Fusion reactor actually put out more energy than it consumed for the first time ever

pendragon1 said:
1.9 Mj in for 1.3Mj out? i dont get it but "go fusion!" as it will make more sense than any "green" energy.
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Problem is, we've been 'conditioned' by decades' worth of movies/media, to think of nuclear reactors as little more than ticking nuclear bombs, with a teeny-tiny, weak "harness" for us to use.
I'm almost 100% certain, that if you asked someone on the street how good a modern nuclear reactor is, they will either say "not that good", or mention "Chernobyl", simply because TV show > real life.

Mentioning "fusion" to most folks nowadays, and they will think "nuclear bomb", followed by what I mentioned above (sadly).
 
And some people think you can make a hydrogen bomb from hydrogen gas.
And I mean a fusion bomb and regular h2 gas. H2 needs to be treated with respect, but its not going to make a 10 mile wide crater if something goes wrong.
 
tungt88 said:
Problem is, we've been 'conditioned' by decades' worth of movies/media, to think of nuclear reactors as little more than ticking nuclear bombs, with a teeny-tiny, weak "harness" for us to use.
I'm almost 100% certain, that if you asked someone on the street how good a modern nuclear reactor is, they will either say "not that good", or mention "Chernobyl", simply because TV show > real life.
Click to expand...

Nobody is conditioned by media, it's just people being completely out of touch with reality.

It's always the non sequitur fallacy of "because our shiny new unbuilt reactors, RBMK is of no concern, neither are the 40, 50 and 60 year old reactor designs still in service and/or exist today" or "look at our theoretical thorium / molten salt reactors!" Basically using the lure of new technology to distract from the dilapidated falling apart thing poorly hidden behind the curtain, or in the case of Chernobyl, a giant dome.

Chernobyl wasn't the only RBMK reactor complex, there were 26 total RBMK reactors and 12 of them are still in service today. But hey, at least it wasn't a Windscale, blowing radioactive farts and debris all over the countryside for years.
 
Here's a good summary, kind of in a "nuclear fusion for dummies" way.

https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-arent-we-using-nuclear-fusion-to-generate-power-yet.html

I give the authors some credit here, that they do mention that you end up generating radioactive waste with a fusion reactor. I've talked with a couple of my fellow U. Alabama friends who are up in the Huntsville area, and they're constantly experiencing frustration at having to replace those steel plates that are constantly getting irradiated by neutrons bombarding them.

One other thing... The liquid helium cooling isn't easy to do. You can't just attach a hose to the dewar, and spray liquid helium like you would with something similar to liquid nitrogen, since its liquid properties are much different. Those cryogenic transfer lines are fragile, and constantly lose their vacuum.

That, plus the sheer cost of helium has gone through the roof lately, now that BLM (no, not Black Lives Matter, but the Bureau of Land Management) has opened up the Amarillo facility to the public, which now allows many a Chinese or Indian customer to buy helium that was previously mostly reserved for the USA's use. Even with a helium liquefaction facility in place, they're still going to be consuming a LOT of helium.
 
My Dad worked on NOVA and NIF, designing the targeting adjustment system. To be honest I kind of wrote off NIF, as much of the team had moved towards trying to find commercial application for the research and seemed to be abandoning the original core research.
 
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GiGaBiTe said:
Nobody is conditioned by media, it's just people being completely out of touch with reality.

It's always the non sequitur fallacy of "because our shiny new unbuilt reactors, RBMK is of no concern, neither are the 40, 50 and 60 year old reactor designs still in service and/or exist today" or "look at our theoretical thorium / molten salt reactors!" Basically using the lure of new technology to distract from the dilapidated falling apart thing poorly hidden behind the curtain, or in the case of Chernobyl, a giant dome.

Chernobyl wasn't the only RBMK reactor complex, there were 26 total RBMK reactors and 12 of them are still in service today. But hey, at least it wasn't a Windscale, blowing radioactive farts and debris all over the countryside for years.
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I agree, but I'll bet that 95% (or more) of the folks on the street (including many well-educated types) have absolutely no idea what RBMK/Windscale/etc means.

