Fusion power - prospects for the future?
- Thread starter Bernie Gunther
- Start date
Sunray
Its sunny somewhere.
Solar cells are hardly green. Keep telling people this, they require pure silicon. That requires 50Kw energy per Kg of silicon to make. Then there is keeping the room you make them in clean, the washing, the cutting, the packaging, the box and then all the transport. By the time you've set it up on your roof the amount of energy saved will hardly make it worth while.
Bio fuels require more land than there is surface area on the planet.
Wind farms hardly make any energy and they take shit loads of energy to make and install. Their massive.
The sad fact is that nuclear energy is the only real alternative to fossile fuels that will sustain our energy needs as they currently are.
www.iter.org
The iter project seem confident they have just about got around most of the technical challenges.
Given that this does not product materials that can be used as a bomb, goes out if things go wrong, produces its own fuel and its been suggested requires only a 100 or so year life cycle on old recycleable parts, I can see every country in the world installing them. Would that cause a new world order?
Bio fuels require more land than there is surface area on the planet.
Wind farms hardly make any energy and they take shit loads of energy to make and install. Their massive.
The sad fact is that nuclear energy is the only real alternative to fossile fuels that will sustain our energy needs as they currently are.
www.iter.org
The iter project seem confident they have just about got around most of the technical challenges.
Given that this does not product materials that can be used as a bomb, goes out if things go wrong, produces its own fuel and its been suggested requires only a 100 or so year life cycle on old recycleable parts, I can see every country in the world installing them. Would that cause a new world order?
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
I've got my fingers crossed for plastic PV. There's several technologies being researched that could allow mass-printing of solar cells in sheets. Just roll it onto a drum and integrate it into whatever you want. It's not a silver bullet to energy problems, but don't knock solar, there's some interesting things happening. Also, have a look at the solar thermal electric plant being built in arizona )I think) http://www.stirlingenergy.com/
Sunray said:
I was talking to Bob Hirsch, famed for is DOE paper looking at peak oil mitigation timeframes. He's totally dismissive of fusion power. He should know what he's talking about seeing as his bio includes:
The reasons he gave were cost (will always be more costly than fission), complexity (always more complex than fission) and waste (although fusion doesn't produce the very long lifetime waste products hundreds of years is just as bad as 1000s in commercial terms).
He's a fan of fission - suggesting over a 1000 years supply of fissionable material, including fast breeders which he said were cheaper and easier than fusion. Whilst not doubting fusion could/will work technically (although he did say that the current research was going in the wrong direction) his problem with is that that it'll just never be competitive with fission.
I don't really agree with him... but then I got the impression he's about 1000 times smarter than me so I expect he's right!
Having been to visit the JET facility it appears that most of the physical problems are relatively well understood and the technicques for replacing linings, etc are well rehearsed. ITER is looking at any potential problems associated with scaling up the process. There is also another useful experimental sub-fusion system at Culham known as MAST which is looking at methods of simplifying the design.
Jonti
what the dormouse said
The "other" type of fusion is to rely on inertial confinement, the so-called bubble fusion or sonofusion approach.
A company called Impulse Devices, "a private corporation pursuing the development of a new inertial confinement approach to hot fusion energy production", are developing this. There's an article about this inertial fusion technology at the IEEE's Spectrum Online here.
If it could be made to work (it is theoretically possible), it holds out the hope of much smaller reactors. But the situation seems pretty confused right now with, as the article says, with personality clashes, disputes over funding and prestige, and a failure (so far) of other researchers to replicate the original results.
A company called Impulse Devices, "a private corporation pursuing the development of a new inertial confinement approach to hot fusion energy production", are developing this. There's an article about this inertial fusion technology at the IEEE's Spectrum Online here.
If it could be made to work (it is theoretically possible), it holds out the hope of much smaller reactors. But the situation seems pretty confused right now with, as the article says, with personality clashes, disputes over funding and prestige, and a failure (so far) of other researchers to replicate the original results.
With regards to Tritium, IIRC from what I've seen written down the max capacity at ITER is planned to be 24kg! ITER won't use the next stage of Tritium generation which is to surround the reactor with a lithium blanket and use the neutron bombardment to generate the tritium. Another advantage of fusion is that while it will produce radioactive waste and lead to activation of the reactor structure the half-lives will be very significantly shorter (decommissioning to brown field in 150 - 200 years) with no significant long half-life by products.
