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Nuclear Energy
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“1) As with F_alk, I am a strong advocate of Nuclear Fusion, not Nuclear Fission, as I mentioned before. Fusion is much cleaner, it won’t “explode,” won’t leave nuclear fallout, is much safer, and doesn’t leave the nuclear “waste” of its cousin. The main problem is with the technology. So far Nuclear Fusion can only be achieved on the small scale with electromagnetic field. Then there are the rather large start up cost associated with it. But Yanny, if you are willing to look into long-term (ex your 5 year electrical deal), then it seems a likely way to go.”
Actually, the biggest problem with Nuclear Fusion is that it requires the use of more energy to squish the Hydrogen atoms together than the energy you get out of fusing the atoms. You’re right that it’s safer. After all, you get Helium which will just leave the atmosphere naturally because the atmosphere can’t hold it. The sun is a big fusion ball, maybe the solution to being able to use Nuclear Fusion lies in further study of the sun.
The biggest problem with your plan Yanny is hte waste. The problem with it is that it stablizies into lead, which is extremely poisonous to humans and serves only the purpose of blocking nuclear radiation which they use in Fission plants (why do you think that lead stopped Kryptonite in Superman?). You can’t put it in Canada or bury it because it will enter our undergorund water supplies and it will do serious damage t o us and kill many people. THis will especially hurt the Untied States if you bury it in Nova Scotia because Nova Scotia is close to the American border and water systems run north to south. Sending it into the sun might work, since the sun is a huge fusion ball and sending lead into it wont affect it much. It’s also a very big philosophical problem. Many say that there may be life out in space and we dont have the right to send out poisonous garbage there.
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“1) As with F_alk, I am a strong advocate of Nuclear Fusion, not Nuclear Fission, as I mentioned before. Fusion is much cleaner, it won’t “explode,” won’t leave nuclear fallout, is much safer, and doesn’t leave the nuclear “waste” of its cousin. The main problem is with the technology. So far Nuclear Fusion can only be achieved on the small scale with electromagnetic field. Then there are the rather large start up cost associated with it. But Yanny, if you are willing to look into long-term (ex your 5 year electrical deal), then it seems a likely way to go.”
Actually, the biggest problem with Nuclear Fusion is that it requires the use of more energy to squish the Hydrogen atoms together than the energy you get out of fusing the atoms. You’re right that it’s safer. After all, you get Helium which will just leave the atmosphere naturally because the atmosphere can’t hold it. The sun is a big fusion ball, maybe the solution to being able to use Nuclear Fusion lies in further study of the sun.
The biggest problem with your plan Yanny is hte waste. The problem with it is that it stablizies into lead, which is extremely poisonous to humans and serves only the purpose of blocking nuclear radiation which they use in Fission plants (why do you think that lead stopped Kryptonite in Superman?). You can’t put it in Canada or bury it because it will enter our undergorund water supplies and it will do serious damage t o us and kill many people. THis will especially hurt the Untied States if you bury it in Nova Scotia because Nova Scotia is close to the American border and water systems run north to south. Sending it into the sun might work, since the sun is a huge fusion ball and sending lead into it wont affect it much. It’s also a very big philosophical problem. Many say that there may be life out in space and we dont have the right to send out poisonous garbage there.
I bet Alabama, kentucky and some of those southern states wouldn’t notice it much . . . .
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But Yanny and DasEWokSS might, after all, they do live in the armpit of the United States which is in the north.
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@SUD:
In typical US fashion your gov’t has withdrawn from ITER, preferring to go its own way. There are many reasons for this; however, at least one of them is because you have not been able to get your own way, and the US was not able to dominate the governing body. So, you have taken your marbles and gone home.
WRT, I know a bit of nuclear fusion, and what I will tell you was that it [US withdrawing from ITER] didn’t have that much to do with so-called “Yankees always want things their way” as SUD so diligently mentioned. The main problem was government spending. Initially, US was a major proponent in getting nuclear fusion power plant to work (expected to a prototype fusion reactor by 2025). However, that was when Congress initiated huge paycuts (literally hundreds of millions of dollars) from nuclear R&D, and called for that sector to be restructured into something much boarder and more science based (ie cutting back on long term technology for short term science). This caused the department to lose 800 scientist and several of our production facilities. This is not to say that the US government was against alternative energies, but also wanted to invest time to other, more conventional projects like hydroelectric, solar, and wind power (already billions of dollars had been invested in fusion research).
However, that doesn’t mean we have pulled out of ITER entirely, in fact we’ve sent several scientist aboard to Japan and Europe to help them out. Also our department is very willing to show our own findings with the ITER and help them out in any ways possible besides costly funding (as said before, Congress rolled back a lot of research spending). Hopefully we can continue to help them with the sciences involved in self-sustaining plasma research in order to power their own technologies.
Now there is a very strong possibility that US will rejoin ITER. This is due because of funding, something the remaining members of ITER are having problems of there own. But in a promising indication, the ITER agreed in 2000 to design a much smaller prototype capable as serving as model for a nuclear fusion plant at half the cost ($4 billion). Also promising is the fact that Congress has reinitiated some funding into Nuclear Fusion.
Seriously, imagine the laugh the rest of us will have if we are successful. Superpower one day, 3rd rate banana republic the next. Going to cost you big time to buy your way in later.
