Fusion vs Fission

[Content1]

Un-C1:  This is great news!  I suggest you stop your kids from saddling the dead horse that commercial nuclear power is becoming and hitch their hopes to the rising star of fusion.  With your front row seat I am sure you can pull some strings...

Actually, already thought of that except they only take seniors in this field, so still have to stay hitched until they are a 3.1's.  We are still hiring seniors here, but only by word of mouth.   They are picky folk who do the hiring.  (I know you may say, then how did I get in?  Just lucky I guess.)

[Content1]

Skip Fusion, Go directly to matter antimatter reactor, it seems more plausible to me.  Temperatures too high for material in fusion reactor to sustain it seems to me.

It is called Inertial Confinement Fusion, it uses lasers to get the temperature at 100 million degrees for 20 billionth of a second.    You get power like a machine gun, firing multi-shots verses one big one like the sun.   They can do it.   If we spill our matter, we get water on the floor.   Our waste is helium.  Tell me how to make and safely contain antimatter and I am with you.

[Fermi2]

It is called Inertial Confinement Fusion, it uses lasers to get the temperature at 100 million degrees for 20 billionth of a second.    You get power like a machine gun, firing multi-shots verses one big one like the sun.   They can do it.   If we spill our matter, we get water on the floor.   Our waste is helium.  Tell me how to make and safely contain antimatter and I am with you.

Pipe dream.

[thenukeman]

Said before Penning trap stores anti mattter,  we can make anti matter now, Just not in great quantity, I think the making more of Anti matter problem will be solved before the millions of degrees heat from Fusion problem.  Just a thought.

[Content1]

Pipe dream.

Like in the movie, "Evan Almighty" when we are successful this year I will do the "Dance" and dedicate it to the naysayers like yourself.   We are so close and I am there, you are not to know or base an opinion.  I suppose you think the Moon Landing were done in a studio too.

[Fermi2]

Like in the movie, "Evan Almighty" when we are successful this year I will do the "Dance" and dedicate it to the naysayers like yourself.   We are so close and I am there, you are not to know or base an opinion.  I suppose you think the Moon Landing were done in a studio too.

Not hardly son. Pipe dream.

[co60slr]

It is called Inertial Confinement Fusion, it uses lasers to get the temperature at 100 million degrees for 20 billionth of a second.    You get power like a machine gun, firing multi-shots verses one big one like the sun.   They can do it.   If we spill our matter, we get water on the floor.   Our waste is helium.  Tell me how to make and safely contain antimatter and I am with you.

As pointed out here in October 2009, your passion for your job is inspirational.  Your information broadcast continues to reinforce what can be found here:  https://lasers.llnl.gov/.  Meanwhile, Newsweek also does a pretty good job of summing up the optimistic and pessimistic points of view.   Perhaps the bottom line is that the world is divided and "time will tell", as it does with all inventions pushing through innovation?  http://www.newsweek.com/id/222792/page/2

In the world of technical research, it seems that keeping up the hype and excitement in your expensive project/experiment is the key to continued funding.  How else would your senior PhD scientist there at LLNL keep his 10-figure grant money pouring in the front door for the last 20 years?  There is obviously some technical merit to the experiment, or it probably would not have gotten this far.

Personally, comparing an experimental energy conversion process to one that is on the streets (e.g., combustion, fission) running my car and powering my computer right now doesn't seem to be a fair argument, in my opinion.  The $3.5 Billion fusion toy that we have all invested in, seems to be just that...for now, but I hope my tax dollars work out for the DOE Lab there.  However, I'm convinced that I won't be dumping trash into a little fusion reactor in the trunk of my car anytime soon.   (Note reference to "Back to the Future").

[Adam Grundleger]

Seriously?  We can't get new fission units built and we're talking about new technology fusion units? 

Sure, there's rumors about government loans to get a few units built, but I don't buy it.  Until they untie the hands of the utilities to shift rates to pay for the new units and get them out of the debt cycle we won't have new construction on the scale we all expected. 

Instead, we'll wait and the suppliers will fold or move overseas.  If we ever get to work building plants they'll all come with tags that say "Made in China." 

So, on topic, lets say you all are successful with this new technology.  Do you think private industry will be in any shape to take it on once it's viable?  Never mind the fact that you can burn spent fuel.  Breeders have been doing that in Europe for decades.  It's not enough justification for the government to give up control of the funding, and until they do we're stuck.

