Nuclear fusion thread

[Anon !PhzO.oXIQA No.5667682]

Nuclear fusion is the most promising form of energy for the power grid, its renewable, no dangerous by-products and almost endless benifits when compared to other forms of energy production, so why is no-one apart from few organisations really pushing to make it a reality? anyway just post pics and interesting facts related to nuclear fusion please.
Pic: its ITER a ongoing fusion project predicted to reach and exceed break even (The point when the power being produced exceeds the power required to ignite and maintain the fusion reaction)

[Anonymous No.5667751]

It's expensive as fuck and we need more physicists. On top of the engineering challenges presented by trying to mass produce fusion reactors, we've got problems like neutron flux and steam turbines. Fuck steam turbines. Seriously, when will someone obsolete them?

[Anonymous No.5667783]

"Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water." -Albert Einstein

[Anonymous No.5667792]

>Fuck steam turbines. Seriously, when will someone obsolete them?
There's no reasonable alternative. Maybe some other working Fluid, but when your energy source is heat, you can't possibly do better than an ideal Carnot/Rakine Cycle adn Steam turbines are pretty damn close to that.

[Anonymous No.5667957]

We have no way of containing all the energy created and by the time we can put it to use we have less energy left than we used to create the reaction in the first place

[Anonymous No.5667988]

>>5667783
This applies to both nuclear fusion and fission.

[Anonymous No.5667992]

>>5667957
>We have no way of containing all the energy created and by the time we can put it to use we have less energy left than we used to create the reaction in the first place
Most of the energy we create via nuclear plants are used "on the go".
Same will apply for nuclear fusion.

[Anonymous No.5668037]

Still very far away from being technologically feasible.

For TOKAMAK reactors

1) The neutrons damage everything. Kind of solved by lithium 6 curtain.

2) It is extremely hard to keep the reaction stable for long periods of time so while there might be a net power output it will not be sustained.

3) Plasma energy is lost by Bremsstrahlung which makes it hard to get a net power output.

[Anonymous No.5668061]

>>5668037
Not so far away though.
The first tests for the ITER project are planned around 2020.

[Anonymous No.5668065]

>>5668061

ITER will have a net power output but it still will only run for 500 second cycles by virtue of the gargantuan size of the thing. It would be a shit power plant but an important step along the way.

[Anonymous No.5668106]

>>5668065

No, it will be a shit power plant. Meaning it won't produce net power. Meaning it's another welfare program for the military-industrial complex and you're a fool for continuing to support it.

[Anon !PhzO.oXIQA No.5668316]

I have an idea for nuclear fusion, how about you ionize some Hydrogen or Deuterium and have them dissolved in a solution, because Hydrogen ions and its isotopes are para-magnetic in solution. You can then oscillate a magnetic field so on an atomic level the ions will be moving forward and backwards rapidly around the electromagnet which causes the nuclei to collide and fuse at a larger rate than it would at room temperature. This means you can ignite fusion without ridiculous amounts of heat. What problems are there with this?

[Anonymous No.5668323]

>>5668106
It isn't a power plant at all, it's a test reactor. It will not attempt to produce energy. It's an experiment.

[Anonymous No.5668345]

>>5668323

Sounds like an experiment that's not trying to be successful. Therefore it's not an experiment at all. It's a welfare program for PhDs and engineers, which is the status quo for your massive leech of a military-industrial complex.

The Western world has been able to make fusion reactions since the 1930s, and consistently since the 1950s. Here you are 60 years later, so it's time for you morons to admit that you can't do it. Stars can. Humans can't.

[Anonymous No.5668351]

>>5668316

The problem is that you wouldn't produce enough power to justify the power required to run your so-called reactor. So then you'll find that having enough reactions to justify it, automatically means such a harsh reactor environment that you can't contain the reaction.

End of issue. Humans can't produce fusion power. It's physically impossible.

[Anonymous No.5668362]

>>5668351

It's pretty much certain that we can. The net power is solved by decreasing surface effects in the torus by increasing size as will be seen with ITER. We just need to make it last longer now.

[Anonymous No.5668363]

>>5668345
>Sounds like an experiment that's not trying to be successful.
And how is that?

>it's time for you morons to admit that you can't do it.
Ah, biased, baseless opinion.

[Anonymous No.5668386]

>>5668362

No, it's pretty much certain it is NOT. You need the reaction to last INDEFINITELY, just like in REAL power plants. Trying to get a reaction to last several hundred seconds is like trying to get an airplane to fly for that long. "Longer" is useless. "Indefinitely" is what works.

So: You're brainwashed. Stop posting here.

[Anonymous No.5668388]

>>5668363

Because the experiment doesn't pursue a real goal. A power plant produces energy continuously. That's the only goal. "Longer" reaction isn't a real goal. It's just a welfare program for the military-industrial complex. And you've totally bought into the SCAM.

[Anonymous No.5668396]

>>5668388
>Because the experiment doesn't pursue a real goal.
No, it does. ITER is not a power plant, it is an experiment that will teach us how to build a fusion power plant. So it's not built to fail. It is not built to your aims and goals.

> That's the only goal. "Longer" reaction isn't a real goal. It's just a welfare program for the military-industrial complex. And you've totally bought into the SCAM.
Worthless opinion.

[Anonymous No.5668402]

>>5668386
>You need the reaction to last INDEFINITELY, just like in REAL power plants.
That's goddamn retarded. If the plant is on for 3 minutes every 10 minutes it's still a perfectly fine power plant. It'll just store the heat in it's working fluid and produce smooth power all the time anyway

[Anonymous No.5668409]

>Humans can't produce fusion power. It's physically impossible.
You are a fucking idiot.
>JT-60 (JT stands for Japan Torus) is the flagship of Japan's magnetic fusion program
>During deuterium (D–D fuel) plasma experiments in 1998 plasma conditions were achieved which have exceeded break-even—the point where the power produced by the fusion reactions equals the power supplied to operate the machine
>In fusion terminology JT-60 achieved conditions which in D–T would have provided Q = 1.25, where Q is the ratio of fusion power to input power.

[Anonymous No.5668422]

>>5668106
What a dumb comment.
Military don't care about fusion reactor at all: we've been able to do H bombs for decades, what's difficult is to make fusion reactors for civil use.
We'll see in the few decade who really is the fool.

[Anonymous No.5668432]

>>5668351
>Humans can't produce fusion power. It's physically impossible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f5d-bRgieI

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143026-fusion-power-at-home-or-how-small-science-will-defeat-big-science

[Anonymous No.5668435]

>its renewable

wut

[Anonymous No.5668444]

>>5668435
The materials and combustibles used are fairly common and only have to be used in small quantities.

[Anonymous No.5668454]

>>5667792
>Maybe some other working Fluid
Like a 15 MeV plasma?

[Anonymous No.5668457]

>>5668454
Very efficient.

[Anonymous No.5670036]

Are people so afraid of conventional nuclear energy that they pour so much money into fusion?
I think fusion might be viable but not in the near future. New nuclear tech seems more promising to me.

[Anonymous No.5670066]

>>5668351
even though history showed time after time the tardness of absolutes you are still using them. 11/10 retard or 0/10 troll.

[Anonymous No.5670073]

>>5668402

Yeah, thanks for repeating their propaganda. The truth is, power plants must produce continuously. The ITER is already a failure, just like with all fusion research.

You can't sustain the reaction, and now they're using propaganda to get around that hard fact. After 2020, want to know how many fusion plants we'll have that produce commercial power? ZERO. As we've always had.

[Anonymous No.5670076]

>>5670073
are you one of the thorium sheeps from /pol/?

[Anonymous No.5670078]

>>5668422

We've alreayd had those decades pass to see who's the fool, and it's YOU. Humanity hads made fusion reactions since the 1930s, and consistently since the 1950s. Our high-tech industry has had SIXTY YEARS to get it right, and it's totally failed. ITER is your Great White Hope, and it won't even be online until 2020. That makes another decade when you can claim "just another decade".

Get it, moron? You already lost the game. Man up and admit that YOU LOST.

