Nuclear fusion breakthrough

[scrambler]

Just because something is hard to do does not mean it is not worth pursuing

 

[procreator]

It seems that despite all our technological evolution, our civilization is still a barbaric one albeit with much more sophisticated ways to act barbarically...
Makes you wonder about our specie and its chances of long-term survival

I read a book a few years back called Hurtling Toward Oblivion. In it the author looks at the exponential increase in knowledge and technology. He shows how the capacity for doing good is an exponential curve. But he also points out that the capacity for evil is on the same curve although a few months or years behind. He argues that while much good can be done, it only takes a single act of evil to offset all of the good. Not saying it was intentional (because I have no clue) but COVID showed us what could happen if a weaponized microbe were to be released to the general population.

The author argues that the end of civilization likely won't be due to global warming or a rogue asteroid, but evil unleashed from the hearts of rogue individuals.

 

[scrambler]

The author argues that the end of civilization likely won't be due to global warming or a rogue asteroid, but evil unleashed from the hearts of rogue individuals.

That and collective shortsightedness and selfishness, which plays a big part in today's misguided an unsustainable civilization

 

[duggie]

I'm just an ordinary bloke applying common sense to this breakthrough. Of course this is military. Now it may just be that to get this thing up to scale has the world in their hand. Who knows, maybe incredible lazers. If it is this kind of thing then the political will will be there, like during the war, like apollo.

 

[kevinmccune]

Cheap energy means dig dig dig make make make use use use. It won't be cheap energy for the people.. except for powering the work camps where the usable people will be housed while stlil usable. It's what the western nations' public is begging for; to be eliminated while being dominated more and faster. Gotta save the earth..for the powerful nincompoops who are ready and willing to dispose of them right now.

View attachment 142537 Dang, you get it!. This whole fusion fiasco has been like the "Tilt Rotor" one ,50 yrs of research and testing finally coming up with a questionable product if all this money and effort had been put into gravity research, the spinoffs like fusion would have happened. Its like modern medicine, most of which is designed to treat rather than cure, the problem for gravity research( may have already been solved) gravity control cannot even be hinted at, its something ,thats levels above top secret, you could wipe out the whole human race rather cheaply and thats what the superpowers would like an ace in their sleeve like that, we have so much usable fission tech that could implemented before the next decade clean and long lived. Its seems the energy giants would rather be digging up and burning ancient flora, with little consideration to the fact they have to live on this earth as well, a gated community has to breathe the same air as the rest of us.

It seems our wonderful tech always degrades into weaponization for the haves.

 

[kevinmccune]

Handlebars.......I think you are right that it will not save the Earth. I think that there are just too many people living in an unsustainable way. Answer: less people. It is going to have to be a sort of one world order where there is no possibility of war. Fusion might be a key towards this. Powerful nincompoops and a picture of Charles, haha. That's a bit harsh. I reckon he is ok. There's something about the idea of a royal family that makes a lot of sense, which is how it must have started all those years ago. There is something about being top banana and it can't be changed by anyone, ever. There is a security in it, a live and let live in it, but that is a different subject. Fusion, what will it all mean.

What are we ment to be looking at with that photo, with the red circles? What is going on?

Charles "red right" hand?

 

[kevinmccune]

Actually Bernoulli's Principle was published in Hydrodynamica in 1738. The Wright Brother's first flight was in 1903.

So we may be in for a bit of a wait.

There are a long list of ugly engineering problems that have to be solved to build a practical fusion reactor and electricity generation system. There is no rational way to put a timeline on how long it will take to solve them. There is no guarantee that there are solutions to those problems. There is no guarantee that any good solution will be economically feasible. And I'm talking about known problems here. There will be surprises.

Just to give a short list:

• Neutron flux. The intensity of neutron emissions from a fusion reaction is thousands of times higher than with any other nuclear reaction we have experience with. No known material can withstand such intense neutron emissions. So it begs the question what in blazes do you build this thing out of.
• Tritium (and neutrons). You need tritium (hydrogen with two neutrons) and deuterium (hydrogen with one neutron) to make this kind of fusion reaction go. For a self-sustaining system of power plants, you need to capture the one extra neutron and "breed" one new tritium (probably with Lithium-6, which you'll need a lot of). The problem is that for a self-sustaining system you'll need to capture 100 percent of the neutrons and make tritium out of all of them. One hundred percent efficiency doesn't happen very often, and this whole system kind of assumes that you can do that.
• Helium. The deuterium-tritium reaction produces helium. Having helium in the reaction chamber will slow down and eventually completely stop the fusion process. So you need a very efficient system for getting rid of the helium.

There's more where that came from. And I'm just talking about known problems.



It is kind of more complicated than that.

Thermal neutron water moderated reactors (which includes nearly all nuclear power plants in use) are widely acknowledged to be a dead-end technology. Largely because they have poor economics and require a lot of complicated and redundant equipment to keep operating and keep operating safely. The design has very bad failure modes, even if those failures are fortunately rare. You only consider major failures, but my understanding is that there is a pretty continuous stream of minor failures that we aren't hearing about. Even if those failures don't endanger anyone (and nearly all of them do not) they add to the cost and complexity of the system.