Actually, the strongest possibility lies that it will be the other way around (US first to develop a nuclear fusion power plant before the parties aforementioned). From what I can tell, US is still the dominant power in the field of modern nuclear fusion (esp. for Californians! :)) and is responsibly for much of science that governs it. By not joining ITER, we can now spend the increased funding in domestic research Department of Energy, Defense Programs, and Fusion Energy Sciences, which have made sustainable gains in this field – with the possibility of joining the ITER in the near future.
For some additional information, I suggest you check out:
http://www.iter.org/
http://www.aip.org/pt/mar00/iter.htm
http://www.pnl.gov/energyscience/04_99/brf.htmActually, the biggest problem with Nuclear Fusion is that it requires the use of more energy to squish the Hydrogen atoms together than the energy you get out of fusing the atoms.
As I said before, the science is not so much as the problem but technology and cost. A very small fusion power plant can be build, but an actual one would require billions in spending and technology. We can get our energies from electromagnetic fields and Advanced Tokamak to exploit the use plasma pressure. I believe that the ITER is using a standard Tokamak (Donut design), whereas the US has already discovered much more efficient ways (NSTX) in which to manage plasma (another reason why we opted out from ITER).
I bet Alabama, kentucky and some of those southern states wouldn’t notice it much . . . .
Yeah, those Northern Yankees are always finding ways to put us down. Fight the power! :)
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Where will you get your maple syrup, premier ham, and lumberjacks from? :roll:
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Well if Canada is selected as the site for the ITER research complex, I am sure there is a stronger possibility of joining in the future. Just don’t expect this immediately is what I’m trying to say. Anyways, it’s not that US didn’t want to join ITER (though Congress was quite strong about it), but that we couldn’t join with the fervor that accompanies most joint US programs. Still I’m was hoping that the ITER would use at Advance Tokamak.
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Actually, the biggest problem with Nuclear Fusion is that it requires the use of more energy to squish the Hydrogen atoms together than the energy you get out of fusing the atoms. …
Fusion bombs work fine, the problem is a controlled fusion.
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I imagine that’s where most of the power consumtion of any fusion reactor comes from.
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I imagine that’s where most of the power consumtion of any fusion reactor comes from.
Yup.
What you have to do, for a controlled fusion, is to
(1) get the hydrogen atoms really hot and under a really high pressure.
To do this, you can’t avoid to:
(2) break the hydrogen atoms into their nuclei and shells. Or: rip off the electrons from the shells, and form a “plasma”.
Then you
(3) put on a strong (!) magentic field, to keep the plasma away from the walls (it’s hot!) and confined (high pressure!).So, heating, pressure and keeping these two inside something takes quite some energy. The heating on the other hand is only “expensive” a long as the fusion does not run on its own. Aftwards the fusion processes will heat up the plasma, so that you have a positive energy balance there and hopefully for the whole system.
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Remember, once you light a match you have to keep it burning on its own.
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@TG:
Remember, once you light a match you have to keep it burning on its own.
of course you have to provide fuel and oxygen in order for it to burn “on its own” . . . .
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Ahhhh… it seems we can learn a lot about nuclear fusion from 5th grade science. :)
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Question is, how small scale can you get a fusion reactor down to? Small enough for an Aircraft Carrier? A Sub? Maybe a future Cruise Ship?
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ya but think of it this way. all they need to fuel a fusion reaction is hydrogen and oxogen, now where can you find both of these together in a neat little package…. WATER!! you can actully extract enough Detireum (an isotope of hydrogen) from water to produce the same amount of electricity as 30,000 gallons of gasoline for about 34 cents. and the only thing left over from a fusion reaction is hellium gas.
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Question is, how small scale can you get a fusion reactor down to? Small enough for an Aircraft Carrier? A Sub? Maybe a future Cruise Ship?
Relative to size of a nuclear reactor. However, you have to be careful that fusion does not use up more energy than it gives off. Of course this topic is about “Providing Power to the Masses” and not “How can we use alternative energy to power our Weapons of War,” so I’m assuming that this point is irrelevant.
they need to fuel a fusion reaction is hydrogen and oxogen, now where can you find both of these together in a neat little package…. WATER!! you can actully extract enough Detireum (an isotope of hydrogen) from water to produce the same amount of electricity as 30,000 gallons of gasoline for about 34 cents. and the only thing left over from a fusion reaction is hellium gas.
Well not exactly. To find Detireum you still need to extract it from sea. The other component is tritium, which can be taken from lithium. Also the left over waste, it isn’t exactly safe, as it is still radioactive from it activated materials and will take 50-100 years before it can be cleared from regulatory control or recycled.
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… all they need to fuel a fusion reaction is hydrogen and oxogen, now where can you find both of these together in a neat little package…
Why do i need oxygen for a fusion process? You can “fuse” everything up to iron, but why oxygen? It’s terribly inefficient compared to fusing hydrogen.
Or did you mix that up with the usual burning of hydrogen and oxygen to water (As happened to the zeppelin “Hindenburg” in the early 30s)? -
my mastake, you don’t need oxygen in fusion, just the hydrogen isotopes and a lot of heat.
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instead of thinking where to dump your c*ap think of how to harvest the power of a black hole, all that gravity has to do something.:)
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Ummm… sorry your comment was so far fetched and incoherant that I really don’t know what to say. How about, do you know how far the closest black hole is (assuming it is)?
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@TG:
Ummm… sorry your comment was so far fetched and incoherant that I really don’t know what to say. How about, do you know how far the closest black hole is (assuming it is)?
i think there’s one in my closet. You may borrow it if you like. Just remember that i need it back for the bodies - you know how it is.
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