[Anonymous No.5670083]

>>5670076

Nope. Thorium is a good idea, but there's no effin' way we're going to adopt it for commercial power. Know why? Because nuclear commerical power is ONLY a by-product of the military nuclear industry. If they start making Thorium bombs (which you can't make, since Thorium can't do that), then we'll end up with Thoirum commercial power plants.

You guys need to put down the Cheetos and get out of momma's basement. Learn how the world WORKS. The world WORKS in only one way: THE WAY IT DOES. No other way is possible, since if it was POSSIBLE, then it would have ALREADY HAPPENED. That's what economics and politics ensures.

[Anonymous No.5670087]

>>5670083

[Anonymous No.5670106]

>>5670073
>You can't sustain the reaction
>Baseless opinion

>The ITER is already a failure, just like with all fusion research.
You're just repeating your nonsense now. People have already explained why you are wrong.

[Anonymous No.5670121]

>>5670083
>if it was possible it would have already happened
Because nothing about the world has ever changed, and we're still primordial ooze.

[Anonymous No.5670124]

>>5670106

60 years of total failure has also explained why your explanations make no sense. The inability to (1) contain the reaction combined with (2) inability to produce positive-return power, fully explains why fusion will never work. Stars can do it since they can sustain the reaction to their own profit. We can't sustain the reaction, or do it profitably. Period.

And 2020 will swing around, and the project will be predictably overbudget, and won't 'succeed', since it was never supposed to succeed. It's only supposed to keep military-industrialists rolling in free government money. And you'll never learn. Since you're stupid. They play on your hopes and fears like you're a little child.

[Anonymous No.5670125]

>>5670121

Oh, change certainly does happen... always for the worst for your class of person, and the best for the elite. The world of 2100 AD will see the world embroiled in the worst tyrannies ever designed, prompted by Petroleum Starvation. And all of you (who survive) will applaud it.

[Anonymous No.5670142]

>>5670124
>60 years of progress.
>The inability to (1) contain the reaction combined with (2) inability to produce positive-return power, fully explains why fusion will never work.
Flat out no. Just because we haven't doesn't mean we cannot, those are two different things. The first fission reactor didn't produce power for the grid, that doesn't mean fission could not. Have not is not the same as cannot.
Also positive energy return has been demonstrated but not achieved because most runs don't use tritium.

>More opinion...

You have not proven that it cannot be done.

[Anonymous No.5670144]

>>5670125
>Deflecting the question.

[Anonymous No.5670165]

>>5670124
nothing to do with the military. unlike in the USA civil science projects in Europe aren't funded over shady military budgets

[Anonymous No.5670174]

>>5670124
What are you even doing on /sci/

>The inability to (1) contain the reaction combined with (2) inability to produce positive-return power, fully explains why fusion will never work.

What? How does the fact that we cannot do something right now prove that we can never do something? I don’t think you understand how science works.
>Stars can do it since they can sustain the reaction to their own profit. We can't sustain the reaction, or do it profitably. Period.
You still have not explained why it’s impossible only that no one has done it.

>And 2020 will swing around, and the project will be predictably overbudget, and won't 'succeed',

Meaningless predictions.

>since it was never supposed to succeed.

With a sprinkle of baseless speculation to round out the enemy of progress fruitcake.

[Anonymous No.5670195]

What about the problem of radioactive waste? Things like isotope U-238 with its half life of 2.35 billion years which currently has no place to be stored apart from the nuclear plant itself, with no real long term storage solution.

[Anonymous No.5670197]

>>5670195
Fusion not fission. The waste from fusion should be minimal and short-lived.

[Anonymous No.5670220]

Do you think Lockheed's Skunk Works is going to do it?

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-02/fusion-power-could-happen-sooner-you-think

[Anonymous No.5670244]

>why is no-one apart from few organisations really pushing to make it a reality?
Anyone who looks at it seriously quickly realizes that cost-effective fusion power necessarily also implies even more cost-effective production of weapons-grade plutonium.

Fission makes roughly an order of magnitude more neutrons per joule of energy produced. Excess neutrons are the main thing you need to make plutonium.

Long before fusion technology becomes cost effective for power generation, it will be the best way to make nuclear weapons.

Fusion research: the biggest nuclear weapons proliferation threat in the world right now.

[Anonymous No.5670251]

>>5670244
>Fission makes roughly an order of magnitude more neutrons per joule of energy produced.
Sorry, this should read: Fusion makes roughly an order of magnitude more neutrons per joule of energy produced than fission.

[Anonymous No.5670440]

>>5670195
There was a storage solution in Yucca mountain but it was scrapped.
Also,
>implying U-238 with a half life of 2.5 by can hurt you.

[Anonymous No.5670565]

>>5670195

The longer the half life the lower the radioactivity

[Anonymous No.5670572]

>>5670565
only if in equal amounts. Also you can have unstable decay products with shorter half lives which also radiate.

While I get your point its not that straightforward.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5671977]

>>5668037
>2) It is extremely hard to keep the reaction stable for long periods of time so while there might be a net power output it will not be sustained.

aka, fucking turbulence

as Einstein put it
>"when i meet god, I will ask him why there is turbulence"
oh course it might have been Heisenberg who said that. the quote is pretty malleable

>>5667751
does general fusion fave a fan club? i want to sign up.
when is the first fucking test firing gen fusion, i want tickets

[Anonymous No.5672335]

Leonardo Davinci designed a helicopter
400 years later there were still no helicopters
Helicopters must be impossible, guys.
Clearly if nature wanted helicopters we would have had them from the start

[Anonymous No.5672379]

>>5672335
>Clearly if nature wanted the Internet and computers we would have had them from the start

[Anonymous No.5672434]

Muon catalyst fusion

[Anonymous No.5672466]

>>5672335

Ah, moron: The principle of helicopters was sound and there merely remained materials science to catch up to its production.

There is no such lack in fusion. The reaction is provably beyond handling by physical materials and force fields. So it's over. In order to make fusion work, you either have to be a star, or you have to be an imaginary character in some stupid scifi story.

[Anonymous No.5672470]

>>5672379

We DID have communication networks. We DID have computing devices. We merely expanded on the theme, RETARD.

Fusion is impossible for Humans to manage. But stupidity can always find a higher level, like YOURS.

[Anonymous No.5672475]

>>5672466
>provably beyond handling by physical materials and force fields
Prove it then.

[Anonymous No.5672486]

>>5672466
But seeing as you haven't actually given a sound argument as to why fusion is impossible other than "derp we've been trying for 60 years and haven't done it yet so it must be impossible", I can adapt what you just said about helicopters to nuclear fusion and it will be just as true.

"The principles of nuclear fusion are sound and there merely remains materials science and plasma physics to catch up to its production (make it feasible)."

[Anonymous No.5672492]

Of course I suppose the thousands of physicists working to achieve fusion power are all wrong and you're right, for reasons you refuse to divulge. Because if several thousand of these people were in on a huge conspiracy to pour billions of dollars into a fool's errand, especially with many of them being scientists with high intellectual honesty, nobody would ever leak that this was going on.

[Anonymous No.5672497]

>>5672466
>The reaction is provably beyond handling by physical materials and force fields.
That's nonsense. It's provably within handling by physical materials and forcefields.

We've had stable, contained fusion (the fusor, and accelerator fusion) and energy-positive fusion (the thermonuclear device) for a long time, just not both together.

Without being clever, contained energy-positive fusion is clearly possible. It just needs to be done on a very large scale. There's no reason to suspect the Tokamak design is fundamentally unworkable. It's just technically challenging, time-consuming, and expensive to make such a large, sophisticated device. That's why they're building progressively larger ones, to work out the required techniques of construction and operation.

What's not perfectly clear is whether if we *are* clever, contained energy-positive fusion can be done on a much smaller scale and more affordably than the Tokamak. There are many reasons to suspect that a variety of more clever and economical methods are possible, but there's no certainty for any of them, like we're certain that the Tokamak can work.