Better design pathways exist. Both molten-salt reactors and lead-moderated fast neutron reactors fail in less destructive ways and would likely be less expensive to maintain and operate. In addition their failure modes are far less catastrophic. They also produce far less (on the order of 1 percent) less radioactive waste, and that waste needs to be kept safe for a far shorter time. As of this writing I am not aware of anyone who is pursuing those options at scale. While practical models of lead-moderated fast neutron reactors have been built (in 1970s-era Soviet submarines) there is still quite a few years (probably on the order of fifteen years with generous funding and a crash program) until a commercially feasible reactor based on those technologies would be available.

Blame 'Rickover"?

 

[kevinmccune]

The world has been 30 years from nuclear fusion power since I was 12. That was 60 years ago.
We're still 30 years from affordable nuclear fusion. The investment required to achieve the 150% gain Lawrence Livermore achieved is incredible.
I think the utilities should commit to pumping water uphill to resevoirs & dams with solar & wind power, to solve the base load problem. Would be a big help in sunny California. The east coast metroplex is also close to a number of mountains with plenty of water. The idea of using LiIon battery facilities to run inverters for dark & calm mains AC power just runs up the cost of all the electric cars we will need.

There are many other kinetic systems besides"pumped storage" one even uses a huge concrete or mass cylinder, the trouble with such systems is low energy density and relatively high construction cost. In the eighties the worlds biggest pumped storage facility was constructed a couple of ridgelines away from where I reside, it was a couple of billion then( 1.6 billion-4.03 billion in 2021 dollars) it supposedly has a capacity of 4000 MW( probably averages less) It might mot even be allowed to be constructed these days with all the NIMBYs and rich econuts around, everyone went to pieces with the proposed NG pipeline coming through close to the same area( liking it to an Apocolypse) the big problem with that pumped storage project was the ugly ass powerline(500kva) I have to stare at till I die, the brushkiller runoff seems to be killing my fruittrees, so it goes.
Anyway I believe fusion( for now) is a pipe dream till they can come up with some kind of wave compression or whatever to do the nasty or maybe the secret of self sustaining plasma balls( they exist in nature) The three essentials keys of creation were quoted to us a few years back and it was simply put, rather simple. Simple does not mean easy.

 

[Zekeer]

Cheap energy means dig dig dig make make make use use use. It won't be cheap energy for the people.. except for powering the work camps where the usable people will be housed while stlil usable. It's what the western nations' public is begging for; to be eliminated while being dominated more and faster. Gotta save the earth..for the powerful nincompoops who are ready and willing to dispose of them right now.

View attachment 142537

Most just ignore what you point out . People like us are to negative Most just ignore what we see and pretend it's not all racing to the end . Because they aren't ready for it .

 

[kevinmccune]

Most just ignore what you point out . People like us are to negative Most just ignore what we see and pretend it's not all racing to the end . Because they aren't ready for it .

We have "Bread and Circus",UFC, NFL, NASCAR, Mickey D, Budweiser, Ad Nauseum , the waters are tepid now, but she is starting to get hotter-20 years?

 

[Zekeer]

We have "Bread and Circus",UFC, NFL, NASCAR, Mickey D, Budweiser, Ad Nauseum , the waters are tepid now, but she is starting to get hotter-20 years?

I doubt we have 10 . Have you seen the simulation video on Seers ? Just like what they did with C/19 ? Slated for 2025 . Forecasting to be deadly to 1 * Billion people . 15-20 million Children ? 2025 ?

 

[kevinmccune]

I doubt we have 10 . Have you seen the simulation video on Seers ? Just like what they did with C/19 ? Slated for 2025 . Forecasting to be deadly to 1 * Billion people . 15-20 million Children ? 2025 ?

I doubt we have 10 . Have you seen the simulation video on Seers ? Just like what they did with C/19 ? Slated for 2025 . Forecasting to be deadly to 1 * Billion people . 15-20 million Children ? 2025 ?

possible, the next one is going to be a plague and covid showed the ones that will be affected( People get the dang shots you are playing into the hands of the NWO, this next one will eliminate a lot of the Rebels and Freethinkers) This one dude that wears the t-shirt that says "we are fuc%*$" has a very interesting slant on this whole affair, I have to agree We have screwed the "Living Earth' severely and things are probably going to come to a head. Don't worry too much about the plant fertilizer going into the air, rather be concerned when the other 7 Billion living souls ask for their piece of the pie, bunkers and gated communities are temporary fixes.
First do no harm and enjoy life while you can. The sound of Mothers weeping for their dead and hungry children will be more than I can bear.

 

[Zekeer]

possible, the next one is going to be a plague and covid showed the ones that will be affected( People get the dang shots you are playing into the hands of the NWO, this next one will eliminate a lot of the Rebels and Freethinkers) This one dude that wears the t-shirt that says "we are fuc%*$" has a very interesting slant on this whole affair, I have to agree We have screwed the "Living Earth' severely and things are probably going to come to a head. Don't worry too much about the plant fertilizer going into the air, rather be concerned when the other 7 Billion living souls ask for their piece of the pie, bunkers and gated communities are temporary fixes.
First do no harm and enjoy life while you can. The sound of Mothers weeping for their dead and hungry children will be more than I can bear.

