The Future is Fusion

[Charles_Main]

this will be a waste commensurate with the amount of resources spent on it. fusion is a way of consuming energy, not making it. there is only a slim chance that this character can ever be overturned. very, very slim. where would that leave it in terms of an efficient source of energy?

Where do you source that claim that the chances are very very slim. The scientists working on it say it is not if but when it will become a feesable power source.

i'm a chemical engineer. i've endured a good bit of physics which i think adds some crucial perspective to the idea that it is as feasible as is popular to believe. there isn't consensus on the viability of fusion for energy. it plays out in experiments -- all of them -- up to this point. the current approach to fusion employs tritium which takes energy to produce. energy is even expended extracting deuterium, the other main ingredient. sustained energy has to be introduced to create the reaction and sustain it. notwithstanding the ancillary costs in refining the fuel, the energy put in has never, and might never be less than what is available from the reaction.

we have a fusion generator, the sun, it is responsible for wind, waves and rain -- all the energy on the planet. there could be viability to fusion. i dont think it is as clear as abandoning all other sources before a proof of concept defies the math which dictates you cant make energy out of nothing.

Well you said it all when you said "the current approach to fusion employs tritium which takes energy to produce. "

I would assume an advancement beyond that method is what they are counting on.

 

[konradv]

Fusion energy is limitless and waste free. But more to the point, when it becomes commercially viable not only will it solve nearly all of earth’s energy problems, it will also combat CO2 emissions and make redundant the wave energy, solar panel and windpower installations that currently pollute the landscape and will do so for years to come. However, geo-thermal energy will be useful.

Excerpt from: The future is fusion - On Line Opinion - 7/9/2010

I do so enjoy it when people prove they know less about science than the average idiot. Nothing is limitless. Everything produces waste. What makes hydrogen fusion attractive is that helium is not something that most people consider a pollutant. What makes it dangerous is that we have to figure out a way to build a star and contain it.

How is that dangerous? If you don't contain it, the reaction stops, no danger, very low radiation. I don't see how you can talk about others being idiots, when you failed to realize such a basic principle of fusion power generation!!!

 

[antagon]

Where do you source that claim that the chances are very very slim. The scientists working on it say it is not if but when it will become a feesable power source.

i'm a chemical engineer. i've endured a good bit of physics which i think adds some crucial perspective to the idea that it is as feasible as is popular to believe. there isn't consensus on the viability of fusion for energy. it plays out in experiments -- all of them -- up to this point. the current approach to fusion employs tritium which takes energy to produce. energy is even expended extracting deuterium, the other main ingredient. sustained energy has to be introduced to create the reaction and sustain it. notwithstanding the ancillary costs in refining the fuel, the energy put in has never, and might never be less than what is available from the reaction.

we have a fusion generator, the sun, it is responsible for wind, waves and rain -- all the energy on the planet. there could be viability to fusion. i dont think it is as clear as abandoning all other sources before a proof of concept defies the math which dictates you cant make energy out of nothing.

Well you said it all when you said "the current approach to fusion employs tritium which takes energy to produce. "

I would assume an advancement beyond that method is what they are counting on.

actually they are counting on deuterium and tritium netting more energy than the laser input and the gravity/automation required to sustain it. do you have any indication that any credible study is engaged in exploring different fuels?

 

[Charles_Main]

i'm a chemical engineer. i've endured a good bit of physics which i think adds some crucial perspective to the idea that it is as feasible as is popular to believe. there isn't consensus on the viability of fusion for energy. it plays out in experiments -- all of them -- up to this point. the current approach to fusion employs tritium which takes energy to produce. energy is even expended extracting deuterium, the other main ingredient. sustained energy has to be introduced to create the reaction and sustain it. notwithstanding the ancillary costs in refining the fuel, the energy put in has never, and might never be less than what is available from the reaction.

we have a fusion generator, the sun, it is responsible for wind, waves and rain -- all the energy on the planet. there could be viability to fusion. i dont think it is as clear as abandoning all other sources before a proof of concept defies the math which dictates you cant make energy out of nothing.

Well you said it all when you said "the current approach to fusion employs tritium which takes energy to produce. "

I would assume an advancement beyond that method is what they are counting on.

actually they are counting on deuterium and tritium netting more energy than the laser input and the gravity/automation required to sustain it. do you have any indication that any credible study is engaged in exploring different fuels?

of course not, that is why I said. I would assume.

 

[Bill Angel]

Fusion energy is limitless and waste free. But more to the point, when it becomes commercially viable not only will it solve nearly all of earth’s energy problems, it will also combat CO2 emissions and make redundant the wave energy, solar panel and windpower installations that currently pollute the landscape and will do so for years to come. However, geo-thermal energy will be useful.