[Anonymous No.5672578]

>>5672497

Totally asinine. Prove you have sustained fusion. Oh wait, you can't. You have the same unsustainable and uncontainable fusion processes that mankind has been fucking around with for decades. You're in total denial. It's not just a technical fix. Stars make use of fusion by their very design: A trillion trillion tons of matter in one spot, CONTAINS AND SUSTAINS THE REACTION. Nothing else material will work. Human scales don't involve a trillion trillion tons of containment.

According to you, we have commericial fusion plants ALREADY. Well, where are those, chum? THEY DON'T EXIST. So much for your 'proof''.

[Anonymous No.5672586]

>>5672492

They are all wrong. After all, they've failed for 60 years to produce a simple solution: Contain and sustain the fusion reaction in order to achieve commercial (profitable) power. Obviously they can't admit they can't do it. Reality tells us otherwise. Humans are great liars and cheats. The inner Violent Simian should always be suspected in this.

[Anonymous No.5672589]

>>5672578
>Prove you have sustained fusion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_generator

They're used all the time for neutron scans, mostly in mining or inspecting cargo for smuggled nuclear materials.

If you're this ignorant about a subject, you shouldn't go around making authoritative pronouncements about i.

[Anonymous No.5672590]

>>5672578
>Can't prove the impossibility, says lack of proof of possibility is proof of impossibility
You clearly don't understand how logic works. You're no scientist and you never will be. Get the fuck out.

[Anonymous No.5672596]

>>5670083
your capslocking pisses me off
please stop

[Anonymous No.5672600]

>>5672596
Not his incessant logical fallacies and completely moronic perspective on literally everything?

[Anonymous No.5673732]

polywell
/thread

[Anonymous No.5674628]

bump

[Anonymous No.5674709]

>>5673732
Yay, let's revive this thread with another direction, other than to discuss with morons.

Polywell is supposed to work, but there are counter-papers stating it looses too much energy by braking-radiation, which Bussard seemingly ignored.
I had my courses mostly about Tokamak-fusion-plasmas, so anyone knows more about this subject?

[Anonymous No.5674731]

>>5672434
/thread

[Anonymous No.5674890]

>>5672600

Accepting reality is a logical fallacy?

[Anonymous No.5674892]

>>5672475

It's already proven since no material or field we've used can CONTAIN THE REACTION.

Come back little boy when you actually find Unobtainium.

[Anonymous No.5674901]

>>5674892
It's not proven then is it? By that logic sustained heavier than air flight was proven impossible in 1900 since no material or engine used could bring about sustained flight.

Something is not impossible simply because it hasn't been done.

[Anonymous No.5674915]

>>5672586
Humans couldn't fly for there first 50,000 years of existence, therefore, they will never be able to fly.

The moon is too far away. There's no way we could ever go to the moon and return safely. Too much radiation outside our atmosphere.

The human genome could never be sequenced. It's too long and we don't have the proper methods.

Blah, blah, blah.

It physically pains me to see people state that certain technologies or understandings are impossible to achieve. You are the ever present illogical skeptic who history continues to forget as science marches on.

[Anonymous No.5674916]

>>5674915 typo, my bad
*their

[Anonymous No.5674952]

>>5674709
I think Polywell is not too promising because it's
1) IEC
2) a bunch of magnetic mirrors

[Anonymous No.5674954]

>>5674892
You don't know anything, do you?

[Anonymous No.5674959]

>>5667682
THORIUM

[Anonymous No.5674963]

>>5667682

oil companies are suppressing it, since its existence would most certainly bankrupt them. they did the same thing for electric cars, they are capable of being highly efficient, but oil companies bought out their manufacturers and purposefully destroyed any chance of it being on the road

[Anonymous No.5675143]

Fusion sounds fucking awesome. I hope Elon Musk takes a stab at it before he dies or goes insane.

I also reckon fusion research deserves a lot more money than I gets today. They say fusion is always "50 years away", but only because funding keeps being cut. If it got as much funding as it was promised it would get back in the 70s we'd supposedly have working commercial reactors right now. If we upped our funding we could have a working commercial reactor in 30 years.

For those not aware the current plan is to build ITER, which will be used to learn how to build a self sustaining fusion reactor. With knowledge learned from that the plan is to then build DEMO, a demonstration fusion power plant which provides power to the grid and may be (though probably won't be) profitable. And with lessons learned from that the plan is to build commercial reactors.

Each reactors will take AT LEAST 10 years to build, not counting the time spent performing research on each one before planning the next. With shitty funding is could all take while, but if we figure it out that energy solved forever effectively.

[Premeau No.5675209]

>>5667751

Steam turbines are practical for our current applications. It is theory that is you unplugged the turbines at the hoover dam, and discontinued to run water across the turbine blades that the turbine would spin for a week before coming to a stop. That is how negligible the coefficient of friction is for turbines today thanks to advances in fluids.

>>5668316
You're an rtard. see microwave oven

>>5668351
I happen to have a nuclear fusion reactor, its kind of far away from here, but I know that it works and produces more energy than anything will be able to produce on this ball of dirt.

>>5675143
Money, that's why you blame our race for being unable to create a reactor? /sci/ is slipping. Sounds like a lot of people have started to gain their information from political talk show hosts. pity

[Anon !jL4jc9Cfs2 No.5675243]

>>5675209
And why am i a "rtard"? As a man of science why don't you explain instead of dismissing.

[Anonymous No.5675263]

>>5674709
>there are counter-papers stating it looses too much energy by braking-radiation, which Bussard seemingly ignored.
He didn't ignore them, he read them and found them wanting. Assumptions were made that he didn't think were reasonable.

Did you actually read the papers? "A scientist looked at X and concluded Y in a published paper." does not mean "Y has been proven to be true", it means "someone thinks Y is true". Peer reviewers don't even have to agree with a paper's reasoning and conclusions to pass it. Peer reviewed literature is like a moderated mailing list: the moderators are just trying to keep the discussion at a certain level of civility, relevance, and quality.

[Anonymous No.5675279]

>>5675143
Why throw money at this approach of taking 10 years and billions of dollars to build each reactor, instead of working on advances in manufacturing and construction technology that will let us build the reactors in a few months for a few million dollars?

If the space shuttle had been recognized as a bad idea and scrapped before launch, people would be bitching, "Oh, if only people had thrown billions of dollars at reusable space flight in the 70s, we'd have cities on the moon by now!"

And SpaceX would still be doing its robotic rocket factory and "reusability in software" thing, that just couldn't have been done back then, and people would be saying, "the space shuttle could have done all of this thirty years ago!"

[Anonymous No.5675388]

>>5675279
I'm not getting your point... They are taking the approach of spending 10 building each reactor because that's as fast as they know how to build them? I understand even today it takes about 10 years to build a commercial nuclear fission power station.

[Anonymous No.5675425]

>>5675388
>I understand even today it takes about 10 years to build a commercial nuclear fission power station.
And yet the first experimental fission reactor with net power output was built in a few months in a makeshift space on a university.

This is what we're working toward now: producing a sustained net power output reaction at all, not a full-scale commercial power station, which needs a new building, environmental studies, etc.

If it costs billions of dollars and a decade or more just to *construct* a proof-of-concept that does no useful work, our construction technology is not at a level which can support economical operation of these things for power generation.

[Anonymous No.5675431]

>>5675388
It will get cheaper to build the reactors as time passes, regardless of whether we're trying to build reactors.

The robots will get better, the materials will get better, the superconductors and cryotechnology will get better. And of course the computers for simulating and designing the thing will get much better.

At our current tech level, it's just make-work for physics PhDs.

[Anonymous No.5675482]

>>5675425
>If it costs billions of dollars and a decade or more just to *construct* a proof-of-concept that does no useful work, our construction technology is not at a level which can support economical operation of these things for power generation.
That's just an assumption. Pile-1 was not controlled nor is it equivalent to a power station, ITER is. Secondly you're comparing apples to oranges.
What if it's like the Human Genome project? Back then the project cost 3 billion and yet today some 10 years later that has fallen to almost a thousand dollars. Much of that reduction in cost came from lessons learned and techniques developed during the project.

[Anonymous No.5675489]

>>5675431
That's opinion. Things may not get cheaper considerably, inflation in some industries can make things worse.
It's not a jobs program.

