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True, not to mention that there is no way it would be able to take in enough rainwater in if it wasn't in Seattle. Its still a step in the right direction though.
 


Wow, thanks for sharing. I wonder where they get their energy from?



There has been a successful attempt at making a miniature star inside a vacuum system. Google it. It is quite cool.



Good plan. However, current electrical engineering does not permit such flexibility in power management. Basically, when the battery fails, it will take a while for the grid to energize and provide a current to establishments. Maybe you could solve that for us.



Yes, in Western states, there are state and federal grants for placing panels along your house. However, they are not much and the silicon is expensive! They pay themselves in 10-12 years though!



No. To provide a new way...a new system of power generation. Oil will be around until all its uses can be synthesized in labs that can fully fabricate necessary material that is composed of oil and its products.



I believe that statement. Do I know it is true, not really.



The Sun uses a Prodium-Prodium reaction. When 2 Prodium isotopes collide, they release a neutrino and gamma packet. Then they become Deuterium. Then a Deuterium-Deuterium or a Deuterium-Tritium reaction occurs, yielding a stable He4 isotope and a neutron,( but only a neutron in a D-T reaction). The D-D reaction yields thermal energy. However, the energy rating for such reaction is about 8-16 MeV output.



your statement yields a point, however, we do not need that much energy per second to power the Earth. A simple Tokamak such as ITER, would provide a complete state or many states with the necessary power for one year with 1 tonne of either Deuterium and Tritium or Helium-3.

 
And therein lies the concern. That much power, in a single area. My overall concern wouldn't be that it was done; No, the concern is what happens when we fail to control it, safeguards break down, etc.

The same concern was happening with CERN.

Fission has finite resources available and therefore can be controlled. With the concept of fission, sure it could burn out eventually, but you take that 1 ton of an element while running. How large is the span of destruction around it? How do you stop it if that is the case?

Come on, think Spiderman already kids. haha

How do you control it?

I think I figured it out :) The sun was originally the home of our ET friends. They figured out fusion... and oops.
 



Yes and the world is flat, so we should not explore any further than we have to so we don't fall off.

All the controversy surrounding CERN is from people who are controlled by the fear of the unknown. There is no real danger in it, a miniature black hole will not devour the planet. People just hear the word black hole and assume judgement day.
 
By the way the sun started out as a huge gas giant that was so big, that the pressure at the center created the first spark of fusion resulting in a chain reaction that lead to its creation as our sun. Its amazing how our universe works.
 
I didn't mention CERN and blackholes. You did. I mentioned the concern because of the sheer amount of energy being created by such things.

Tens of thousands of people died prior to the first bomb even being developed when it came to a nuclear bomb from the unknown effects of radiation and contamination.

What I'm saying is that we're walking into something even larger than a nuclear weapon. We are starting to deal with some of the greatest known mysteries of the universe. Tread lightly as more people will be impacted by this than any estimate would likely provide.
 
Riser:

Fusion is very nit-picky when it some to its operation. The reason we canoo tutilize fusion to its fullest is because we cannot regulate the system OVER it current expectation. Bssically, the technology is too weak to even sustain fusion.

Now, if you are worried about a nuclear meltdown: I hate to burst your bubble, but ti wont happen. Fusion is a precision operated system in which all things must fall into place...or nothing happens. If one operation is underworked or underemployed...nothing will happen or it will stop, whichever comes first. Aneutronic reactions are more if not completely safe for energy generation here on Earth. There is no clue as to high radiation. In fact...you get more exposure to radiation throughout the year than you would from an aneutronic reaction.

Ivy Mike was the one and only H bomb I can recall that was ever deployed on Earth. The radiation was coming from the free neutrons of the Deuterium, Tritium, and uranium. In a tokamak, either Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, or Carbon will capture all free radicals and take the kinetic energy to heat water. Fusion is virtually safe...

Oh, and the spiderman fusion reactor is a complete joke.
 
Well, let's agree to disagree.

Beryllium. That's at the top of the nastiest stuff on earth as far as I'm concerned. If you even remotely think fusion is safe, you're insane. :)

You talk about everything that has to be perfect that goes into making it happen, but once it happens, what if a safeguard fails? We lose 15-20 mile radius to destruction at a much quicker rate than Fukushima?

Basically, what I'm saying is that if/when we geting fusion, everyone is going.. not just some, not just a city or town.. everyone in this world becomes involved in it.

A nuclear catastophe takes out hundreds of square miles.. what is the same impact if/when that happens with fusion?
 
I am saying Fusion has no capabilities of such thing.

Look, fusion needs to be contained, not because it is not safe, but rather for it to operate. If a fail-safe goes out, the reactor would shutdown or any electrical, mechanical, or magnet system would fail and render the reaction neutral. The plasma would supercool to room temperature and no fusion would continue until the reactor is re-evalueated and repaired.

