humans and once again we would come to live in fear of deities whose beneficence we will prey, sacrifice and do honour unto, in case they take away the sun/warmth/water/fertility/good-health/stable-geology, &c...

As far as fusion goes, the 'null hypothesis' of any other scientific experiment would have been presumed proven after 60 years of unsuccessful experimentation [that is; that it is not possible to contain a thermonuclear fusion plasma], but as there is no further alternative within our current understanding of physics to get energy from somewhere new, then the quest will be continued indefinitely, until we do.

......And so it should be. The funding for fusion research is truly pitiful when one considers its huge importance when compared with so many other things involving vast amounts of money we see on this Earth. e.g. 'Quantitative easing' (printing money) of trillions of dollars to prop up an imagined crisis from numbers on a page, rather than spending on 'real stuff', like fusion research.

Alex deeply bemoans why we don't see that things could simply be done better, then the problems we have could be avoided. Why indeed? "Politics, dear boy." It is simply politics. Humans are political creatures. Humans are no more adapted by evolution to be able to fly as they are to be able to agree to collectively do the best/right thing. ... if humans were collectively capable of doing anything near to what you ask, Alex, then why do people still war with each other? If folks can't figure out there's no benefit killing each other for no darned reason, then what hope is there to get them to collectively agree to support advanced technology projects to the benefit of all mankind?!?!?

Whilst the oil flows from the ground and is ready for pumping into some peoples' cars at prices cheaper than water in bottles collected from a mountain spring, and whilst the electrons flow into their houses and gas in our pipes at trivial costs, and whilst those without these things are mostly oblivious to even the very existence of such things, then what hope is there for a change? When those flows become so expensive that they all but stop, then it may be too late for a critical-mass of a well-educated workforce with an industrial infrastructure behind them to do what's needed. Who can say? But it ain't looking good at the moment!
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by ab0032 »

Dan DT wrote:
> I don't know where you get your numbers. I have heard that fission of Uranium may last a few hundred years and thorium a few thousand. This assumes that this fission fuel replaces most of the fixed site fossil fuel consumption. In a similar vein, coal might last us (US) for several hundred years if it replaces gas and oil. New natural gas will ease this situation some as will wind and solar to a smaller degree. Actually, the US is in pretty good shape for several generations, though the cost will be greater. Europe, much of Asia, and Africa may be a different story.
>

I dont care if coal or gas last another few hundred years or not, and if you do the math, you will quickly see they wont. But what is interesting is that new lies from greenpeace can spread around the globe and even cover up things that have been known for a long time.

It is urban legend that uranium will last for as long as we can imagine and this is known for decades now.

You can find estimates on wikipedia, here is a quote:
"An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s showed that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was technically feasible).[57][58] There have been experiments to extract uranium from sea water,[59] but the yield has been low due to the carbonate present in the water. In 2012, ORNL researchers announced the successful development of a new absorbent material dubbed HiCap, which vastly outperforms previous best adsorbents, which perform surface retention of solid or gas molecules, atoms or ions. "We have shown that our adsorbents can extract five to seven times more uranium at uptake rates seven times faster than the world's best adsorbents," said Chris Janke, one of the inventors and a member of ORNL's Materials Science and Technology Division. HiCap also effectively removes toxic metals from water, according to results verified by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.[60][61]

Or you can read it here: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html

The nice thing about ocean water is that anybody can do the math and verify the truth of the statement.

As Mark Twain has said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." and that is what those criminal anti-humanist environmentalist make use of. Anybody who does a tiny bit of research can find the truth, but they are evil seducers who dont care about the consequences of their actions. It is no accident that founders of Greenpeace have turned against greenpeace and for example the whole earth catalog publisher Stewart Brandt is massivly pro nuclear now. He has enough character to admit he made a mistake, but others cling to their power and abuse it knowingly.
ab0032
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by ab0032 »

We are pretty close to fusion and we will have it in time, when we need it or long before that.

Also the famous meteorite hitting earth: I sure hope that we will be able to do something about it, we are already thinking and researching what can be done and how, and the skies are being searched permanently for large objects heading our way. And I sure hope humanity has a few more planets, before the big one hits. Diversify risks, its pretty dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket when it is about life and death.

And I want to say some things about solar PV, because it keeps popping up here in this thread.
Globally solar is not even 0.1% of all energy, even in Germany where a new record of 30GW peak installed was celebrated recently, this does not even replace one single nuclear power plant. The energy produced at a huge cost to society (bill currently at 400 billion €, estimates for necessary grid expansions needed for wind and solar are at 1.000 billion or you can also say 1 trillion €, which is about 1.3 T$ are currently circulating in the press.)