[Anonymous No.5675536]

>>5675482
>Pile-1 was not controlled
That is complete nonsense. It was a low power reactor, but it was very definitely a controlled, self-sustaining, reaction. And the only reason it was a low power reactor was for safety.

>nor is it equivalent to a power station, ITER is.
ITER is very definitely not equivalent to a power station. ITER will not generate significant amounts of electrical power. ITER will not be built to stand up to its own neutron flux for anything like a useful power generation service life. ITER will not breed its own fuel, but will rely on tritium produced in fission power plants.

>>5675489
>Things may not get cheaper considerably
Some things may not. Other things very definitely, very obviously will.

>It's not a jobs program.
Everything funded by government is, on some level, a jobs program.

[Anonymous No.5675582]

>>5675536
>ITER is very definitely not equivalent to a power station.
That should have read comparable to. ITER won't generate any electrical power but it does aim to demonstrate the servicing, breeding, fueling needed to run a power station. Pile-1 was nothing like this.

>Some things may not. Other things very definitely, very obviously will.
Doesn't mean it will make a dent in the budget.
>Everything funded by government is, on some level, a jobs program.
>Nonsense gerealitiy

[Anonymous No.5675596]

>>5675582
>it does aim to demonstrate the servicing, breeding, fueling needed to run a power station.
It aims to demonstrate the servicing, breeding, and fueling needed to run a proof-of-concept self-sustaining fusion testbed.

These will obviously not be sufficient for a power station.

Just because fusion is a lot harder to do than fission doesn't mean ITER has any hope of getting closer to being a power station than CP-1 was.

[Anonymous No.5675608]

>>5674892
>gets asked to prove something
>NO ITS ALREADY PROVEN SO I DONT HAVE TO
>mfw

[Anonymous No.5675614]

>>5675582
>>Some things may not. Other things very definitely, very obviously will.
>Doesn't mean it will make a dent in the budget.
Are you completely insane?

You think there's any possibility that 20 or 30 years of general progress in science and technology won't "make a dent in the budget" of a fusion reactor project?

[Anonymous No.5675642]

>>5675596
That's because ITER doesn't aim to be a power station? If ITER gets working though the only thing left to do to build a power station is build another ITER reactor and hook it up a steam powered turbine. How you think ITER doesn't get us closer to a viable fusion power station is beyond me.

[Anonymous No.5675643]

>>5675596
>These will obviously not be sufficient for a power station.
How so?
>Just because fusion is a lot harder to do than fission doesn't mean ITER has any hope of getting closer to being a power station than CP-1 was.
I disagree. As has been said all the components of a fusion power station aim to be demonstrated at ITER, this is not true of pile-1.

>>5675614
>You think there's any possibility that 20 or 30 years of general progress in science and technology won't "make a dent in the budget" of a fusion reactor project?
That's not an argument. Fission plants are more expensive now than ever, how has technology driven down that cost?

[Anonymous No.5675649]

>>5675642
>If ITER gets working though the only thing left to do to build a power station is build another ITER reactor and hook it up a steam powered turbine
Even as a proponent of ITER I know this isn't true. It's not about whether ITER can make power, it's whether it can do it economically.

[Anonymous No.5675662]

>>5675649
I believe the DEMO reactor is tasked with figuring out how to create fusion power economically. ITER afaik does not need to solve *that* problem to be considered a success, though I expect it will be expected to make some progress with it.

[Anonymous No.5675670]

>>5675649
Fair enough, there's work left for DEMO to do in proving the economics of a reactor design, but ITER gets us pretty close I think to a real world feasible fusion reactor.

[Anonymous No.5675678]

>>5675662
I didn't mean to imply ITER would, I meant that the feasibility of fusion would be based on economics.

[Anonymous No.5675689]

First of all, IC is not a magnetic confinement scheme. Inertial Confinement relies on the momentum (the mass, really) of the fusible substance to hold the reaction together -- There's usually no imposed magnetic field. A good example of inertial confinement is The National Ignition Facility. Stars can also be considered Inertial Confinement, as well, although they are at a much larger scale -- a scale that makes inertial confinement practical. Unfortunately, inertial confinement doesn't seem a very promising confinement scheme on Earth, although it does have the familiar glimmer of an internal combustion engine.
Tokamaks are obviously the leading contender for magnetic confinement in the present day. Please don't misunderstand this, though. There are still many, many problems with tokamaks; Tokamaks tend to win because they've been worked on the longest and are the most well-understood (after mirror traps, perhaps). ITER is currently being built in the South of France and should be a full-scale tokamak "reactor," although it is not expected to act in a power-delivery capacity. I would consider this the "first generation" of fusion power, already.
The IEC scheme is a very old scheme, but there are some clever new ways of attaining such confinement. It first came up back in the days of Farnsworth - who successfully attained fusions with an IEC device back in the 1940's or so. Nowadays, there are a few private companies around the US, as well as a few Universities internationally, that study electrostatic confinement. Often, the polywell magnetic configuration is associated with IEC devices.

[Anonymous No.5675691]

>>5675689
There are also many new, clever confinement schemes. As the private_donkey mentioned, General Fusion has a neat scheme that involves shock-wave compression of a plasma. They have also done a good job of including the energy-conversion scheme into their design. If I remember correctly, though, General Fusion is another company that is not using magnetic confinement. I believe their confinement is purely fluid pressure.

Tri-Alpha, a private American company, has done some interesting stuff by confining FRCs in a picket-fence (quadrapole) magnetic field. Tri-Alpha has actually had a good deal of success, and I've heard whispers that they're gearing up for a large, multi-million dollar device soon.

Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to get anything except Tokamaks funded these days. Many of these brilliant companies are having to search far and wide for funding. In the good old days, the US government did a better job funding various fusion schemes as opposed to just the one. Bob Hirsch, a former director of the Office of Fusion Energy, recently came out and said that Tokamaks weren't the way to go, though! He, instead, supports the IEC approach.

[Anonymous No.5675718]

>>5675691
Exciting stuff. It sure would do my inner child good though to hear some real progress progress on fusion.

I know Elon Musk is a bullshitting business man, but it sure was awesome to see someone stand up and say "we're all going to mars lads!! Wayhaaayy!!!". I hope he dips his dick in fusion tech before he gets too old/dumb.

[Anonymous No.5675725]

>>5675718
Or anyone else who's capable of making a real breakthrough with fusion.

[Anonymous No.5676678]

>>5674892
HAHAHA oh man... you're really special, aren't you? The special kind of stupid.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5677562]

just gunna put this riiiight here

[Anonymous No.5677603]

>>5677562
FINAL BOSS

[Anonymous No.5677611]

>>5677562
it looks like something a supervillian would build

[Anonymous No.5677613]

>>5677562
Bonerwhy.jpg

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5677616]

>>5677611
just wait till you see the top and bottom plasma injectors

[Anonymous No.5677615]

>>5670036

You're right, fission power is pretty dope, but it relies on fissile material, which we have a lot of, but it's still limited. Fusible material is the most abundant shit in the universe.

[Anonymous No.5677619]

>>5677562
"General Fusion will build a ~3 metre diameter spherical tank filled with liquid metal (lead-lithium mixture). The liquid is spun to open up a vertical cylindrical cavity in the centre of the sphere (vortex). This vortex flow is established and maintained by an external pumping system; the liquid flows into the sphere through tangentially directed ports at the equator and is pumped out radially through ports near the poles of the sphere. Two spheromaks (self confined magnetized plasma rings) composed of the deuterium-tritium fuel are then injected from each end of the cavity. They merge in the centre to form a single magnetized plasma target. The outside of the sphere is covered with pneumatic rams. The rams use compressed gas to accelerate pistons to ~50 m/s. These pistons simultaneously impact a set of stationary anvil pistons at the surface of the sphere, which collectively launch a high pressure spherical compression wave into the liquid metal. As the wave travels and focuses towards the centre, it becomes stronger and evolves into a strong shock wave. When the shock arrives in the centre, it rapidly collapses the cavity with the plasma in it. At maximum compression the conditions for fusion are briefly met and a fusion burst occurs releasing its energy in fast neutrons. The neutrons are slowed down by the liquid metal causing it to heat up. A heat exchanger transfers that heat to a standard steam cycle turbo-alternator to produce electricity for the grid. Some of the steam is used to run the rams. The lithium in the liquid metal finally absorbs the neutrons and produces tritium that is extracted and used as fuel for subsequent shots. This cycle is repeated about one time per second.[9]"

Interesting idea.