[Content1]

You  don't know the power of the force, it is much more powerful than fission on a weighted basis.   Every time you use your PC, cell phone and other microprocessors thank the Moon program.   We will someday return when  we have people in office with the right vision to know the Earth will fill up and we need the ultimate "elbow room."   

From Fusion research we will get: High powered lasers to knock out incoming ICBMs (In the x ray to gamma ray range.)  If you don't think gamma lasers could do it, think of natural occurring gamma ray bursts from 100 light years away could wipe out all life on Earth.   Lucky for us no supernovas that close and aimed at us have ever happened in our galaxy.  You get a methods to verify nuclear weapons without underground testing.  You get methods to burn spent fuel.   When developed, you get power without greenhouse gases.  The supply of energy is essentially unlimited, we have millions of years of fuel available, long after we burn our last fossil fuel.   You are able to compliment the research on the operation of stars to add to what we find with the super-colliders in Europe.   Finally we can be like England and slowly fade away on the world scene as we give up on research and development or be on the forefront of technology and have the jobs here, not in China.   There are hundreds of others uses which have yet to be discovered.  Rome fell partially because they thought their technology would last forever and the Barbarians spent money on R & D and eventually overwhelmed Rome.   We are the modern equivalent of Rome, even about 1/3 of our language, our republican form of government etc.  came from Rome.  Let us learn from their mistakes so our arsenal of democracy will last forever!

Those of you who think it is a waste of money, what are we going to do when fossil fuels start to run out?   Even if you think it is a waste of time now, it will be needed by necessity someday.   Why make your grandchildren suffer from out lack of foresight to see the coming end of the fossil fuels and we did nothing to prevent it.

[HydroDave63]

and the Barbarians spent money on R & D and eventually overwhelmed Rome. 

Please refresh my memory, was it the Visigoth use of Stukas against the 10th Legion, or Attila The Hun dropping paratroops south of the Tiber that finally did Rome in? Just what the cornbread %&@ technology did these barbarians have?!?

Look, no one doubts that fusion would be the cleanest spiffiest power source. Might be why the Farnsworth Fusor got buried early on, since he got almost as close as the Tokamak to breakeven fusion with an electric tabletop device. But an endless parade of breathless posts about the imminent New Age of Fusion with ice cream and unicorns falling from the sky isn't going to make it happen. It's cool to be proud of being part of this project, whether it really achieves power generation or not. Just relax, document your surveys, and if and when the physics support your claims, we'll know who posted it here first (and second and third and Avogadro's Number) 

[Adam Grundleger]

I think you're right--it can be done.  I just don't think it'll be allowed to happen until free market funding is available.  

[thenuttyneutron]

You  don't know the power of the force, it is much more powerful than fission on a weighted basis.   Every time you use your PC, cell phone and other microprocessors thank the Moon program.   We will someday return when  we have people in office with the right vision to know the Earth will fill up and we need the ultimate "elbow room."   

From Fusion research we will get: High powered lasers to knock out incoming ICBMs (In the x ray to gamma ray range.)  If you don't think gamma lasers could do it, think of natural occurring gamma ray bursts from 100 light years away could wipe out all life on Earth.   Lucky for us no supernovas that close and aimed at us have ever happened in our galaxy.  You get a methods to verify nuclear weapons without underground testing.  You get methods to burn spent fuel.   When developed, you get power without greenhouse gases.  The supply of energy is essentially unlimited, we have millions of years of fuel available, long after we burn our last fossil fuel.   You are able to compliment the research on the operation of stars to add to what we find with the super-colliders in Europe.   Finally we can be like England and slowly fade away on the world scene as we give up on research and development or be on the forefront of technology and have the jobs here, not in China.   There are hundreds of others uses which have yet to be discovered.  Rome fell partially because they thought their technology would last forever and the Barbarians spent money on R & D and eventually overwhelmed Rome.   We are the modern equivalent of Rome, even about 1/3 of our language, our republican form of government etc.  came from Rome.  Let us learn from their mistakes so our arsenal of democracy will last forever!

Those of you who think it is a waste of money, what are we going to do when fossil fuels start to run out?   Even if you think it is a waste of time now, it will be needed by necessity someday.   Why make your grandchildren suffer from out lack of foresight to see the coming end of the fossil fuels and we did nothing to prevent it.