So with that kind of a bill you would expect something for it, right? You could build enough nuclear power plants to produce the German energy needs multiple times over. At that price, with nuclear the energy would be flowing out of our ears and we wouldnt know what to do other than heat out the open window in winter. But what do we get from solar? 0.3% of German primary energy, can you imagine that? Not even one percent. Yeah, but its all over in the news, all of Germany has windmills and PV left and right, I can see it, is what people are saying, but the facts are simple, wind and solar are extremely diluted forms of energy and it is hard to harvest and store. People cant grasp that all these 30GWp cant even replace 1 nuclear power plant, and they cannot grasp what it means that the energy content of nuclear is a million times that of a chemical fuel. They cannot understand that if a person gets all his energy for his whole life from nuclear, including all flights and everything, the waste would not even be an inch high in a coke can. Instead they prefer to blow out 7 billion tonnes of CO2 every year. That is a stretch of air from NY to the west coast 1km high and 1 km wide. Its completely absurd, nuclear is safer than even new years fire crackers, but they want nuclear banned which is the safest and cleanest known energy form.

But it's even worse than that, not only are Germans spending huge amounts of money for nothing, it was shown now, that CO2 and air pollution and fossil fuel consumption is up, BECAUSE of solar.
Big iron coal plants where getting cleaner and cleaner and efficiency was rising and would have produced less CO2 without solar. But with solar they are idling in standby at times burning fuel and not producing energy, their efficiency has dropped drastically do to the nonsteadyness of those silly alternatives. And now that the greens managed to turn off nuclear, Germany is running the oldest and filthiest lignite plants at full blast that had to be reactivated now.

And it still gets worse than that, what most people think is that solar PV prevents green house gases.
In Germany the return on energy comes after about 10 years, because Germany has about as much sun as Alaska. So Chinese burn a lot of coal to produce PV for Germany. So you could think that, oh well, they are nasty shit, with the cadmiumtellurid in them, but at least they prevent greenhouse gases and global warming, but that is not true, because nitrogentrifluoride is used and release in the production process and NF3 is not only toxic, it is a 17.200 times stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. Guess how long the PVs would have to run to make up for that?
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by ab0032 »

Chris Bradley wrote:
> Alex deeply bemoans why we don't see that things could simply be done better, then the problems we have could be avoided. Why indeed? "Politics, dear boy." It is simply politics. Humans are political creatures. Humans are no more adapted by evolution to be able to fly as they are to be able to agree to collectively do the best/right thing. ... if humans were collectively capable of doing anything near to what you ask,

Who knows what is right or wrong? You or me? Or the central planing committee called the federal government, which is getting fatter and fatter? No, the knowledge is distributed among all the people, not the collective knows what is right, but the people.

> Alex, then why do people still war with each other? If folks can't figure out there's no benefit killing each other for no darned reason,

Who is making war? You or me? No, it's the governments. Instead of going to war, now in Mali, we should just drop guns from helicopters so that every woman and every child has one to defend themselves. Where would the drug dealing warlords be, if the ordinary people had the means to protect themselves? Where would the muslime brotherhoods paid with oil dollars be?

> then what hope is there to get them to collectively agree to support advanced technology projects to the benefit of all mankind?!?!?

They will do the right thing sooner or later. They will one day realize that free health care is not that free. We had that in Russia and it did not work out. You will have to pay for it one way or the other, and if you think the government can do a better job at handling your money, you are dead wrong.

What we now have is crony capitalism moving more and more towards socialism, the once proud and free people will not be free and they will pay dearly for letting politicians bribe them for their votes to get more handouts. The US economy is in free fall, due to the fat government and the creeping socialism. It was at 30% of global GDP 10 years ago and is approaching 20% of global GDP now. If that does not scare people yet, maybe it has to get worse and they will have to go to 10% or maybe even to 5%, but eventually they will get up and request their country back, they will ask for their personal and economic freedom again, they will ask for free markets or they will go down and give the stage to China and India who are now getting out from under the thumb of socialism.

The people are still free to chose in America, and even if they have chosen a retarded liberal government that is spending trillions like the was no tomorrow, one day, they will come to their senses with a big hangover.

There is no need to worry, China and India and Brasil are working on making the molten salt thorium reactor a reality, China is building 25 nuclear power plants by 2015 and will build another 70 or so by 2020. There is no stopping them. There is no stopping genetics to benefit mankind, the question is only do you want to be a part of it or not, will America still be a part of advanced technological projects for the benefit of mankind or not. The answer to this question will determine the standard of living and the live expectancy in the USA. And government health care, taking guns from the people, ignoring the constitution and spending yet another trillion and more food stamps are not the right answer.