[Anonymous No.5677623]

>>5677616
HAHAHA oh man, I just looked it up. You're not kidding.

[Anonymous No.5677632]

>>5677562

Were do I attache turban?

[Anonymous No.5677645]

>>5675643

Fission plants are so expensive now because there's fucking tons of safety shit and regulation that you have to comply with to build them.

Besides, I'm not so sure you're right, considering France is basically all nuclear and the entire American Navy is nuclear. Can you find me a source that compares the cost of a nuclear reactor now and in the 60s in adjusted dollars?

[Anonymous No.5677646]

>>5677562
Oh god, i hope this thing works. I want to see the golorious rise of fussion power in my lifetime...

[sage No.5677713]

>>5677619
>>5677562

Oh god, wow. If this shit works it is ingenious. I wonder how big the power output will be then.
I'm guessing preparing the plasma and working the rams will take a lot of energy. But it's nice, how it basically dodges the neutron radiation problem. Well I don't know too much about all this, but I like it. Will keep an eye on it.

[Anonymous No.5677718]

>>5677713

Whoops that sage is from another thread.
It was necessary though...

[Anonymous No.5677737]

>>5677713

Yeah, keep that keeping an eye on it. You'll die, while waiting for news. All this is theater. If these retards have an idea, they should just SHUT THE FUCK UP AND BUILD IT.

They're yapping and not building, since it's all just a scam to get more research money. Fusion is impossible as an energy source for man, until we unfuck our heads and make use of the huge fusion reactor at the center of our solar system.

[Anonymous No.5677738]

>>5677562
Why is their homepage so useless?

[Anonymous No.5677748]

>>5677645

So, you believe all those safety features will be retracted in the future? UNFUCK YOUR HEAD. These features are permanent parts of Western living standards. Nobody's going to go back to risking meltdowns. PERIOD.

[Anonymous No.5677749]

>>5677737
>They're yapping and not building
What the fuck is this a photo of then?
>>5677562

[Anonymous No.5677752]

>>5677737
>Fusion is impossible as an energy source for man
For the last time no. That's opinion.

[Anonymous No.5677753]

>>5677748
Regardless of whether it's true, what relevance does the argument "Fission power isn't getting cheaper because it's so inherently dangerous that we spend all of our technological advantages on making it safer instead of cheaper." have to fusion power?

[Anonymous No.5677765]

>>5677753
For one fussion is as safe as fuck if we can just get it working.

[Anonymous No.5677764]

>>5667682
Nuclear fusion is playing God. Only God should be allowed to control the power of the atom.

[Anonymous No.5677768]

>>5677764
I guess well just control it for him until he gets here.

[Anonymous No.5677771]

Instead of these unproven designs, we should stick to proven fusion technology, and build an internal thermonuclear detonation engine.

The Project Orion spacecraft had to be relatively small, because it was a vehicle. There's no reason we can't scale the concept up to make a piston engine powered by H-bombs.

[Anonymous No.5677777]

>>5677748
Safety features get cheaper and cheaper.
Fusion power companies will make it cheaper or lose to their competitors.

[Anonymous No.5677783]

>>5677771
>There's no reason we can't scale the concept up to make a piston engine powered by H-bombs.
Welcome to /sci/

[Anonymous No.5677816]

>>5677737
Did a fusion reactor spit on your mother or something?

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5677904]

>>5677623
you bet.
best part is, this is actually a rather simple plasma production method, compared to tokamak, since it doesn't require the plasma to remain hot and stable for very long.

[Anonymous No.5677917]

>>5677904
Oh god, this thing's going to be a fucking disaster if it works.

>mix natural uranium into molten lead
>power output increased several times over
>now it breeds plutonium as well as tritium

[Anonymous No.5677921]

>>5677783

It would be a very big piston engine.

[Anonymous No.5677925]

>>5677904
Well, it would be nice if it turns out to work, but compressing things is never straightforward.

[Anonymous No.5677923]

>>5677921
How big? City sized?

[Anonymous No.5677930]

>>5677925
But it can be straightinward.

[Anonymous No.5677933]

>>5677930
Thisnigga.jpg

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5678016]

>>5677925
true, turbulence always gets you
i'm confident that this approach is brute force and simple enough that turbulence can be, if not ignored, mostly circumvented

[Anonymous No.5679341]

>>5677737
Holy fuck you're stupid.

[Anonymous No.5679468]

>>5677923

That sounds about right.

[Anonymous No.5679485]

>>5677771
Engineering problems aside, you couldn't possibly imagine just how many political and foreign relations issues this would cause.

[Anonymous No.5679505]

>why is no-one apart from few organisations really pushing to make it a reality?
Because it is expensive as fuck and require the leverage of several governments to do any meaningful research.

[Anonymous No.5679507]

>>5679505

You're trying (poorly) to cover up that it's unprofitable. Private enterprise knows that it's not worth pursuing. That leaves the warfare-welfare government to prey on the taxpayers over it.

[Anonymous No.5679509]

>>5679507
lolno

[Anonymous No.5679514]

>>5677816
> Did a fusion reactor spit on your mother or something?

Obviously not, since there's no such thing as a "fusion reactor". You may as well ask if Santa Claus spat on my mother; sure, there's a Santa in every mall before Christmas, but that's not the real Santa, with the real capabilities.

[Anonymous No.5679517]

>>5679514
look ma, I'm equivocating!

[Anonymous No.5679520]

>>5679509

Ah, yes. You don't understand economics. If it was as profitable as people claim, the private sector would be all over it. Instead, we have government money thrown at the issue for over 60 years, with no results. Remember, a RESULT is a working reactor that can be copied as much as desired by a utility company.

Why can't /sci/ do economics?

[Anonymous No.5679521]

>>5679520
>no results
Progress isn't a result?
Of course we already know what you're going to say, since you're discounting everything that doesn't agree with your agenda.

[Anonymous No.5679522]

>>5679517

There are no fusion power reactors, after 60 years of trying. We can't contain or sustain the reaction. It's just too energetic. So it's time to stop this fusion nonsense and go back to exploiting our existing fusion reactor, THE FUCKING SUN.

[Anonymous No.5679533]

>>5679522
>It's just too energetic.
Once again you demonstrate your lack of understanding.

[Anonymous No.5679537]

>>5679521

After 60+ years, no. Progress implies you achieve the goal within a reasonable period of time. Chipping away at a mountain with an ice pick in order to reduce it to a flat plain, isn't progress. In fact, it's not progress at all, since you'll first run out of ice pick, and then run out of your life. So it's impossible.

The real result of fusion is evident: The reaction is too energetic to be contained by structured matter. Stars don't use structured matter; they use a trillion trillion tons of matter in one spot to both contain and sustain the reaction (sometimes to catastrophic results). We can't do that. But we already have a perfectly fine fusion reactor operating in the solar system, called THE FUCKING SUN. We should be exploiting that instead.

[Anonymous No.5679539]

>>5679537
>Progress implies you achieve the goal within a reasonable period of time.
And you get to define what's reasonable, right?
Not all problems are going to be solved overnight.

>The reaction is too energetic to be contained by structured matter.
Again, you clearly don't understand what you're talking about.

>We should be exploiting that instead.
Yeah, let's pump toxic gases into our atmosphere through the manufacturing of the millions of square kilometers of panels needed to meet our energy needs while also destroying millions of square kilometers of natural habitats. What an excellent plan.

[Anonymous No.5679542]

>>5679533

You haven't demonstrated a working reactor. And we all know why.

Reality trumps opinion.

[Anonymous No.5679543]

>>5679542
Reality TAKES TIME
God you're fucking dense

[Anonymous No.5679546]

>>5679537
>durr

[Anonymous No.5679552]

>>5679539
> And you get to define what's reasonable, right?

