nuclear fusion in France

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nuclear fusion in France

Postby everything on Fri Aug 07, 2020 7:13 am

Is this going to be amazing or a disaster?

https://www.businessinsider.com/iter-in ... FxCqpQmmQE
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby Peacedog on Fri Aug 07, 2020 7:26 am

It’s the only viable steady state power source long term.

If developed governments had put all of the money they’ve wasted on green power initiatives into fusion development instead we’d have it already.

The green lobby opposes nuclear development on any level mainly because they realize that when it succeeds no one will care about their initiatives at all.

Fusion power once scaled is the holy grail of energy production. It basically makes energy “free.” Not really, but close enough that you’d never waste your time on anything else.

By virtue of this, it makes a lot of things that aren’t practical due to energy requirements possible. Examples include: space exploration, 3D metal printing, supersonic transcontinental flight, large scale desalination, and hydrogen powered vehicles.
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby Steve James on Fri Aug 07, 2020 8:47 am

Well, nuclear fusion is "green." The money spent on hydrogen fuel cells and lithium battery technology have not been wasted. All will signal an end to fossil fuel dominance, as well as reduce carbon emissions. Money spent on "renewable" (and unlimited) resources like solar is really no different than harnessing rivers to produce hydroelectric power.

Afa safety, the only thing certain is that there will be people who want to spend as little as possible in order to make as much as possible. Then there are countries that will want to keep up and make mistakes. I.e., everything is subject to human error.

Afa nuclear fission and space exploration and transcontinental flight, etc., these currently use fuels that are dirty as hell. Ok, we have a few nuclear spacecraft, but getting them off the planet is still the issue that nuclear power doesn't solve.

Don't worry, though. The manufacturing of all this stuff still requires most of the same old methods. We still use nuclear power to produce steam. :) But, what's gonna happen to all those coal miners.
Last edited by Steve James on Fri Aug 07, 2020 9:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby Bao on Fri Aug 07, 2020 12:14 pm

Read a lot about this to a copy assignment, wrote a heck a lot of articles about "green energy" and fusion. If they didn'tbelieve in it, they wouldn't have done it. I believe that they could make it. If it goes all as planned, t he world's energy and power balance could look very different in a few generations. But as the USA always try to push down other countries, I don't believe that the world will become a better place very soon. First, the US must change drastically. But its system doesn't allow big changes... So I guess as long as the West keep supporting the USA, the world will still look very much the same.
Last edited by Bao on Fri Aug 07, 2020 12:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby everything on Fri Aug 07, 2020 3:09 pm

US is essentially controlled by Super PACs and gerrymandering, so if you want change toward green energy, you need a PAC that takes on all the vested interest of Big Oil. Government is useless and toothless it seems. Or you need to win at capitalism despite these structural issues. Like with Tesla, potentially. Industrial policy for green energy won't happen here. We're too busy being stupid at pandemics and every other thing. :'(
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby windwalker on Fri Aug 07, 2020 3:16 pm

Not “we”

You might want to read up on what you’re calling green energy.
It’s not so green, nor efficient.

Nuclear the best way to go often used as a bogeyman making the development and study of it in the US quite difficult.
Probably by those understanding once it’s developed the need for so called green energy Technologies
is negated.
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby everything on Fri Aug 07, 2020 3:27 pm

"We" are definitely too stupid. I do mean "we".

Wind and solar are more "green" than say coal burning. To address other issues, more investment is needed. Does it have to be public/private? No.
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby windwalker on Fri Aug 07, 2020 3:44 pm

@everything,

you can only speak for yourself.
The "we" you speak of is in your mind...
takes awareness to understand this




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE&t=29s


interesting movie.



used to work in the solar industry for start ups making solar cells.
The process is not so clean, the efficiency of the cells was somewhere between 18 and 20%
Last edited by windwalker on Fri Aug 07, 2020 4:28 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby jimmy on Fri Aug 07, 2020 6:46 pm

Steve James wrote:
TVA wrote:
harnessing rivers to produce hydroelectric power wrote:Image
Image

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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby Trick on Sat Aug 08, 2020 12:08 am

Peacedog wrote:It’s the only viable steady state power source long term.

If developed governments had put all of the money they’ve wasted on green power initiatives into fusion development instead we’d have it already.

The green lobby opposes nuclear development on any level mainly because they realize that when it succeeds no one will care about their initiatives at all.

Fusion power once scaled is the holy grail of energy production. It basically makes energy “free.” Not really, but close enough that you’d never waste your time on anything else.

By virtue of this, it makes a lot of things that aren’t practical due to energy requirements possible. Examples include: space exploration, 3D metal printing, supersonic transcontinental flight, large scale desalination, and hydrogen powered vehicles.

However here the green lobby and the fossil lobby are brothers in arms and pose as a mighty foe
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby Trick on Sat Aug 08, 2020 12:14 am

Bao wrote:Read a lot about this to a copy assignment, wrote a heck a lot of articles about "green energy" and fusion. If they didn'tbelieve in it, they wouldn't have done it. I believe that they could make it. If it goes all as planned, t he world's energy and power balance could look very different in a few generations. But as the USA always try to push down other countries, I don't believe that the world will become a better place very soon. First, the US must change drastically. But its system doesn't allow big changes... So I guess as long as the West keep supporting the USA, the world will still look very much the same.

