Where are the energy experts

[konradv]

The only good long-term answer is fusion power. Contact your representitives and urge them to earmark more funds for research.

ITER - the way to new energy or

Department of Energy - Fusion

 

[konradv]

Why We Shouldn’t Give up on Nuclear Fusion

By Melanie D.G. Kaplan | Jun 21, 2010

The old joke with fusion is that it’s the energy of the future–and it always will be. But one technology research and development company executive says even if it takes another 50 years, it will still be worth the investment for clean, safe, cheap, domestically-sourced power.

Below, F. Douglas Witherspoon, president and chief scientist of HyperV Technologies Corp., answers some questions about fusion research: where it stands, where it’s headed and why it’s taking so long.

Nuclear fusion has been researched since the 1950s. Why is it taking so long to turn it into a viable energy source?

We’re essentially trying—in the lab–to make the equivalent of a tiny star that we can control long enough to get useful energy out of it. That’s an incredibly difficult thing to do.

When research began on controlled thermonuclear fusion back in the ‘50s, the scientists had just come off successfully making the hydrogen bomb in a relatively short period of time, so it was pretty clear that it was possible. Everyone was excited that [fusion] could be accomplished in the same kind of time frame. But they did not realize the true difficulty of the task and ended up having to develop a whole new scientific discipline to learn about plasmas–the stuff stars are made of. It turns out that plasma is finicky and doesn’t like to be confined for very long. As a result, scientists have spent the last five decades conducting basic research to map out the science needed to make nuclear fusion a viable source of energy.

What are the different approaches to controlled nuclear fusion?

There are really only two generic approaches right now to making a fusion reactor:

Magnetic Confinement: The mainline approach uses magnetic fields to form a non-material “bottle” to contain the plasma in a steady state. A tokamak reactor such as the ITER experiment now under construction in France is the leading example of this type of reactor.

Inertial Confinement: An imploding shell of dense plasma is used to crush and ignite a fuel target to trigger a fusion reaction. The best example is laser fusion now being tested at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California.

An imploding ball of plasma is created in an experiment using a ring of 64 small plasma jets to partially simulate the forces needed to ignite fuel inside a full scale PJMIF reactor.
What’s the next big goal for fusion research, and when might it be achieved?

The next really big milestone is to demonstrate what is termed “net gain,” which means getting more energy out of the reaction than what is put in. The laser fusion effort at the National Ignition Facility appears to be very close to achieving this with their big new laser that came online recently. They might actually demonstrate ignition, as they call it, within the next year. That will be exciting.

What evidence do we have that nuclear fusion might work?

Go stand outside on a sunny day and feel the heat from a nuclear fusion reactor that is about 93 million miles away. The sun is using its tremendous mass–or gravitational confinement–to drive the nuclear fusion reactions in its core. Obviously we need to accomplish the same thing but on a smaller scale. Both the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor experiment at Princeton and the JET experiment in the U.K. demonstrated multi-megawatts of fusion power output several years ago. Some laser fusion experiments have also produced some fusion energy output. These experiments haven’t achieved net gain yet, but they are getting much closer.

What are the potential benefits of nuclear fusion as a sustainable source of energy?

Nuclear fusion has a number of advantages:

It has zero emissions;
It doesn’t require importing fuel (you get it from seawater);
It’s safe. There’s no chance of a meltdown, and there’s no high-level radioactive waste generated;
It has a tremendous fuel energy density:
Four drums of fuel equals roughly a 21,000-boxcar train of coal;
Its powerplant footprint is small;
It enables a robust power grid–plants can be located in and around consumers;
Its power can be produced either on demand or 24/7;
It creates domestic high tech jobs;
Its reactor technology is suitable for export.
What type of nuclear fusion approach is HyperV researching?

HyperV is part of a larger research community developing the Plasma Jet Magneto Inertial Fusion (PJMIF) concept, which is kind of a hybrid approach between inertial confinement and magnetic confinement. Instead of using lasers to drive the implosion on a fuel target, the PJMIF approach uses high-performance plasma guns to produce a spherically imploding plasma shell that crushes a magnetized plasma fuel target at the center of the reactor. The shock waves produced by the implosion create–for a tiny fraction of a second–the pressures and temperatures required to achieve fusion ignition. The embedded magnetic field in the target plasma aids in confining the energy just long enough to keep it hot and fusing, and it substantially reduces the energy required in the plasma jets.