Trying to get more nuclear reactors built in the US, might be the only thing that unites both the Republican & Democratic parties together -- in shutting down (more like shouting/screaming down) any such proposal: again, due to "nuclear reactor = ticking nuclear time bomb" panic.

Three Mile Island is a case in point: not some kind of "American Chernobyl" (not even close), but the media furor (and public reaction) over the entire thing effectively doomed it, and it was shut down in 2019.
I remember relatives discussing TMI, and all they could talk about were the "dangers of being close to a nuclear reactor": there was no way in hell, I could insert anything (especially NOT anything positive) about nuclear reactors, in such a discussion (they were in unanimous agreement, that nuclear reactors were "very bad/dangerous").
 
What do they use to lubricate the moving parts of a windmill?

Asking for a friend
 
Wat said:
What do they use to lubricate the moving parts of a windmill?

Asking for a friend
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Lubricating oil of some sort. I don't know the specifics but my brother does QC for a company in Pittsburgh that makes the stuff.
 
tungt88 said:
Problem is, we've been 'conditioned' by decades' worth of movies/media, to think of nuclear reactors as little more than ticking nuclear bombs, with a teeny-tiny, weak "harness" for us to use.
I'm almost 100% certain, that if you asked someone on the street how good a modern nuclear reactor is, they will either say "not that good", or mention "Chernobyl", simply because TV show > real life.

Mentioning "fusion" to most folks nowadays, and they will think "nuclear bomb", followed by what I mentioned above (sadly).
Click to expand...

Why are you so obsessed with world domination?
 
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GiGaBiTe said:
Nobody is conditioned by media, it's just people being completely out of touch with reality.

It's always the non sequitur fallacy of "because our shiny new unbuilt reactors, RBMK is of no concern, neither are the 40, 50 and 60 year old reactor designs still in service and/or exist today" or "look at our theoretical thorium / molten salt reactors!" Basically using the lure of new technology to distract from the dilapidated falling apart thing poorly hidden behind the curtain, or in the case of Chernobyl, a giant dome.

Chernobyl wasn't the only RBMK reactor complex, there were 26 total RBMK reactors and 12 of them are still in service today. But hey, at least it wasn't a Windscale, blowing radioactive farts and debris all over the countryside for years.
Click to expand...

I disagree. People have been conditioned by media on all sorts of views, particularly this generation. The problem is that media no longer means newspapers, radio, TV, and movies. It's expanded to include social media and influencers as well, which are capable of conditioning their followers far more quickly than previous forms of media.

While yes, older nuclear reactors have their share issues, they shouldn't be used as reasons to preclude building new properly built reactors. Let the market determine what makes more economic sense without subsidies, whether that is nuclear, solar, or otherwise. And a fund to offset the environmental impact of said energy source should be built into the initial and operating costs to make the playing field fair, which is IMO where the government should step in to regulate.
 
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Wat said:
What do they use to lubricate the moving parts of a windmill?

Asking for a friend
Click to expand...

I'd imagine mostly they use pre-treated bearings of some sort.

How often do you need to lubricate a car's wheel bearing?
 
Tsumi said:
I disagree. People have been conditioned by media on all sorts of views, particularly this generation. The problem is that media no longer means newspapers, radio, TV, and movies. It's expanded to include social media and influencers as well, which are capable of conditioning their followers far more quickly than previous forms of media.

While yes, older nuclear reactors have their share issues, they shouldn't be used as reasons to preclude building new properly built reactors. Let the market determine what makes more economic sense without subsidies, whether that is nuclear, solar, or otherwise. And a fund to offset the environmental impact of said energy source should be built into the initial and operating costs to make the playing field fair, which is IMO where the government should step in to regulate.
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Well, if that is the case, Nuclear Fission would lose big time. It is one of the most expensive sources of power on the market already, and that's even before you start considering the fact that we have no final solution for waste.

