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Scientific American staff editor Michael Moyer talks about his article "Fusion's False Dawn" in the March issue, and Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina discusses the rest of the issue. Web sites related to this episode include www.sciamdigital.com; www.snipurl.com/mikefusion
Podcast Transcription
Steve: Welcome to Science Talk, the more or less weekly podcast of Scientific American posted on March 17th, 2010. I am Steve Mirsky. Remember fusion? Not cold fusion; real regular old fusion that's going to solve all our energy needs. Well Scientific American staff editor Michael Moyer has an article in the March issue of the magazine about the current state of fusion called, "Fusion's False Dawn". We'll talk to him and we'll talk to Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina about some of the rest of what's in the March issue—but first up, Michael Moyer.
Steve: Michael, let me just read the subhead of the article, "Fusion's False Dawn". "Scientists have long dreamed of harnessing nuclear fusion, the power plant of the star, for a safe, clean and virtually unlimited energy supply. Even as a historical milestone nears, skeptics question whether a working reactor will ever be possible". So let's first of all talk about fission versus fusion very quickly, because some people might not be aware of the difference; because fission reactors exist all over the place. And also we'll talk about what that historic milestone is and then we'll talk about why it's possible we may never get fusion.
Moyer: Yeah, fission reactors, as you say, are all over the place and those work by the splitting of heavy atoms such as uranium and more rarely plutonium to produce energy. Fusion is, you know, the opposite of that. It's a[n] atomic nuclear reaction, but it's the combination of two very light elements, generally hydrogen that come together and produce helium and then they also produce a lot of energy, and the energy comes from the basic fact that helium is slightly lighter than two hydrogens put together, so that excess energy has to go somewhere via Einstein's E = mc2
Steve: The excess mass, it's converted into energy.
Moyer: Yes excuse me, the excess mass gets converted into energy and quite a bit of energy, as anyone who's ever seen one of those film reels of hydrogen bombs going [off can] [at]test; that is just a little bit of hydrogen converted into helium, and wow!
Steve: So, that's what we're talking about and hydrogen is available in bounteous supply, so it'd be a wonderful thing.
Moyer: Hydrogen, [the] most common element in the universe and obviously we have it all over the place, not just in the atmosphere, but in the water. In order to make a workable fusion, we, actually scientists, use isotopes of hydrogen. Hydrogen itself just has a proton at its nucleus; if you have a proton and a neutron that's called deuterium. If you have a proton and two neutrons, that's tritium and for various technical reasons, it's much easier to make deuterium and tritium come together to produce fusion.
Steve: Okay. So that's fusion. What's the historic milestone that's coming up?
Moyer: So, for many years, ever since World War II, when people realized the power inherent here, they've dreamed of making a controlled fusion experiment. Control basically means it doesn't explode, it just moves along slowly and produces heat and you can then use that heat, and they've been working on this for decades and decades now and getting closer and closer to the point where they're producing actually more energy than they put into the experiment. It's very hard to push these two deuterium and tritium nuclei together because they have this repulsive force; they're both positively charged and so getting them close enough to fuse is very, very difficult and there's been a lot of different strategies for how to do that and it takes a lot of energy to make them come together. For the first time, maybe later this year, more likely next year, the National Ignition Facility, which is in Livermore, California, is expected to finally create more energy from their fusion reactions than they put in, which is called breakeven or ignition, and it's really a historic milestone. People had been working on this for half a century now.
Steve: Despite all that, we're nowhere near a fusion reactor that would supply electricity for big populations, and it looks like some people think we may never actually get there.
Moyer: Well, here's the thing: In theory, you think to yourself, "Okay, now we're getting more energy out than we're putting in; loop some of that energy back around." You have this multiplicative effect, and then suddenly you're able to get a reactor, which you're just putting in basically seawater and kind of getting out on the other side as much energy as you want to. You know, this is the world's energy problem solved. This is limitless energy—all we have to do is kind of get past this breakeven point and learn how to control it. That is not true for a lot of reasons. One of which is that the breakeven that the National Ignition Facility is going to be achieving is really just the energy that is going directly into the reaction. So the way the National Ignition Facility works, it's this amazing structure. When I was able to visit it; it's the most powerful laser in the world, three football fields in size and they generate this laser and then they focus all the lasers down, they split it apart into 142 different little lasers or, you know, not little but smaller; and then they focus it onto [a] little pellet of deuterium and tritium, and then that pellet, the outsides of the pellet kind of explode, and that pushes the insides ever closer together and that is what creates a fusion reactions. It's really just this marvelous, marvelous experiment, but into the accounting that they do—and they're very clear about this—it's just the energy of the lasers that are actually going in and hitting the pellets. There's a lot of losses in the system that come from generating the lasers themselves, so we're not there yet. More importantly, now you have all this energy coming out of the fusion, energy coming out, and how do you then convert that into energy that we could use? How do you make that boil water and spin a turbine and have that generate electricity that then goes out through the grid?
Steve: What is the form of the energy that comes out right now?
Moyer: So, the energy in a fusion reaction is mostly in the form of neutrons. And neutrons, one of the atomic constituents of matter, they're called neutrons, because they're neutral—they don't interact via the electromagnetic force, they don't have charge. So, you have all these neutrons coming out, they're very energetic, they've got all this energy, and they're blasting out through the sides of your chamber. Now you've got to somehow convert that into boiling water. How do you do it? Well you['ve] got to have this design around it, what's the called blanket; and what the hope is, is that the neutron will go out and the blanket is made of some very thick steel-type material, and every so often, a neutron will just hit an atomic nucleus in the steel blanket and that hit will then make the steel hotter and that hot steel, and then you have, almost like in a car engine, you have some fluid, water could work, going through the steel, it takes the energy away, that water is hot, it goes and spins the turbine, okay that's great. Problems: sometimes the neutron goes out and hits a nucleus of the blanket and instead of just ringing it like a bell, it goes and one of the steel atoms absorb[s] the neutron; now this makes it different material, [it] makes it brittle, it makes it radioactive. And in the blanket, they're figuring out [some of] the common materials wouldn't have a very long life. Another, actually huge problem that they have and probably the core problem that people are most worried about, as we said before, there's two elements that you have to have going into a fusion reaction, deuterium and tritium. Deuterium is very common, it's an element of sea water, you can find it; tritium is not common. Tritium is very difficult to make, it's radioactive itself, and right now you can make it in ordinary fission reactors, but only a very little bit and all at very high cost. Once you get one of the power plants going and up and running, you're going through kilograms and kilograms and kilograms of this tritium and you have to find a way to actually make tritium in this blanket at the same time that you're extracting energy. And so in order to do that, you have to have all these other components nearby and you have to have lithium, you have to have some of the neutrons hit lithium ions, and then it has to go through a cascade of reactions, so that the lithium goes and produces tritium and helium and then you have to extract the tritium from the blanket and you go ahead. It's just this huge, huge engineering feat that people aren't really sure of how they're going to solve right now; they haven't demonstrated that they're going to be able to do it. And so even as we get to this point, before we get to breakeven, now people are saying "Okay look, we've been working on this problem of making fusion reactions happen, controlling plasmas—plasmas are these very odd materials, when you heat things up to very high temperatures, and it's hard to control them. We're kind of getting this, in addition to NIF, there's this other program called, ITER, which is out in Europe, which will also be able to create controlled fusion reactions at above break-even that's going to be going online in maybe 15 years or so; they're building it right now. Now that we've done this, how are we going to make a workable power plant? And those problems are much more severe than anyone's been talking about.
