Nuclear Fusion ... Interested? ... This is it, this is the spot to explore ...

[North_Sky]

Exciting - Radio Frequency Waves ... helping to stabilize fusion reactions.

▪ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/amp32389687/radio-waves-stabilize-fusion-reactions/

 

[North_Sky]

$84 million startup (stimulus by investors) in entering next phase ...
• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...oject-backed-by-investors-to-enter-next-phase

 

[North_Sky]

● https://scitechdaily.com/iter-fusio...t-international-scientific-collaboration/amp/

 

[Tks]

That is not quite correct.

There will be more radioactive waste on a volumetric basis. You are talking about structural pieces that need to be replaced. Not fuel rods like in fission reactors. Imagine a big 4000 sq feet volume of a house in radioactive artifacts.

HOWEVER, these are less radioactive in their inherent potency and their half-lives will be a fair bit shorter. In terms of decades rather than thousands of years for uranium / plutonium waste.

It will present a different kind of containment and storage issue. Volume versus longevity. Whichever is easier to handle ? I'm not sure about that.

Not a problem by the time it gets off the ground, SpaceX would gladly commercialize shooting garbage out in deep space by then if we finally become energy net-positive as a civilization.

 

[North_Sky]

2025, here we go ...

⚛ https://www.livescience.com/nuclear-fusion-reactor-sparc-2025.html

 

[phoenixdogfan]

2025, here we go ...

⚛ https://www.livescience.com/nuclear-fusion-reactor-sparc-2025.html

Naw, it's 29 years in the future.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Naw, it's 29 years in the future.

Where are you getting this from? Everyone knows it is always 50 years away. Come on this is supposed to be a science forum.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Where are you getting this from? Everyone knows it is always 50 years away. Come on this is supposed to be a science forum.

Now if the drug companies just find an effective anti-agathic, we might actually see it come to pass, assumng we're not all underwater by then.

 

[Neutron]

Stellarators are fascinating devices.

 

[lord45]

A few words about how nuclear propulsion in the space exploration area. I know that different types of propulsion are used but nuclear propulsion is the most frequently used. I`d like to mention one rocket that is called a hybrid rocket. It was named hybrid as it combines solid hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene ( HTPB ) fuel 90% hydrogen peroxide ( H2O2 ) liquid oxidizer. This rocket is called SkyHy and it is used for some microgravity missions and experiments and delivering microsats in the orbit.

 

[Count Arthur]

Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking?

 

[egellings]

It seems like fusion power is always 20 years away. It's a spectacular way to get energy, if we can ever pull it off on a commercial scale.

 

[egellings]

With fusion, we do with magnetism what the sun does with gravity.

 

[Offler]

Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking?

I can post a very boring article or video, but its very accurate . Helium on Earth comes from alpha radioactive decay of heavy metals such as Thorium . Since is so light, it escapes Earths atmosphere into space.

 

[Wes]

so will the Thorium coating my old Nikkor lenses turn into Helium?

 

[Offler]

so will the Thorium coating my old Nikkor lenses turn into Helium?

I have Carl-Zeiss "Zebra" Pancolar 50mm F1,8 with the same thorium coating, thats how I learned about it.

As Thorium decays, it releases alpha particles which consists of two protons and two neutrons. They are large and slow, and cannot get throught skin, or lets say paper, but they eventually pick electrons. 2protons + 2 neutrons + 2 electrons = Helium isotope 4.

Thorium itself will change according to 'thorium decay chain':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain

Keeping the lens Its safe, unless the lens gets broken and the dust ingested or breathed in, thats actually very dangerous.

I wanted to use the lens in this experiment:

 

[Tachyon88]

I'm not surprised...

 

[JuliaCoder]

I'm not surprised...

She says all the attention is on the energy gain in the plasma. It was 0.67 in 1997. Now it's 0.7. But this is very misleading. It's the total gain of the whole system to electricity on the grid. This is much lower and research into lowering the total gain is neglected.

 

[mhardy6647]

Pretty good article (obviously nontechnical) in The New Yorker showed up in my inbox just a wee bit ago.

Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

Amid an escalating crisis, the power source offers a dream—or a pipe dream—of limitless clean energy.

www.newyorker.com

Sample quote:

A joke I heard is that fusion operates according to the law of the “conservation of difficulty”: when one problem is solved, a new one of equal difficulty emerges to take its place.

 

[egellings]

I wonder if fusion will ever become commercially viable, or if it will remain a laboratory curiosity. I'd love to see it work, though. We really could have limitless energy then. Question I have is this: Fossil fuels, when burned, put an insulating blanket around the planet that lets light in but doesn't let the resultant heat out so well. So the temperature will rise. With fusion, we'll be able to dump a lot of heat directly into the air right from the planet. If we get stupid making ridiculous amounts of this energy, will we be able to heat the place up dissipating all of it? Add the sun's input to that, along with residual fossil fuel use as well, and it could get warm in here. What we need is a lower population that uses less energy per capita. More people means less energy for each one. Can't have your cake and burn (oops! eat) it, too.