What’s a rough estimate as to how long it will take to develop a commercially viable fusion reactor?

If experiments over the next four or five years are successful, then we would need perhaps 15 years to develop a PJMIF-type reactor that can demonstrate net gain, and probably another five to 10 years to develop a reactor suitable for commercial power generation. This assumes steady and increasingly aggressive research and development funding.

We have wind and solar energy now. Why take so much time and money to develop fusion?

Because clean, plentiful energy for everybody is going to completely transform the world. Even if it took another 50 years, it would clearly still be worth it. Using energy more efficiently, along with the further development of wind and solar technologies are a great start. But they don’t provide a complete solution and almost certainly not for baseload energy needs. You could think of today’s cleantech technologies as the first wave of a multi-decade effort to provide the world with clean energy. Nuclear fusion is arguably the second wave of that effort. It has not only the potential to be clean, but also the capacity to support a thriving and sustainable human civilization pretty much indefinitely.

Why we shouldn’t give up on nuclear fusion - SmartPlanet

 

[JiggsCasey]

nevermind that 50 more years of hopeful fusion research puts us about 45 years PAST collapse in the wake of massive petroleum shortfall, making the financing for this ambition impossible. Fusion, on its best day, will do nothing for plastics, rubber, asphalt, fertilizer, pesticide, medicines, refrigeration, and computer chip lubrication industries completely reliant on oil.

there are no silver bullets in this predicament... and rosie, optimistic reports by journalists in business magazines on projects like these always require critical analysis, close inspection, and lots of relevant perspective (preferably by scientists) . ...

The Fusion Myth

Confining a little sun inside a box is an extremely difficult task for three main reasons. First, the nuclear fuel is not seawater, but a mixture of the two heavy isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, a radioactive element that has been produced in small quantities for hydrogen bombs. Any development of fusion reactors would require producing tritium with industrial methods that have yet to be invented.

Second, the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction starts at around 100 million degrees. To achieve this requires using a magnet to accelerate a plasma that is a big flame of deuterium and tritium nuclei. This must be done in a ultra-high vacuum in a large chamber. ITER is not designed to produce electricity, but to study the stability of the flame in the magnet. Since the fusion reactions produce alpha particles, which pollute the plasma, one has to insert a “divertor” inside the flame at 100 million degrees in order to clean it. Nobody has ever accomplished this, but ITER may be able to try around 2030 – that is, if it solves the previous problem.

Third, fusion also emits neutrons that will produce helium gas bubbles inside the wall material, which tends to explode. The supporters of ITER explain that if the walls are porous, the bubbles can escape. But nothing can be both leak-proof and porous, and ITER is not designed to study this contradiction. In the future, a “blanket” should be inserted between the plasma and the walls, with two objectives: to protect the outer walls and to produce tritium from nuclear reactions within a circulating fluid containing lithium. This might work, but the first wall of the blanket will need to be not only leak-proof and porous, but also sufficiently permeable to neutrons, which have to hit the lithium atoms beyond it.​

 

[JiggsCasey]

second post in this thread

You say what,

Dementia must be a terrible disease.

As Old Crock can see he cannot respond, Old Crock has no facts, Old Crock has not the intelligence to even engage, at this point all Old Crock can do is hide in shame.

now there's some stunningly poetic irony, tool box.

 

[editec]

What percentage of solar power currently is part of the electricity mix in the US?
The amount of solar power that is currently part of the electricity mix in the U.S. is quite small. According to the Annual Energy Review of 1999 provided by the EIA, 0.076 quadrillion BTU's of energy were produced by solar power. This is about 0.1% of the overall 72.523 quadrillion BTU's produced in the U.S. This percentage is dwarfed by the 57.673 quadrillion BTU's, or 80% of the total, produced using fossil fuels. Coal alone produced 52% of the electricity produced in the US in 1999.

source

Currently the best investment we can make toward energy independent is probably money spent REDUCING wasted energy use.