Steve: The last section of your article is sub-headed, The Big Lie, but it's not about propaganda, what is it about?
Moyer: So, the big lie—once you take all these ideas into account, then you have to consider, are we going to be able to make these reactors and are we going to be able to make them work at [a] cost that is effective that is able to compete with whatever other options we have in 30, 40, 50 years and longer. And so people are starting to ask hard questions, for instance with the NIF program, as we said before, there're these little pellets in the center that all these laser[s] have to hit. So, but this it's really an issue where it's a blast. You have the lasers come and hit the pellet and the pellet explodes in a way, you know fuses together. Now, okay so that was one, now you want to kind of do this continuously. So you've got to kind of cycle things through and you almost, it's a machine gun approach. You got all these pellets coming in and blast, blast, blast, blast, blast. Right now, NIF is only set up to kind of run one blast every four or five hours or something like that, but you start to do, Ed Moses, the director of NIF told me, "You know, you have a 600 rpm machine, you start to create a lot of energy." Well, so then you ask the question, how much does the fuel cost? How much are these pellets? And NIF doesn't release the cost of their pellets and they're making them on-site there, but [there are] other people making similar pellets that have to [be] exquisitely machined, you know, down to micrometers, and right now the estimates are, they’re you know, in the order of about a million dollars a pellet.
Steve: As opposed to a nickel a pellet.
Moyer: As opposed to a nickel, which is where they have to go, and they and, you know, Dr. Moses will say, "Hey we have to get this cost down." He's very optimistic that they're going to be able to get it all the way down, but look that's a lot of orders of magnitude; you gotta get that pellet cost down.
Steve: Well, we have seen the price of certain entities fall by that many orders of magnitude within a relatively short time. I'm thinking about consumer electronics.
Moyer: Sure, and my hope is that they're able to make it happen, but the tolerances required are very small, and you also don't solve the tritium problem, with this as well, you still have to get the tritium from somewhere. Dr. Moses was telling me, we've seen progress like this in consumer electronics. He says the laser in the NIF right now is very expensive, but you can imagine that if we would have a solid-state laser made—they're making great progress in making solid-state laser[s] a lot cheaper—those you would be able to blast much more frequently. The limiting factor is in how often you can do the blast [at NIF now is that] you can only, kind of, run the flashlike-tubes that make the lasers so powerful every four hours, they have to cool down, they have to be able to do all this other stuff. So, can it happen? It could. Is it going to be this great stuff where in 20 years, we're going to start building these things? From [what] I learned in reporting the story, I'm not convinced.
Steve: Alright. Let's just play a game. Twenty years from now, what would you think the odds are of having a working fusion reactor that's actually supplying electricity to households in 50 years?
Moyer: In 50 years, I guess I would have to fudge it and say it depends. A lot of the people, I spoke with said, "Look, if you gave us more money, we'd be able to make progress a lot faster." Moses is a big fan of a design which is more of a hybrid fission-fusion design. You have those, you kind of solve a lot of the blanket problems where you have your fusion blast in the center and then it hits a blanket which is basically nuclear waste, depleted waste, and there's a lot of left over energy in that waste; and you have neutrons hit that waste and then that catalyzes further reactions, you get a lot more heat. He says that that really can happen in 20 years if we want [it] to happen and other people in fission communities say that that's not really feasible. The standard answer I would say is, I would say that there's may be a 20 percent chance that in 50 years we'll have a working fusion reactor.
Steve: All right. So what about 100 years?
Moyer: There is a great optimism amongst everyone in the field that one day civilization will get to the point where we'll be using fusion energy.
Steve: So, a thousand years from now?
Moyer: That's right. At a thousand year[s], as T goes [to] infinity, the chances that we're using fusion for energy chances are….
Steve: Go to 100 percent.
Moyer: But in between now and then, it's hard to see where that slope of that line is right now.
Steve: How come I haven't heard a lot about fusion in the last maybe 20 years really?
Moyer: Well, I think it's a lot story of frustration. You know the early pioneers of the research made big promises; and you know, this was in the '50s and the '60s, this was the nuclear age, this was you know, "We can do anything if we put enough energy into it" and there were just a lot of you know, nature put up a lot of roadblocks along the way. And so then after hearing lot of promises for so long and not seeing results, you know, Congress stopped funding a lot of these things to the extent that they were before; and you know, the earlier energy crisis going back [to] the '70s, there was a lot of money put into fusion, but then that went away and so did the money. So, and then you also have the cold fusion fiascos of the late 1980s which kind of give everything a little bit of a bad name, but really it's because there hasn't been a lot to report since then. We've been working towards break even, now finally we’re getting to break even and that's great and the experiments that are going on, you know, aren't just for the purpose of getting us energy in the future, there's a lot of interest in science work that can be done. You can model supernova explosions with these little explosions at NIF. The real reason that NIF exists and the reason why it hasn't been canceled [for] going over budget is because it's used to help the stock[pile] stewardship program which is to help ensure the safety of Americas nuclear weapons stockpile, now that we can't test them anymore, there's a comprehensive test band. So there are a lot of reasons to do it that don't include making energy.
Steve: Well, I hope that in the you know, we have the column "50, 100 and 150" years ago at Scientific American, so I'm hoping that the March 2110 issue quotes from your article here and talks about how ironic it was where you say that ignition may be close but the age of unlimited energy is not, and I hope those people [a] hundred years from now, in their hovercraft, as they're texting in they're hovercraft—its okay because it's on autopilot—I hope they're reading what we had a hundred years ago and think , "Oh those poor people back then, thank god [that] such a great progress has been made."
Moyer: I certainly hope that they get a good chuckle out of it.
Steve: Michael Moyer's article, "Fusion's False Dawn" is available in the March issue of Scientific American. The preview of the article can be found on our Web site and at http:snipurl.com/mikefusion. Mariette DiChristina is the editor in chief of Scientific American magazine. We talked about the rest of the contents of the March issue. March is here Mariette, and I understand there's now dark energy in the brain of all places?
DiChristina: Can you believe that?
Steve: I can't actually.
DiChristina: You know the good thing about March is that the sun is actually now out more so the dark energy in the brain will maybe [be] ameliorated by the light outside.
Steve: Interesting. And by the way, everybody who's now getting ready to write to us to explain how the Earth revolves around the Sun and spins on its axis and that the sun is not actually out more, we know.
DiChristina: We know, yes thank you. We probably addressed this in [the] Ask the Experts area of the Web site, too.
