Fusion vs Fission

[Content1]

For anti-matter, show me how you would contain it.   It we could contain it, then Tokomatic fusion would be here now in magnetic bottles.   All these ideas sound good for the future, while fusion is happening now.  And it is a 14Mev Neutron from tritium/dueterium fusion, well strong enough to fission U238 and get rid of all that spent fuel that is piling up and scaring the liberals.   The beauty of the 14 mev neutrons is the produce more energetic neutron when the split the u238, and u238 is much cheaper than u235, probably free in old fuel bundles.   

How about having a fusion plant built on an existing Nuc plant site and engineer it to use the spent fuel as it comes out of a spent fuel pool.  Have a reactor designed with a cavity where the fusion generator is located in the center and then continue using the fuel assemblies buring the u238 and plutonium now contained in the spent fuel until it is nearly exhausted of its energy.  All nuclear plants could be their over re-supply and waste disposer.   I have seen such reuse plant designs on display at the lab, an example of one use for successful fusion reactors.   

[thenukeman]

A penning trap contains antimattter.  The problem with antimatter is making it.  So if  a way to make it more efficently is found then the Fusion reactor is obsolete before it is built.  Antimatter is the ultimate that I know of, pure energy no waste.  Fusion problem is the heat, this is a big problem on a big scale.

Wikipedia

Penning traps are devices for the storage of charged particles using a homogeneous static magnetic field and a spatially inhomogeneous static electric field. This kind of trap is particularly well suited to precision measurements of properties of ions and stable subatomic particles which have electric charge. Recently this trap has been used in the physical realization of quantum computation and quantum information processing as well. The Penning trap has also been used in the realization of what is known as a geonium atom. Currently Penning traps are used in many laboratories worldwide, for example at CERN it is used to store antiprotons

[Brett LaVigne]

I get all the responses about tiny experiments don't equal sustainable power but we should also consider the early days of nuclear power.

The nucleus of an atom was split for the first time somewhere around the early 1930's. I know there is some debate about the details of this and it is not important for my point. Lets just agree that we split the atom in a controlled manor sometime in the mid 1930's to early 1940's. From there, we made a bomb and dropped it on a couple of cities to help end a war. Within' the next 10 years or so, plants were being designed and produced for Navy ships and submarines. In 1963, Humboldt Bay Power plant (I am sitting on the refuel floor there as I type this by the way) started making commercial power. So we are looking at about a 20 year period from the first successful experiment to producing commercial power. And, it would have been even less than that if it were not so secret then. Realistically, the Nautilus was 1954! Now we are talkin' no more than 12 - 15 years from start to usable, sustainable power.

With that said, Fusion presents different and maybe more challenging problems. But should we "nay-say" it because we haven't figured it out?

If it weren't for freethinking, smart and persistant people...We would all still be running around killing buffalo for food, praying for fire and living in caves.

[Chimera]

I wasn't "nay-saying" fusion.  What I meant in my post was that a lot of theoretical knowledge went into the first sustainable fission reactions - decades worth.  Once the theory was firmly in place, it was an engineering feat to figure out how to harness the heat to produce power.  That includes the SNAP reactors used in some satellites.  I am of the opinion that we are still deep in the theoretical stages of understanding fusion.  I also think that too much is made of every incremental step along the way.  We will get there in due time.  But I don't think I'll ever get to fly my Delorean powered by Mr. Fusion.

[Brett LaVigne]

I wasn't "nay-saying" fusion.  What I meant in my post was that a lot of theoretical knowledge went into the first sustainable fission reactions - decades worth.  Once the theory was firmly in place, it was an engineering feat to figure out how to harness the heat to produce power.  That includes the SNAP reactors used in some satellites.  I am of the opinion that we are still deep in the theoretical stages of understanding fusion.  I also think that too much is made of every incremental step along the way.  We will get there in due time.  But I don't think I'll ever get to fly my Delorean powered by Mr. Fusion.