The difference can be rather enormous, for example, when building new homes, newer insulating techniques are giving those homes enormous savings at modest cost.

Previously we insulated our homes using fiberglass insulation.

But the problem with that is that depite near perfect installation (which almost never happens in real life!) , those homes still suffer from micro leaks which jet cold air though the home.

However spraying insulation on interior of the exterior walls (in new construction) elimates those leaks down to virtually nothing and increases the R factor enormously....by nearly 50% savings for heating the home.

Therefore, I'd say our best energy investment is STILL to invest in building techniques that conserve energy us, as well as to invest in more energy efficiencies in our cars and appliances.

My older home was recently retro fitted for more efficient use of heating oil.

The investment cost for that additional insutlation and repairs to increase efficiency was about $17,000.

I can expect about a 25% increase in home heating efficiency per year as a result of that investment.

This same style house, if it had been built with spray on insulating foam originally, would use about half as much energy to heat it as I can expect now.

 

[JiggsCasey]

Currently the best investment we can make toward energy independent is probably money spent REDUCING wasted energy use.

absolutely correct...

serious, yet sensible conservation methods is the very best alternative...

unfortunately, conservation doesn't fit into the model of "infinite growth" and "gluttonous consumption" promoted by most cons. ... heck, look how bad cons freak out with endless vitriolic indignation when cities ban their rights to ingest transfats in public restaurants.

"how dare liberal tree huggers tell me i can't poison myself or waste fuel!!! I'm an AMERICAN damnit!!!!"

endless loops of dumbosity.

 

[editec]

A 20 or 30% reduction in overall energy consumption equates to one hell of a lot of nuclear plants.

And the cost is probably cheaper than those plants, too.

Not that it matters, since the energy companies aren't about to build the things as long as they cannot find a way to insure them against accidents.

The so-called invisible hand of the market (rather than tree huggers) has been preventing the development of nuke energy in this nation for the last 30 years.

 

[konradv]

nevermind that 50 more years of hopeful fusion research puts us about 45 years PAST collapse in the wake of massive petroleum shortfall, making the financing for this ambition impossible. Fusion, on its best day, will do nothing for plastics, rubber, asphalt, fertilizer, pesticide, medicines, refrigeration, and computer chip lubrication industries completely reliant on oil.
---------------------------------

You're missing the point. With the amount of energy available from fusion all the things you mention could be synthesized WITHOUT the use of petroleum.

 

[konradv]

How is fusion a myth? The author points out problems and assumes we either won't be able to solve them, something he can't possibly know, or assumes they'll take over a hundred years to solve, 50 more than most who work in the area predict. Admittedly it's going to be a while in the future, but nothing I've read indicates it's impossible and downplaying its importance only pushes the final goal even futher into the future. We can't wait for the ultimate solution until petroleum is almost exhausted. It'll be way too late.

 

[JiggsCasey]

How is fusion a myth? The author points out problems and assumes we either won't be able to solve them, something he can't possibly know, or assumes they'll take over a hundred years to solve, 50 more than most who work in the area predict. Admittedly it's going to be a while in the future, but nothing I've read indicates it's impossible and downplaying its importance only pushes the final goal even futher into the future. We can't wait for the ultimate solution until petroleum is almost exhausted. It'll be way too late.

It already is too late. Read what I wrote. We don't have 50 years. Collapse is starting right now.

Who's going to have the capital to invest in "making a star" 50 years into the draw down of industrial civilization? You're seeing what's happening in the world right now, yes? The FDIC is bankrupt, U.S. states are insolvent, the feds will no longer extend unemployment aid to states, 15-20% of the population is out of real work, the Gulf Coast is ruined, the EU is dissolving, we're posturing for war on Iran, the Saudis are injecting sea water into their biggest fields to pump what's left.