Steve: No doubt. So let's talk about the brain's dark energy, obviously a term that the neuroscientists are borrowing from the physicists.
DiChristina: Right, in astrophysics and cosmology, what dark energy is referring to is this mysterious force that is responsible for the expansion of the universe at speeds greater than what have been anticipated, or I should say rates rather than speeds. In the brain, dark energy is this unexpected activity that they found by looking at, well let me back up just for a minute. It's when you're resting, say you're semi-dozing, you're kind of lying in your chair, you're kind of relaxed or even sleeping, once upon a time we had this idea, or scientists had this idea that the brain is pretty much inactive then, that you've shut off in effect your conscious thinking, then also your brain was not doing much. It actually turns out to be quite the opposite. In fact, when you're not doing much, the brain is super active, and this is the brain's dark energy. And the question was what is the brain doing when you're relaxing, you know, semi-slumbering; what could you possibly be up to?
Steve: [One of] the really interesting findings is, let's say you are just sitting in a chair not doing anything, daydreaming or maybe just, sort of, maybe not trying to meditate but you are in a meditative kind of state, you're just sitting there relaxing, looking out the window, and you then decide to perform a task—your brain activity actually goes down.
DiChristina: Right it does. Well it goes down in the sense [that] it gets a little more focused as well; now know what's happening is this brain dark energy, which scientists call the brain default mode network—and they use the word default because when you're not doing anything else—this is background brain activity that is constantly occurring is all about the brain anticipating and predicting what'll happen next in the environment. This research by a guy named Marcus Raichle at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, the reason why he start[ed] to look at it was he began to wonder [whether]—all this brain wave activity when we look at, when scientists look at brainwave activity, they typically strip out what you and I would call noise. So you're trying to get that sine wave, that up and down mountain range of brainwave activity, and there's all these little wriggles in there that scientists once thought was noise. And what Dr. Raichle [asked] was, "Could that noise be actually doing something?" And it turns out it is. It is by far the brain's greatest level of activity, devoted constantly, and what is doing is thinking about the world; it's thinking about interpreting the data that come in and it's thinking about planning actions that one might next take for a background level of consciousness. 'The brain at rest' is actually a hive of activity and what it's doing is trying to sort out information that comes in; I mean this is another, another thing that made Marcus Raichle curious about this, is we know, for instance, that six million bits of data go flowing in through your optic nerve from the environment around you, and then only 10,000 of those bits actually get to the brain's visual processing area and only a few hundred of those are involved in consciousness, and you know, the conscious processing associated with that visual activity. So how on earth is the brain taking that little, relatively very small amount of data and then creating this very enriched, you know, very complete visual and, you know, sensory experience of the world around us and scientists think this default mode network is a key to that experience.
Steve: A constant kind of reconstruction of reality.
DiChristina: Exactly, and a ruminating, you know, sort of considering what data it has taken in so far and what it might anticipate happening next, and you know assembling conscious processing to match that.
Steve: So that's our cover article. You also have a really interesting piece by Robert Hazen, about the fact that the mineral diversity on earth is unique, well unique, as far as we know; because as it turns out so much of that diversity is the result of life itself on earth [itself] creating the minerals that we find on the planet. We always think of the planet as this inorganic, you know, nonliving environment, that life then takes place on but what this article shows is that life actually constantly remolds the physical non-organic environment. It's really interesting just how many thousands of the different minerals will not be found on the moon or Mars because life was[n't] involved in their creation.
DiChristina: Yeah, I love this article. This article is actually called the "Evolution of Minerals" and one of the things, as your rightly point out, that the article does is the author Robert Hazen suggests that, you know, we had thought of minerals for their timeless quality but actually they've been quite varied and diversified over time, just as life itself has, and that life has been the actor in this. You mentioned before how, you know, earth is unique as far as we know, and that is true. When earth was first formed with, you know, giant pieces of rock smashing, you know, impacting together, they were maybe 200 or so minerals created through the formation of the solar system and so on. And this is maybe, you know, 4.4 [billion] or 4.5 billion years ago, a little bit more, 4.6 billion years ago, through heat and pressure over the next few hundred thousand years, about another thousand or so minerals arose through chemical reactions, heating, weathering and so on. But then earth went through a series of three more giant stages associated with the formation of life that wholly revamped minerals. And so now there are something like 4,400 on Earth which is at least as far as we can see completely unique, and there was a period which Dr. Hazen called red earth about a couple of billion, two billion years ago, when life first gets going when there's some, you know, early forms of life and about 2,000 or so minerals arise [there], microorganisms make sheaths of minerals like calcium carbonate that we now see in animals with shells. There was an era called white earth which starts about 700 million years ago with alternating periods of deep ice sheets and then hotter warmer stages which led to formation of various kinds of crystals, and last and luckily we live in the period known as green earth, which started about 400 million years ago when multicellular life arose and wholly changed to biochemical breakdown the makeup of the minerals on the planet again. So [it's] a terrific article on how minerals have changed and how life and minerals back and forth had shifted each other.
Steve: And one of the key things is that life is responsible for the oxygenation of the atmosphere. There was a very, very miniscule percentage of the atmosphere that was oxygen until living things started to produce oxygen and oxygenate the whole big deal here; and the oxygen in the atmosphere basically rusts the earth.
DiChristina: Everything yeah, this is red earth, you're referring [to] Steve; it's an event called the great oxidation event and this started about two billion years ago and really set off the first giant wave of mineralization of changing varieties of minerals that we see in earth's history.
Steve: Well, once you have oxygen out there to combine because it's so corrosive …
DiChristina: So reactive yeah.
Steve: … to combine with all these other elements you have this just incredible variation of minerals that become available too.
DiChristina: Yeah, I mean, we think of minerals as things that just kind of sit there, and they are timeless, and they don't change, but what this article shows is that they've changed in extraordinary ways over time. That's fascinating.
Steve: Yeah, it's also a good reminder that we always perceive things through the human lifespan, and when you can hold back from that and see things over geological time spans, everything, sort of, takes on the appearance of being alive, even the rocks.
DiChristina: Right, well even they change, I mean if we then change our lens again, you know, the solar system is evolving and changing the galaxies and so on, and in fact the entire cosmos seems to be alive with change.
Steve: And one of the interesting things Hazen points out is that if we are searching for life on other planets with our telescopes—we don't have to actually go there yet—one of the things we can do in addition to looking for the direct signatures of life, biochemical signatures of life, we can look to see what kind of minerals appear to be on those planets. Because if there's just a handful, chances are it's a dead planet. But if we find another body out there with just an incredible variety of mineral forms that might be a clue to us that there is life there creating those mineral forms.
DiChristina: Right, I mean and that would be, as you say, we could look with our telescopes and we could see chemical signatures using special instruments with our telescopes and look for those signs of potential life.
Steve: So, we have another article everybody loves: worms.
DiChristina: Who doesn't love a good worm?
Steve: Seriously, so worm grunting; we [have an] article actually on worm grunting; let's explain what worm grunting is.