Maybe nay-say was the wrong term, I didn't mean to come across hostile nor did I intend to single anyone out, sorry if it came accross that way. It was more of a blanket statement including other discussions on this theoretical future technology. I have heard several people talk of all the reasons why it won't work or isn't worth going after. I have just got to the point anymore that I don't rule anything out. Science progresses so incredibly fast it boggles my mind. It seems as if nothing can be completely ruled out.

[btkeele]

If it weren't for freethinking, smart and persistant people...We would all still be running around killing buffalo for food, praying for fire and living in caves.....(Brett L)

Brett....quit picking on my lifestyle, there is nothing wrong with Buffalo, I have
a recliner and direct tv in my cave, and I worship fire (water)......

[Brett LaVigne]

If it weren't for freethinking, smart and persistant people...We would all still be running around killing buffalo for food, praying for fire and living in caves.....(Brett L)

Brett....quit picking on my lifestyle, there is nothing wrong with Buffalo, I have
a recliner and direct tv in my cave, and I worship fire (water)......

You kill me Barry! LOL! I hope your doing well. By the way, had a Buffalo burger at the Big Texan in Amarillo, TX. Not bad...not great either, think I will stick with the cows

[Content1]

The bright side is a fusion/fission plant will require Rad Techs and outages to refuel the fission plant and the spent fuel burning plant, so either way jobs for the road techs.    The laser fusion portion is in need of conventional Rad Techs; irradiated equipment requires the same NRC rules as does power plants.   All I am saying is the younger folk get ready to hitch your wagon to the promised land when the opportunity presents itself.   In all the confusion about fusion don't limit your vision to fission.

[B.PRESGROVE]

Trust you me if you havent already see by most of the posts here, the guys and girls on this site know more than most of your college professors and doctored scientists.  We have all been keeping an eye on fussion power but with so many hurdles to overcome it is going to be a while yet.  You have to admit that.  We love the idea of some new nerdy way of making atoms do cool things, but we also have to keep in mind of our present situation.

[Nuclear Renaissance]

the guys and girls on this site know more than most of your college professors and doctored scientists.

Really?

[thenuttyneutron]

Really?

I have had to unlearn many "truths" that I paid a PHD to teach me.  My favorite fallacy is being taught that it is impossible to get superheated steam out of a nuke plant.

[Content1]

"the guys and girls on this site know more than most of your college professors and doctored scientists."

"I have had to unlearn many "truths" that I paid a PHD to teach me.  My favorite fallacy is being taught that it is impossible to get superheated steam out of a nuke plant."


Hate to burst your bubble with "Street" nuclear smarts verses book smarts, but these people at the lab with the PHd's are like Curies and Einsteins, education does matter when you are trying to duplicate what happens inside a star.   

A quantum mechanic doesn't fix problems with a quark wrench. 

I cannot invison how they got 192 lasers to not only converge on a point a little over a milimeter in size, within 1 billioneth of a second of each other, but to the turn heavy hydrogen into plasma like inside the sun (at 80,000,000 degrees at 3000 atmospheres) and fused it to helium in the spherical shape needed.  I saw the film, this is where the technology is at.   Yes, they will take a year or so to get it right using the more energetic tritium-dueterium reaction before announcing to the public what is happening, to insure they got it right and reproducable each shot.  I am one of the RCT's there (kind of like the military in the movie "Stargate" hired just in case they were successful getting their project to work) in my case, if the fusion works and start having radwaste problems to deal with we are ready to contain it..

[Chimera]

I have had to unlearn many "truths" that I paid a PHD to teach me.  My favorite fallacy is being taught that it is impossible to get superheated steam out of a nuke plant.

I thought everyone knew Indian Point One was an oil-fired, super-heated steam nuclear power plant.  That big stack in the middle of the site isn't an off-gas stack.