The right answer is freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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Chris Bradley
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Chris Bradley »

Alexander Biersack wrote:
> Who knows what is right or wrong? You or me?
Alex, I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you on the desired end-point. Certainly not me.

The issue is how to get there. Just hoping that eventually folks will collectively do the right thing the world-over looks like a fantasy, if you contemplate the last 100 years of history.

The 28th July next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1. That was the war to end all wars, with a staggering 20-odd million people being killed, and the same again injured. The there was another war to end all wars 20 years later when +60 million people were killed. Since then there have been another +50 wars.... the world cannot even yet organise clean drinking water for children in between these conflicts - it is estimated that 5,000 die each day from drinking contaminated water. So, yet higher expectations for more sophisticated organisation across nations to improve everyone's lot in life look to be unrealistic. Maybe individual, more authoritarian countries stand a chance to make the quantum leaps in the future, but I can't see much coming from the 'collective knowledge' of people.

I don't want to put too much of a downer on this, and I'm not saying give up trying to change things, but best to stick with recognising reality? I fight battles [of the non-violent variety!!] I can't win every day, but I don't expect to change much. I do it simply because to me it would seem wrong not to try. This experiment I have been pounding away at for many years now is a case in point.
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Doug Browning »

I fail to see any point in all this whining and doom stuff.

The only real game in town is Sandia's MagLIF:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 161505.htm

and the 1st year's testing has shown the original simulation to be spot on:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 124210.htm

The fusion quest will be history by the end of 2013 or 2014, unless the Sequestration shuts them down........

Then we will be left listening to endless whining about there's nothing left to think about. You have one year to come up with something better than Sandia's approach, or it gets run over and forgotten.
ab0032
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by ab0032 »

Chris Bradley wrote:
> The issue is how to get there. Just hoping that eventually folks will collectively do the right thing the world-over looks like a fantasy, if you contemplate the last 100 years of history.

The last century looks pretty dim from a political perspective, it was the century of suffering inflicted by class warfare and marxist thinking, that is true, but on the other hand what remained of the free markets did amazing things. The question is just how much better things would have been in a freer world. Dont you think that after tinkering with a system that just wont work, people will not one day realize that and get over this outdated and wrong Marxist thinking?

> The 28th July next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1. That was the war to end all wars, with a staggering 20-odd million people being killed, and the same again injured. The there was another war to end all wars 20 years later when +60 million people were killed. Since then there have been another +50 wars.... the world cannot even yet organise clean drinking water for children in between these conflicts - it is estimated that 5,000 die each day from drinking contaminated water. So, yet higher expectations for more sophisticated organisation across nations to improve everyone's lot in life look to be unrealistic. Maybe individual, more authoritarian countries stand a chance to make the quantum leaps in the future, but I can't see much coming from the 'collective knowledge' of people.

The wars where not about ending all wars. And I am not talking about collective knowledge, I am talking about individual knowledge and free markets where people can express their knowledge. I expect nothing from the UN, the Worldbank and all the rest, they just cause suffering.

> I don't want to put too much of a downer on this, and I'm not saying give up trying to change things, but best to stick with recognising reality? I fight battles [of the non-violent variety!!] I can't win every day, but I don't expect to change much. I do it simply because to me it would seem wrong not to try. This experiment I have been pounding away at for many years now is a case in point.

The change starts with the thinking, just look at what happened in East Germany, people where just fed up and got up one morning and said, we've had it, and that was that for their supressive government. Thought is just too strong a force. And so you and I can only spread the message and tell people to look and see what is happening and think for themselves instead of repeating mainstream media propaganda like a parrot. I know it takes some courage for many people to stand up and disagree publicly when you think the majority thinks different. Most people dont want to be social outcasts, so they fear to say: "I dont believe it's a good idea to use food to drive cars." when the leftgreen media are hammering away at this so called alternative energy nonsense. The more important it is to disagree, and tell people that there isnt even an energy shortage in sight, for example, or explain that trillions of government spending just destroys our chance at a reasponable future and does no good now either.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Fusion's promise

Post by Richard Hull »

Regading Sandia MAG LIF.......... I quote

"Potential problems involve controlling instabilities in the liner and in the magnetic field that might prevent the fuel from constricting evenly, an essential condition for a useful implosion. Even isolating the factors contributing to this hundred-nanosecond-long compression event, in order to adjust them, will be challenging."

Wow! Just the stuff holding up tokamaks for years!

Simulations are proving the process spot on? Computers say its gotta' work? Give it an expensive swing and then take another whack at it when that simulation falls on its face.

Give me a large personal break........More spin, more promise, more fluff.

Fusion is the energy of the future and it always will be......

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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