DiChristina: Yeah, [we have] an article on this amazing, on this amazing phenomenon which is so counter-intuitive. I mean evolution teaches us, we [were] just speaking about evolution and minerals, right, and evolution of the brain. Evolution teaches us that survival is a good thing. So one would think that anything you do counter to survival will not be a good thing, and with worms if you stamp on the ground, worm grunters do this, the worms will rise to the surface. Why would they do that thing? Why? Because they come to the surface and now they're subject to you who are just stamping and want to pull them off for fish bait, or other animal forms, why would they do that?
Steve: A perfunctory analysis would be if you hear stamping on the ground, you would go deeper down to get away from whoever is making that noise up there, which might be a threat; but no, they come up.
DiChristina: Even Charles Darwin wondered about this puzzle, and he had an idea about it; he thought that it may be the worms were trying to escape a predator, moles who are seeking protein in the form of wriggling worms. And the thing is that's a nice just old story, right? Maybe the worms just do that; Charles Darwin had this idea but how do we know that's what happened? And this is where this article, which is called "Worm Charmers" by Kenneth Catania comes into play, because he had the same question—could we prove that moles, that they were indeed trying to escape moles who were digging and that they might rise up to escape the moles that were in tunnels below them.
Steve: So our buddy Ken Catania goes to Florida and he tracks along with some of these worm grunters or worm charmers.
DiChristina: Right so first he has got to find some moles, so he is driving down the highway and he looks for characteristic tunnels that moles form, and he finds them; and then, you know, how are you going to get the mole out of the tunnel? Well some of the tunnels were crushed by cars passing by so you would wait for moles to come out and kind of fix the tunnel and thereby find them.
Steve: And once he found them what was he going to do with the moles directly?
DiChristina: Well you can set them to work then back on the ground and then see what the worms do, so in this way you can directly test what the animals are doing, you know, whether they interact with each other.
Steve: And lo and behold when the moles burrow they actually set up these vibrations that are very similar to what humans do when we stamp on the ground.
DiChristina: And so the worms will rise up to escape them. And what else is interesting about that is that there are other animals that have figured out, as human worm charmers [have], that if they set up vibrations on top of the ground, worms will rise to meet them.
Steve: So the moles are setting up these vibrations. The worms attempt to flee because they know that those vibrations mean burrowing moles and they come to the surface, so human beings have co-opted that vibrational form which they mimic by stamping to get the worms to come up, but so have these other species, have figured this out. So, was it herring gulls have also figured it out that if they stamp on the ground with their big web[bed] feet that they can get the worms to come up and get a meal out of it? And what’s the other animal?
DiChristina: There is a wood turtle that also stomps to drive up worms.
Steve: Also, with the big webbed foot, smacks the ground, brings the worms [up]; and, of course, the turtle doesn't know that it's imitating the vibrational form produced by the moles, it's just figured this out evolutionarily.
DiChristina: Right, I mean it happens, it proves to be successful strategy for acquiring protein in the form of worms and those animals that develop this successful strategy or can pass it on in whatever means survive better and that way the behavior continues.
Steve: So, the worms are caught in, I believe the expression is an evolutionary trap, where their survival strategy has now become deleterious to them.
DiChristina: Well, there is, yeah, but it is and it isn't. So in some cases, this behavior is, you know, a survival advantage when the moles; and, you know, clearly when Kenneth Catania was driving around he found lots of mole tunnels, so there are lots of reasons for worms to rise up and get away from these moles. But in other cases other predators, such as humans or this herring gull or that wood turtle, you can mimic that vibration and can take advantage of it.
Steve: And we should say that the herring gulls finding was made by the renowned Nobel laureate Nicholas Tinbergen actually who did a whole lot of interesting stuff on animal behavior that’s worth checking out, so do a Tinbergen google.
DiChristina: I think I will do that right after we are done here.
Steve: So let's take a quick look at our "50, 100 and 150 Years Ago" space here compiled by Daniel Schlenoff. One hundred and fifty years ago in Scientific American, the March 1860 issue, we wrote "… gas for interior illumination, it is supposed is a powerful disinfectant, and hence there is no contagion within the circle of its influence"—actually we were then quoting, and then we wrote: "We copy the above sentence for the purpose of disputing the inference that gas will protect people from the smallpox. Smallpox is doubtless uncommon among that class of people who burn gas for [light] in our cities because they generally have sufficient intelligence and forethought to attend to the vaccination of their families and its ravages are almost wholly confined to that improvident class who make no provision against the smallpox or anything else in the future and who live by the light of burning fluid." So a 150 years ago—there's undoubtedly some classism involved in our interpretation back then—but 150 years ago at least we were pointing out the difference between causation and correlation.
DiChristina: I was just going to say, that's one thing also what occurred to me is that to me is a lesson in microcosm—because it's just a paragraph what Steve just read to everybody—that shows why it's so important in science to remove all your confounds, you know, remove all the variables so that you can find really what is at the heart of thing, and to me that that's the lesson that science has much more thoroughly adopted probably at this point and can speak with, you know, much greater authority; when something actually is a finding you need to be able to remove all the potential things that could be interfering with the conclusion that you're trying to make.
Steve: Absolutely, and 150 years ago we were pointing out that it was really a good thing to get vaccinated.
DiChristina: And it is today—; go get your shot folks.
Steve: The March issue of Scientific American is on the newsstands and it's also available in its entirety at www.SciAmdigital.com. We are running very long so that's it for this episode. We'll roll out our TOTALL…… Y BOGUS quiz as a stand-alone feature pronto. In the meantime, get your science news at www.ScientificAmerican.com or you can see the slide show illustrating six fun facts about the James Webb Space Telescope. For Science Talk, I am Steve Mirsky. Thanks for clicking on us.
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63 Comments
Add CommentAlways 20 years in the future...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn fact, our author thinks it's going to be much more than 20 years in the future. However, if it ever happens, then some day it will have been 20 years into the future...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the cost of the war in Iraq had been applied to particle physics, we would have 150 experimental fusion reactors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDskan,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis isn't a political blog. Further, you are completely wrong. You could spend 10 times the amount spent on the war and we wouldn't have a viable fusion reactor. Get an education before simply injecting political commentary into a discussion related to nuclear fusion.
Fusion - The Energy of the Future....and always will be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr. Phyiscs, chill out brother - Dskan's point is valid even if the practicalities are not. I suspect few would or could argue that the resources involved in Iraq have been optimally applied - Perhaps only those at Halliburton and the like. Of course, you are also correct in pointing out that throwing dollars at this problem is not necessarily going to solve it. Better allocation of funds however certainly would have us further down the road on this and many other significant projects. And perhaps we would be travelling down those roads in something not so reliant on the oil for which we did not go to war.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr. Phyiscs, chill out brother - Dskan's point is valid even if the practicalities are not. I suspect few would or could argue that the resources involved in Iraq have been optimally applied - Perhaps only those at Halliburton and the like. Of course, you are also correct in pointing out that throwing dollars at this problem is not necessarily going to solve it. Better allocation of funds however certainly would have us further down the road on this and many other significant projects. And perhaps we would be travelling down those roads in something not so reliant on the oil for which we did not go to war.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere endth the rant - thank you for your time!