[B.PRESGROVE]

Hate to burst your bubble with "Street" nuclear smarts verses book smarts, but these people at the lab with the PHd's are like Curies and Einsteins, education does matter when you are trying to duplicate what happens inside a star.   

Uuuummmm most of the Street smart folks here are degreed scientist or close to it.  I understand you have to be pretty smart to work with that stuff where your at, but you can train a person to do that kinda stuff just as easily.....well some.....people (i use that word loosly)

[RDTroja]

I thought everyone knew Indian Point One was an oil-fired, super-heated steam nuclear power plant.  That big stack in the middle of the site isn't an off-gas stack.

The superheated steam did not come out of the nuke plant. The superheater was the oil-fired part.

[retired nuke]

The superheated steam did not come out of the nuke plant. The superheater was the oil-fired part.

Yep, IP1 was a PWR (sort of) with ctrl rods in the bottom head, and produced saturated steam which was fed to an oil fired superheater. The old superheater was rebuilt into offices. I think at least one of the steam generators is visible from the equipment hatch (is it still open??). Funny looking things, 2 horizontal vessels with multiple tubes between them. Learned about this several years ago from an old hand that started there about the time unit 1 shut down.

[Content1]

Hate to burst your bubble with "Street" nuclear smarts verses book smarts, but these people at the lab with the PHd's are like Curies and Einsteins, education does matter when you are trying to duplicate what happens inside a star.   

Uuuummmm most of the Street smart folks here are degreed scientist or close to it.  I understand you have to be pretty smart to work with that stuff where your at, but you can train a person to do that kinda stuff just as easily.....well some.....people (i use that word loosly)

Not too easily, some here in a fusion vs. fission posts get off on a tangent of Superheated steam at Nuclear plants.   Must focus on job at hand.  The fusion plants are not recreating science, just taking it to the next level.  Everyone know the binding energy per nucleon chart.  Deuterium/Tritium to Helium releases more energy than splitting U235.   We don't have to mine deuterium and put it through centifuges and then only get 3% enrichment, tossing out the other 97%.   Its all burnable and when we use spent fuel for more energy what a deal.   I do have a fusion joke.   What was the motto for fusion in 1955 "Fusion power in 50 years."   The motto in 2006: "Fusion power in 50 years."   Good mottos are hard to change.

[HydroDave63]

Not too easily, some here in a fusion vs. fission posts get off on a tangent of Superheated steam at Nuclear plants.   Must focus on job at hand.  The fusion plants are not recreating science, just taking it to the next level.  Everyone know the binding energy per nucleon chart.  Deuterium/Tritium to Helium releases more energy than splitting U235.   We don't have to mine deuterium and put it through centifuges and then only get 3% enrichment, tossing out the other 97%.   Its all burnable and when we use spent fuel for more energy what a deal.   I do have a fusion joke.   What was the motto for fusion in 1955 "Fusion power in 50 years."   The motto in 2006: "Fusion power in 50 years."   Good mottos are hard to change.

1. There is an electric-powered separation process for deuterium, it doesn't just bubble up from a well in Calistoga. Your fuel source is not without front-end cost.

2. Reprocessing trans-uranics works just fine in the countries that don't have Jimmy Carter.

3. Fission of uranium worked for free with just water and uranium ore at Oklo http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml  Nature almost always has the answer's to science's questions, whether aerodynamics or high-energy physics.  Oddly enough billions of stars started up just fine without 192 gazillion lasers.

4. Since we are mouth-breathers without PhD's, here is a link to a PhD written article from a quarter century ago about the electric origins of fusion with neutron fluence as a result in lightning. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v313/n6005/abs/313773a0.html

Basically, Tokamaks and their next generations are multi-billion dollar boondoggles. Assuming that fusion can ONLY happen with massive cramdowns of magnetism,heat and laser energy would be similar to Fermi assuming uranium can ONLY fission with a stream of high-energy neutrons from a spallation source in a pulse reactor. Yet, physics science accidentally found that U²³⁵ has a higher probablity from a lower energy thermal neutron.

