Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Speeding the development of fusion power to create unlimited energy on Earth
Can tokamak fusion facilities, the most widely used devices for harvesting on Earth the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars, be developed more quickly to produce safe, clean, and virtually limitless energy for generating electricity? Physicist Jon Menard of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has examined that question in a detailed look at the concept of a compact tokamak equipped with high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. Such magnets can produce higher magnetic fields – necessary to produce and sustain fusion reactions – than would otherwise be possible in a compact facility.
Menard first presented the paper [open, DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2017.0440] [DX], now published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, to a Royal Society workshop in London that explored accelerating the development of tokamak-produced fusion power with compact tokamaks. "This is the first paper that quantitatively documents how the new superconductors can interplay with the high pressure that compact tokamaks produce to influence how tokamaks are optimized in the future," Menard said. "What we tried to develop were some simple models that capture important aspects of an integrated design."
The findings are "very significant," said Steve Cowley, director of PPPL. Cowley noted that "Jon's arguments in this and the previous paper have been very influential in the recent National Academies of Sciences report," which calls for a U.S. program to develop a compact fusion pilot plant to generate electricity at the lowest possible cost. "Jon has really outlined the technical aspects for much smaller tokamaks using high-temperature magnets," Cowley said.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Sulla on Monday March 25 2019, @07:05PM (1 child)
We just build Gen 4 nuclear reactors and burn the fuel we already have lying around instead of shoving in mountains and then let fusion happens when it does without suffering in the meantime.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:32AM
Yup. There's a big difference between wanting to accelerate development of fusion reactors and actually accelerating development. As half a century of work in this area has more than shown us, fusion reactors will always be the technology of the future. Unless it's that really big pre-built one, whose energy is harvested with photovoltaic cells.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by linkdude64 on Monday March 25 2019, @07:06PM (10 children)
For the love of G-d please do something.
I can so perfectly envision the refined and professional circle this idea was refined by; their stoic figures seated around a dark table, faces masked in shadow. "To make fusion cheaper.....", began Brother Prometheus (Mr Scientist person in TFS), "Go on" said the Grand Wizard with a low vocal fry, "We will make the fusion fuel much hotter...", "Yes, well that's a given," interrupted the Wizard, "—AND, as I was saying...use extremely powerful magnets as well, magnets that are not cooled to near-zero as has already been done, but magnets that are HOT...like REALLY *SUPER* hot!" The room must have exploded into an ecstasy of knowledge and pleasure made one as their independent sensations unified at higher dimensions inconceivable to us sub-150 IQ mongreloids.
Seriously, what the fuck? Can somebody actually design a working one before coming up with the compact version? I'm not talking about the test tokamaks that are already constructed, I'm talking about creating a functional, practical, commercializable design that is generating electricity, and then worry about making it smaller. It's like Obama winning the peace prize before he did anything.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday March 25 2019, @07:16PM
I think he's basically just applying these new high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets to the existing compact facility designs...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @07:18PM (4 children)
They are doing something, you just didn't read thoroughly enough. The possibility for "compact" designs actually affect the viability of the fusion reactors. This is NOT about you getting your own Mr. Fusion on the back of your Tesla.
"The bottom line, he said, is that the lower aspect ratio “is really worth investigating based on these results.” The potential benefits of lower ratios, he noted, include the production of fusion power density — the crucial output of fusion power per volume of plasma — that exceeds the output for conventional aspect ratios. “Fusion needs to become more attractive,” Menard said, “so it’s important to assess the benefits of lower aspect ratios and what the tradeoffs are.”"
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday March 25 2019, @08:06PM (1 child)
Your quoted section definitely gives a more concise reason as to why this proposal was significant. Wish that had been in TFS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @10:50PM
It wasn't in TFS, but it was in TFA.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday March 25 2019, @08:29PM (1 child)
Compact designs also help with quicker iterations. I saw an interesting propaganda video on the skunkworks website that talked about it.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion.html [lockheedmartin.com]
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 25 2019, @08:33PM
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=30569&page=1&cid=814505#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/nuclear-fusion-updated-project-reviews.html [nextbigfuture.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 25 2019, @08:29PM
It's fairly critical to get the fusion stuff rolled out as fast and as far as possible - with the backlash on fission lately, it's our only hope for a future that lacks a major extinction event and homo sapiens population crash.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @09:00PM (2 children)
Super-150 IQ mongreloid here. Don't worry. It's still inconceivable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:58AM
Conceive it already!
With the incel population on the rise, it's now or never.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:41AM
150? That's so cute.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @07:22PM (3 children)
What kind of simulators do we have? Have we fed in parameters for previous designs and gotten results comparable to what those designs did?
