Nuclear Fusion

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Fusion research is important, but it's not likely to "save the world" any time soon. Fusion power plants will be much like fission power plants; big expensive things that take a long time to build and many people to operate.

 

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The reason why it will save the world is because fusion power provides an incredibly large amount of energy. Think back to the nuclear bomb, in one flash of a second it can produce a gigantic and immense amount of power, a fusion bomb, explosion is 100,000 times as powerful. And this is in a fraction of a second think about keeping one going for days.

 

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But you need a fission bomb to light the fusion bomb. ;-) Teller-Ulam design kind of like double-mint gum

 

I've seen the other reactor based on lasers. All of them will need to be preciselly aligned. The world energy problems would be solved if we can find a way to bring down alot of things concerning Fusion.

Cost and power being just two.

 

I've been following these guys for a little bit...

http://focusfusion.org/

It's an interesting idea, and if it proves to be workable, would allow for much tinier reactors than the tokomaks would be; the size of an electrical substation as opposed to the size of a conventional nuclear plant. They're basically taking the idea behind a dense plasma focus device and jacking it to the highest limits to try and get the plasma energetic enough to create pulses of fusion.

This thing would be pretty sweet because, given it's potential size, it just might be usable in certain vehicles like ships or even spacecraft and aircraft.

 

the focus fusion group looks promising. The US goobermint has been off on another tangent

https://lasers.llnl.gov/

not exactly small

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Good call, Obama might be such a man to dump funds into this sorta thing. And they wouldn't even need to start fusion projects, there are plenty of underfunded projects in existence already!

I know I keep bringing up Focus Fusion (it's a favorite effort, sry!), but they're only asking for a few million as opposed to billions for projects like the NIF or ITER. The funding of hundreds of smaller projects such as Focus Fusion may not cost so much in comparison as opposed to funding the larger efforts, and who knows, they may yield a smarter way (if not a few good ways) to do fusion. At the very least, they can disprove some methods as being impossible and not worthy of future investing.

 

Keep bringing up Focus Fusion !! I guess I'm a bitter about Fusion research in the US and the National Labs . I know this is the web and all and I can say just about anything. But I did work at Los Alamos a long time ago. As a Mech. Tech, no plasma physicist or anything, I did beat a lot of them in chess.

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But it pisses me off and it's been pissing me off for close to 25 years. The crap the government < goobermint

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> has been doing. They get some good results, viable progress and then they turn it over to a weapons program. Reagen in particular. Even NIF is covering up some of their motives. They kill shit with underfunding , it's like they don't want it to work.

Magnetic vs. Lasers , yeah keep it going in both directions. There are advantages to magnetic, no fuel pellets--- gas.. in many ways it's easier. Plasma translation to another chamber looks hot <pun intended> to allow the plasma ring to expand without hitting the walls and cooling... death basically.

Sorry for ranting, but I feel it's something that could already be in place except for the misdirection that has gone on over the years. Again it pisses me off to no end.

You younger folks, don't cut them any slack , keep the pressure on them. I hope Obama does some house-cleaning. But I feel it's going to come form overseas, judging from some of the articles I have seen here... thanks btw... or it's going to be the private sector.

 

the change link is now

http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/opl/

also from wh dot gov

Over the last three decades, federal funding for the physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences has declined at a time when other countries are substantially increasing their own research budgets. President Obama and Vice President Biden believe federally funded scientific research should play an important role in advancing science and technology in the classroom and in the lab.

 

One less problem... at least we didn't get the bridge building barbie doll in the VP seat ;-)

 

About that bridge... wasn't it because there was supposed to be an airport built on the adjacent island, but since federal funds for the airport were cut during the bridge project, the bridge was rendered useless?

That's off topic though. I don't have any contacts at Focus Fusion, I'm just a guy who checks their site off and on. Plasma research and the like isn't really my field, otherwise I'd be all over it.

 

Thanks for the link. I've followed the Livermore route for decades, and they aren't getting anywhere either. They switched their fuel-implosion pellets from using lasers to 'burn-off' the outer layer, imploding the fuel, to using proton beams, but still no luck. I've thought of using proton beams on other fuels including B-11, but it'd also be tricky, and not tried as of yet.

I do believe that if the money had been spent on B-11 fusion with protons [whether via "focus fusion" type devices, or other such as proton beam on B-11], we'd have at least a workable device by now.

But as Focus Fusion points out, most of the money has been going to tokamaks. Part of the "good ol' boy" network of physics, rather like CERN and the LHC.

 

Isn't this how it already works? Physicists build experiments and then a proof-of-concept system, then engineers work to make the device economical? This is why some universities have undergrad majors like "Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering", whose students we affectionately know as "Nukies" around here.