The only places where fission have been highly successful are places where there are huge government subsidies. And that doesn't make sense. Yes, we want more carbon neutral energy, but not if it just means piling on another problem which is final storage of spent fissile materials. With all nuclear fuel ever used in this country still sitting in open pools near the plant where it was used, and not as much as a plan for final storage, it really doesn't make any sense to do anything but stop using it all together.

And it's not even carbon neutral due to the resource intensive mining and large construction projects needed to construct the plants.

Now fusion is a different. Still pretty resource intensive to build the plant, but the fuel is just hydrogen that can easily be generated from sea water using the carbon neutral electricity the plant generates, and the waste is minimal with little to no radioactivity and that which is radioactive has an extremely short half life so it disappears quickly.

That might actually be worth subsidizing for it's potential benefits to society.

tungt88 said:
Problem is, we've been 'conditioned' by decades' worth of movies/media, to think of nuclear reactors as little more than ticking nuclear bombs, with a teeny-tiny, weak "harness" for us to use.
I'm almost 100% certain, that if you asked someone on the street how good a modern nuclear reactor is, they will either say "not that good", or mention "Chernobyl", simply because TV show > real life.

Mentioning "fusion" to most folks nowadays, and they will think "nuclear bomb", followed by what I mentioned above (sadly).
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure about that. I imagine if people hear "Fusion" they will think "Science Fiction" more than anything else. Now if you preface it as "Nuclear fusion" you might get a different response. I mean, consider MRI machines. Originally they were called NMRI machines, Nucelar Magnetic Resonance Imaging, but they had to drop the "nuclear" because people got scared of the thing and refused to go in it. Now everyone seems fine with MRI's.

It's all about messaging to not needlessly trigger the fears of the uneducated.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Well, if that is the case, Nuclear Fission would lose big time. It is one of the most expensive sources of power on the market already, and that's even before you start considering the fact that we have no final solution for waste.

The only places where fission have been highly successful are places where there are huge government subsidies. And that doesn't make sense. Yes, we want more carbon neutral energy, but not if it just means piling on another problem which is final storage of spent fissile materials. With all nuclear fuel ever used in this country still sitting in open pools near the plant where it was used, and not as much as a plan for final storage, it really doesn't make any sense to do anything but stop using it all together.

And it's not even carbon neutral due to the resource intensive mining and large construction projects needed to construct the plants.

Now fusion is a different. Still pretty resource intensive to build the plant, but the fuel is just hydrogen that can easily be generated from sea water using the carbon neutral electricity the plant generates, and the waste is minimal with little to no radioactivity and that which is radioactive has an extremely short half life so it disappears quickly.

That might actually be worth subsidizing for it's potential benefits to society.



I'm not so sure about that. I imagine if people hear "Fusion" they will think "Science Fiction" more than anything else. Now if you preface it as "Nuclear fusion" you might get a different response. I mean, consider MRI machines. Originally they were called NMRI machines, Nucelar Magnetic Resonance Imaging, but they had to drop the "nuclear" because people got scared of the thing and refused to go in it. Now everyone seems fine with MRI's.

It's all about messaging to not needlessly trigger the fears of the uneducated.
Click to expand...

Fast fission reactors are capable of solving the nuclear waste problem and does not require mining new materials. They are actually capable of using up most of our current nuclear waste as fuel. The most active byproducts of fast reactors decays within 200-300 years, while the long lived stuff have such a long half life they may as well be considered inert. While only about 5% of uranium can be used in normal nuclear reactors, fast reactors are capable of using the remaining 95%. Two issues solved right there with fast reactors, at least for the next couple hundred years: waste and fuel source.