Do you have a relationship with God?? I mean Jesus . If so you have nothing to worry about . Everything happening is all signs of the coming tribulation . If you look at what's happening in Israel it's really obvious . What frustrates me is how many people just can't see it .

 

[fooferdoggie]

Do you have a relationship with God?? I mean Jesus . If so you have nothing to worry about . Everything happening is all signs of the coming tribulation . If you look at what's happening in Israel it's really obvious . What frustrates me is how many people just can't see it .

what frustrates me is how many times the world has been predicted to end by Christians. its so much against Christianity and its just wanting the wold to die so you can see Jesus sooner. there are better methods to make that happen and it does not take the rest of the world out.

 

[indianajo]

the worlds biggest pumped storage facility was constructed a couple of ridgelines away from where I reside, it was a couple of billion then( 1.6 billion-4.03 billion in 2021 dollars) it supposedly has a capacity of 4000 MW( probably averages less) It might mot even be allowed to be constructed these days with all the NIMBYs and rich econuts around, everyone went to pieces with the proposed NG pipeline coming through close to the same area( liking it to an Apocolypse) the big problem with that pumped storage project was the ugly ass powerline(500kva) I have to stare at till I die, the brushkiller runoff seems to be killing my fruittrees, so it goes.

People that protest at power lines and gas lines should disconnect, burn candles and wood. I use electricity and natural gas, thus I ignore the power lines when I admire nature. I allowed an easement on my summer property for a line to simplify distribution for the electric coop.
There are places where it would be insensitive to route a power line. One in front of El Capitan cliff, or skirting the edge of the Grand Canyon, would be annoying. Yosemite and Niagara falls should also be protected.
There are some fans of the cleared strip under the power line. My grandmother used to walk across the mountain under the power line to and from her job. Saved her an hour a day walking by the road and eliminated the risk of being hit by a car: no berms or sidewalks in 1940 WestVirginia.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Helium. The deuterium-tritium reaction produces helium. Having helium in the reaction chamber will slow down and eventually completely stop the fusion process. So you need a very efficient system for getting rid of the helium.

Well, if a fusion energy economy results in cheaper party balloons, I'm all for it!

Thanks for that in-depth reality check. Sounds like you have a physics or nuclear engineering background.

Once fusion generation becomes scalable, where will the money to build the extremely expensive infrastructure come from -- at a scale sufficient to impact climate change? And will it come in time?

I seriously doubt that it will come in time. Meanwhile, countries rich and poor will be spending so much to defend against or recover from a steady stream of climate-related disasters that adequate public funding may be unavailable. Private funding could also be stretched too thin.

An NPR piece yesterday stated that in areas along coasts and large lowland rivers in the US alone, some 30-40 MILLION homes and buildings will have to be either raised or moved inland to escape the sea level rise expected in coming decades. Think of all the public and private funding that will suck up -- just to keep what we already have.

 

[kevinmccune]

People that protest at power lines and gas lines should disconnect, burn candles and wood. I use electricity and natural gas, thus I ignore the power lines when I admire nature. I allowed an easement on my summer property for a line to simplify distribution for the electric coop.
There are places where it would be insensitive to route a power line. One in front of El Capitan cliff, or skirting the edge of the Grand Canyon, would be annoying. Yosemite and Niagara falls should also be protected.
There are some fans of the cleared strip under the power line. My grandmother used to walk across the mountain under the power line to and from her job. Saved her an hour a day walking by the road and eliminated the risk of being hit by a car: no berms or sidewalks in 1940 WestVirginia.

My late Brother said much the same thing and I agree.

 

[kevinmccune]

Well, if a fusion energy economy results in cheaper party balloons, I'm all for it!

Thanks for that in-depth reality check. Sounds like you have a physics or nuclear engineering background.

Once fusion generation becomes scalable, where will the money to build the extremely expensive infrastructure come from -- at a scale sufficient to impact climate change? And will it come in time?

I seriously doubt that it will come in time. Meanwhile, countries rich and poor will be spending so much to defend against or recover from a steady stream of climate-related disasters that adequate public funding may be unavailable. Private funding could also be stretched too thin.

An NPR piece yesterday stated that in areas along coasts and large lowland rivers in the US alone, some 30-40 MILLION homes and buildings will have to be either raised or moved inland to escape the sea level rise expected in coming decades. Think of all the public and private funding that will suck up -- just to keep what we already have.

I do not think you will have to worry anytime soon, meanwhile back at the ranch, the PV enthusiasts are already enjoying the benefits of fusion energy. Maybe one day we will be able to send some of our excess CO2 AND Dihydrogen oxide to the "Musk" planet.( Required reading "Colussus-The Forbin Project"( Guess who played in the screen version and is still around as far as I know)

 

[kevinmccune]

Do you have a relationship with God?? I mean Jesus . If so you have nothing to worry about . Everything happening is all signs of the coming tribulation . If you look at what's happening in Israel it's really obvious . What frustrates me is how many people just can't see it .

Ask the "Millerites".