As the taxpayer footing all these bills, YES I DO.

Take heart, though: This hugely expensive warfare-wlefare government will within our lifetimes stop all this warfare and welfare, since it's fueled by PETROLEUM, up and down all the strata of society, and that's depleting. So your stupid fusion welfare crowd will be starved of funds.

[Anonymous No.5679553]

I'm amazed that we actually have to keep explaining to you that just because something doesn't work after 60 years of trying doesn't mean it never will.

It's taken that long if not longer for other things, like verifying certain portions of GR or the standard model (the Higgs Boson for one).

[Anonymous No.5679556]

>>5679552
>As the taxpayer
>implying you're not an americunt

[Anonymous No.5679560]

>>5679543

Scams take time; they take all the time they can get to keep milking the rubes. That's the real issue here; the fusion welfare class wants to keep collected their paychecks.

[Anonymous No.5679562]

>>5679560
You just keep twisting it to suit your own argument. Call it a scam all you like. You don't have any understanding of the science behind it whatsoever as you've repeatedly demonstrated.

You don't deserve to have a voice in the matter of what gets scientific funding and what doesn't, especially since you think solar power is an actual solution to the energy crisis.

[Anonymous No.5679565]

>>5679562
inb4 that retard goes "but we could put all those panels IN THE DESERT and have enough energy for everyone!"

[Anonymous No.5679566]

>>5679565
I know. My roommate said this the other day and I wanted to smack him.

[Anonymous No.5679572]

>>5679569
>I'm being raped as a taxpayer
>implying
Time to post a proof of that broski.

[Anonymous No.5679569]

>>5679553

I'm amazed that I have to keep explaining to you that I'm being raped as a taxpayer for science boondoggles. But that's OK, since petro-culture is coming to an end, and it won't have fusion to replace it. Obviously.

That's the best thing about unsustainable enterprises: They eventually STOP. Eventually all these fusion con artists will stop receiving paychecks, and will have to go back home and start gardening and collecting rain water.

[Anonymous No.5679573]

>>5679569
>Fusion
>con
Yeah, you've yet to support that argument. Or for that matter any argument you've given.

[Anonymous No.5679575]

>>5679560
> You just keep twisting it to suit your own argument.

You don't "twist" the total lack of results for over 60 years. Note that's OVER 60 years. We've been able to make fusion reactions for 80.

> Call it a scam all you like.

It is. I will. Squirt some tears, bitch.

[Anonymous No.5679577]

>>5679575
Except it's not a total lack of results, except when you conveniently decide to redefine it as such. See the graph above that you also conveniently ignored.

And I'm not the one crying about how my taxpayer dollars are being squandered and I'm being taken advantage of.

[Anonymous No.5679580]

The long-term goal hasn't been reached, but many short-term goals have, in the interim. We've also learned a tremendous amount about plasma physics

[Anonymous No.5679582]

ITT: butthurt murrican who didn't pay one cent in taxes going toward fusion tries to stir up some shit.
Sssssh, don't be jealous, you will be able to piggyback on us like the rest of the world once the first world finishes the research.

[Anonymous No.5679585]

>>5674731
>>5672434
>implying you can get enough muons to make it worthwhile

[Anonymous No.5679584]

Does this guy even know how much money is going into fusion research? Why isn't he complaining about things we spend WAYYYYYYYYY more money on, like military and defense spending that we don't actually need?

Fusion we do need.

[Anonymous No.5679586]

>>5679485
That's why we have to build it on the moon.

I think a V12 would be the most practical.

[Anonymous No.5679589]

>>5679586
>V12 thermonuclear pulse engine
Holy fuck /sci/, I didn't know you had such a sense of humor.

[Anonymous No.5679591]

>>5679585
The larger problem is that the muons end up sticking to fusion products, such as helium-4, after catalyzing only a few reactions, and staying there until they decay.

[Anonymous No.5679598]

>>5679585
I know that feel bro, I scored half an o of muons yesterday and hid it in my room, then went out for dinner. When I got back, more than half the muons were gone! Must've been that fucking roommate stealing my shit again.

[Anonymous No.5679607]

>>5679572

1. 60+ years of government funding.
2. No results.
3. ??????
4. PROFIT!!!

Missing that #3 there, bro.

[Anonymous No.5679609]

>>5679607
>2. No results.
There you go again, twisting the facts.

[Anonymous No.5679610]

>>5679607
still missing that proof doodzor

[Anonymous No.5679611]

>>5679584

So you're justifying the continued waste of money? Dude, the summation of all society sectors produces a federal government that borrows 25%-40% of its yearly budget to JUST KEEP UP WITH THE WASTE.

Your wastrel Western governments are falling. It's in the papers each day, moron.

[Anonymous No.5679612]

>>5679589

As soon as I work out the exact materials composition of the compression rings, we are good to go.

[Anonymous No.5679613]

>>5679610

Still missing that fusion power plant. Once again: Reality trumps opinion. You've failed after a serious 60+ year effort. When will you admit you've failed? After 600 years? 6000 years?

[Anonymous No.5679616]

>>5679613
How can you expect people to build a fusion power plant when you can't even take a picture of your tax declaration.
This is a much less challenging task. And still you produced no results.

[Anonymous No.5679617]

>>5679613
10/10 for effort
0/10 for grasp of material
10/20 overall (F-)

[Anonymous No.5679618]

>>5679611
So why are you complaining about them spending on something that we clearly need instead of something like defense spending and $25 million dollar fighter jets?

[Anonymous No.5679638]

>>5679618
>$25 million dollar fighter jets
...

I have some bad news for you...

[Anonymous No.5679812]

>>5675243
My Question still hasn't been answered, why am i an rtard.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5680081]

>>5679542
it's because of turbulence and that weird thing plasma does where it conducts with itself and discombobulates almost instantly, i forget the name.

they are very, very difficult problems

[Anonymous No.5680334]

>>5667682
>so why is no-one apart from few organisations really pushing to make it a reality?
the dinosaurs who are in positions of political power are scared shitless. it doesn't help that the average 50yo man in north america was raised at a time when the soviet union was considered the literal embodiment of the devil and the worst nuclear disaster just happened to happen IN the soviet union. to them, nuclear power is just some 'fringe' technology that promises riches and glory for great country but will just get people killed, while good ol' fashioned oil and coal is the key to the future.

i think that the DPRK will eventually emerge as a super-power because they are one of the few countries who aren't bound by international treaties concocted by the US and its allies which promote the fear of nuclear power. possibly japan as well, just because they are so isolationist. DPRK/japan will finally iron out the kinks in modern day reactor technology (which in fact has existed for almost 60 years - and was never persued because, again, THE ATOM IS THE DEVIL) and one of them will suddenly be producing massive amounts of energy at 10% of the average cost per unit energy. then they outsource power for super cheap to china and get rich as fuck.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5680356]

>>5680334
>fusion isn't being funded because all dem old people are like "muh coal"
no, not really, if anything they like fusion as much as the next guy, it's getting lots of funding, it's just a REALLY REALLY REALLY hard problem that might not be solvable for centuries

well, ICF and MCF at least

[Anonymous No.5680358]

>>5680081
Reconnection?

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5680365]

>>5680358
yes, that was it
it makes your nice pretty plasma confinement go poof very fast

[Anonymous No.5680450]

This guy is fucking insane.

You'd better get started on your 1990s format website with a fully black background and varying multicoloured fonts.

[Anonymous No.5681250]

>>5680450
lol

[Сергей No.5681360]

>>5670244
I think I encountered you about a year ago.

You're still wrong...

At D-T fusion neutron energies, you are more likely to completely fission anything that can be transmuted to Pu-239.

[Anonymous No.5681391]

I'm not exactly a nuclear physics expert, but even if you could use fusion to transmute elements into fissile isotopes, won't the neutron flux fission these isotopes right from the start anyway?

On a related note, if that is the case, would that be a way of squeezing more power out of a fusion reactor?

[Anonymous No.5681785]

energy required to overcome electrostatic repulsion>useful energy produced. anyone else see a problem here?

[Anonymous No.5681818]

>>5681785
The problem is your post, because that's not the case.

