Fusion reactor work gets go-ahead (debatable)

[fshrink]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5012638.stm

On the one hand, the principle is still that of the steam boiler but on the other the yield is 10,000,000 better than fossils with less toxic by-products than fission.
On the one hand, "renewables" are still a theoretical option, but on the other they seem to require de-centralization.

Sounds like both paths are in need of a major scientific break-through (e.g. how to store energy with high yield) rather than of technological advances...

[FreakinDJ]

1. by year 2050 maybe

wishin it could be sooner but they project it will not be a reality until 2050

[SpiralHawk]

2. When I was a young whippersnapper, I remember one of the elders saying

"the really big trouble is going to commence when the Bigheads start messing around with the Medicine of the Sun. That will bring on the forces of nature as has never been seen before."

I asked what he meant about about the Medicine of the Sun. He was talking about fusion. It's Major Medicine, he said, and it would be a death-dealing mistake for the human beings to engage that Medicine with anything but the highest of motivations and also after many purification rituals. That is how it was told to me. Must be 30 or more years ago since these thoughts came to my ears.

[bananas]

3. That's actually good news

it means we have a few more decades before the really big trouble starts!
I was worried it would be the next couple of years..

[Ghost Dog]

5. Yes. We must direct strong medicinal, purifying forces towards Cardarache,

remember the name (Just next door to me, here in Barcelona, in the great (by W. European standards) river Rhône southern (Provençal) valley).

[Vogon_Glory]

4. Fusion Power: Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow

I remember reading about the promise of fusion power as early as the mid-1970's. Supposedly scientists and engineers would have all the bugs worked out and there would be a working fusion reactor in 2000 and models for commercial power generation in 2008. Then the deadline got shifted to 2008 and 2016, etc.

I'd be tickled if someone perfected a safe, reliable fusion reactor for generating electricity with low or no radioactive byproducts. But the day that a working fusion reactor would become a reality seems to be slipping further and further into the future each day.

[DiscussTheTruth]

6. Obviously

That is because of the focus on Oil. Oil is politics and leverage within societies. If we go beyond oil then everything changes and trust me the governments of all nations fear that change because it will totally change politics and who has control.

[fshrink]

8. There is that. Which is why

this is mostly a European project and not a US one. But even then, the important point I see is that the same mode of thinking is applied to the development of nuclear fuel... The funding goes to puting some sort of fire under the pot, which makes turbines spin, etc... not to fundamental research, which would find an elegant way to conserve and transfer energy between modalities (chemical, electric, mechanical etc... The frame-work is as old as fire.

[Ghost Dog]

9. Here's The Guardian on the subject (yesterday's paper):

Where the dream of harnessing the sun's power could come true

· International reactor project gets go-ahead
· Commercial usage not guaranteed, say critics

James Randerson, science correspondent
Wednesday May 24, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1781764,00.html

The prospect of virtually limitless energy is not merely science fiction. The haunting, screaming growl of matter being smashed together at unimaginably high speed is a daily occurrence at Jet in Oxfordshire, an existing experimental fusion reactor. Jet is by far the biggest of the world's 28 fusion reactors. It is the work of scientists here that has paved the way for the much bigger Iter, which, once the project is ratified in December, will be built in Cadarache in southern France.

Its advocates say nuclear fusion is the most promising long-term solution to the energy crisis, offering the possibility of abundant power from cheap fuel with no greenhouse gases and low levels of radioactive waste. But critics say the government is gambling huge sums of money - 44% of the UK's research and development budget for energy - on a long shot with no guarantee of ever producing useful energy.

<snip>

Unlike nuclear fission, which tears atomic nuclei apart to release energy, fusion involves squeezing the nuclei of two hydrogen atoms together. This process releases a helium nucleus and a neutron plus huge quantities of energy. The hydrogen fuel is part heavy hydrogen or deuterium, which can be easily extracted from water, and part super-heavy hydrogen or tritium, which can be made from lithium, a reasonably abundant metal.

The energy produced is truly colossal. The lithium in just one laptop battery and the heavy hydrogen from half a bath of water could provide enough energy for the average European for 30 years.

One of fusion's big advantages over fission is safety. Firstly, there is no chance of a runaway meltdown as happened at Chernobyl. If you stop applying the fuel or switch off the magnetic jacket that keeps the fuel in the reactor, the reaction just stops.

