Fusion vs Fission

[OldHP]

We, the USA, started experimenting with the possibility of "Fusion Power" with "Project Matterhorn" (when I was in grade school) which became PPPL - D&D'd in the 90s.  It is still the dream of many - clean, efficient, etc!  However, the fact at this point is it costs more energy than it can produce.

I'd still prefer to live next door to a NPP than a Coal Burner!   

[Content1]

I will not say much anymore, nobody likes to hear that fusion might work.   The fusion that won't work is close to crossing the break-even point by the summer (High yield shots).   The say they have a system for "fast fusion" that is made to strike after the already successful compression method to heat the target faster.   Of course none of this will work, I am at the lab and crazy with the rest of them.   I happen to be one of the technicians that takes samples from the imaginary fusion to see how much converted to Helium.   Of course I never see anything like neutron activation, it is in my head.   Their plans to make a power generation system the size of a railroad car that can power a small city is also imaginary. I do agree with the previous post, I would rather have an imaginary fusion power generation next to me compared to a CO2 belching coal plant.   I ride my bike to and from work.  Fusion produces no green house gases that will slowly kill us all.   But since fusion is imaginary, and the plant they are building in France that copies us shows how foolish the French investors are.   And the ability to test nuclear weapons without blowing them up is also imaginary.   How did we ever talk most all the Senators from both parties to build this?

[RDTroja]

I will not say much anymore, nobody likes to hear that fusion might work.   The fusion that won't work is close to crossing the break-even point by the summer (High yield shots).   The say they have a system for "fast fusion" that is made to strike after the already successful compression method to heat the target faster.   Of course none of this will work, I am at the lab and crazy with the rest of them.   I happen to be one of the technicians that takes samples from the imaginary fusion to see how much converted to Helium.   Of course I never see anything like neutron activation, it is in my head.   Their plans to make a power generation system the size of a railroad car that can power a small city is also imaginary. I do agree with the previous post, I would rather have an imaginary fusion power generation next to me compared to a CO2 belching coal plant.   I ride my bike to and from work.  Fusion produces no green house gases that will slowly kill us all.   But since fusion is imaginary, and the plant they are building in France that copies us shows how foolish the French investors are.   And the ability to test nuclear weapons without blowing them up is also imaginary.   How did we ever talk most all the Senators from both parties to build this?

If you have it stuck in your head that everyone is against you, there will be no convincing you otherwise. You are just going to cry the 'Boo-Hoo nobody believes me' song until you make yourself look pathetic. Nobody disbelieves in Fusion. Yes, it is a physical fact, yes there is science behind it, yes the things that you see are real. When it starts to put electrons on the grid it will be a viable source of energy, and not before. Period. I hope that I am alive to see it, but I am not so sure I will. So to me it is a nice theory that will not gain anything that I will be able to appreciate. Meanwhile we work on putting as many of those electrons on the grid from our existing clean, no greenhouse source of energy as we can. Good luck to the future, but my bet is on someone figuring out how to harvest the energy that the sun gives us freely, rather than trying to duplicate it here. It makes more sense to take what is there rather than try to reinvent it. Fusion may be the future, but it could just as easily be relegated to the 'nice experiment' pile (fission will be in the 'helped get us to the next step' pile) when we figure out how to efficiently tap the energy we are all awash in already.

Don't take it so personally. At the very least it is an experiment that will add to the human knowledge bank and possibly benefit us in ways we can't see yet. At best it will be the next temporary source of energy that will last until something better comes along. In either case (or somewhere in between) it won't be anything more than a part of history that we may or may not be able to witness.

And the power plant that OldHP was referring to as 'a NPP' more likely broke atoms than welded them together.

[Content1]

There is nothing in France of which you speak that copies the NIF, in Europe there are feasibility studies being funded;

In October 2008, Hiper received approximately 13m euros of funding to carry out a feasibility study. It also has access to European hardware and capability worth a further 50m euros.

If all goes well, engineers will begin to build the Hiper facility towards the end of the next decade, bringing the vision of a commercial fusion reactor one step closer to reality.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7972865.stm

In France they are building ITER, which is a magnetic, not laser, containment scheme;

http://www.iter.org/

What about this?  http://www.hiper-laser.org/

If we have no competition, all the better when it is made to work for the USA to win at something again, like we used to do in the past.  The fusions lasers are able to, in theory:

1)  Direct power with heat transfer to boil water like a nuke reactor
2)  Develop Gamma ray lasers that can see even through lead to inspect cargo containers at high speed to detect things like nuclear bombs from terrorists
3)  With the proliferation treaties, to test nuclear material without blowing it up at a test site (Now illegal)
4)  Covert the nuclear waste from nuclear plants from being stored and overflowing into usable for energy from the high energy neutron from fusion
5)  It will not just make helium from tritium and deuterium, but nothing holds it back like in the sun in layers, it may go, in small quantities, all the way up to iron giving us research in the process of stars.
6)  Other projects that have not been shared to date, but in demand as the lab is booked for experiments for the next two years from paying customers.

