What is Digg?94 Comments
- curios, on 10/10/2007, -2/+34If most of the physicists and physics budget were directed into solving controlled nuclear fusion first, many other things would advance much better and faster as a consequence. Like solving global warming and space colonization. There should be a international modern day fusion equivalent of the Manhattan Project(for energy, though, not bombs,), bringing together many gifted and talented scientists from around the world, revolutionizing energy production, improving the climate, conserving the planet and bringing a better future.
- geekchic, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11The UK's nuclear fusion center is not far from Reading, and they host a open-evenings there semi-reguarly for the public. If you like big machines and lots of science, it is a facinating place to visit.
- Johnagain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9They are not claiming 100+ Percent efficiency. They are releasing stored energy in the elements that the reactor is fueled with. Think of it like this: (Super simplified) pour a cup of gas on the ground. Light it with a match. Get gobs of heat out, but only 1 match for input... looks like you get back more than you put in, but only if you do not consider that you are not creating heat energy, you are merely transforming stored energy in the gasoline into heat energy. Fusion and Fission merely release energy stored as particle bonding in atoms.
- Avor, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10How long till I can buy my "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor" and run my car on trash?
- dheaddy, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9You mean this? http://farm1.static.flickr.com/101/283622663_484b62032c_b.jpg
- Johnagain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Billions were spent on research into creating useful computers, which many considered a fad in the scientific community, and never an option for the general public, and overall, a horrendous waste.
Think about it. - adinb, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5You can't; you're merely unlocking energy (that's already been stored in the atoms) during the fusion reaction. Once you run out of "fuel", the reaction is over. Think of it as starting a fire (though this fire has to be constantly fed energy and fuel while being contained).
The challenge with controlled/contained fusion (vice uncontrolled fusion, which is utilized in thermonuclear weapons) is getting a fire that puts out more energy than is put in (during the "fire starting" and the containment). - calgone, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7Didn't anyone see Spiderman 2?
- swrostmore, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5"the Manhattan Project (for energy though, not bombs)"
HAHAHAHA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design#Fusion_weapons - Error601, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5One more among many. Hopefully one of these projects will come across a concept that is practical. Right now we can fill the time gap with modern fission reactors.
- Sowdi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4It is true that some of the material in fusion reactors can become radioactive. Deuterium-Tritium reactions expell neutrons which carry away the energy released from the process as kinetic energy, when absorbed by nuclei of atoms in th reactor walls they slowly cause the walls to become radioactive.
The radiation emitted from the sun is not due to the fusion reaction directly but due to electrons being accellerated.
Fusion really doesn't have the same problems as fission- if the magnetic containment field fails the plasma would simply hit the reactor walls and cool down and most likely create a big mess in the reactor. - Sowdi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Don't you know Fusion power is always 50 years away. But here's hoping.
- neodorian, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Doc Oc wanted for questioning.
- chmeee, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5No, there has been nothing but hype over "cold fusion". Hot nuclear fusion happens all the time.
- Ramble, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I swear I heard a bunch of guys talking about this on the bus a few months ago (This bus goes up to aforementioned in the article RAL).
Pretty awesome. - seamushc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I'm not sure what you think this has to do with the dugg article, its a cool pic tho.
- neodorian, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3It sucks that that is part of the human condition. We never really strive to achieve the highest things unless we are forced by our desire for immediate survival.
- adinb, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3"HiPER is the first experiment designed specifically to study the "fast ignition" approach to generating nuclear fusion, which uses much smaller lasers than conventional designs, yet produces fusion power outputs of about the same magnitude. This offers a total "fusion gain" that is much higher than devices like the National Ignition Facility (NIF), and a reduction in construction costs of about ten times."
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiPER and http://www.hiper-laser.org/
So while the article talks about how big the lasers in the HiPER are, they're really a *lot* smaller than the laser used in other ignition facilities, like the NIF. - Johnagain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+330 years.
(it is funny, if you read the whole article...really, it is!) - genericcynic, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You mean, like ITER? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
- Ramble, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Apparently how this works (all overheard via a conversation) is that the lasers fire at a spherical target with holes along the surface. The target superheats and gas is expelled from these holes and the target is compressed tightly while being extremely hot.
- Ramble, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2The thing with going up to RAL is that it's so divided up there is no general tour of the place. There's ISIS, the Diamond light Source, medical research council mouse house, space control centres. Everything, the place is huge.
- Darkhowling91, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5I was under the impression that you could never have 100%+ efficiency. Interesting article, dugg.
- curios, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2This may be the link, part of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Reading. Includes a video tour for the rest of us. http://www.clf.rl.ac.uk/Facilities/vulcan/laser.htm and the main European laser fusion website -http://www.hiper-laser.org/pressandpr.asp
- init100, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2jgzman is correct. The mass of the two reactants is greater than the mass of the products. Since no particles are destroyed, the difference must come from the binding energy between the subatomic particles. The difference is emitted as radiation and kinetic energy in the product atoms.
- st3vo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Hopefully by then we won't need roads either.
- knomevol, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3does humankind possess the humility necessary to achieve such energetic capabilities and live to tell the tale?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo - DanaG, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2OT, but I wish someone would someone would continue funding of Dr. Bussard's IEC (inertial electrostatic confinement) fusion project. It looks a lot more promising for less money in a much shorter timeframe ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606 ).
- OBJECTinMOTION, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Thomas Edison had to literally experiment with thousands of variations of the light bulb before finding the optimal design.
And now light bulbs are everywhere, and have revolutionized civilization in countless ways.
I have a feeling that nuclear fussion will have to undergo the same trials -- thousands of experiments before we can hit upon the right design that actually works. The only difference is that it is a heck of lot more expensive to try design changes in something as complex as fusion. Hopefully computer based simulations and theoretical calculations can bring down the cost, and narrow down the path to the "right way" to do nuclear fussion. - bwpayne, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3It has been shown consistently in the past that it requires war and true competition to develop transilient technologies.