Excerpt from: The future is fusion - On Line Opinion - 7/9/2010

Last I heard experts believed viable application of this technology was still 50 years away.

Have they revised that number at all?

50 years would be the outside number. That could be brought much closer, if we made it a national priority, like the Space Race. How long would it take to have viable solar and wind generating plants? Not much less, IMO, so why waste the time, since in about double that 50 years oil will be running dry?

There is a company planning to place solar collectors in outer space, and beam the power down to earth as microwave energy. If this system works out, it would provide the advantages of a source of solar power without the problems of cloud cover interrupting the flow of energy from the sun. Such a scheme seems more practical than attempting to achieve the goal of contained nuclear fusion as a productive energy source.
See:
PG&E makes deal for space solar power

 

[Charles_Main]

Last I heard experts believed viable application of this technology was still 50 years away.

Have they revised that number at all?

50 years would be the outside number. That could be brought much closer, if we made it a national priority, like the Space Race. How long would it take to have viable solar and wind generating plants? Not much less, IMO, so why waste the time, since in about double that 50 years oil will be running dry?

There is a company planning to place solar collectors in outer space, and beam the power down to earth as microwave energy. If this system works out, it would provide the advantages of a source of solar power without the problems of cloud cover interrupting the flow of energy from the sun. Such a scheme seems more practical than attempting to achieve the goal of contained nuclear fusion as a productive energy source.
See:
PG&E makes deal for space solar power

People felt the same way about Nuclear energy before it was developed.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Fusion energy is limitless and waste free. But more to the point, when it becomes commercially viable not only will it solve nearly all of earth’s energy problems, it will also combat CO2 emissions and make redundant the wave energy, solar panel and windpower installations that currently pollute the landscape and will do so for years to come. However, geo-thermal energy will be useful.

Excerpt from: The future is fusion - On Line Opinion - 7/9/2010

I do so enjoy it when people prove they know less about science than the average idiot. Nothing is limitless. Everything produces waste. What makes hydrogen fusion attractive is that helium is not something that most people consider a pollutant. What makes it dangerous is that we have to figure out a way to build a star and contain it.

How is that dangerous? If you don't contain it, the reaction stops, no danger, very low radiation. I don't see how you can talk about others being idiots, when you failed to realize such a basic principle of fusion power generation!!!

That is the theory, but until it is actually put into practice no one actually knows. In a self sustaining reaction the time between the collapse of the containment field and the breakdown of the reaction could present a significant danger. One of the reasons most scientist are looking at using lasers to create the fusion reaction is to lessen, or eliminate this danger. The safety interlocks are designed to shut off the lasers if the containment field starts to collapse.

Now that I have demonstrated that I know the rudiments of what I am talking about, this still relies on a technological fail safe. If you actually believe that there is no way that this technology will fail, then you are an even bigger idiot than I thought when I first responded to this thread.

 

[loosecannon]

Fusion energy is limitless and waste free. But more to the point, when it becomes commercially viable not only will it solve nearly all of earth’s energy problems, it will also combat CO2 emissions and make redundant the wave energy, solar panel and windpower installations that currently pollute the landscape and will do so for years to come. However, geo-thermal energy will be useful.

Excerpt from: The future is fusion - On Line Opinion - 7/9/2010

Last I heard experts believed viable application of this technology was still 50 years away.

Have they revised that number at all?

YES! A fusion generator was activated about a year ago for almost a second. It worked. The problem is that it produced enough power to satisfy the entire east coast power grid and there is no way to scale it down yet. Even finding safe ways to waste extra energy in those volumes is a huge problem.

Those folks say they just have a few of those kinds of glitches to over come before it is ready for prime time.

 

[loosecannon]

Last I heard experts believed viable application of this technology was still 50 years away.

Have they revised that number at all?

50 years would be the outside number. That could be brought much closer, if we made it a national priority, like the Space Race. How long would it take to have viable solar and wind generating plants? Not much less, IMO, so why waste the time, since in about double that 50 years oil will be running dry?

There is a company planning to place solar collectors in outer space, and beam the power down to earth as microwave energy. If this system works out, it would provide the advantages of a source of solar power without the problems of cloud cover interrupting the flow of energy from the sun. Such a scheme seems more practical than attempting to achieve the goal of contained nuclear fusion as a productive energy source.
See:
PG&E makes deal for space solar power

a friend of mine engineered this technology 30+ years ago but there were considerable problems with damage to the upper atmosphere caused by the microwave beams. The Feds paid for several million $ in engineering work and never used it for military applications (star wars).