Remember, this is a lab and you never know what you find when start research in areas that have never been attempted before.   This is one of the few things left we still produce in the USA.   Let us not forget we are on the verge of having usable lasers on ships to intercept incoming missiles to protect them during attack at hundreds of miles away.   We in the USA have got to do the research and development if we want to stay the best in the world.   The Roman Empire, before it fell, did not have much research and development and eventually fell from their short-sightedness. 

[Content1]

Completed a high yield shot and working towards even higher shots at the NIF.  Solving the confinement problems in spite of what Harvard University said would make fusion impossible.  It is just a matter of time.

[RDTroja]

Completed a high yield shot and working towards even higher shots at the NIF.  Solving the confinement problems in spite of what Harvard University said would make fusion impossible.  It is just a matter of time.

That's pretty much what the rest of us have been saying all along.

The BIG question is... how much time? I figure I have 30 years at the outside left for it (i.e. significant energy source) to happen in my lifetime... and I would love to see it but I am not holding my breath.

[MacGyver]

Completed a high yield shot and working towards even higher shots at the NIF.  Solving the confinement problems in spite of what Harvard University said would make fusion impossible.  It is just a matter of time.

[thenukeman]

I said this in 2009,  Man I can see Content1 In 2059, 50 years from now, Telling Content 3 his Grandson that in 50 years the Fusion problem will be solved.  So Content 3 hold down the fort until 2109 for Content 5.

Solar, Wind and fusion seem to be in the same useless pile.

As I said before  I believe Anti-Matter problem will be solved before the fusion problem.

Just the humble opinion of a Certified Health Physicist part 1, NRRPT.

[MacGyver]

I said this in 2009,  Man I can see Content1 In 2059, 50 years from now, Telling Content 3 his Grandson that in 50 years the Fusion problem will be solved.  So Content 3 hold down the fort until 2109 for Content 5.

Solar, Wind and fusion seem to be in the same useless pile.

As I said before  I believe Anti-Matter problem will be solved before the fusion problem.

Just the humble opinion of a Certified Health Physicist part 1, NRRPT.

I am certain that Content 5's response will be something like the ending of this:

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Not that I am an expert on this sort of thing.  Parenting that is.

[Content1]

I said this in 2009,  Man I can see Content1 In 2059, 50 years from now, Telling Content 3 his Grandson that in 50 years the Fusion problem will be solved.  So Content 3 hold down the fort until 2109 for Content 5.

Solar, Wind and fusion seem to be in the same useless pile.

As I said before  I believe Anti-Matter problem will be solved before the fusion problem.

Just the humble opinion of a Certified Health Physicist part 1, NRRPT.

Well there is a us for the NRRPT certification, that is, to talk about subject not in you specialty.  How many fusion questions were on the NRRPT?  I best just as many as there was for anti-matter.  I had the honor to log in the results of a 450,000,000,000,000 neutron shot that came from the fusion of tritium and deuterium, not fissile material needed here.  Let me see, I got a teaching credential, does that make my opinion better?  It won't be 50 years, it will more be like this summer where we are producing high yields.   It is taking a while to insure the methods are 99.99% reproducible, not like that cold fusion farce of years ago.  If you really thought we couldn't do it, you would be clamoring to your representative in Congress and the DOE.   It is precisely that it is working is why the research continues.

[thenukeman]

Yes, and the Congress people are that intelligent to know what to invest in like solar, wind, ethanol, etc. They will believe what the next clown says as  long as it gets votes in their district.

You may be right about lasers though, my understanding is that lasers are  cheaper to  seperate U235 from U238 than the centrifuge process with the new developments in laser technology.  Heard they may open a laser separation facility in Oak Ridge TN.    They had a old one with old laser technology that did not work cost effectively.  This new technology is suppose to work great.  We will see.  

The temperature problem seems to be too much of a hurdle to overcome for fusion.

[thenuttyneutron]

Well there is a us for the NRRPT certification, that is, to talk about subject not in you specialty.  How many fusion questions were on the NRRPT?  I best just as many as there was for anti-matter.  I had the honor to log in the results of a 450,000,000,000,000 neutron shot that came from the fusion of tritium and deuterium, not fissile material needed here.  Let me see, I got a teaching credential, does that make my opinion better?  It won't be 50 years, it will more be like this summer where we are producing high yields.   It is taking a while to insure the methods are 99.99% reproducible, not like that cold fusion farce of years ago.  If you really thought we couldn't do it, you would be clamoring to your representative in Congress and the DOE.   It is precisely that it is working is why the research continues.