It's too late for 50-100-year projects. Should have listened to Carter and started getting off petroleum 30 years ago. We're in the beginning stages of collapse. Accept it.

nevermind that 50 more years of hopeful fusion research puts us about 45 years PAST collapse in the wake of massive petroleum shortfall, making the financing for this ambition impossible. Fusion, on its best day, will do nothing for plastics, rubber, asphalt, fertilizer, pesticide, medicines, refrigeration, and computer chip lubrication industries completely reliant on oil.
---------------------------------

You're missing the point. With the amount of energy available from fusion all the things you mention could be synthesized WITHOUT the use of petroleum.

No, YOU'RE missing the point. Oil isn't just the energy used to make those products. Oil is actually IN those products. How does fusion "synthesize" plastic, or nitrogen-based fertilizer?

 

[konradv]

How is fusion a myth? The author points out problems and assumes we either won't be able to solve them, something he can't possibly know, or assumes they'll take over a hundred years to solve, 50 more than most who work in the area predict. Admittedly it's going to be a while in the future, but nothing I've read indicates it's impossible and downplaying its importance only pushes the final goal even futher into the future. We can't wait for the ultimate solution until petroleum is almost exhausted. It'll be way too late.

It already is too late. Read what I wrote. We don't have 50 years. Collapse is starting right now.

Who's going to have the capital to invest in "making a star" 50 years into the draw down of industrial civilization? You're seeing what's happening in the world right now, yes? The FDIC is bankrupt, U.S. states are insolvent, the feds will no longer extend unemployment aid to states, 15-20% of the population is out of real work, the Gulf Coast is ruined, the EU is dissolving, we're posturing for war on Iran, the Saudis are injecting sea water into their biggest fields to pump what's left.

It's too late for 50-100-year projects. Should have listened to Carter and started getting off petroleum 30 years ago. We're in the beginning stages of collapse. Accept it.

nevermind that 50 more years of hopeful fusion research puts us about 45 years PAST collapse in the wake of massive petroleum shortfall, making the financing for this ambition impossible. Fusion, on its best day, will do nothing for plastics, rubber, asphalt, fertilizer, pesticide, medicines, refrigeration, and computer chip lubrication industries completely reliant on oil.
---------------------------------

You're missing the point. With the amount of energy available from fusion all the things you mention could be synthesized WITHOUT the use of petroleum.

No, YOU'RE missing the point. Oil isn't just the energy used to make those products. Oil is actually IN those products. How does fusion "synthesize" plastic, or nitrogen-based fertilizer?

With enough energy you can fly a brick!!! Fusion produces the energy to synthesize anything you want from available building blocks, whatever they may be, and it definitely doen't have to be oil.

 

[JiggsCasey]

With enough energy you can fly a brick!!! Fusion produces the energy to synthesize anything you want from available building blocks, whatever they may be, and it definitely doen't have to be oil.

Please tell the forum how fusion can synthesize plastic. A substance which is MADE from oil. Not just BY oil in the process of making it, but the actual substance itself.

 

[konradv]

The substances from which plastic can be created are all around us, not just in oil. The situation now is that, getting them from oil is the most economical way to go. Given high levels of cheap energy, those substances could be used and the need to drill for oil eliminated. Therefore fusion doesn't create plastic, it gives us the means to create it out of more easily obtained materials.

 

[JiggsCasey]

The substances from which plastic can be created are all around us, not just in oil. The situation now is that, getting them from oil is the most economical way to go. Given high levels of cheap energy, those substances could be used and the need to drill for oil eliminated. Therefore fusion doesn't create plastic, it gives us the means to create it out of more easily obtained materials.

Then you should have said that. That rationale is very different from what you earlier stated.

Very well. Let's pretend star-creation, or fusion, saves us all in 30-50 years. ... Please link to the "other" substances that can be used to create plastics on a mass commercial scale. Then account for everything else that uses oil, like nitrogen-based fertilizers, pesticides, medicines, cosmetics, road pavement, computer chips, rubber, to name a small few.

As for the bolded above, you've just underscored the entire point. There is nothing else ready that will be "economical" any time soon.

 

[konradv]

The substances from which plastic can be created are all around us, not just in oil. The situation now is that, getting them from oil is the most economical way to go. Given high levels of cheap energy, those substances could be used and the need to drill for oil eliminated. Therefore fusion doesn't create plastic, it gives us the means to create it out of more easily obtained materials.

