Nuclear Fusion one step closer...

[Fat Tone]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2928435.stm

still some way off though.

[Wombat]

Seem to be barking up the wrong tree. I still have no idea why they ignore Farnsworth.

[Technoid]

That whole proces they describe seems to be "forced" where Farnsworths idea is more to jumpstart a "natural" process

[Fat Tone]

Originally posted by Wombat
Seem to be barking up the wrong tree. I still have no idea why they ignore Farnsworth.

It would seem that ITT are to blame. A fascinating read is here

[Brian Ellis]

Unfortunately, it won't happen in my lifetime: I have only 30 years left until I'm shot by a jealous husband at the age of 100

I used to have contacts with the plasma physics lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, one of a handful of labs, worldwide, working on fusion. In the 1970s, they used to tell me that it would take 5 years before they would have viable fusion (i.e., more energy produced than it would take to initiate the fusion). In the 1980s, they said 10 years. In the 1990s, 25 years....

At least, "traditional" fusion methods (plasma pinching) does not produce significant radiation. It sounds that the intense X-rays required for the Z machine may be quite difficult to contain. If they are sufficiently energetic to fuse D2, and to release thereby one neutron per atom, they must also be sufficiently energetic to cause nuclear changes to other atoms, possibly producing radioactive isotopes. The advantage of plasma methods is that combined effect of the electrical discharge and the magnetic field was to keep the energy contained in a pinched mm diameter gas stream in the middle of a toroid, so that no other atoms came in contact with the energy and transmutation was therefore impossible.

However, let's hope our grandchildren will be able to benefit from safe fusion energy; theoretically it is possible.

[az]

ANY safe energy will do for me, doesn't have to be fusion

AZ

[Brian Ellis]

Farnsworth's ideas round the Fusor have not been suppressed. There is no intellectual property involved in them, now, as the patents fell into the public domain many years ago. His patents and designs are still available and, if they were viable, they could be exploited by anyone. The problem is that they are not viable, i.e., IF they produced free neutrons, they would require more energy to do so than would be produced (as in most other fusion systems). However, the real problem seems to be that other experimenters have not been able to duplicate his supposed findings.

BTW "safe energy" is really an oxymoron. Energy, in any reasonable form of power, can never be safe. One of the potentially most dangerous is the hydroelectric dam. Since the 39-45 war, it is estimated that over 2,000 persons per year, on an average, are killed by water accidentally escaping from HE dams in some way or another. This makes Chernobyl look like child's play, regrettable though it was. I have always said that I'd much rather live next door to a nuke power station than downstream from a major dam.

[az]

Dams are a bad thing for a variety of reasons. I wouldn't want to live near a nuclear power plant (or, much worse, were the material is stored after it's been used, which is really the one big problem for this form of energy) neither, though. Solar energy would be nice, if we culd find a way to build reasonably efficient photovoltaic cells without the use of hazardous materials.

AZ

[Brian Ellis]

"I wouldn't want to live near a nuclear power plant"

A modern one in a country with a good authority governing them would not bother me. For example, 39.7% of Switzerland's electrical energy is produced by nukes. The stations are all in fairly populous regions (e.g., the 2nd biggest one is at Gösgen, in the middle of the industrial belt between Zurich and Bern and biggest one is in the Rhine valley between Zurich and Basel). They operate at typically 95% of the time and the number of scrams (unprogrammed reduction of output) is minimal. I wouldn't object to living near these.

Reactors are designed to withstand crashes from large aircraft.

"the material is stored after it's been used, which is really the one big problem for this form of energy".

It all depends what you mean. 96% of the fuel rods are recycled, using the MOX technique. Only 4% of them have to be vitrified and drummed as high-activity material (this represents less than 1 m3/year in Switzerland). By law, they have to be stored above ground, in specially designed and shielded hangars for 40 years before their activity is low enough for permanent storage. On top of that, there are a tonne or so of relatively harmless low and medium activity materials (mostly residues from ion exchangers, cleaning materials etc.). These are stored in sealed stainless steel drums and the radioactive levels in their vicinity are only slightly higher than the natural background level. They are also stored in special hangars for a few years, to check that there are no leaks. The worst case is that of used fuel rods before they are sent off for recycling, which have to kept cool in "swimming baths".