A couple of down sides - The things are incredibly complex to build, maintain and run, especially when a commercial station will need a series of rectors to provide continuous generation! They need a much higher level of competency from the operators. The next thing is that they will always be expensive to build (in terms of cash and energy), many of the parts require relatively rare materials and involve very high purities that aren't required in normal facilities (i.e. copper subject to radiation must have a very, very low oxygen content to reduce the levels of activation).
A couple of down sides - The things are incredibly complex to build, maintain and run, especially when a commercial station will need a series of rectors to provide continuous generation! They need a much higher level of competency from the operators. The next thing is that they will always be expensive to build (in terms of cash and energy), many of the parts require relatively rare materials and involve very high purities that aren't required in normal facilities (i.e. copper subject to radiation must have a very, very low oxygen content to reduce the levels of activation).
Sunray
Its sunny somewhere.
People have always said stuff like that. One of the major problems was generating the magnetic field needed to confine the plasma. Solved by someone coming up with high temperature super conductors. Once thought impossible. If you don't try to solve problems, they will never get solved.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Which is in itself an acknowledgement of how far off fusion power still is.clv101 said:
They've been trying to make fast breeders effective (at something other than nuclear weapons proliferation) for quite a while now too.
The tokomaks use a toroidal chamber to induce confinement. But this is in the order of 10 atomspheres which ill suited to the requirement necessary to sustain the plasma. I think meissner effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meisner_effect
may have something to do with the confinement problem.
may have something to do with the confinement problem.
Kauai Inventor
New Member
magnetic electric vessel
I was inspired by reading Project Sherwood by A.S. Bishop in the 60s to eventually come up with this method of confinement:
I think that using both a magnetic field and electric field gives enough design adaptability to compose an arrangement that holds a hot plasma tightly. Magnetically the device is a linear machine with a narrow middle which is the opposite of a magnetic mirror. A wasp waist shaped magnetic field provides extra stable central confinement but presses the plasma out of the ends axially. The electric field presses the plasma back in at the ends while attracting the plasma radially at the center. The geometry and field strengths can be such that the plasma is trapped everywhere within extra stable fields of at least one type. The positive charge imposed on the plasma is an advantage because the electrons do not participate in the reaction and they unnecessarily radiate energy.
I think that the diode array is generally a better energy source. The diode array can also recycle the operating energy of any thermonuclear reactor so the only the net nuclear energy surplus or absorption ( for nuclear transmutation where mass is increased ) is important. A plasma rocket engine variant of the magnetic electric vessel where one end allows some escape may be useful.
I attached a drawing, is it there yet?
Aloha
I was inspired by reading Project Sherwood by A.S. Bishop in the 60s to eventually come up with this method of confinement:
I think that using both a magnetic field and electric field gives enough design adaptability to compose an arrangement that holds a hot plasma tightly. Magnetically the device is a linear machine with a narrow middle which is the opposite of a magnetic mirror. A wasp waist shaped magnetic field provides extra stable central confinement but presses the plasma out of the ends axially. The electric field presses the plasma back in at the ends while attracting the plasma radially at the center. The geometry and field strengths can be such that the plasma is trapped everywhere within extra stable fields of at least one type. The positive charge imposed on the plasma is an advantage because the electrons do not participate in the reaction and they unnecessarily radiate energy.
I think that the diode array is generally a better energy source. The diode array can also recycle the operating energy of any thermonuclear reactor so the only the net nuclear energy surplus or absorption ( for nuclear transmutation where mass is increased ) is important. A plasma rocket engine variant of the magnetic electric vessel where one end allows some escape may be useful.
I attached a drawing, is it there yet?
Aloha
Attachments
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
I know what you're thinking. "Is he serrious or just taking the piss" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is an online bulletin board, the most troll susceptible media in the world, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I waste time responding? Well, do ya, punk?Sunray said:*slaps hand against face*
Kauai Inventor
New Member
I'm serious and discussing it is safe.
Aloha
Aloha
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
No it's not...Kauai Inventor said:
They may be watching us...
nick1181 said:
I'm aware of the arguments against the higgs and the slepton, the latter is hypothetical. If the higgs boson isn't found and the theory is defunct (I'm sure it won't be found, gathering from better equipped minds) but the question remains: how do we interact with gravity?
The fusion reactors use EM fields which are stronger than gravity here on earth, but imagine if we were using gravity to create those fields.
I know it is difficult to broach the subject, because the experts are divided. But I can't help thinking there is some reasonably simple experiment that will shed further light on the mechanism of gravity.
Kauai Inventor
New Member
I want my reactor design to be inspected by everyone in all capacities. Some comments will be valuable. Please tell me if I have overlooked an immediately severe problem with it.
Aloha
Aloha
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