There was a great article in the Atlantic maybe 8-10 years ago on this subject. It pointed out that the neutrons given off by the reaction would quickly "poison" everything in the vicinity - the whole plant would become in 20 years or less too radioactive to work in. It wouldn't be the super high level of radioactivity of a spent fission fuel rod but in terms of volume there would be so incredibly much more of it. And of course a fission rod can be recycled (Jimmy Carter not withstanding). Once again for use on this planet the economics of the power plant just wouldn't be there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd where the f*** is my jetpack!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMartin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy point is this article isn't about the war in Iraq. I'm tired of every freaking topic somehow turning into an argument about the war or healthcare. This is about fusion, not the war. Sure he can argue we could have spent that money more wisely, but that can be said of every governmental expenditure, such as welfare programs, ag subsidies, bank bailouts, auto bailouts, and etc.
These tangential hijacking posts just get really really old.
DrPhysics, you are correct. I pulled the $3 trillion cost of the Iraq war out of faulty memory. It is *only* $1 trillion. So given ITER's $20 billion cost, we would have had to make do with only 50 of them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClearly though, you only hold a doctorate of science on this board. Besides the fact that a trained scientist wouldn't speak in absolutes, only a fool would dare say that an engineering problem with a $10 trillion budget would go nowhere. I said 50 EXPERIMENTAL reactors. That is a lot of data. Since you know so much about fusion research, tell us, how many designs are there for experimental reactors?
And your lack of imagination notwithstanding, there are no standing problems in physics that cannot be solved with a trillion dollars. I would bet there are no living physicists with enough imagination to even spend a trillion dollars.
That would be a good online contest for SciAm: figure out how to spend a trillion dollars. That's 7.5 years of the US's entire research budget. Or even better, that's enough to fund NSF for 140 years.
You have to be kidding. How can you replicate the power of the Sun when the nuclear fusion THEORY of solar fuelling is incorrect in the first place?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCold fusion - unlike this untested technology - has actually been shown to be REAL, friends, and certainly doesn't require a trillion bucks to work it up to a usable scale.
See for instance LOW-ENERGY NUCLEAR TRANSMUTATION @ http://newilluminati.blog-city.com/index.cfm?search=low+energy
The post on neutrons is far more relevant than DrPhysics' hysteria. The neutron problem was popularised by Lawrence Lidsky. The neutrons don't just poison the surrounding area, they weaken the structure of the containing building. Theoretically, one way around this is a neutron-free(ish) reaction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would imagine that, say $100 billion, should be enough to test the feasibility of an aneutronic fusion reactor? What do you think, Herr DrPhysics?
New Illuminati,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA bit like bubble fusion? What do you think Herr DrPhysics?
I like that idea for a contest: What is the best way for scientists to spend 1 trillion dollars? It's just too bad that scientists will never have a budget anywhere near that. My friends and I came up with this idea recently to make Titan habitable, at least to some forms of life. Unfortunately, even with trillions of dollars at our disposal that won't be a feasible idea for at least a few centuries, but it has been fun speculating about what it would require.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, cold fusion was shown to be false, and the solar fusion theory has no known flaws in it, so new illuminati should get with the program.
fisixisfun:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with cold fusion is that there are no working theory of physics at rigid matter. And cold fusion fits under that category. Second problem is that partly because there are no theory, the experimental setups with cold fusion do not always work. They do work with enough probability to say that the phenomena is real. It's something that can be measured. But hot fusion people certainly don't want to admit that something else could work and work actually better. I think that we should focus on improving cold fusion, because it can be made small which makes it easier to manage. I would rather have 100 or 1000 cold fusion reactors than one ITER. And probability of continuous output would be much bigger.
Just search for cold fusion and one can see that it's just under understood and wrongly despised by people that don't understand that it's not perfect yet, but needs more study to be ready for commercial energy production.
So why hasn't SciAm covered alternative fusion theories such as inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (Polywell). According to EMC2 Fusion Development Corporation, we could have a 100MW reactor by about 2015 or so..:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.emc2fusion.org/
Listened to this, read the article... very disappointed. Not so much that Michael Moyer is saying the CERN design won't work, but that he's obviously put so much time and energy into fusion research, and, if nothing else, made it wonderfully put into layman's terms and didn't touch any of the more promising designs. General Fusion, Inc out of Canada has been getting a decent amount of press lately using magnetized target fusion, theres also focus fusion as well as pinch devices. But most frustrating is his failure to mention Robert Bussard's Polywell fusion design, as stated in a wonderful speech that Google put on at the Google-plex a few years back, as well as other published science papers, it already works, and has a net gain of power when a scaled up design is finished. Very disappointing that this wasn't even mentioned, as Robert Bussard was a very... I don't have words to properly described how amazing of a person he seemed, to not mention him is a shame. As far as when he talks about why it hasn't been in the news for 20 years, it has been, quite often, on the cover of many popular science & technology magazines and journals. More recently was the 'scandal' at Purdue over the misconduct of Purdue's professor Taleyarkhan. The interesting that thats never mentioned in articles covering the scandal is, not that his improper peer review practices, but that, despite this, his sonoluminescent fusion design actually worked! So, thats two cases of fusion actually working, one with a lifetime of credibility and success in his wake, the other with a less credible history, but still functional and successful science. Let alone General Fusion's aggressive design. Lastly, to not mention the design types using fission that make the need for fusion as a primary energy source near moot, example, Wired's recent story on thorium, is just... bad journalism. I applaud his understanding and ability to explain, I just thing it was much to narrow relative to the field he was attempting to cover. I look forward to him expanding into these in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave any of you considered that the reason we do not have more nuclear power plants and the ones that we do have are old and crumbling down is because we realized that nuclear power plants can become, in a matter of days or hours, incredably destructive and could wipe out all life forms in the area and they are too expensive to build, operate, and maintain? Nuclear power plants do not spew a little bit of CO2 out into our air, the radiation they emmit will deliver you a very painful and ugly death. Why are most of you thoughtless human like animals relentlessly insistting that we kill ourselves with radiation? Don't you think there are a lot of better ways of creating energy without endangering ourselves with radiation?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe disagreements here have some valid points. Like the Iraq war, solar-electric subsidies, etc, too many government actions seem to be to benefit a few campaign donors rather than to be useful spending of taxpayer money. From what I have seen in government -sponsored research, too much of that also seems to be spent on things which the researchers themselves know to be a waste of money. I am not talking about basic research or verification of things which "everyone knows". These are valid and worthwhile pursuits. But there seems to be too much research claiming to advance something like fusion which focuses on a minor detail of the problem wile the most basic problems are left unsolved or are at times known to be unsolvable. Getting the government spending to be better focused on worthwhile projects seems to be the underlying problem here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven when NIF and/or ITER experiments produce net gain from fusion, it still would not be possible to produce electricity for the grid. (This is the main point of the article.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the problem is thinking energy production methods (heating up water to produce steam to run turbines) used in current nuclear power plants should be applied to fusion reactors.