That said, our biggest problem isn't really one of where our energy comes from, but of how to eject our waste heat. Sure, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps some of our heat, but generating energy, whether by solar panels or fusion, will heat the earth. Only hydro and wind, which take advantage of energy already present on earth, wouldn't add to the total energy in the earth's system. Well, there is tech to address that, and IMO it is not receiving nearly enough attention in helping fight climate change: https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/09/tech/radiative-cooling-skycool-electricity-environment/index.html

I highly doubt nuclear fusion will win out in being a primary land-based power source due to the costs and complexity involved. I believe that will go to a mix of solar, wind, and hydro along with some sort of battery backup system. Central power plants will go away in favor of more distributed power generation.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Well, if that is the case, Nuclear Fission would lose big time. It is one of the most expensive sources of power on the market already, and that's even before you start considering the fact that we have no final solution for waste.

The only places where fission have been highly successful are places where there are huge government subsidies. And that doesn't make sense. Yes, we want more carbon neutral energy, but not if it just means piling on another problem which is final storage of spent fissile materials. With all nuclear fuel ever used in this country still sitting in open pools near the plant where it was used, and not as much as a plan for final storage, it really doesn't make any sense to do anything but stop using it all together.

And it's not even carbon neutral due to the resource intensive mining and large construction projects needed to construct the plants.

Now fusion is a different. Still pretty resource intensive to build the plant, but the fuel is just hydrogen that can easily be generated from sea water using the carbon neutral electricity the plant generates, and the waste is minimal with little to no radioactivity and that which is radioactive has an extremely short half life so it disappears quickly.

That might actually be worth subsidizing for it's potential benefits to society.



I'm not so sure about that. I imagine if people hear "Fusion" they will think "Science Fiction" more than anything else. Now if you preface it as "Nuclear fusion" you might get a different response. I mean, consider MRI machines. Originally they were called NMRI machines, Nucelar Magnetic Resonance Imaging, but they had to drop the "nuclear" because people got scared of the thing and refused to go in it. Now everyone seems fine with MRI's.

It's all about messaging to not needlessly trigger the fears of the uneducated.
Click to expand...

interesting standpoint, not being sarcastic. i'll try to keep the politics minimal here....

with respect to fission, yeah it's not the cheapest thing out there but for same output with wind/solar it is cheaper....sort of. yes cost for care/disposal of the waste is a concern. they rarely factor in everything when making any claims publicly. claiming current nuclear fission has zero emissions has always been nonsense when you consider mining and processing of fuel, but emissions are significantly less than say coal or natural gas. as for storing of spent fuel, i'm optimistic. there's a lot of technology out there that we're not using or developing. reprocessing spent fuel as well as some newer molten salt designs. i can't speak for the rest of the world, but i do know for a fact that here in canada they're researching putting spent fuel directly into a molten salt SMR. not sure if there would be any reprocessing or not, remember that our spent fuel is natural uranium and not enriched. no idea about how the reactor physics would work either. a spent fuel bundle out of a candu has quite a bit of plutonium in it (more than most light water designs) and that is a fissionable fuel.

as far as government subsidies goes....well i guess it depends on who your ask. our original grid and power generation was completely owned by the provincial government years ago as was the company that ran/maintained it. it was a not for profit organization believe it or not. the result was some of the cheapest hydro rates in any developed nation. but that was a long time ago now. bureaucracy ruined it amongst other things. these days there are some privately owned generators, but the provincially owned operator is still the biggest. now they're all about making a profit but all money they get goes back to the province. any money for maintenance or construction must come from the province.

so in other words is very different. subsidies doesn't even really apply here. at some point maybe we should consider what our priorities are. i'm not going to argue for one system over the other because i can clearly see the pros and cons of both.
 
THRESHIN said:
interesting standpoint, not being sarcastic. i'll try to keep the politics minimal here....

with respect to fission, yeah it's not the cheapest thing out there but for same output with wind/solar it is cheaper....sort of. yes cost for care/disposal of the waste is a concern. they rarely factor in everything when making any claims publicly. claiming current nuclear fission has zero emissions has always been nonsense when you consider mining and processing of fuel, but emissions are significantly less than say coal or natural gas. as for storing of spent fuel, i'm optimistic. there's a lot of technology out there that we're not using or developing. reprocessing spent fuel as well as some newer molten salt designs. i can't speak for the rest of the world, but i do know for a fact that here in canada they're researching putting spent fuel directly into a molten salt SMR. not sure if there would be any reprocessing or not, remember that our spent fuel is natural uranium and not enriched. no idea about how the reactor physics would work either. a spent fuel bundle out of a candu has quite a bit of plutonium in it (more than most light water designs) and that is a fissionable fuel.

