Controlled Nuclear Fusion -- the energy source of the future

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Controlled Nuclear Fusion is thirty years in the future. It has been thirty years in the future for the last fifty years. And one hundred years from now it will still be thirty years in the future. Controlled nuclear fusion is indeed the energy source of the future.

ruveyn

Probably. They haven't made much progress in making controlled thermonuclear fusion viable source of energy. At the moment, they have to expend more energy to start a process of controlled nuclear fusion than what it produces. That, of course, would make it completely useless as a viable source of energy and it will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future.

Fusion always seems to always in the future, I worry that the fusion reactor designers will never get it to work. For me the defining mile post is to get a reactor which is a net exporter of energy.

Fission reactors were easy to build, I think that with a homogenous reactor design (Pu nitrate or enriched uranyl sulphate) is close to donkey easy to get to go critical. If anything fission is much better, the only problem is that the fission products include some irksome isotopes and the reactor parts tend to get activated.

In the last analysis we can always place unusable radioactive waste in the briny deep. Parts of the Pacific Ocean are 36,000 feet deep. We can always sink radioactive fissile stuff down to the Bottom where they will trouble us no more. If 100 feet swimming pools can hold radioactive wastes safely then so can six mile deep oceans.

ruveyn

The problem with dumping the radioactive waste in the ocean is, even if it is 6 miles down, there could be/is life down there, so what'll happen to the creatures down there?

Cloverfield.

It's thirty years into the future because no one is serious about it. If someone was serious about it, it'd be ten years away in no time.

Some of them will die. Fortunately the root of the food chain is near the top of oceans.

ruveyn

That will never happen. Energy cannot be created.

But it can be stolen from other galaxies.

Bill gates is doing some investing in some projects, and there is going to be a controlled attempt of nuclear fusion 2012 from what I understand. Then again, I might be misunderstanding something...

If he is as good at controlled nuclear fusion as he as at producing quality software, I would recommend that you not hold your breath.

There is a good reason why controlled nuclear fusion is hard to achieve. It is closely related to the the second law of thermodynamics. The available free hydrogen on the planet is in a high state of entropy. Think of trying to unburn ashes to produce logs. That is just about what controlled nuclear fusion is.

ruveyn

The reason hydrogen bombs are not used is because they produce too much entropy.

I don't see how the entropy could be a problem really, the entropy is simply transfered to heat and neutron emissions. The fact is some controlled nuclear fusion reactions have already been produced, but they simply didn't last long.

There is a project of a experimental fusion reactor by the National Ignition Facility (NIF), sound quite promising.


https://lasers.llnl.gov/


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yixhyPN0r3g[/youtube]

One day fusion will work, no doubt about it even if progress seems slow.

The next problem is that the first generation of fusion reactors will be deuterium fuelled and that is in very short supply.

We would really want them to be satisfied with normal hydrogen, just like the sun but that is another leap in technology.

I see very little evidence supporting that assertion. Progress is slow. It is slower than paint drying. The problem is that hydrogen is strongly bound to various chemical compounds, particularly water. The energy needed to dissociate the hydrogen exceeds the energy recapture from any fusion reaction involving the hydrogen. In short, there is a net loss of energy. We are pissing in the wind so to speak. Perhaps if we ever extract He3 from the moon we might have a chance but that is a long way off.

I do not see controlled fusion as a practicality in the next one hundred years. In the mean time we have to keep war. I propose fast breeder reactors. That will produce the heat and will also solve most of the nuclear waste problem.

ruveyn

I am afraid I have to disagree on this point. Dissociation of H2O is a chemical process and while relatively energy intensive by present day standards the amounts we are talking about are minute compared to the potential output of an reasonably efficient fusion reaction.

Mind you, I am talking about a reasonably efficient reaction. Right now, as we have seen, gaining a net positive output AND a sustainable reaction has not yet been achieved. And we have not even progressed to trying hydrogen fusion yet.

But in theory fusion should produce ample power to compensate for the energy requirements of the dissociation process.

Having said that, I do agree it will take a long time and fusion power may very well prove not to be the answer we are looking for. I am a firm advocate of setting up a large scale energy investment plan throughout the Western World as a prelude to ridding the whole planet of its dependence on fossil fuels.

And I am not talking about a solar cell here and a windmill there. I am talking about the energy equivalent of a Rooseveltian New Deal executed throughout the European and European continents.