It seems like we could save a lot of time and money if we got one running as a simulation on a supercomputer before actually building it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @07:24PM
not good enough. best supercomputers are not good enough to simulate the entire thing properly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @10:53PM
This is real live plasma, son. Leave the supercomputers to their destinies, like Facebook and Twitter.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:12PM
There is a rich field in simulating high density plasmas contained in magnetic fields. Lots of codes exist to do the magnetohydrodynamics correctly, for example by solving Vlasov equation, or doing Particle-in-Cell calculation, or solving for the coulomb potential using fourier transform analysis. PIC codes for example can be massively parallelised. *However* these codes require significant CPU to achieve their goals and even large supercomputers cannot do the calculations. Particles are travelling many km, with details of the electromagnetic field on a scale of mm to cm; so it is difficult. Without too much google, here is a random article:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu//#abs/2014CoPhC.185.1310H/abstract [harvard.edu]
Disclaimer: I am not a fusion guy, I usually work at higher energies.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @07:32PM (2 children)
But will it be called magic?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @08:44PM
IDK but what are we going to do with all these heavy elements?
We'd have to redefine the meaning of:
"Eat lead you filthy animal!"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @11:19PM
Will it be "too cheap to meter"?
(Score: 3, Funny) by ShadowSystems on Monday March 25 2019, @07:32PM (5 children)
I heard "Tokamak", I know what that is, but for some REALLY schtooooopid reason my brain kept shouting "Taco Bell!" over every "Tokamak".
So we get compact, portable, personal TacoBells that we can use to generate power?
Given the amount of gas I make after eating there, I'm fairly sure I'll be able to power most of North America just on my production capacity alone.
Add in every other American to the mix & we could make the entire world into either a neon Klieg rave light or a glowing toxic cloud...
Then I read the bit about ratios.
Oh great, as if the 3:2, 16:9, 16:10, 4:3, X:Y zealots don't have enough to argue about?
*Comical eye roll*
Ignore me, I'm off my meds...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @09:45PM
McDonalds already has methane collectors under the seats in the dining area that they use to cook your Big Mac.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Monday March 25 2019, @10:11PM
Your farts may become superconductive [wikipedia.org] if you compress them strong enough.
So, go ahead with those TacoBells but tighten your ass, man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:01AM
Toke a Mac?
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Thursday March 28 2019, @01:21PM (1 child)
I keep reading tomahawk instead of tokamak. And I'm like "compact, portable, personal tomahawks are already a thing. Why's this on this site? Maybe they mean the missiles?"
(Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Thursday March 28 2019, @01:33PM
Mini, portable, personal missiles?
SIGN ME UP!
=-D
What I couldn't (shouldn't) do with one of those.
(Checks My Skippy's List...)
Damn it, that one is already on here...
What about... (checks) ...Damn it, that too!
How about... CRAP! I'm Not Allowed to do that either?
Then what about... Son. Of. A. FROG! I can't have any fun anymore!
*Comical pout*
Nevermind, My Skippy's List is so damned extensive at this point there's entire CHAPTERS dedicated to various WMD.
*Sulks*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @07:44PM (12 children)
is 60 years of failure a scam?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 25 2019, @07:49PM (1 child)
No.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:32AM
It's not 60 years of failure, it is 60 years of finding bigger and more expensive ways of finding out what won't work, pace Edison.
Learning what doesn't work is an important part of progress - ask any kid learning to ride a bicycle.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sulla on Monday March 25 2019, @08:33PM (2 children)
With fusion they at least appear to be trying, but failing. This to me seems like a problem that is much harder than was expected, not necessarily a scam.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday March 26 2019, @05:42AM (1 child)
Sadly the biggest problem seems to be getting funded - a big part of the reason that fusion is forever 20 years away, is that they still haven't finished delivering the funding that was supposed to be delivered over the course of the first 20 years.
If you promised me 2 billion dollars over 20 years to build you a skyscraper, that skyscraper would be twenty years away (assuming I bid the job honestly and well). If you then immediately reduced funding to only 50 million dollars per year, then the skyscraper would be at least 40 years away - the total price tag isn't going to get any smaller just because I'm building it more slowly. Keep cutting funding every few years and the completion date will keep receding into the future, and the building will never be completed until you start actually paying for it properly.
That's basically what happened with fusion. Look at it in terms of progress achieved per dollar spent towards the originally estimated price tag, and progress has remained pretty much on schedule. We just keep cutting the funding, and thus pushing the completion date further into the future.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:02AM
Then maybe researchers should stop saying "it's so-and-so many years in the future" and start saying "it's so-and-so many dollars in the future".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @10:55PM (5 children)
It took the Universe millions of years to create the Sun. And you're complaining that Man can't do it in 60 years?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @11:32PM (4 children)
Yes. it was "millions of years." 7,700 or so of them.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:50AM (3 children)
Well, Ussherly [wikipedia.org] 4004+2019 = 6023 years if you are quibbling.
OTOH, if you take the view the Sun was formed in a star-forming nebula, then the process of gravitational collapse, possibly triggered by a supernova, took roughly 105 years. Without a triggering nearby supernova, it takes longer: the primordial stars were formed roughly 150 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang. Note that these stars are known as 'Population III' [wikipedia.org] stars, and have not yet been directly observed, but there is a strong theoretical basis for their existence. The James Webb space telescope will be looking for them, amongst other things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @09:15PM (2 children)
Actually, I was saying 7,700 million years, not 7,700 years.