as far as government subsidies goes....well i guess it depends on who your ask. our original grid and power generation was completely owned by the provincial government years ago as was the company that ran/maintained it. it was a not for profit organization believe it or not. the result was some of the cheapest hydro rates in any developed nation. but that was a long time ago now. bureaucracy ruined it amongst other things. these days there are some privately owned generators, but the provincially owned operator is still the biggest. now they're all about making a profit but all money they get goes back to the province. any money for maintenance or construction must come from the province.

so in other words is very different. subsidies doesn't even really apply here. at some point maybe we should consider what our priorities are. i'm not going to argue for one system over the other because i can clearly see the pros and cons of both.
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Thank you for that.

I do agree, I don't want to get into politics. (and I'm not even sure where the border between just stating the concerns of final spent fuel storage and politics goes here) but I do feel like it is irresponsible to continue using the stuff before we have an achievable plan in place for final storage (or further processing). I think it is clear that right now at least in the U.S. no such realistic plan that won't get defeated by NIMBY's exists, which means any continued use of fission just continues to pile on the already substantial (and highly radioactive) spent fissile materials sitting in open pools next to current (and former) plants.

I'm not advocating for one solution vs another, and honestly I am not well read enough about the alternatives to advocate for one vs another either, but I am suggesting we should at least have A solution, politically approved and shovel ready before we continue to expand the amount of waste we are generating.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Thank you for that.

I do agree, I don't want to get into politics. (and I'm not even sure where the border between just stating the concerns of final spent fuel storage and politics goes here) but I do feel like it is irresponsible to continue using the stuff before we have an achievable plan in place for final storage (or further processing). I think it is clear that right now at least in the U.S. no such realistic plan that won't get defeated by NIMBY's exists, which means any continued use of fission just continues to pile on the already substantial (and highly radioactive) spent fissile materials sitting in open pools next to current (and former) plants.

I'm not advocating for one solution vs another, and honestly I am not well read enough about the alternatives to advocate for one vs another either, but I am suggesting we should at least have A solution, politically approved and shovel ready before we continue to expand the amount of waste we are generating.
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i completely agree that we need some sort of a solution. i think it's another thing we just sweep under the rug and nobody wants to deal with it. it comes down to money as usual. there are alternatives, but it's going to cost us.

still, our current system isn't terrible. by the time the fuel has cooled off enough in the spent pool and gets into a dry cask, it just sits there. it's well sealed up. the containers are way too heavy to worry about anyone getting into them. my only concern is similar to yours - cost over thousands of years. this is why i think we should be putting a lot of effort into things like reprocessing and more advanced reactor designs so we can 'burn up' the current spent fuel. consider this: current reactor designs only use about 2% of the fuel give or take depending on which design you're using. what if we could use 10%? the fuel cycle gets pushed much further towards the stable end state of lead. we mine 5x less uranium and therefore 5x less carbon emissions to deal with. 5x less waste fuel too.

i admit, i'm just dreaming here. its 3am so what do you expect lol.

getting back to the topic of fusion, i'm a firm believer that this will happen and it is a matter of time. it's taking us a long time for several reasons. 1. this is a very complex problem. creating a sustained fusion reaction on earth is unlike anything humans have ever done. 2. we really wanted a new iphone more. shiny electronics seem to get more investments. this is why we need something better in the meantime.
 