Fusion reactors would work very differently than fission reactors, so they would require completely new methods of energy production naturally.
@Vailheim. Bubble fusion has never been shown to work. The only independent verifications were not so independent, since they occurred in Taleyarkhan's own lab, under his supervision, and were never published.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with fusion is that it is so immensely costly that experiments are binary: they work or they don't. There is no tinkering, no exploration of alternative concepts. Both are the backbone of research. For instance, dynamic magnetic fields have been suggested, but will probably never be implemented because chaos is not well received by determinist particle physicists.
Does anyone remember Don Rumsfeld making trips to see Saddam Hussein over supplies of US weapons to Iraq in the early 1980's or thereabouts ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt that time Saddam was a friend of the US (or more particularly US foreign policies) but years later with a shift in US policies, he became expendable.
So he was overthrown with help from invading US forces, and Iraq's vast Oil reserves are now safely in the hands of US and British Oil companies.
Which was the purpose of the invasion in the first place, to steal their Oil.
Anyway the fuel source of the future is probably Rocket fuel, which is simply Hydrogen burning in Oxygen. in other words WATER.
Rocket fuel can send a spaceship around planet Earth in just 90 Minutes.
What more power could we need ?
The Seas cover three quarters of the planet, so we are not likely to run out of water anytime soon.
Oil will eventually be used mainly for Plastics production - I think.
But the biggest threat to world peace is the CIA (always stirring up trouble internationally) and Israeli extremists plus the New World Order lunatics
Jim
A simple ING that I discovered would make a nuclear reactor a simple thing. The question is, would you like it in your home?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmen DrPhysics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese weenies that cannot discuss science have nothing to fall back on but brain-dead politics. The degree of irrelevancy of said diatribe is incredible.
DrPhysics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmen!! These weenies that cannot discuss science have nothing to fall back upon but tired, brain-dead politics. Their degree of irrelevancy is equal only to the cube of their asinine stupidity.
@DSKan - I don't have the links nor the time to find them to back this up but, my point was more to the effect that, relating to Prof Taleyarkhan falsified, or heavily manipulated, the peer review study to the extent that that, as a true and valid peer review was invalid, and, in my opinion, very bad policy on his part. I am not agreeing with his publishing practices, but to the science itself, and thats where most people seem to skip over. It reminds me of that end scene in Contact where James Woods' character is talking to Angela Bassett's character relating to the static on the video, it wasn't that it was static, it was that it was 18 hours of it. Pop sci(fi) movies aside, my point is that the scientific community has (understandably) focused more on the publishing practices than the science underneath, which, to my understanding, actually worked. I hope that enough time has passed, and enough objectivity attained from the situation that the community can now go back to the original project/research/etc and do a proper independent study, as, to the best of my knowledge, actually did work. Not so as to say that fusion had been attained and we're ready to crank these things off the assembly line and all drive fusion powered cars to mars or anything, just that, the original science seemed strong enough that it was ready to move to the next stage of research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as your second paragraph, I honestly couldn't disagree with you more. Assuming that costs are relative (when you use a word such as immense, are we talking thousands? millions? billions?)... I don't think that results are binary. I mean, maybe in the most strictest of circumstances but, then, I highly doubt the Wright bros. got it right with their first airplane design (not being versed in Wright bros history prob not the best example). I'm sure they went back to the drawing board a few times.
My point is, aspects can work, aspects can fail, science is gained either way. I won't argue at what costs (relative to other science that could've been researched with the same funds), just that ... Bussard failed on the first 5 designs, and claims to have succeeded with the 6th. Binary or not... the costs of NOT investing to continue his work is what is immense. I think the global fusion project is a misallocation of funding relative to other avenues (not discussed in the article or the podcast) that have shown to not only be cheaper to implement, but proven to be more positive results.
In 1958 I visited the World Exhibition in Brussels as an 18 year old. In the Palace of Science there was a stand on fusion energy where fusion energy was promised in the next 50 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy patience is running out!
@ridelo - at the following link is a donation button. help them speed it up so we don't have to go through another 7(0) years of false promises!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.emc2fusion.org/
Another Shell Oil disinformation piece from a let's-keep-those-fossil-fuels-burning editor of Sci-Am. He deliberately picks the worst two examples of practical fusion energy. ITER & NIF. He doesn't mention that the NIF is ENTIRELY funded for military research - predominantly to develop pure fusion weapons. The ITER being a mega-buck UN lead international bureaucracy, whose predominant purpose is to delay practical fusion as much as possible, by sucking funds and resources into a boondoggle modeled after the idiotic International Space Station fiasco. (For the price of that one we could have a permanently manned base on the moon right now).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRobert Bussard, actually described how to achieve practical fusion within a 5-10 yr timeframe, in a letter to Congress:
http://www.askmar.com/Robert%20Bussard/1995-6-6%20Letter%20to%20Congress.pdf
Of course, Mr. Natural Gas himself, Clinton didn’t want anything to do with a successful fusion program. Interesting to see that Bussard anticipated the value of using large prizes, like the X-prize as a cost-effective way to stimulate innovative science & engineering, way back in 1995. If the X-Prize for private spacecraft, used the ITER / Space Station scheme, it would have cost at least $10 billion to get a successful launch rather than the $10 million that ultimately went to Burt Ruttan's company.
So practical Fast-Track-to-Commercial-Fusion Technologies struggle with a few millions in funding - or less - amounts which the Oil, NG, Solar, Wind, Clean Coal & Ethanol gangs, would consider coffee money or pocket change. $7B a year to Nutty, Soil Raping, Fossil Fuel guzzling, Energy Negative Corn Ethanol. That amount alone would be enough to fund a dozen Fast-Track-to-Fusion Technologies.