"It is very difficult to keep it running. It is like keeping honey on the back of a spoon," said Mathias Brix, a physicist at Jet. Also, the quantities of fuel involved are much smaller than in fission reactors. Jet contains less than a gram of fuel, while Chernobyl had 250 tonnes. Lastly, the fuel and waste from the reactor is much less radioactive. But although physicists think they understand fusion, harnessing it has proved extremely difficult. Research first began in the 1950s with claims that fusion would provide reliable power by the end of the century but even now scientists admit that a commercial application is at least 40 years away. The problem is getting two nuclei close enough to fuse and then controlling the reaction. This means putting in huge amounts of energy at the start to convert less than a gram of the fusion fuel into a super-hot gas or plasma. Hydrogen nuclei flying around at high speed in the plasma can then come close enough together to fuse.

/lots more food for thought...

[Tesha]

7. You don't suppose that has any connection with Reagan...

You don't suppose that has any connection with Reagan
zorching all the fusion research funding when he came
into office in 1981, do you?

The momentum suddenly shifted to Europe, and that's
why ITER is being built in France rather than, say,
Princeton, NJ.

Tesha

[MadHound]

10. Fusion is not the answer to our energy problems

The tech still isn't there, and fusion, while cleaner than fission, still produces radioactive waste that we will be dealing with tens of thousands of years from now.

Meanwhile, we have two clean, renewable alernatives that can indeed supply all of our current and future electrical needs fully, here and now. All we have to do is start building. Wind and solar, that is the way to go. These two technologies are ready to go, off the shelf. And they can supply all of eletrical power, both now and in the future.

[fshrink]

11. They would if decentralized,

in a "small is beautiful manner", which is unfortunately very unlikely to happen on a large scale because that would kill the current mode of governement everywhere around the planet. Not that it would be a bad thing... Just very unlikely. In addition, the same core theoretical problems apply to the renewable and to the others: energy loss in transport, extremely poor storage, low yield...

[MadHound]

12. I agree that you would have to decentralize these two

A bit more than conventional power plants, but that really should be no obstacle to converting all of our electrical production to wind and solar. And while there is energy loss in transmission, apparently there isn't enough loss over a thousand miles to make a significant difference in profits, witness the fact that Enron slammed power into and out of California, all the way from Houston and other TX producers:shrug:

It is time we stopped waiting around for the technology of tommorrow to ride in and save us. We have the technology today to do that, let's put it to use.

[fshrink]

18. Let's remember the PC.

"Personal Computer". Which was in fact the decentralization of the computing power, by contrast with the "work-station"... That didn't go down easy and the resistance was huge from corporations. Even today with the development of server technologies the resistance to decentralizing initiative and "power", computing or otherwise, is enormous. The reason of course is that decentralization fosters autonomy, which increases the number of variables and parameters necessary to maintain control over subordinates, which makes profit more volatile, which is bad for stocks and investment, etc... So, in the end, this is not a technical question but a political one. No one, even the "greens", will take the path of what is in effect a, *the*, revolution. The best one can realistically hope for is a little more technological elegance and less waste.

[pooja]

13. I have to agree

It is easier to afix solar panels to our roofs (etc) than to come up with this idea... need to be looking at waste being the driving fuel... we have enough garbage and animal waste to deal. These are oganic compounds... Think of what happens in a compost pile... it gets really warm because of the decomposition factor... Ever seen a big (i'm talking Texas size) pile of shit catch on fire. We have enough waste sitting around.. use it up.

[Ghost Dog]

14. Excellent. Efficiency against energy mafia! 1 pile Texas shit ==

(sick, poor foodlot medicinalised unfree sad newspeak animals) 1 nuclear power station!

Insulate youselves. Be most intelligent; efficient. Vote down Bush/Cheney evil. You (still) have the power.

[DiscussTheTruth]

15. Don't solar panels still have waste associated with them? nt

nt

[Bridget Burke]

16. I hadn't heard that.

Perhaps you can supply us with the details.

At any rate, how would "waste" from solar panels stack up against nuclear waste?

[noel adamson]

17. I think just in their manufacturing process.

And, the sun being a fusion reactor, they turn fusion power into electricity.

[Tesha]

21. Depends how you feel about arsenic, acids, organic solvents, etc. (NT)

[FlaGranny]

19. Waste storage batteries maybe

and eventually the panels themselves.

[Tesha]

20. Of course they do.

> Don't solar panels still have waste associated with them?

Of course they do.

While it's true that silicon solar cells produce no
waste during their useful lifetime, it's equally true
that producing silicon solar cells is your usual high-tech
industrial process, invloving raw materials, energy
consumption, and at least some waste.

Silicon cells also eventually become waste themselves
(although they could be recycled pretty effectively).

Evaluating the total life-cycle, dust-to-dust waste
costs of *ANYTHING* is pretty complicated, but every-
thing produces waste.

Tesha