[Anonymous No.5681880]

>>5681878
You again, eh? Come to spew more rhetoric and no actual evidence?

[Anonymous No.5681878]

The only real production of fusion research has been predictions of imminent success. Remember, they keep you taxpaying SUCKERS paying and paying, by telling you commercial fusion power will be achieved in another 20 years. They will always need "another 20 years". By no mean coincidence, that's about the career span of a fusion researcher.

Smell the scam, folks. Wake up.

[Anonymous No.5681884]

>>5681360
>At D-T fusion neutron energies, you are more likely to completely fission anything that can be transmuted to Pu-239.
And what happens then, Einstein? Your single fusion neutron gives you 2 or 3 fast neutrons. Some of these may cause further fission, which would also of course be desirable, but eventually most of these multiplied neutrons will be absorbed by U-238 or Li-6, so you get the Pu-239 you want, and the tritium you need to sustain the reaction.

Every D-T fusion reactor is a breeder. Typical designs use lead as the neutron multiplier, but uranium is a better multiplier, increases your thermal power output (very possibly bringing the thing into the self-sustaining range, when it wasn't before), and makes copious amounts of plutonium into the bargain.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5683404]

>>5681878
>wake up!
whenever i hear someone say this, i immediately ignore everything they have said up to that point. it has never failed me.

if you're going to argue against something, dont sound like a truther

[Anonymous No.5683408]

>>5681878

[Anonymous No.5683437]

>>5670220
>Do you think Lockheed's Skunk Works is going to do it?

I really want a straight answer on this too. They are also promising the moon with quantum computing and whatnot. I wonder if it is just a reflexive strategy borne from being part of the military industrial complex for so long... "promise the moon, who cares, we'll go 5x overbudget and then never deliver but we'll still get the next contract"

[Anonymous No.5683456]

>>5679638
lol

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5683484]

>>5683437
id like to see some diagrams of the reactor configuration. what are the fusion focal points, whats the shape of the plasma ect.
the fact that its positive feedback for plasma pressure is interesting

[Anonymous No.5683567]

same energy density as a compost heap
gtfo hippy shitbag

[Anonymous No.5683618]

>>5683567
The fuck are you even talking about?

[Anonymous No.5683953]

>>5683618
Sounds like he's talking about the sun.

Stars, when they're not in the process of blowing themselves up, necessarily tend to have lousy power density.

[Anonymous No.5683955]

>>5683953
I mean, I realize that, but the entire reason you get that number is because only like 1-2% of the solar volume is actually undergoing fusion. The rest is just hydrogen plasma. Within the core itself the energy densities are much, much higher.

[Anonymous No.5683980]

>>5683955
The highest rate of sustained fusion power production to be found anywhere in the sun is about 300 watts per cubic meter, where the hydrogen/helium plasma is more than ten times more dense than lead.

It's slow because the proton-proton chain relies on highly improbable weak interactions: the whole thing can't start until a diproton becomes a deuteron, a proton spontaneously turning into a neutron during a brief collision with another proton.

Almost as soon as deuterium appears, it picks up another proton, creating helium-3, and the helium-3 wanders until it finds another helium-3 nucleus, at which point the proton-proton chain ends in helium-4 (and two protons sent back to the pool).

Proton-proton fusion is... not recommended for terrestrial applications.

[Anonymous No.5684066]

>>5683980
Note that compost heaps can put out over 200 watts of heat per cubic meter. It's the actively fusing *core* of the sun that's comparable in power density to a compost heap or animal body, not the whole sun.

[Anonymous No.5684193]

>>5684066
Apparently according to wiki the power density at 19% solar radius is about 7 W/m^3. That's crazy low

[Anonymous No.5684218]

>>5684193
There's more fusion as you go deeper in. I think there's basically no fusion outside of 25% of the radius. 19% was probably picked as a distance from the center where the power density equalled the average power density of the whole sun.

[Anonymous No.5684233]

>>5684218
Well the same article said that that number was ~2.5% the peak power density at the core, so apparently the sun's peak power density is ~280 W/m^3. Still roughly equivalent to a compost heap.

So no kidding about the P-P process being inefficient.

[Anonymous No.5684247]

>>5684233
Well, you also have to consider that, though the density is extremely high compared to anything we're trying to do with magnetic confinement, the temperature is only about 10% of the temperature in D-T fusion tokamaks.

The power output regulates itself: heat causes thermal expansion, which lowers temperature and pressure, which lowers the rate of fusion.

If tritium didn't decay, a star made of deuterium and tritium would also have low power density. Power density HAS to be low in something as big as a star, for it to not blow itself apart.

[Anonymous No.5684255]

>>5667682
>so why is no-one apart from few organisations really pushing to make it a reality?

No immediate returns on the investment at current time. Just another example of economics holding back science.

[Anonymous No.5684511]

>>5684247
>Power density HAS to be low in something as big as a star, for it to not blow itself apart.
Just in case anyone's not clear on why, this is because the volume grows with the cube of the radius, while the surface area grows with the square of the radius.

Beyond the thickness at which the material is reasonably transparent, the total power output is determined by the power density and the volume, while radiative cooling is limited by the surface area.

Stars do blow themselves up, quite commonly, when they first light up, when they grow too massive from stuff falling in, or when they transition from one type of fusion reaction to another (one process fails due to fuel running out, the star begins to collapse due to lack of internal radiation pressure, and when temperature and pressure sufficient to ignite the new fusion reaction starts, it increases temperature and pressure faster than the star can expand, creating a runaway reaction that blows the star apart).

[Anonymous No.5684573]

>>5683437
Yeah, I watched the talk on this and they basically gave close to zero technical details.

[Anonymous No.5684601]

>>5684573
They probably haven't decided on any technical details, just functional specifications.

>Okay, secret research guys in secret research team, we want you to make a fusion generator this good, with this amount of money, in this amount of time. We assume you can do this because of reasons.

[Anonymous No.5684619]

>>5684601
No, they had pictures of it. And they're claiming that they're close to usable power.

[Anonymous No.5684624]

>>5684619
If it's in Popular Science, you know it's never going to work.

[Anonymous No.5684633]

>>5684624
Hahaha, that's definitely something you learn from reading PopSci.

[Anonymous No.5684640]

>>5684619
>they had pictures of it

[Anonymous No.5684697]

>>5684640
>>5684624
Dammit, you guys.

[Anonymous No.5684740]

>>5668037
>1) The neutrons damage everything. Kind of solved by lithium 6 curtain.
or helium 3 if you can get enough of it, moon mining of it seems a bit far off though

[Anonymous No.5684785]

>>5684740
I don't know where the whole moon mining thing came from.

I can't believe it'll ever make more sense to try and harvest helium-3 from the lunar regolith at ppb concentrations than to produce helium-3 by deuterium fusion, or as a byproduct of the tritium fuel cycle.

[Anonymous No.5684793]

>>5684785
Probably some video game or novel. Anyway the cross section for He3 fusion is pretty lousy.

[Anonymous No.5684879]

>>5684740
If containment gets good enough we could use the CNO cycle to avoid neutron production.

[Anonymous No.5685084]

>>5684879
Let's be realistic: if we build any kind of fusion device which consumes only light hydrogen as fuel, it will be ridiculously huge, and will probably be constructed in space, where there is a zero-G, hard vacuum environment.

[Anonymous No.5685200]

>>5684640
looks like wmd's from Iraq.

[Anonymous No.5685224]

>>5685200
Just like after WW2, America captured scientists who developed revolutionary new technology.

This is the real reason for the Iraq invasion: to get their hands on practical fusion power technology... and a few other things.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5686147]

>>5684640
there's two possible answers
1) investor bait or just posing for the cameras
2) they're really on to something, and are guarding it like nobody's buisness short of telling people it exists

considering skunkwork's pretty stellar track record, i'm reasonably hopeful of the latter

[Anonymous No.5686189]

>>5686147
>skunkwork's pretty stellar track record
Of course you only hear about the successes, not the failures.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5686325]

>>5686189
that is another possible wrinkle in this fabric
the question is whether they are confident enough in their progress to make a presentation like this and risk it failing, tarnishing their image

[Anonymous No.5686349]

>>5686189

Well duh. But then again, thats the point. You don't here about the failures because there weren't many. Sure a lot of prototypes got built and many didn't work out, but that what we technically call 'research'.