Real, Practical, Potential Fast-Track to Fusion Tech (Michael Moyer doesn't want you to know about these):
Bussard's IEC Fusion:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/new-pictures-and-updated-goals-for-emc2.html
Focus Fusion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVif4hUAJ8c
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1518007279479871760&q=Google+tech+talks+lerner&pr=goog-sl
Super Marx Deuterium & Laser Fusion-Fission Hybrid:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/10/winterberg-compares-super-marx.html
Reversed Field Pinch Fusion:
http://www.sciencecodex.com/upping_the_power_triggers_an_ordered_helical_plasma
General Fusion (Shockwave Fusion):
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/09/general-fusion-will-leverage-computer.html
More potentially Practical-Fast-Track-To-Fusion Tech:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDARPA's Handheld Nuclear Fusion Reactor:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/darpas-handheld-nuclear-fusion-reactor/
Muon Catalyzed Fusion:
http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2009/10/05/the-new-cold-fusion/
Cold Fusion:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/03/neutron-tracks-detected-in-cold-fusion.html
Kolic Spherical Plasma Fusion:
http://www.prometheus2.net/
Tri-Alpha Energy's Aneutronic Colliding Beam Fusion:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/06/tri-alpha-energy-raises-40-million-in.html
Similar to Tri-Alpha, Helion Energy:
http://www.helionenergy.com/
Another Dense Plasma Focus Fusion System:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/01/another-large-dense-plasma-focus.html
Winterberg Impact Ignition Fusion:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/01/attaining-high-velocities-for-impact.html
Magneto-Inertial-Fusion (MIF):
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/12/magneto-inertial-fusion.html
Excellent summary on the future of Commercial Fusion Energy:
http://www.physicsessays.com/doc/s2005/page_fusion051.pdf
And just a little comment to those mental midgets who can't stop repeating the tired-old-cliche that " fusion is always xxx years in the future". Like maybe if they spent .01% on it that they spend subsidizing wacky, fundamentally-impossible-to-amount-to-anything technologies like Clean Coal, Corn Ethanol, Hydrogen Economy, Solar & Wind Energy as well as subsidizing Oil Wars ($1.8 trillion for the Iraq Oil War) - then maybe xxx years would actually be 10 years. YOU CAN'T GET SOMETHING FOR NOTHING, FOOL!
Abandoning politics for a moment and getting back to fusion: how does buying Iraqi oil at market prices equal stealing it? Besides US, British (plus Chinese, French, Russian etc.) oil majors are not even being given a share in those oil projects, just a chance to develop and buy output. Sorry if this sounds too technical, would not be posting this on, say, a politics blog...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere have been plenty of comments mentioning Dr Bussard's Inertial Fusion (a.k.a. Polywell) experiment, which appears to have made substantially more progress than the Tokamak designs, with only the tiniest of slivers of funding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy does SciAm not undertake an investigation of this subject -- bring in the mainstream fusion proponents, let them critique the data and raise their own issues with this notion?
Either they flat-out do not believe the reported data, or they see some issues with scaling it up to a commercially viable design (I can see some questions there myself, but alas, they are only questions).
Frankly, for SciAm to waste valuable trees/pixels telling us that research which has had many billions poured into it without any significant progress being achieved, is kind of a dog-bites-man story.
You should be looking for the man-bites-dog stories that are out there.
Why didn't you talk about the vast abundance of tritium available on the moon...???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...or, the fact that the tritium-deuterium reaction minimizes the damage that would have been caused by a full 4 nucleus hydrogen fusion reactor, in that the tritium that would be produced is a problem, solved by using the tritium as a primary fuel?
We don't have to make the tritium we need, because the sun, over the last 4,500 million years has produced more than we could ever use, and it deposited it on the moon...
Why do you not understand that when you knock, the door will invariably open...
It is so sad, and short sighted for you to po po controlled fusion, when we have never been closer to actually achieving it.
With a mined fuel supply as close as our next door neighbor and the CURRENT state of reactor design, we could have a fusion economy up and running well in the 50 years you postulated.
Of course, I do understand that this scenario, although the best possible, doesn't fit into your myopic view of the universe...
Scientific? Hardly...!
I really loved Michael Moyer's article and his appearance on the podcast.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, his statement (which is in fact a very common one) that fusion works by converting mass into energy is misleading. Sure, fusion does convert energy to mass, but so does a fire. Or a battery. Or a solar plant. Or a windmill. Anything that pours out energy looses mass according to the famous E=mc2. If you would very carefully weight the air that was slowed down by passing through a windmill, you will find it lost mass! Therefore: fusion is not special when it comes to converting mass to energy. It is special because it uses the strong force in the nucleus (whereas, for example, a fire just uses the much weaker electromagnetic force). Stronger force means more energy output, which means more mass loss. But the difference is just a quantitative one (strength of fields involved), not a qualitative one.
In my opinion we will be fusion reactor never not. Because of contents of my analysis on own www.cosmology.hu web site. The existing system it is a fission process basically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSooo, Olaf .. you're saying that the FUSION of hydrogen into helium is not as effective as fission..regardless of the physical forces involved? That the loss of mass is more important than the energy created (released)? E=MC2 should give you the formula for arguing against yourself . Your analogies are total nonsense. Since when does a windmill convert energy to mass? Misleading??? You need to get out of your basement a bit more. Or at least read your own babblings.
YO! Emoryfrom hu.. FIRE your translator!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWORK IT, dwbd!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly the molecularly anal retentives here (90% of this "class") have the actual mental horsepower to absorb and process your info. I find them amusing.
hear, hear
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@DWBD - Thank you, seriously. Thank You.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoc2010 at 07:37 PM on 03/19/10 wrote:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> Sooo, Olaf .. you're saying that the FUSION of hydrogen into helium is not as effective as fission..regardless of the physical forces involved?
No, I did not say that.
> That the loss of mass is more important than the energy created (released)?
No, I did not say that either.
> Your analogies are total nonsense. Since when does a windmill convert energy to mass?
A windmill does convert mass to energy: the air atoms of the wind will be slowed down a little bit after they gave a bit of their kinetic (motion) energy to the windmill. Since these air atoms now contain less (kinetic) energy, they are a bit lighter (according to E=mc2) then before they spun the windmill. You can state this as: the windmill converted mass to energy.
> Misleading??? You need to get out of your basement a bit more. Or at least read your own babblings.
Please, behave civilized. No need to assault others in a scientific discussion. Especially when you are totally wrong. ;-)
Sorry, Olaf,.. I apologize for the effrontery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPLEASE define your statements. AND how I am "totally wrong". If you have data that can explain your premises.. please share same. I'd love to see them.
p.s.- Sometimes the only way to get someones attention is to be a bit aggressive in response.. nothing personal, just business. lol
candide at 05:57 PM on 03/17/10
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIsn't is wonderful to sit around doing nothing useful and making smart arse comment about something you know nothing about.
Dear James Davis,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWill you please advise France about this immediately , as they are now generating 80% of the electric power using Nuclear Reactors.
It possible a FIRE for my translator :-))
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is also obvious that the most fundamental point of the Cosmos content process is the power generating fission. Fusion inside stars is also an exclusive process which can not be controlled. The essence of the problem is as follows: it is not sufficient to force the nuclei to stay next to each other. We also need to provide the appropriate structure of the external interaction process to stabilize the connection. Achieving this goal and the realization of this possibility is not automatic but fission is.
Doc2010 at 05:56 PM on 03/20/10 wrote:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> Sorry, Olaf,.. I apologize for the effrontery.
That's OK, no offense taken.
> PLEASE define your statements.
Well, my statement is: saying that a fusion reactor converts mass to energy is correct, but also suggests that this (converting mass to energy) is something unique to fusion (or fission). It is not: Energy always has mass: m=E/c2. So: whenever you extract an amount of energy "E" from something (no matter if it is a nuclear core, wind, molecules, a battery, even a mechanical spring) you will make that something a bit lighter (by m=E/c2 precisely). So, in this respect, fusion, a windmill, releasing a spring, etc., they all convert mass to energy. And this seems surprising to a lot of people because we only hear "fusion/fission converts mass to energy". In fact, every power station converts mass to energy (just by different means: nuclear forces, electromagnetic forces, etc.). Only because a fusion/fission reactor outputs so much energy per atom, the mass loss is clearly noticeable. In fact, historically the mass loss in fission was detected before the exact mechanism that generates the energy was known. I guess this is were the misunderstanding that fusion/fission was unique in converting mass to energy started.