 

[antagon]

Fusion energy is limitless and waste free. But more to the point, when it becomes commercially viable not only will it solve nearly all of earth’s energy problems, it will also combat CO2 emissions and make redundant the wave energy, solar panel and windpower installations that currently pollute the landscape and will do so for years to come. However, geo-thermal energy will be useful.

Excerpt from: The future is fusion - On Line Opinion - 7/9/2010

Last I heard experts believed viable application of this technology was still 50 years away.

Have they revised that number at all?

YES! A fusion generator was activated about a year ago for almost a second. It worked. The problem is that it produced enough power to satisfy the entire east coast power grid and there is no way to scale it down yet. Even finding safe ways to waste extra energy in those volumes is a huge problem.

Those folks say they just have a few of those kinds of glitches to over come before it is ready for prime time.

nah. bogus.

 

[Charles_Main]

Last I heard experts believed viable application of this technology was still 50 years away.

Have they revised that number at all?

YES! A fusion generator was activated about a year ago for almost a second. It worked. The problem is that it produced enough power to satisfy the entire east coast power grid and there is no way to scale it down yet. Even finding safe ways to waste extra energy in those volumes is a huge problem.

Those folks say they just have a few of those kinds of glitches to over come before it is ready for prime time.

nah. bogus.

It is hard to find ways to waste energy? BS

Set up a massive Plant that uses Electricity to separate Hydrogen from Water.

That technology exists but takes to much power to be practical. Unless of course you have a bunch of Energy you need to "waste" lol

 

[loosecannon]

Last I heard experts believed viable application of this technology was still 50 years away.

Have they revised that number at all?

YES! A fusion generator was activated about a year ago for almost a second. It worked. The problem is that it produced enough power to satisfy the entire east coast power grid and there is no way to scale it down yet. Even finding safe ways to waste extra energy in those volumes is a huge problem.

Those folks say they just have a few of those kinds of glitches to over come before it is ready for prime time.

nah. bogus.

I spent 5 minutes and couldn't find a link. But I did find references to it in wiki, I will look into it more later.

 

[loosecannon]

It is hard to find ways to waste energy? BS

Set up a massive Plant that uses Electricity to separate Hydrogen from Water.

That technology exists but takes to much power to be practical. Unless of course you have a bunch of Energy you need to "waste" lol

Electrolysis is not very efficient. And the problem isn't wasting energy, it is wasting copious volumes of energy safely. So far the fusion plants built for experimentation only run for a second or less because they don't have the metalurgy or materials science developed to handle the half million degree temps that can be produced. And wasting megawatts of power instantaneously in a safe way actually is quite challenging.

 

[antagon]

YES! A fusion generator was activated about a year ago for almost a second. It worked. The problem is that it produced enough power to satisfy the entire east coast power grid and there is no way to scale it down yet. Even finding safe ways to waste extra energy in those volumes is a huge problem.

Those folks say they just have a few of those kinds of glitches to over come before it is ready for prime time.

nah. bogus.

I spent 5 minutes and couldn't find a link. But I did find references to it in wiki, I will look into it more later.

it doesn't sound like a fusion reaction. within that close-to-a-second frame, enough power to satisfy the east coast power grid would have to be applied to the reaction for a small net gain. to net enough power to light the east coast, enough power to light north america would have to be applied to roughly throw some proportion to the proceeds which scientists hope to glean from fusion.

its my understanding that there has never been a net surplus experiment.

 

[loosecannon]

nah. bogus.

I spent 5 minutes and couldn't find a link. But I did find references to it in wiki, I will look into it more later.

it doesn't sound like a fusion reaction. within that close-to-a-second frame, enough power to satisfy the east coast power grid would have to be applied to the reaction for a small net gain. to net enough power to light the east coast, enough power to light north america would have to be applied to roughly throw some proportion to the proceeds which scientists hope to glean from fusion.

its my understanding that there has never been a net surplus experiment.

enough energy to light the east coast for 1/2 second isn't all that much energy, and could be stored over a long period of time into condensors which have the property of being ideal for sudden release of electrical charge.

its my understanding that there has never been a net surplus experiment.

That is true but misleading. Initiating the reaction consumes a lot of power, and once initiated the reaction produces heat as high as 6 million degrees. But there is no capacity to either contain that heat or use that energy safely. So all the tests to date have to run for very short moments and then abort the reaction before the heat produced becomes dangerous.