In reality, you risk more from the radioactivity in the flue gases of a coal-fired power station than you do from the storage areas of a nuke power station.

I agree that there is a problem with the disposal of the high-activity wastes after the 40 year storage period. This is not an insoluble problem. Most countries have stable anhydrite beds up to 200 m thick which are totally exempt of water and are in aseismic areas. Many (but not all) of these are OK for storing wastes up to an estimated 20,000 years, with no foreseeable risk. The problem though is that no one wants them in their back yard (NIMBY), no matter the assurances of experts! They imagine being overrun with 7-headed rats, spiders the size of St Bernard dogs or somesuch.

PV cells are made, nowadays, efficiently and without dangerous materials. The problem with PV electricity is the cost. Compared with thermal (including nuclear) or HE electricity, it would take ~50 years to economically write off the capital cost, without interest on the investment, but their lifetime is only ~30 years. Some countries offer massive subsidies (up to 75%) to equip a house with PV panels but even then it is difficult to pay back. In this country, I can get a 50% subsidy AND a generous repurchase of the excess electricity produced. Even so, I have done careful calculations and the payback time with current (no pun) electricity consumption and estimated production for a 3 kW installation is about 12 years.

[Fat Tone]

I'd like to see all new properties required to have a thermal-solar exchanger for hot water, and PV for electricity generation. Initial costs must be insignificant compared to the cost of the property. Mass adoption would also lead to economies of scale.

As to the energy budget for production of said devices, over to you Brian...

T.

[GNEP]

To quote from a (publicly available of course) document sitting on my desk, there is currently significant overcapacity in the PV cell manufacturing industry.

Uptake of PV will continue to be entirely dependent on government (or NGO for some rural electrification schemes) subsidy for the foreseeable future.

However, that's not to say there isn't exciting technology around - last time I was over at our renewables office, one of the guys had a bit of (what looked like) clear glass on his desk, with two little wires coming from it powering a small desk fan. Pretty cool if clear glass windows could produce current! Still expensive though...

[Fat Tone]

Originally posted by GNEP
To quote from a (publicly available of course) document sitting on my desk, there is currently significant overcapacity in the PV cell manufacturing industry.

So are prices being kept artificially high? Wouldn't market forces normally drive them down in this situation?

However, that's not to say there isn't exciting technology around - last time I was over at our renewables office, one of the guys had a bit of (what looked like) clear glass on his desk, with two little wires coming from it powering a small desk fan. Pretty cool if clear glass windows could produce current! Still expensive though...

hah - I can do that with a potato, and then eat it

T.

[GNEP]

Mmmm...Potato

Re. the artificially high comment, well, no, not really - the point I was making was that even with the competitive pressures of over-capacity, and very slim (if existant at all) margins in PV manufacturing and supply, the cost is still too high for the electricity to be viable in terms of cost without subsidy.

Also there is consolidation in the business now, with "older" less-productive/cheap plants closing, and for example Shell/E.On/Siemens solar business merging into one (owned 100% by Shell). As production techniques and the underlying technology improve, I have no doubt that PV cells will one day be viable, but we are talking a range of decades not years here (well, maybe only one decade or a bit more). And even then, they will only be used appropriately as part of a range of electricity-producers, and not be a panacea.

Wind generation, however, is much closer to the lifecycle cost per megawatt being comparable to traditional sources. Even if a certain Blyth offshore effort was a bit of a problem in many respects (although I can't say much more than that...)

Gnep

[Jammrock]

When someone figures out how to efficiently generate power from ocean currents, that will be significant, imo. You could power all the costal area (the most populated parts of the world) without burning anything or pissing of anti-nuclear hippies.

Jammrock

[GNEP]

Except that by taking power from those currents, you might have an (unknown in magnitude) effect on the same currents. And as the ocean currents have BIG effects on our climates, I'd be fairly careful first...