All that is just relativity, according to Einstein.
> AND how I am "totally wrong".
Well, for once, because you claimed in your initial post that I said things I never did. But also you seem to doubt that a windmill does "extract" mass from the air and convert it to pure energy. But it really does! The air is slowed down when it spins the windmills blades. Therefore, the air loses motion (kinetic) energy (and passes the energy on to the blades of the windmill by spinning them). Less energy in the air = less mass in the air (because: E=mc2).
> If you have data that can explain your premises.. please share same. I'd love to see them.
This relation has been proven in a lot of experiments, and you can see it in action every day in particle accelerators: pump energy into a particle by speeding it up and it gets very heavy (you converted energy to mass!). Slow it down and it will get lighter (you converted mass to energy).
> p.s.- Sometimes the only way to get someones attention is to be a bit aggressive in response.. nothing personal, just business. lol
Yes, that is true. And you got mine! ;-)
As anybody so too Edward Teller did knew only on base the experience that the fusion is happening. But he didn't knew so neither do anyone that it happens why and how in the reality so far. The scientific interpretation only a talking beside the point. It is the true. And it is a true correct statement. (Indeed the essence of my web site it isn't understable?)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho can to know in Hungarian. Also the matter after the English language may be read in Hungarian in the rolling down window. (Aki magyarul is tud: az anyag magyarul is olvashato a legordulo ablakban az angol szoveg után.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article would have been more appropriately title "The Illusion of Fusion"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrillions have been spent... Trillions will be spent...
The answer to the Fusion question is.... use the same container as is used for our sun.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOlaf - You stated:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"A windmill does convert mass to energy: the air atoms of the wind will be slowed down a little bit after they gave a bit of their kinetic (motion) energy to the windmill. Since these air atoms now contain less (kinetic) energy, they are a bit lighter (according to E=mc2) then before they spun the windmill. You can state this as: the windmill converted mass to energy."
I'm ignorant, but as I understand, the reduction of the atmosphere's momentum resulting from driving the windmill is considered a loss of effective mass rather than actual rest mass. The air molecules are not really lighter at rest, but have lost momentum and therefore effective mass. E-mc**2 still works in this interpretation, if I understand correctly.
I'm sure nuclear fusion is possible, as has been done already by electrostatic particle accelerators around the world. There is a well-conceived fusion device that I believe has much more chance of harnessing the fusion power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrossFire_Fusion_Reactor
Dear Sir (Michael Moyer). I have read Your article "Fusions False Dawn". I would like to ask You the following question:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHas it ever been contemplated to "embed" the fusion-fuels (D,Tr,Bo,He-3,Li-6,Li-7,etc) in some of the heavier, stable elements, say Lead-ions, thereby "caging" so to say the light-fuel-elements within the heavier stabilizer-elements ?
I am aware that this scenario implies a larger Ignition-temperature (Just how much larger, I do not know), however it is known that heavy element plasma, is much more stable than light element plasma (To my knowledge). I do not know if You are a physicist Yourself; if not, could I ask You respectfully to forward these questions to prefereably a plasma-physicist ?! Very Sincerely Yours Peter Jepsen, Denmark. E-mail: pet-jep@hotmail.com
Follow-up to my recent letter-request to Mr. Michael Moyer:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan two plasma-gasses, heavy-elements and light-elements,
exist together in the same reaction-chamber, with a bi-modal temperature distribution ? Due to the theorem of linear-momentum-conservation: Mv (heavy-element) = mV (light-element) in a closed system, a bi-modal velocity-distribution is implied (V/v). Consequently a bi-modal temperature-distribution should occur, - or shouldnt it ? Furthermore the heavy-element plasma-component will off-course cool the light-element plasma-component, thereby probably leading to higher ignition-temperature (in the light-element component) !? How this will affect the parameters of the Lawson-criteria I do not know, and I am not able to calculate the outcome. Sincerely Yours Peter Jepsen, Denmark. E-mail: pet-jep@hotmail.com
Possible that fusion power is a dead end, may *not* be possible to make fusion reactor better than known fission in next 50 years. We've had fuel cells for a long time but they haven't replaced combustion engines.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMight be cheaper and more practical to make a good thorium or uranium reactor that consumes most of the long life radio actives generated. A few very large reactors could breed nuclear fuel and synthetic fossil fuels (germans in WW2 made large quantities of synthetic diesel and gas)
As well, how much energy do we really need? There are ways to cut most energy "needs" to 1/10 our current industrial levels without mass discomfort. Eg smaller houses with lots of insulation, smaller transportation (human power can get to 100km/h for short spurt, so streamlined with 5 hp engine could easily do better), well insulated chest fridges, etc.
The article on fusion is lacking HIF, the only real means of really putting fusion on line. There is a letter in Physics Today talking about a "near term" solution. (p 59)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA visit to www.fusionpowercorporation.com could be very enlightening for you and your readers.
Hal
The economics are there ... Fusion Power can be here at less than 8 cents per Kh. ... and in ten years ... no big research program, just building the production facility (permits allowing, as they will be the time limiting factor) as the science was done in the 70's to 90's and then shelved as to big or something ... we NOW need the bigness! It will cost about the same as a fission plant but has NO highly radio-active waste or carbon emissions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is going to be a big project like going into space, but it can be done, NOW! Visit: www.fusiopoercorporation.com
California Hal
i need to know if half a 2 liter bottle of soda pop has the air squeezed out will the rest of the soda pop go flat quicker ? or stay carbonated longer? im tryin 2 settle a bet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou missed the most promising of all the fusion processes currently known but overlooked by most because it was too big in 1979.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheckout: Google Tech Talk - Heavy Ion Fusion (Nov. 2010) and the web site www.fusionpowercorporation.com
CaliforniaHal
Folks - fusion can be in the near future. The best bet is Google Tech Talk - Heavy Ion Fusion. Ten years down the road - little or no radioactive waste. No carbon generation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLots of heat to produce syn-gas and electricity.
Visit www.fusionpowercorporation for a real education NOW.
It is there ... demonstrated in the 1950 to 1998. Was shelved as it was to big for the need at the time. It is still big, but that is what is needed today!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee Google Tech Talk - Heavy Ion Fusion, Nov 2010 and visit www.fusionpowercorporation.com to complete your education on the subject of fusion. You and others, even Sec. Chu, have bought the idea that fusion is a long way away. It does not have to be!
Fusion is 20/50 years away. NOT TRUE >>> see Google tech talk - Heavy Ion Fusion or visit www.fusionpowercorporation.com for an education on RF accelerator driven heavy ion fusion.
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