Nuclear fusion

Re: Nuclear fusion


I am not qualified to answer this but according to Wikipedia there may have been some success here recently.



The ITER project plans to be operational in 10 years, and as far as I know will likely be the first man made fusion generator



I think the real energy woe is for portable (eg automobile) energy. You can't put fusion generators in cars, and we haven't been able to perfect hydrogen fuel cells...and electric cars aren't that good



I think they can create it its just a matter of how to do so efficiently enough to make it worthwhile

specific info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion

6. Could we catch fuel for future nuclear reactors from the solar wind?



I think fusion power is an absolute necessity for long term manned space exploration because it is about the only way to get the power needed to provide power and thrust that would last long enough. As for battle ships, not unless we start a war against aliens



Everyone already knows how to make nuclear weapons

1.Thanks for your input stuh505. I know about the ITER project, I don't think it's the first man made fusion generator though. I know one of the first fusion generators was the Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor, then the TOKAMAK, and then a slew of others, all did not produce sufficient energy yields.

2.You saw Independence day right?

3.For the last question, I know everyone knows, but thanks to future technologies, does anyone think the bombs won't need urainium or plutonium to triggor the fusion reaction?

Yes, I saw independence day. Good movie! But it's not something you have to worry about in real life. There are no aliens in our solar system or nearby.

I would like to answer #5. BECAUSE THEY COULD DIE FROM RADIATION POISONING!!! End of dissertation.

Fusion cannot be sustained on earth. That is why we don't use it. In all the experiments, it takes more energy to keep the reaction going than it produces. Though, in the past year or so, I remember reading an article about a new type of fusion reactor that has been invented. In testing, it seemed to produce more energy than it consumed. It was a small (a few feet) reactor, so who knows what a full-sized one would do... But in any case, those are the reasons we don't use it currently. :-)

Are we confident enough in our knowledge of atmoic particles etc that we should be even thinking of cold fusion?

Isn't that sort of like trying to make a steel I-beam before we have even mastered the art of smelting iron?

I think we are. We can handle fission (usually). The particles used/produced in fusion are the same - only the mechanism is changed.

1. Cold fusion, tabletop fusion, has been dismissed by most of the
scientific community. In your imagination, with the advent of new
technology and greater understanding of physics, could you see these
methods of fusion being harnessed as an energy source in the future?

Yes or our understading of reality might advance to the point that fusion is old hat and we move to quantum force manipulation. For instance we disprove fields and move reality to being based on scale relativity - where the entire constrction of the universe is based on endless fractals, and we find a way to unlock zero point energy - an near infinite source.

2. When do you see nuclear fusion becoming a readily available energy
source to the world?

2040 was BT head of predicitve researchs guess - who knows as you can't predict innovations that unlock success.

3. With the fuel for the tritium deuterium reactors in high abundance,
do you see the earth's energy woes ending?

Not until we've solved 1 and 2.

4. Do you think we will strip mine the moon to get helium 3 from the
luner regolith?

Nope - too much infrastructure and better energy source may well present itself based on better undertsanding f reality and materials science.

5. What are the main reasons why scientists and engineers can't
harness nuclear fusion?

Difficult to sustain fusion past 60 seconds and leave a positive energy balance.

6. Could we catch fuel for future nuclear reactors from the solar wind?

Yes technically, but economically feasibally - unlikely.

7.Do you see fusion powered spaceships, battle ships, and satellites
in the future?

No, I think it will be a science that may be obsolecsed before it economically scales to any volume where it matters. Tap into the quantum world - billions of billion of times smaller than atoms, and harness some of there power without a structural collapse in reality, and you unlock billions of billions of times more power than fusion.

8.Do you think research on nuclear fusion will overlap with nuclear
weapons, making it easier for nations to build thermonuclear weapons?

Er no. It's pretty easy to make fusion devices if you already have fission devices really. You see it's the sourcing the enriched plutonium 239 and Uranium 238 and machining this and building an atomic fission bomb to trigger your fusion device that's almost impossible given the safe guards in place to make it effectively impossible to gather the prerequisite materials.

Well, that is a neat idea...smash some baryons together in the hopes of transmuting them. Perhaps a bottom lambda + sigma -> Sigma + bottom sigma, or something similar. But it would be much harder to harness the energy released and probably completely impossible to get the kind of pure fuel for sustainable reactions that would be required...where you gonna get lambda sigma soup? On the other hand deuterium and tritium are not so hard to come by..

Well if reality isn't best described by a field, all the rules need re-writing. And a new technological framework in the future may allow us to play with lower levels of reality and unlock far higher levels of energy.

related discussion can be found on this page:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2700654#2700654