Then you should have said that. That rationale is very different from what you earlier stated.

Very well. Let's pretend star-creation, or fusion, saves us all in 30-50 years. ... Please link to the "other" substances that can be used to create plastics on a mass commercial scale. Then account for everything else that uses oil, like nitrogen-based fertilizers, pesticides, medicines, cosmetics, road pavement, computer chips, rubber, to name a small few.

As for the bolded above, you've just underscored the entire point. There is nothing else ready that will be "economical" any time soon.

Sorry you have to have every little detail spelled out for you. Plastics are carbon based, as are lawn clippings. Given enough energy, you can turn one into the other. I'm not suggesting we should stop drilling or using oil immediately, just that we need to be spending more money on research. Given the economic growth that would ensue, today's deficits would be no more than an interesting historical side note. Also, the danger of war worldwide would diminish as living standards improve. People that are happy and comfortable in their lives, usually don't start beating the war drums.

 

[JiggsCasey]

Sorry you have to have every little detail spelled out for you. Plastics are carbon based, as are lawn clippings. Given enough energy, you can turn one into the other. I'm not suggesting we should stop drilling or using oil immediately, just that we need to be spending more money on research. Given the economic growth that would ensue, today's deficits would be no more than an interesting historical side note. Also, the danger of war worldwide would diminish as living standards improve. People that are happy and comfortable in their lives, usually don't start beating the war drums.

Actually, they most certainly do. Evidenced by 2002 and 2003 when it was gluttonous well-to-do cons lapping up all the WMD fraud and pumping war dreams without examining ANY critical analysis whatsoever.

I agree with you that investment needs/needed to start immediately on alternative research. Should have started 30 years ago, but our arrogance impeded such progress.

But you're talking, essentially, about star-creation. Maybe, MAYBE 35-50 years away from even being workable. This is about time frame in the face of collapse. It's too late for the Star Trek stuff, as we'll see within 5 years, when investment all but dries up entirely.

 

[konradv]

rdean, forgive me if I do not put your post in quotes, that is very redundant and useless when addressing small portions.

I am all for research into solar (not wind, wind is definately proven dead).

What your article leaves out is much, millions of gallons of water are needed for solar, increase the solar panels to an area needed to supply industry with power and then solar needs trillions of gallons of water.

Can a solar farm supply the electricity to pump trillions of gallons of water to the desert? Not in the near future.

Is water better used for farming, yes, what does the diversion of trillions of gallons of water do to the cost of food or even the availability of food.

I got more but this is the most significant obstacle that solar cannot overcome.

Any thoughts.

LOL. Now why don't you just explain how you got that out of the article on solar electrical generation in Germany?

And there are now solar cells that have over 40% efficiency in the labs. Most are thin film type that are very easy to create, one, qdot, can be created using a system very like ink jet printing.

This shows how stupid Old Crock is, 40% efficiency, prove it, whats the benchmark, what are you comparing them to? So Solar Panels under perfect conditions, labratory conditions are wasting 60% of its resources, add that to the 33% conversion loss, add that to the fact that they can only use the sun 30% of the time and Old Crock's Solar Panels are 1.3% effecient.

1.3% effecient, nice solar panel.

Now for the fun part, this is why Old Crock ignores much of what I post, its too embrassing for Old Crock when I take his comments and show the stupidity of Old Crock.

What your article leaves out is much, millions of gallons of water are needed for solar, increase the solar panels to an area needed to supply industry with power and then solar needs trillions of gallons of water.

LOL. Now why don't you just explain how you got that out of the article on solar electrical generation in Germany?

Old Crock, when someone states, "leaves out", that means its missing from the ariticle. Missing means its not there, as in Old Crock is missing much of his brain cells do to Dementia.

So if Old Crock's solar panel is 1.3% effecient how will it pump all that water Solar energy needs.

Your math is screwy. Assuming all your other numbers are correct, and that may be a stretch, 40% X 33% X 30% = 4%!!!