Dept. of Energy win.

Sounds like that guy had his tinfoil hat firmly on. Even if the scientists establish commercial viability my guess is it will be a good 10 - 15 years before it would effectively replace fossil fuels. Thats still alot of time to rape Mother Earth of her hydrocarbons. (At least I hope it lasts that long. I really have no other marketable skills.....)

 

If there was a 10-15 year or even a 20-25 year horizon for ultra cheap electricity in bulk the oil producing nations would go into a panic trying to sell everything that have access to before it became obsolete.

 

crash, are you forgettin' the previous thread about them bein' "energy" companies, not "oil" companies?

 

No, I just think there is still a buttload of profit to be made by drilling for oil and I dont think the energy companies would give up the profits. Bird in hand and all....

 

Nope, they don't have to give up anything. Energy is one thing, lubrication is another.

Or so my wife says...

 

I am sure by the time this is developed the idiots will figure out a way to claim this isn't safe just like our current nuclear power plants.

 

I know...about the only thing I could think of was the boogieman technique. It says "nuclear" and it's gonna get you!

For those who don't know much about Fusion energy. For one you can't have a runaway reaction. If you remove the fuel it stops. No ifs ands or buts about it. The byproduct (the main one at least) is helium. You also get some tritium, but it has a half life of 12 years. You can't really get enough tritium to make a bomb, and the reactor technology can't readily be changed to make fissionable material.

 

And, H8R, we're runnin' out of helium.

 

G,

The other products are heat and gamma radiation. Fusing 1H1 is a lot harder than fusing it with 1H2 (deuterium) or 1H3 (tritium) or lithium, but those easier (or more easily-found lithium) reactions will produce radioactive B, Be, and a lot of neutrons. All that gamma (and neutron activitiy) will make a radioactive shielding chamber.

Also, in the interest of disclosure, 12yr half life means it's really radioactive. 150,000yr half life means it's pretty close to stone-cold stone in terms of radioactivity.

But it's still WAY cleaner than fission, and IMO, fossil fuels.

Keeping the plasma core of a Tokamak or other fusion reactor small means that if it does escape, it will expand/cool quickly (not be an H-bomb).

IMO, all way better risks and long-term effects than the petro industry. I'd doubt, btw, that we'd have fusion reactors in cars, my joke upthread aside. I think we'd have regional/metro Hydrogen generation plants (using a central fusion reactor to provide the watts to separate H from H2O). That would be a huge boom (pun unintended) for the fuel infrastructure industry, to replace all our infrastructure for petro with Hydrogen. And, we wouldn't need pipelines from Canada to the Gulf. We'd still need some of our other pipelines for other chemical transport (where tank cars/trucks don't make sense).


Now that I've solved the worlds' issues, I'll go racing tomorrow.


(hah. Now I've made a dungeon post for others to attack )

 

This sounds 'Out there' in a lot of ways. Suspend judgment for a moment:

Here's an easier reaction, and is fifth on the list of achievable terrestrial reactions ranked by energy produced:

3He2 + 3He2 → 4He2 + 2 p+ + 12.9 MeV

This is Helium-3, and exists on the surface of the moon and asteroids (replenished by the solar wind). 'Mining' this from asteroids might be a really good way to go for the next century, if we wanted. I think this might be what the Russians were trying to do with their recent Mars probe meant to bring back surface dust.

 

We can last for 15 years with what we have.

They aren't exploring for some reason. Doesn't really take much of a tinfoil hat to figure out they know something. Apparently they think that what sources they are tapping right now will be enough. I think 15 years is way too fast for it to be replaced.

 

Everytime people here "the reactor is criticle" they panic.

 

kz2zx, it's "boon".

Just sayin'...

 

Comparing half-lifes directly doesn't even come close to tell the whole story.

Trimium puts off very low energy beta radiation and isn't very hazardous from a health standpoint. That's why the radio-pharm labs are allowed to keep so much of it on hand and are allowed to poor it down the sinks in most cases.

Half-lifes don't tell much. Energies of the radiations released are what's important.

I would rather drink Tritium than get anywhere aroudn Plutonium-239 with its 24K+ half-life.

 

Well, Plutonium is poisonous in it's own right (chemically), but yes, I agree.

Energy flux is the key. And, statistically speaking, you do drink Tritium, just in really tiny amounts.

 

Diaster averted! ITER should be up and running by 2018!

 

Everything I am reading and hearing indicates something different but it wouldnt be the first time I was wrong. IMO US exploration is being held up by the uncertainty of this administration and not having a clue what direction they will jump next. Noone wants to spend a bunch of money on a project only to have the regulations and tax rates change to where the project is no longer viable. On top of that, most of the investment capital is currently being dumped in to shale drilling. That seems to be the hot ticket right now.

 

Huh, Panther, I think that the way he used the word, boom is correct. As in "booming" market for the use of pipelines.
I could be wrong.

 

Yep.

 

Yep.

Nope.