Plus I doubt they'd announce world-altering claims of fusion without some pretty fucking solid proof that they're onto something. They'd be a laughing stock if it wasn't at least promising an reproducible.

Cold fusion, anyone? Ask those guys what the scientific world thinks of them now.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5686377]

>>5686349
actually nasa thinks they were onto something, but jumped to conclusions. its a weak force interraction, not a strong one, and their research is interesting
http://www.gizmag.com/nasa-lenr-nuclear-reactor/26309/

[Anonymous No.5686399]

>>5686377

Eeeeehhhhmm, I have my doubts. The article kinda lost me when it started promising a nuclear reactor in my basement. Ok, I'm no nuclear physicist but I know nuclear reactions don't always turn out perfectly. Any production of radioactive material would sink the process.

Plus I don't think it would be scalable. Making the 'lattice' of nickel larger to gain more power output would probably cause massive heat buildup at the core and melt it. Yeah there are ways to engineer around that but it seems way too easy from reading that article for this to be all its cracked up to be. There's a big 'but' in there somewhere thats not being talked about.

[Anonymous No.5686407]

>>5667682
the research put into nuclear fusion in the US has been 1.6 billion per year

throwing money into research that shows little breakthroughs is hard

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5686462]

>>5686399
the but is in the source link, nasa is mostly speculating, but based on theoretical models the reactor requires a method to alternate current into the lattice at 5 to 7 terrahertz, way faster switching than anything we have right now.
but there is something to this, people fucking around with the concept have had accidents that involve MELTED windows from instantaneous energy release.

also since its just a lattice, it does not need to be solid, a many ribbed fan structure would work just as well

[Anonymous No.5686523]

has anyone seen this? http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/152845-nasa-funded-fusion-rocket-could-shoot-humans-to-mars-in-30-days

[Anonymous No.5686560]

>>5686523
Yeah, it's a cool idea but the anti-nuke lobby won't allow it to get off the ground. The same thing that stopped Project Orion will stop this.

[Anonymous No.5686569]

>>5686560
yeah but the interesting thing is how the fusion reaction occurs. here's the video link; http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=icjQyF2ufCI
maybe a similar method could be produced for fusion plants.

[Anonymous No.5686784]

>>5686377
>nasa thinks
That's a funny way to say, "a guy at nasa thinks".

NASA's a big organization, with all sorts of people. Including crackpots.

[Anonymous No.5686807]

>>5686560
Project Orion wasn't stopped by "the anti-nuke lobby".

It had several strong points against it:
1) It would have required huge amounts of plutonium.
2) It would have released huge amounts of radioactive waste into the atmosphere.
3) It was a rather silly idea that probably wouldn't have worked.

Remember that you couldn't just build the thing and launch it, you'd have had to test the parts repeatedly, if you wanted to have any hope of it actually working. And that would mean setting off a great many extremely expensive dirty bombs.

What really put the last nail in the coffin is that somebody made up a model of a battleship version with enough nuclear weapons to lay waste to a continent from orbit, and JFK saw it, and was horrified.

[Anonymous No.5686847]

>>5686462
>people fucking around with the concept have had accidents that involve MELTED windows from instantaneous energy release.
And there's no evidence whatsoever to support the assumption that this energy didn't come from chemical reactions.

The problem with all of this cold fusion / LENR stuff is that they're always pouring more energy in than is coming out, into systems that have all sorts of ways to store energy chemically, and they never show clear, reproduceable evidence of any nuclear reaction.

[Anonymous No.5686854]

>>5686807
>What really put the last nail in the coffin is that somebody made up a model of a battleship version with enough nuclear weapons to lay waste to a continent from orbit, and JFK saw it, and was horrified.

That is dumb. We already had that capability without project Orion and you could do that with any heavy lift platform.

[Anonymous No.5686860]

>>5686854
>you could do that with any heavy lift platform.
What other "heavy lift platform" was there?

And who would be the more obvious backers of a spacecraft propelled by nuclear bombs than people who already had other uses for nuclear bombs?

[Anonymous No.5686865]

>>5686807
All I read is hurrrr and durrrr

[Anonymous No.5686872]

>>5686560
You realize that the thing uses nuclear explosions for thrust? It would literally nuke the ground its lifting off from and the atmosphere its leaving. Thats fucking retarded.

[Anonymous No.5686877]

>>5667792
What if, instead of using steam turbines. We use pyroelectric materials to take the heat produced by the reaction and change it into an electric charge?

[Anonymous No.5686905]

>>5686877
I don't heat transfer is the right way to think about this problem. The plasma produced by a fusion reaction has an effective temperature of billions of degrees, which allows for efficiencies well over 99% if you can keep it at that temperature. The more contact you have with the plasma, the lower your efficiency, the more waste heat you produce and the more you risk damaging your equipment.

[Anonymous No.5686914]

>>5686905
We'll keep an insulator between the reactor and the pyroelectric charger that would effectively block 99% of the heat until we get just the right amount we need for high efficiency.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5686947]

>>5686847
that's the whole problem with this, it's lots of heresay and head scratching, nobody approaching it from a structured, research perspective. well, nobody was until now.

[Anonymous No.5686993]

>>5686947
>heresay
I believe you meant to say "heresy".

[Anonymous No.5687003]

>>5686993
What? The only way the sentence would make sense is with 'heresay'.

[Anonymous No.5687018]

>>5686993
I really don't think most scientists reject cold fusion because of some kind of dogma. All you have to do is show them the neutrons and they will follow. I'm sure nobody would want cold fusion to happen more than fusion scientists.

[Anonymous No.5687051]

>>5687003
"Heresay" is not a word. And "heresy" is funnier than "hearsay".

[Anonymous No.5687054]

>>5687051
Ah, I get it now. My bad for just blindly typing without looking at the spelling.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5687113]

>>5687018
the problem is that cold fusion as an actual strong force process doesn't make any sense
these various interpretations as weak force interactions actually do make some sense

it's a neat idea but i would like to see some results before thinking about vindicating pons and fleishman

[Anonymous No.5687171]

>>5687113
If there was a weak force interaction, then the strong force interaction makes perfect sense. A weak force interaction without a strong force interaction probably wouldn't be productive.

What they're talking about is efficiently turning protons into neutrons, which would be a weak force interaction and basically the ultimate power source. The neutrons would interact through the strong force with whatever nucleus happens to be nearby, releasing a lot of energy.

The problem is, you'd expect this to be extremely obvious and easy to confirm. You could do it with uranium, and get fission fragments and fast neutrons. You could do it with lithium or deuterium and get tritium production with gamma rays.

What you've got is people feeding power into things that could very well be storing chemical energy or other non-nuclear potential energy, and then getting more power out than they're momentarily putting in, which is likely stored from the power they were pumping in earlier. And they're concluding that there's some nuclear reaction based on pure wishful thinking.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5687228]

>>5687171
>What you've got is people feeding power into things that could very well be storing chemical energy or other non-nuclear potential energy, and then getting more power out than they're momentarily putting in, which is likely stored from the power they were pumping in earlier. And they're concluding that there's some nuclear reaction based on pure wishful thinking.

like i said, heresay, head scratching, and just a dash of tinfoil hat
i'll follow nasa's little multi-test-on-a-chip thing they have though, mite b cool

[Anonymous No.5687245]

>>5687228
>heresay
Get a goddamn spellcheck, seriously.

[Anonymous No.5687658]

>>5670195
Nuclear fusion produces Helium in a ground, stable state, so non-radioactive waste.

[Anonymous No.5688188]

>>5687658
There's still neutron activation of materials in the containment vessel, so there will be small amounts of waste produced in the form of radioactive reactor parts. I don't know how hot they'd be, though. Probably nowhere near current radioactive waste, and more importantly it won't have anywhere near the same volume.

[Nuka-Cola; Gamma Grape flavor No.5688209]

>>5687245
heh