We are talking about a run-for reaction, not a runaway.
 
Well, I give you credit for your skill at reading wikipedia. :)

But let's face it, we are still not at a point where fusion is possible as an energy source. The amount of energy required to continue it and the initial burst is still great. That would be my concern, that amount of energy intially required to start it and/or maintain it.
 


Thank You.

I appreciate it.
 


This is what the ITER project is for. Over the last 30-50 years, we have been slowly redesigning tokamaks for generations, making them more efficient. so far, we have a current rating of about.7. If you were to figure that, if we want a power output,( using current generation reactors,) of 7 MW, then we need a power input of 10 MW.

Fusion reaction has too much placed on it as it is. The reactors are not what they ideally should be. To create a toroid, you need large superconductor magnets to simulate a centralized field of isolation to prevent the reactor form 'eating itself' . you would not want plasma to leak and cool and destroy your reactor. the superconductors take up too much of the doughnut and generate massive amounts of heat form all the energy they need. plus, a cooling system for the magnets must be in place! Another issue of mine is the face that we have not been harvesting enough thermal energy form neutronic or aneutronic reactions. Current design do not permit us to collect the needed energy.

If we create a reactor that actually stabilizes a suspended mixture of ionized gas, recoil the magnets, and place coolant system around a sphere, we could essentially collect much more energy. But that is a speculation of mine really.
 
At 100 Million Kelvin.. it'll end up going the route of using a nucler fission reaction to produce enough energy to get to the point of fusion being self reliant while confined. Does that mean salt water will be used to get the hydrogen?

Anything burning at 100 million K has a lot of danger. It doesn't cool off instaniously either.

We don't really have a great understanding of the sun, nor we do fully understand solar flares. Let's say we have a small reactor running for a few years an anomoly occurs and creates a 'flare' - seems plausible.

We can all speculate. Maybe in 30-50 years they'll have it figured out. I doubt we'll see it much sooner outside of test labs.
 
Not enough mass to cause a 'flare'.

Also, the hotter an object, the quicker it cools. If you shut down a fusion reactor, it would cool off almost instantaneously.

May I ask why you do not like fusion, due to it being a hazard? I am not being biased here nor reject your concerns. It is just I am curious why you are questioning the safe integrity of fusion.

Yes, we have no clue what the Sun truly does. However, thermonuclear fusion is as close as we can get.

We won't 'figure it out' in 50 years. when you and I are dead, they still won't 'figure it out'. I speculate by 2100 we will have the basic concept of Sun power. by then, we as the people of the world should have at least one fusion reactor online.
 


Oh no, I have nothing against fusion. But many are the fool who walk in the direction that it is so simple, so pure, and safe. Sure, safe compared to a nuclear melt down maybe, but to blindly believe there are no consequences? I will stay on the side of caution and hope to wrong.

Aside from that, you make it sound so simple and safe. I truly and highly doubt that to be the case. Multiple reasons because of the tech required even build the facility, etc.

And since you had earlier mentioned Beryllium could be used in a tokamaks without any insight into how deadly and dangerous that substance is even after I pointed it out. You understand that once Beryllium is put into that tokamaks, it can never be disassebled. If that tomomak breaks from outside forces, that entire place is done and people will never step foot into it again. To say fusion is safe when ever remotely considering the use of Beryllium is idiotic.

Read up on that stuff. I wouldn't wish my worst enemy to die from that substance. How many people died in the US from that stuff is incredible.
 
Agreed.

The Beryllium was an example. I was hopefully not saying that it is the God-Send of tokamaks.

i know how complicated fusion is. That is why we cannot have a successful fusion power plant yet. The reason I am attracted to fusion is the potential. It is saf-ER that fission and cleaner than carbon based combustibles.

I am aware of the limitations fusion places on us as humans on Earth.

Thank You for posting your concerns. Hopefully in the future, we can have a successful and safe fusion system across the world.
 
I find you do not more foward if you always agree and one never plays devil's advocate.

Without a doubt there are many dangers to Fusion that we do not realize today. I was reading that the theory on fusion in the sun doesn't actually work the way they suspected. They had expected a higher amount of a small 'particle' or something from the nuclei to get ejected from the sun. This was not the case; the number was much smaller and they are not sure why. Something else is a factor in there that has not been discovered.
 
The sun is fusion on a massive scale, we will not be attempting anything like that, baby steps first. As far as the flare, we would never have a flare, they are the result of IMMENSE magnetic fields interacting with each other.
 


The 'particle' may be the infamous neutrino. The theory is in a Prodium-Prodium reaction, to protons collide and release a packet of electromagnetic energy plus a neutrino.



Correct, which is why using the 'spiderman reactor' is a bad example. we cannot even get our own superconductors to work to that potential!



Not sure if being sarcastic

or serious?

 
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