We will never run out of fossil fuels.  I do believe in the Peak Oil Theory postulated by Dr. Hubbert.  The price for those last few gallons of oil based fuels will be so expensive that the use of them will be curtailed and a different technology will be used.

I wonder if the average Joe could run a small boiler powered by wood to get their car down the road. 

[Fermi2]

I'll venture my opinion. Content1 is a 15 year old kid. Knows nothing about fission reactors so he's pretending to be part of a fusion research group. Since fusion as a power source is a myth, he no one really cares who he is.

[Fermi2]

Read Kruschev's Cold War. The moon program was just a cover because Kennedy wanted an ICBM that could hit Moscow from South Dakota. All the rest was just fluff.

[Adam Grundleger]

They used Imbert downdraft gasifiers back in the 1940s to power cars and trucks in Europe.  Some people are still experimenting with it.  Wood gas will run most cars, but it has less specific energy than petroleum or alcohol fuels, though wood requires way less energy to harvest and process.  Peak oil will happen, but it's a question of when.  I don't think there's enough information as to the remaining reserves.

Fusion or more widespread fission (or antimatter, or PFM for that matter) would solve a lot of problems, but there's no such thing as a free lunch.  As long as big government has its foot on the neck of industry, the point's moot.  

[thenuttyneutron]

They used Imbert downdraft gasifiers back in the 1940s to power cars and trucks in Europe.  Some people are still experimenting with it.  Wood gas will run most cars, but it has less specific energy than petroleum or alcohol fuels, though wood requires way less energy to harvest and process.  Peak oil will happen, but it's a question of when.  I don't think there's enough information as to the remaining reserves.

Fusion or more widespread fission (or antimatter, or PFM for that matter) would solve a lot of problems, but there's no such thing as a free lunch.  As long as big government has its foot on the neck of industry, the point's moot.  

We can always go to the Fischer tropsch method of making fuels.  The Nazis were able to use it to fuel their war machine.  With a combo of a fission reactor and a lot of coal, I bet you could make lots of fuel to burn in cars cheaply. 

[Adam Grundleger]

Sure, there's been lots of talk about coal-to-liquid and gas-to-liquid fuels, but the cost is very high and the demand isn't there.  We could use algae to make biodiesel or distill butanol or other higher energy-density alcohols from cellulose stock.

The problems are the same as for new power plants: Who's going to pay for it?  Will the government let it happen or will there be some environmentalist backlash that they use (or fabricate) to take it over? 

I want clean, safe power just like everybody else.  Fission works well and is safe.  Maybe fusion will turn out to be better.  I think that we're clever enough as a species to find out.  I just think that we're currently hung up on this nanny-state hand-wringing.  The public's so conditioned to think about dead ends like wind farms and solar panels and so negatively conditioned regarding anything nuclear that I doubt that public support for a new fleet of fusion plants will be there. 

Maybe, if we're lucky, over the next few election cycles we can roll back the "progressive" degradation of our government and free up industry to pursue new ideas.  Companies that are fighting just to keep from being nationalized tend not to go in for heavy R&D.

[B.PRESGROVE]

You know just saw a TV program on science channel about the sun.  I loved it, and of all things they talked about fussion just like the sun and how we hear on earth could make it possible.  The only problem so far is it uses way more energy than it produces, like has been discussed, only lasts for a few milli seconds, and the most important the MMMIIILLLLLIIIOONNNSSSSssss of degrees to sustain the chain reaction.  Its like mike said, a pipe dream.

[Content1]

You know just saw a TV program on science channel about the sun.  I loved it, and of all things they talked about fussion just like the sun and how we hear on earth could make it possible.  The only problem so far is it uses way more energy than it produces, like has been discussed, only lasts for a few milli seconds, and the most important the MMMIIILLLLLIIIOONNNSSSSssss of degrees to sustain the chain reaction.  Its like mike said, a pipe dream.