Raise that neutron count up by a factor of 500000 and you will be at about what a power reactor can produce every second.

[HousePuke]

I currently work at NIF and I'm quite certain we will not see viable fusion on a power producing scale for some time to come. 
While the place is very interesting, and I believe the research is very valuable, I'm not ready to declare that fusion has arrived.

I did see some interesting samples of activation from the last shot though.

[thenuttyneutron]

Content1,

Fusion may become a reality for making electrical power in the future.  You let us know when we get there.  In the mean time I will continue to use a reverse fusion reactor to make electrical power.  Those prehistoric supernovas that made the materials that I am now reverse fusing are just accomplishing the same task of raising the binding energies of the fuel.

-TNN

[Content1]

Whether it becomes a power source soon, I am still amazed by the fact when you fire 192 lasers at an empty target, no neutrons, put some deuterium and tritium the size of a pencil eraser, it produces 100,000+ Rem from a shot lasting 20 billionth of a second with an instantaneous lethal dose and through activation to get a sensor reading 12+ miliremon contact.   Those 7e14 total neutrons (Latest shot) are coming from somewhere and compared with the magnetic confinement this is something.  The compression of the hydrogen isotopes are greater then the center of Jupiter and the research is comparable to the work done in the LHC in Switzerland.  If we perfect fusion for commercial use, called L.I.F.E., all the better.

[Gamma Glue]

"CERN scientists trapped  dangerously slippery antimatter for a record 1000 seconds (or 17 minutes), a huge achievement in terms of antimatter confinement."

Isn't that longer then we have sustained fusion? Maybe Antimatter will win after all...

The WB-D 100MW reactor is the most promissing fusion design, currently. One of the applications is to provide the power necessary to propell a VASMIR rocket to Mars in 39 days, which would be a good shift since the shuttle is no longer in use. Plus the WB-D would only cost $200 Mil. for a 100 MW reactor, instead of the $18+ Bil. already spent on the Tokamak. NIF is a good idea, but until they hire DR. Otto Octavius, I don't see them having sustainable fusion happening any time soon.
Maybe Thiago Olson has modified the fusion reactor in his basement.....

[Marlin]

   I did not know that anyone had picked up Bussard's work. I don't see how this design will be used for anything in the near future though as it is still in the proof of concept stage.


http://www.fusor.net/files/EMC2_FusionToPost.pdf

[Gamma Glue]

You posted a link to an article that was written in 2008.

Try this http://emc2fusion.org/
and
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/10/6619613-fusion-goes-forward-from-the-fringe

[Marlin]

You posted a link to an article that was written in 2008.

Try this http://emc2fusion.org/
and
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/10/6619613-fusion-goes-forward-from-the-fringe

I saw both of those while searching, there is still nothing new really just more work on establishing the plasma fields. I still looks like it is a ways off to fusion much less self sustaining power. There must be some promise to it if the Navy is investing though.

[thenukeman]

I agree with Gamma Glue, there is a chance that antimatter will beat fusion.   The CERN trapped antimatter for 1000 seconds as Gamma Glue said, more here

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110605191458.htm

If this can beconfined a little longer this could  be like nuke med, you make this and fly it or drive it to a antimatter reactor.   Then the exact quantity could be made.   If you really make it easy to make each site could have a plant that made this,  probably needs to  be like Canada and have abot 8 reactors on a site.   If I remember right, a piece of U235  that is eqivalent in size to a piece of coal has about 3 million times its power, fusion material, about 12 million times and Anti-matter is about 1.2 billion times. 


Time to go for the gold!! 1.2 billion times power and little waste.   Shut down the fusion, wind, solar, research and go antimatter.  Be like going to  the moon have it  done end of this decade.   Beginning of the 60's Kennedy  set the moon as a goal and we acheived it. Real energy independence would be antimatter.

[Higgs]

Plus we could build starships! Antimatter ftw!

[Gamma Glue]

Plus we could build starships! Antimatter ftw!

Antimatter as a power source wouldn't dictate that necessarily, we would still need an engine powerful/efficient enough to be designed. The VASMIR is the closest thing out there, and it's not even ready yet.
http://www.adastrarocket.com/aarc/

[Higgs]

You're like a constant downer, huh? 

[thenukeman]

Antimatter engines, the ICAN needs only  190 nano grams to fly to Mars.  The Aim star is below the ICAN, designed to fly from this solar system.  More here from Penn State and NASA.

http://www.engr.psu.edu/antimatter/introduction2.html


And if you lose a tool in space, break it or left it on earth. A replicator can go with you to make it.   This is real!!!!   I do  not think it can replicate Anti-protons yet though 

[Content1]

We better not give up fusion.  We have given up our space program, let the accelerator go to Europe, what is left of any technological innovation here?