There isn't any reason to believe that once initiated the reaction couldn't produce extremely copious volumes of energy if it is sustained. And at huge net energy gains. We just do not have a safe way to consume the energy as quickly as it is produced.

 

[antagon]

lighting the east for a 1/2 second is a massive amount of energy, particularly from a reaction which has not released more energy than has been contributed to it. this could be in the terajoules territory, like a fusion-fission weapon. this is not the same as what might constitute a fusion or fission power plant.

because the proposals for fusion power are more sophisticated than a 1/2 second bomb blast, the issue is not solely one of capturing net energy, it is one of generating a surplus and sustaining a reaction altogether. this has yet to be done. more energy is used to initiate the reaction than is made available from the reaction, some 20%-30% more -- every time to date.

 

[loosecannon]

lighting the east for a 1/2 second is a massive amount of energy, particularly from a reaction which has not released more energy than has been contributed to it. this could be in the terajoules territory, like a fusion-fission weapon. this is not the same as what might constitute a fusion or fission power plant.

because the proposals for fusion power are more sophisticated than a 1/2 second bomb blast, the issue is not solely one of capturing net energy, it is one of generating a surplus and sustaining a reaction altogether. this has yet to be done. more energy is used to initiate the reaction than is made available from the reaction, some 20%-30% more -- every time to date.

I could just repeat my last post or try to explain it in better detail...

The ONLY reason why the experiments consume more energy than they create is because they have to be aborted after they consume the energy needed to initiate the reaction but before the reaction begins generating the 6 million degree operating temps it would generate if they didn't abort within 1/2 second.

There is simply no way to use that heat rapidly enough and therefore safely cool the unit that contains the reaction.

So the net loss argument is moot.

And enough energy to light the east coast for 1/2 second is really not that much power. Certainly less than what one coal fired power plant produces in a day. It can be stored into condensors over a long period of time and released at the speed of light in one spark if need be. You don't even need to worry much about wire size to conduct that current because the wire doesn't have enough time in half a second to overheat. The wire is it's own heat sink.

The ONLY thing that hasn't been proven to work in fusion power generation is a means to contain it while consuming it's massive energy output safely. The challenges are therefore of materials science and in converting so much heat into more useful power forms.

 

[antagon]

what you are saying is not accurate, cannon. can you provide anything to substantiate what you are claiming to be true? ITER doesn't entail an event like you describe; JET doesn't -- they have literally put more energy into the reaction than they have been able to measure coming back out thus far. no net energy means that the reactor has not created more energy than was introduced and that means, intuitively, that there is not enough energy for the reaction to persist under its own power. endothermic, although radioinductive.

the idea is to produce a reaction that can sustain itself and heat a reactor. not a reality that i'm aware of, and not because of containment or exploitation issues, but rather because its endothermic. i think the cutting edge entails exposing fissile matter to the neutron storm in the hope that that would bump up the usable power and dampen the radiation induction: theory that i read in a society newsletter.

 

[loosecannon]

what you are saying is not accurate, cannon. can you provide anything to substantiate what you are claiming to be true? ITER doesn't entail an event like you describe; JET doesn't -- they have literally put more energy into the reaction than they have been able to measure coming back out thus far. no net energy means that the reactor has not created more energy than was introduced and that means, intuitively, that there is not enough energy for the reaction to persist under its own power. .

asked and answered twice. The only energy input required in a fusion reaction is that to superheat hydrogen to sufficient temps to initiate a fusion reaction. Beyond that point no energy input is required. Only more hydrogen.

The experiments to date have succeeded in initiating the reaction but simply lack the means to allow the experiment to achieve the 6 million degree temps that fusion of hydrogen generates. So they are forced to run the experiment for extremely short periods, less than a second, during which time the temps only reach about a half million degrees.

The reaction is proven, it powers the sun, the ability to initiate it is proven. The ability to sustain it and deal with the heat involved is not. There are no means yet to convert that heat into other forms of energy fast enough to avoid destroying any containment vessel we are capable of creating today.

I am not aware of a single material whose melting point is above 10,000 degrees. Much less 500,000 degrees or 6,000,000 degrees

What part of that explanation challenges you?

 

[antagon]

you've not answered what experiment in which reactor you are referring to.

the part of your explanation which challenges my understanding is the gross inaccuracy. in all experiments of which i am aware, plasma has not been affected at a temperature which could sustain the reaction, if it is sustainable without external input. this is why there is a laser race over fusion technology. there's no way that could be mistaken for exothermic to the degree you've claimed. to my knowledge, not a single trial has ever given off more energy than was applied to it.

certainly your claims constitute ground-breaking proof of concept. provide a link.