Was the show in black and white, and was the Vietnam war still going on?  We are way past the problems of getting more energy then it costs to produce it, and on to the problems of how to practically use the excess energy.   The French fusion research reactor in the pipeline is even bigger then ours.   They would not have spent the billions there if they had not good good research reports from our efforts here.  I also never knew pipes were sentient enough to dream.  The millions of degrees is a case of we have already been there, done that.  We are inertial confinement fusion here, and we are only at the 100 million degree for 30 billionth of a second, long enough to get the energy from the reaction.   We get power by re-firing like a machine gun style, verses a continuous boom.   The energy released in the target area is so great if you were in there during a shot, you would get a lethal dose in the 30 billionth of a second it fired.   We don't use it to execute people but to harness the power so released.  I will do the "Dance" this fall when we achieve it and encourage any other "horse and buggy forever" class it may be time to reassess your opinions.   This technology is so new, that Bruce Willis hasn't even made a movie about how the technology can be used for evil.

[co60slr]

Was the show in black and white, and was the Vietnam war still going on?  We are way past the problems of getting more energy then it costs to produce it, and on to the problems of how to practically use the excess energy.   The French fusion research reactor in the pipeline is even bigger then ours.   They would not have spent the billions there if they had not good good research reports from our efforts here.  I also never knew pipes were sentient enough to dream.  The millions of degrees is a case of we have already been there, done that.  We are inertial confinement fusion here, and we are only at the 100 million degree for 30 billionth of a second, long enough to get the energy from the reaction.   We get power by re-firing like a machine gun style, verses a continuous boom.   The energy released in the target area is so great if you were in there during a shot, you would get a lethal dose in the 30 billionth of a second it fired.   We don't use it to execute people but to harness the power so released.  I will do the "Dance" this fall when we achieve it and encourage any other "horse and buggy forever" class it may be time to reassess your opinions.   This technology is so new, that Bruce Willis hasn't even made a movie about how the technology can be used for evil.

You're reportedly 10 years away from a prototype...IF you're successful this fall.  On the plus side, you have plenty of time to practice that dance.  Meanwhile, even if successful, it may take your PhDs that long to figure out how to make their experiment economical.  $100K per fuel pellet?  How much is that per kw-hour for your future electricity customers?  While technically fascinating, it seems that the "invention" has a ways to go before innovation.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100128-nuclear-fusion-power-lasers-science/

[thenuttyneutron]

What is the burnup value for that fuel?  What percentage of the fuel is actually consumed?

With all that money used to build this science experiment, I bet we could have built an IFR prototype.  This IFR design is sustainable.  The fuels for this design are waiting for us at the bottom of all the spent fuel pools and DU tailings.  You can even burn Thorium in the IFR.

[Content1]

A reactor using sodium as a coolant presents self-evident problems.   You still need 20% fissile fuel etc.   Fusion, once the technology is perfected and they shrink the size of the fusion process the cost of fuel will drop, realizing that the availability of deuterium and tritium is abundant, and can last for millions of years giving mankind time to develop those antimatter systems that will eventually be made.   Coal, oil and other fossil fuel have a built in time limit, and we really need hydrocarbons to make things like plastics and medicines.   Traditional fission and its products are dirty as compared with making hydrogen into helium.   A day will come when we cannot live without fusion, a slow incremental use, like the computer did, that future generations will ask, "How did the ancients live without fusion?"

[BuddyThePug]

  I will do the "Dance" this fall when we achieve it and encourage any other "horse and buggy forever" class it may be time to reassess your opinions. 

When the Great Pumpkin fails to arrive by fusion power by 12/31/10 , what is your side of the wager? No more posts on the subject?

[Content1]

When the Great Pumpkin fails to arrive by fusion power by 12/31/10 , what is your side of the wager? No more posts on the subject?

I would be one of the first to know.  Research is not like a go/no go test.   Our brilliant scientists carefully study results each step along the way.  Like Edison who went through a thousand failures to get the first working light bulb, success is more a result of perspiration verses inspiration, and they have been sweating over the idea for 50 years.   The first tritium/deuterium tests are scheduled for August, and when we prove more energy out verses in, I can do the "Dance."  This is on the back of already successful deuterium/deuterium tests.   It will be an event like Lindburg crossing the Atlantic, men on the Moon, the ultimate realization of Einstein equation E=MC2 put into peaceful use for the benefit of all mankind.

[Content1]

Just a comparison to fission, it takes about 2 megajoules of energy to get the fusion to work, and it yields about 20 megajoules per reaction.  That is a lot of difference and to get the 2 megajoules is how the efficiency is to be achieved.   Naturally at first, we have a lot of overhead but with time, the energy balance will be harnessed.   It is possible to achieve this in the decade to come.