Of course, this is all crap because I don't have a degree at all. I'll get back to my moppin' now, suh....

[Content1]

4. Since we are mouth-breathers without PhD's . .

Of course, this is all crap because I don't have a degree at all. I'll get back to my moppin' now, suh....

Did someone's nerve get pinched here, life is too short to be so easily offended.    The world could not function without "Real" people who do the practical work, not just theory.   I have a degree, but it is in education.  (I taught special Ed.)  I left the field because the nuke pay is so much better, so I rely on my Navy and nuclear experience to find work, and it got me the job at the lab as an RCT.   It is lucky to be a nuke right now, there are a lot of degreed people, like lawyers, etc. that are out of work.

[thenukeman]

Just a quarter of a gram (less than the mass of a paper clip) of antimatter making contact with ordinary matter would unleash an explosion similar to those produced by the atomic bombs used to end World War II.

Just think if Fusion is bypassed by Antimatter>>  Poor Content1 and his nuclear Fusion PHD's  will be just mouth breathers on unemployment with the Obsolete Fusion power knowledge!!!

[Content1]

Antimatter sounds like something that terrorist could not use for any purpose.   I, myself would rather stick to being pro-matter.  If terrorist got a hold of fusion fuel it would not do them much good without the machine to use it, it is just water.   You seem to have a thing for nose breathers . .  everyone breathes through their mouth when they exert themselves or have a cold in the nose.   You still must answer how to make, and hold, and safely use antimatter.   Fusion is coming soon to a city near you in a safe, controlled form.  It is kind of an honor if you lump a lowly RCT/college grad with someone who earned a PhD.  I wish I was 1/10th as talented as any one of those technological geniuses of our time.

[Content1]

They have already thought of things like an orbiting solar collector and transmit it back to Earth in a beam, woe be it to the poor bird, or plane, that may try to fly through it.   They have had the thermal thing in Hawaii for years, but they have not got rid of their oil plants.   Solar power takes up a lot of space in a centrally located unit, and the most efficient use, say on everyone's roof in sunny states, power companies would not profit from it though the individual homeowner would it they could afford it.   Until we invent anti-gravity (along with the anti matter) the cost of keeping a turbine in the air would exceed its generation.   Do we want a bunch of high energy beams pummeling the Earth?  Fusion seems to be the Universe's choice of energy production for the last 13 billion years, far from being a dead horse, we are just getting ready to go with the flow.

[B.PRESGROVE]

Ok wait a minute.  How in the world are we going to get a turbine to 30,000 feet and keep it there?  Not only that but how many of these things are going to be needed and Im sure they are heavy.  Also if, lets say, you start to put a bunch of these things in the air you would disrupt the jet streams, and it is unrealiable due to the ever changing winds speed and direction at high altitude.  (studied this kinda stuff when I was in Air Force).  I saw the TV show about this too.

The hole water and amonia thing would not work.  One big hurricane and your done.

Interesting though.

[Fermi2]

They have already thought of things like an orbiting solar collector and transmit it back to Earth in a beam, woe be it to the poor bird, or plane, that may try to fly through it.   They have had the thermal thing in Hawaii for years, but they have not got rid of their oil plants.   Solar power takes up a lot of space in a centrally located unit, and the most efficient use, say on everyone's roof in sunny states, power companies would not profit from it though the individual homeowner would it they could afford it.   Until we invent anti-gravity (along with the anti matter) the cost of keeping a turbine in the air would exceed its generation.   Do we want a bunch of high energy beams pummeling the Earth?  Fusion seems to be the Universe's choice of energy production for the last 13 billion years, far from being a dead horse, we are just getting ready to go with the flow.

Seriously you're not a real nuke yet right? Just a NUB?

[JsonD13]

cost of keeping a turbine in the air would exceed its generation. 

I believe he is referring to wind power, for which this statement holds true.

Jason