THRESHIN said:
i completely agree that we need some sort of a solution. i think it's another thing we just sweep under the rug and nobody wants to deal with it. it comes down to money as usual. there are alternatives, but it's going to cost us.

still, our current system isn't terrible. by the time the fuel has cooled off enough in the spent pool and gets into a dry cask, it just sits there. it's well sealed up. the containers are way too heavy to worry about anyone getting into them. my only concern is similar to yours - cost over thousands of years. this is why i think we should be putting a lot of effort into things like reprocessing and more advanced reactor designs so we can 'burn up' the current spent fuel. consider this: current reactor designs only use about 2% of the fuel give or take depending on which design you're using. what if we could use 10%? the fuel cycle gets pushed much further towards the stable end state of lead. we mine 5x less uranium and therefore 5x less carbon emissions to deal with. 5x less waste fuel too.

i admit, i'm just dreaming here. its 3am so what do you expect lol.

getting back to the topic of fusion, i'm a firm believer that this will happen and it is a matter of time. it's taking us a long time for several reasons. 1. this is a very complex problem. creating a sustained fusion reaction on earth is unlike anything humans have ever done. 2. we really wanted a new iphone more. shiny electronics seem to get more investments. this is why we need something better in the meantime.
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Like I stated above, fast reactors are essentially able to use 100% of nuclear fuel. If it is fissionable, a fast reactor can use it as fuel. Waste only needs to be stored for 500 years at most. Fast reactors aren't new either; they've been around since the 60s I believe. The challenge is getting them economically viable due to the greater difficulty in maintaining control and safety over standard reactors. And of course the politics as well. Wouldn't it be great if we consumed all of the nuclear fuel so no one could have nuclear weapons?
 
Tsumi said:
While yes, older nuclear reactors have their share issues, they shouldn't be used as reasons to preclude building new properly built reactors.
Click to expand...

Yes, they are damn good reasons to preclude building new reactors. Every succeeding accident showed just how incompetent, arrogant and careless the government was in building and running nuclear reactors and the entire supply chain required to support them. Once enough money and prestige starts moving around, the momentum causes people to start doing stupid things that compounds into a series of unfortunate events that lead to things like Windscale, TMI or Chernobyl. But forget about the reactors, the mining and processing facilities are far, far worse. Church Rock is just one example that is still ongoing today, over 40 years later and still hasn't been cleaned up properly.

Windscale is a perfect example of arrogance and prestige. The English wanted a reactor, were told not to do it by the Americans because it was a dangerous design, did it anyway and once it started going sideways, it was covered up until it went on fire and melted down. It had been farting out clouds of radioactive gas and nuggets of core material all over the countryside for years before it melted down, which had been known by some scientists, but was hidden from the public and even Windscale employees. Had it not melted down, it would have continued to fart radioactivity for miles around it for as long as it was active.

Thank god for Terence Price and Sir John Cockcroft pushing hard to have filters installed on the chimneys, when everyone else didn't care and though they were too expensive and a waste of time and money. It greatly limited radiological releases that would have been orders of magnitude worse otherwise. The contempt for the filters was so bad that they were referred to as "Cockcrofts' Folly".

The dumpster fires left behind by shitty reactor designs, terrible mining and processing companies and millions of pounds of radioactive waste you can't do anything with don't at all conclude that building more of them is a great idea.

Tsumi said:
Let the market determine what makes more economic sense without subsidies, whether that is nuclear, solar, or otherwise. And a fund to offset the environmental impact of said energy source should be built into the initial and operating costs to make the playing field fair, which is IMO where the government should step in to regulate.
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Nuclear and solar would cease to exist if government subsidies ended. There is not a nuclear reactor on the planet that has ever been even close to profitable, they all operate at huge net losses.

Solar is the same. The precursor to the first solar cell was discovered in 1839, and the first solar cell in 1883 using selenium. From 1883 to the 1950s, solar really didn't change that much besides moving to silicon to be more efficient. But it wasn't until the 2000s when governments started dumping billions of dollars into the solar industry to fund R&D and build the infrastructure to bring down the cost to where the average person could afford it. But the solar industry is still heavily reliant on free/cheap government money for operating expenses and subsidizing the cost to consumers.

Without government investment, costs would skyrocket and solar would go back to how it was before, a hideously expensive source of energy that nobody could afford. It'd collapse under its own weight like nuclear would.
 