Reserch on nuclear fusion s big here in China too....the US hostile ness toward tiktok and such goes deep, way beyond wechat too.....
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby Trick on Sat Aug 08, 2020 12:24 am

However, the energy sources both the green and the fossil lobbies advocating for all more or less stem from nuclear fusion energy -the energy from our sun
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby Giles on Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:22 am

If cheap viable fusion power were to become reality, that would indeed be amazing. -cheer-


Many of humanity’s problems could be solved – apart maybe from our inherent collective stupidity and destructiveness along with our ability to weaponize almost any technological advance. Thing is, fusion power has been “ten years in the future” for decades now. We (collectively) can keep working for and hoping for the big breakthrough but we shouldn’t put all our R&D resources in just this. That would be a bit like selling your house and all other assets to buy lottery tickets in the hope of winning the big one and getting everything back a thousand-fold. It's not like "we're almost there, just one last big push and we have the prize." There are still BIG problems in the way of general realization and the outcome remains very uncertain.
Nonetheless, it’s definitely worth investing in the option.

Nuclear fission power, too, is great in terms of stopping or slowing global warming. Zero greenhouse gases and no other ‘normal’ air pollution either. That’s why Lovelock has always (rather controversially) been in favor of nuclear fission power. However: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima… And much worse disasters are quite conceivable; anyone who says “nuclear power plants are much safer these days, so no problem” is overly optimistic. Plus the high-level radioactive waste that will remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Maybe a great way of neutralizing all that growing amount of terrible stuff will present itself in the next 100 years or so, but if not then even depositing it in old, deep and ‘stable’ mines is a roulette game. Plenty of time for Murphy’s Law to take effect there…

I did a little research about Green political parties and fusion. It does indeed look as if the Green Party of America opposes the development of nuclear fusion on principle. I think they are totally wrong on this aspect. The German Green Party (Die Grünen), a much larger, more established and experienced political party, is not fundamentally opposed to fusion. In principle, it would be fully in favour. However, on the basis of some recent expert evaluations it is highly critical of ITER because it believes that the Tokamak technology around which ITER revolves is something of a dead end and that ITER, while costing truly huge amounts of money, is highly unlikely to result in viable and sufficiently cheap fusion energy by 2050. Hence the Green Party believes that these funds would be much better spent on improved power grids, power storage facilities, energy (generation) efficiency, energy saving and a general shift towards sustainable and cleaner sources. Approaches that will make a significant and growing difference right now, not possibly at some indefinite time in the future. Put in a nutshell, even if ITER or other fusion projects do at some point deliver the ‘holy grail’ of energy production, this will probably take so long that by then, in climate change terms, we may well already be irrevocably screwed. One may disagree with this standpoint, but please not on the grounds that “they realize that when [nuclear fusion] succeeds no one will care about their initiatives at all.” I don’t think that degree of cynicism is rooted in reality, in this case. Unless one can present recent concrete evidence to the contrary. Not all people or parties in politics are driven by an open or concealed ‘my friends at Halliburton’ mindset… ;)

“All energy is ultimately fusion energy from the sun.” Absolutely true (with the exception of geothermal energy) but a little irrelevant to the debate at hand.
Last edited by Giles on Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby Steve James on Sat Aug 08, 2020 7:37 am

Nuclear fusion is "Green" because it produces almost zero carbon emissions. It also outputs more energy than it inputs, and that efficiency is why it could replace fossil fuels.

Afa the efficiency of solar and wind, they've gotten better every year. Our building just installed panels on the roof, and we're hooking into the grid. Ah, smells like the future.
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Re: nuclear fusion in France

Postby Peacedog on Sat Aug 08, 2020 7:39 am

Giles the issue is that governments worldwide really haven't spent that much money on fusion development versus subsidies for various green power schemes. If that money had been spent on nuclear instead, we'd have it already.

All things nuclear are a major issue for me as I studied this for two years at university before ultimately abandoning it in the early 90's when I realized the political climate would not likely allow for any meaningful development during my working lifetime.

The amount of propaganda and outright lies that have been perpetuated by the green lobby regarding nuclear is staggering. The "waste that lasts 100's of thousands of years" part is one of those that annoys me the most. The stuff that can kill you typically has a half life of 30 years or less. The things that last a very long time are safe to handle without protective gear. I wouldn't want to eat it or inhale the dust, but it is not a problem. The main issue with nuclear waste is that most countries forbid civilian reprocessing, France is a big exception, and as such no market develops to deal with the problem. In the US we can thank that imbecile Carter for this problem.

It gets worse in that even the safety levels for radiation exposure are compromised by these kooks. Early nuclear researchers were all exposed to many times what is considered the lethal dose of radiation and almost all of them lived very long lives. My favorite was a gentleman I actually met once who used to use radiation exposure to treat gout in his big toe. He collectively had what is today considered several times the lethal does of radiation exposure and he lived to be over 100. I'll look up his name sometime. He used to joke, "they say I should be dead, but I didn't know it was a lethal exposure so I didn't die."

Even the Japanese government's own assessment of Fukushima indicates the outcome of the breach might have been a couple of hundred cases of juvenile thyroid cancer.

As for next generation designs, many of these are incapable of reaching critical mass and operate off of passive controls. So, if you run out of coolant, they just get a little warm and then shut down.

Nuclear is by far the safest form of power generation available and the most efficient if you disregard the outsized costs created by over regulation.

And if that isn't enough, many forms of cancer, amongst others diseases, would probably be curable at this point if the same over regulation hadn't made nuclear medical research all but impossible to conduct.

We would also be on Mars already as well. I studied under a few nuclear engineers who had been part of the Reagan era nuclear propulsion project. The bottom line is political opposition killed the program. It worked perfectly well and we've had the raw technology for that since the 1950's.
Last edited by Peacedog on Sat Aug 08, 2020 7:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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