Fission, computers, the internet, planes, rockets, satellites etc etc - GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Essentially output energy is greater than the energy needed to maintain the reaction.
- Johnagain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2"optimistic"
- FizixMan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Why do you think America is about to attack Iran? It's all part of Bush's great plan to use the war to jump start the development of fusion reactors.
Wait, Bush isn't that smart, is he? - arcooke, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Nice analogy, thanks. The article was a little confusing.
- MattTS, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Umm, the summary is quite poorly written. We've already achieved nuclear fusion many times just not in a form useful as an energy source.
- Angostura, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Err yes, it happens in stars .... but not in power stations. It has been the latter possibility that has been hyped.
- thcobbs, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3< Jim Carey Voice > Smokin' ! < /Jim Carey Voice >
- geekchic, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2It's the Culham center - http://www.jet.efda.org/pages/jet/visiting/index.html
There is a visit this month, and another in November - get booking! - docbob84, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The plasma used in these reactions is basically very hot, ionized hydrogen and a little helium. It's very hot, but there's also very little of it. So let's say that the containment of a fusion reactor loses power and the plasma contacts the walls of the reactor. First, if there's enough plasma (a BIG if), it melts through. Then what happens? It cools off! Think about dropping a red hot piece of metal into a glass of water. It's going to grab electrons from the O2 and N2 in the air, but that happens in any thunderstorm. The hot gases cool and dissipate into the atmosphere, and both hydrogen and the isotope of helium used are there naturally anyway. It's not going to ignite the atmosphere (thanks, Fantastic 4 movie...) it's not going to put unnatural or even very radioactive gases into the atmosphere, it almost certainly wouldn't even destroy the building the reactor is in. It might suck for the people right around the reactor (as in, those touching the metal that makes up the shielding) but if anything happened to them it's going to be some burning from the hot gases or suffocation from lack of oxygen. So no, fusion reactors don't go "Chernobyl", the only way one is going to explode is if it's deliberately blown up, and even then... nothing happens.
- DanaG, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That is good news! Thanks!
- riffic, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1supposedly, the navy has continued Bussards funding for the polywell project. http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2007/08/23/funding-continues-for-bussards-fusion-reactor/
- docbob84, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Hydrogen is water, effectively. There's a lot of it around, more than we could EVER use. Even deuterium, there's so much of it available and it would release so much energy that there's no way we could use up a decent sized lake's worth of water in a century, let alone enough water to damage the environment. The isotope of helium released is not radioactive and helium in our atmosphere is not stable; it floats to the top of the atmosphere and is blown away (all helium used in balloons, etc. has been trapped in caves and comes from radioactive alpha decay of things like uranium. Google it). Geothermal heat is so plentiful that, again, we couldn't use it all if we tried. The planet would cool itself down long before we would have any impact.
I guess what you have to consider is, no source of energy is going to have literally "zero" impact on anything, but these sources do so little that it's no consequence. I mean come on, if you have to power a civilization for a thousand years and you have three choices: a) use billions of tons of coal and oil and release it ALL into the atmosphere as CO2, b) remove the amount of water in a small lake from the planet and produce effectively no exhaust, or c) make the planet's core stop spinning in four billion years instead of four billion fifty years, and still make no waste. - jgzman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Hype?
- longhorn30, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Obviously you have no idea what you are talking about. The type and amount of radiation created by fusion is completely different from fission. Also there is no radioactive waste that lasts for 10,000 years.
Just about every method of energy production uses steam to turn turbines, which turn generators that make electricity. About the only one that doesn't is solar, but their efficiency is only a fraction of any other method.
And what exactly are you doing to help resolve our current energy problems? - dicerandom, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Update with numbers:
The detonation of a single ton of TNT produces 4.184*10^12 J of energy, which is equivalent to 1.16 gigawatt hours or about one hour's worth of output for a typical GE boiling reactor. Compare this to the US military GBU-37 "bunker buster", which has an explosive power equivalent to ~2 tons of TNT.
So, if you made a fusion reactor that produced as much power as a typical fission reactor and that fusion reactor happened to undergo a catastrophic failure the resulting explosion would be much smaller than a large conventional (i.e. non-nuclear) explosion utilized in modern warfare. - jgzman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That is actually slightly incorrect. In an atomic reaction (fission ore fusion) the energy comes from the bonds between partials in the nucleus. No atoms or parts of atoms become energy.
Oddly enough, however, the binding energy does have mass while it is still contained within the nucleus. That is why e=mc^2 is used. To properly convert matter to energy would require either an impact at or near c, or a matter/antimatter reaction. (and I'm not 100% sure about either of those)
If you are interested, read "A Serious but not Ponderous Book about Nuclear Energy" by Walter Scheider. Quite illuminating. - dicerandom, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1There's no such thing as "going Chernobyl" with fusion, it's an inherently unstable process. The reason nuclear fission plants can do a lot of damage is that they're both a stable process and radioactive.
The best destructive power that you would get from a catastrophic failure of a particularly stable fusion plant would be an explosion of hot gasses. There would be no real radiation to speak of, just a *****-ton of TNT type explosion. - MasterGrief, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I think HE meant to imply that Edison stole the invention from Tesla, which isn't even close to truth--however, given the competition between the two scientists, it wouldn't surprise me if someone simply assumed that he had.
- oxdeltaxo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The CANDU reactor is one of the safer designs, although besides it most other power stations are safe enough.
- init100, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That's why Helium-3 fusion is so attractive. It only emits Helium-4 and two protons, both of which can be contained within a magnetic field.
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