Tsumi said:
I believe that will go to a mix of solar, wind, and hydro along with some sort of battery backup system. Central power plants will go away in favor of more distributed power generation.
Click to expand...

I am very excited by Tesla and their home systems. If I owned a house I would definitely install a complete system.
 
Tsumi said:
That said, our biggest problem isn't really one of where our energy comes from, but of how to eject our waste heat. Sure, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps some of our heat, but generating energy, whether by solar panels or fusion, will heat the earth.
Click to expand...
No, while yes waste heat can affect the temperature at a local scale whether it's changing the overall albedo of an area by covering it with solar panels or using a lake as a place to dump waste heat from a reactor (whether coal or nuclear), but on a global scale waste heat isn't even a rounding error compared to how much energy from the Sun hits us.

Greenhouse gases hold energy, specifically infrared radiation, that's largely created from the blackbody radiation of stuff that is the same temperature as everything on Earth (whether hot desert or cold arctic). Yes a hot nuclear reactor or whatever creates more blackbody radiation per square area than a forest of trees or a patch of ocean just because it is hotter, but there is so much more square areas of forest and oceans compared to all the power generation on Earth.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Well, if that is the case, Nuclear Fission would lose big time. It is one of the most expensive sources of power on the market already, and that's even before you start considering the fact that we have no final solution for waste.

The only places where fission have been highly successful are places where there are huge government subsidies. And that doesn't make sense. Yes, we want more carbon neutral energy, but not if it just means piling on another problem which is final storage of spent fissile materials. With all nuclear fuel ever used in this country still sitting in open pools near the plant where it was used, and not as much as a plan for final storage, it really doesn't make any sense to do anything but stop using it all together.

And it's not even carbon neutral due to the resource intensive mining and large construction projects needed to construct the plants.

Now fusion is a different. Still pretty resource intensive to build the plant, but the fuel is just hydrogen that can easily be generated from sea water using the carbon neutral electricity the plant generates, and the waste is minimal with little to no radioactivity and that which is radioactive has an extremely short half life so it disappears quickly.

That might actually be worth subsidizing for it's potential benefits to society.



I'm not so sure about that. I imagine if people hear "Fusion" they will think "Science Fiction" more than anything else. Now if you preface it as "Nuclear fusion" you might get a different response. I mean, consider MRI machines. Originally they were called NMRI machines, Nucelar Magnetic Resonance Imaging, but they had to drop the "nuclear" because people got scared of the thing and refused to go in it. Now everyone seems fine with MRI's.

It's all about messaging to not needlessly trigger the fears of the uneducated.
Click to expand...
Not sure mentioning fusion is a good idea either. Ford did, and almost got away with it. Just skip the scary parts. Call it:

Hydrogen iPhone Charger (HiC)

or

Cloud iPhone Charger (CiC)

or

Self-Sustaining iPhone Charger (SSiC)

Maybe get a cross-licensing deal from Apple - or even better, just have them develop the world's shiniest, thinnest fusion reactor. Marketing and energy problems solved.
 
We are still way too primitive to be allowed fusion technology. We would pose a threat to ourselves and anyone else essentially caught in the blast.
 
viscountalpha said:
We are still way too primitive to be allowed fusion technology. We would pose a threat to ourselves and anyone else essentially caught in the blast.
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The chances of a runaway fusion reaction is almost zero. Once the field dissipates, fusion will stop pretty much immediately. You just have to deal with the residual heat, which can theoretically cause a pressure or steam explosion, but nothing like a bomb, and certainly nothing like a fission reactor.
 
Tsumi said:
The chances of a runaway fusion reaction is almost zero. Once the field dissipates, fusion will stop pretty much immediately. You just have to deal with the residual heat, which can theoretically cause a pressure or steam explosion, but nothing like a bomb, and certainly nothing like a fission reactor.
Click to expand...
Think they more meant having such high amounts of power available for any task we set. There is certainly a high probability of abuse there.
 
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