Age of Universe: ~12,300 million years
Age of the Sun: ~4,600 million years.
You do the math. I already did.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:00AM (1 child)
I beg your pardon, I misunderstood your writing style.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @09:43PM
No worries. It was a little stilted.
The odd language was because I was mildly chastising the AC who said [soylentnews.org]:
I realize (note the 'z' -- not 'zed' I'm an American, damn it!) that "thousands of millions" is a reasonable (and generally more british) way to express numbers, but given the way original AC stated things, it could have been three million. Or five. Which gives exactly the wrong idea.
Yes. It was "millions" of years. Many thousands of them. I suppose AC could have said hat it was "trillions of hours" (40 and change) too.
Regardless, I've found that if you can't say what you mean, you can never mean what you say. The details are everything.
Shall we start measuring velocity in furlongs per fortnight, too?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:27AM
No, that's Lisp ;-P
(Score: 4, Informative) by fustakrakich on Monday March 25 2019, @08:02PM (29 children)
They're so full of it. Where are you going to dissipate all the heat? Present growth rates have us boiling off the oceans in less than 500 years [ucsd.edu]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Informative) by RamiK on Monday March 25 2019, @08:18PM (4 children)
I was about to link Tom Murphy's later, more famous, post on the subject: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ [ucsd.edu]
compiling...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 25 2019, @08:32PM
I had been looking for these. Thanks to both of you.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 25 2019, @09:18PM (2 children)
A.K.A.: if we don't go into space much sooner than the next 400 years, we're doomed to a flat-lined economy which will be even less friendly to such "frivolous wastes of time and resources."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday March 25 2019, @09:37PM (1 child)
A steady state economy is not flat-lined by any means. Infinite growth will give you this [wordpress.com].
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @11:34PM
I can believe it. Infinite growth has already given us this [wordpress.com].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday March 25 2019, @08:21PM (13 children)
If you can violate the First Law of Thermodynamics to create unlimited energy out of thin air on Earth, surely you can just as easily create an unlimited heat sink to somehow take away any of the excess without increasing entropy. Because we're well into the realm of magical thinking here: Even Pons and Fleischmann weren't being this grandiose.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 25 2019, @08:34PM (8 children)
The unlimited energy isn't coming from thin air, anymore than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did - or the heat from the Sun.
Instead of a heat-sink, I propose running a heat pump to reject high energy IR to space - sourced from fusion to power the pump and heat from the oceans.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday March 25 2019, @09:27PM (5 children)
Your heat pump will have to be at least as massive and big as the entire planet. The Star Trek stuff is pretty much off the table for now, until someone can show us everything we know is wrong.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:50AM (4 children)
The easier, and only long term, answer to continued economic growth is expansion to space.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:06AM (3 children)
And that will become practical the moment we break the light barrier. Who's gonna be our next Chuck Yeager?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 26 2019, @04:30PM (2 children)
I think people underestimate the attractiveness of Mars, Venus, the Asteroids, and even Jovian/Saturnian moons as compared to an Earth with 100B homo-sapiens resident.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday March 26 2019, @05:28PM (1 child)
an Earth with 100B homo-sapiens resident
That's very unlikely... We're just like any other species, we will reach a limit that cannot be extended. It's really nothing to be concerned about.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:51PM
Overpopulations generally aren't pretty for the overpopulated species, and most don't establish equilibrium on their first boom in a new environment - which is what h. sapiens is doing now.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday March 25 2019, @09:29PM (1 child)
That heat pump is going to need a beanstalk for a radiator, and I don't thing carbon fibers are strong enough. Either that or you're going to need to make some really high plateau hot enough to change the climate over the entire globe. A low red hot should probably be hot enough. Now, how do you pump the heat into that? (This isn't a matter of generating the heat there, it's a matter of collecting the heat from all over and pumping it onto that plateau. Of course, you run into the same problem with the beanstalk, but there the radiator is cold enough at the top end, that you could use it to cool the poles, so I guess you need two of them.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:55AM
The oceans would seem to be a good heat conductor for global distribution, let them bring the heat to the pump.
A breakthrough in higher temperature superconductors would be a nice thing to conduct heat up a beanstalk, although I think that replacing the telescope farm at the top of Mauna Kea with a big-hotter than lava radiator wouldn't be a bad thing. You could also run a higher gradient heat pump into Mauna Loa - pushing heat from the ocean back into the mantle, if the vulcanologists can identify a strong subduction current in the lava that would take hotter lava down.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday March 25 2019, @09:45PM (2 children)
Write to your representative and ask him to support the repealing of that pesky law. Problem solved by the magic of politics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday March 25 2019, @10:26PM (1 child)
Your proposed methodology needs refining: The letter to a representative must include a large check in exchange for this effort.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 26 2019, @02:20AM
Ima gonna promise him a reasonable percent of profits (say, 60%?) from the generated energy.
I bet he's gonna take the deal, he may be stupid enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:55AM
We already have several means of converting heat to other forms of energy. They don't even have to be all that efficient if you're just talking waste heat. So what if they lose 90% (not actually lost, just not going into the specific form you want it in) of the potential energy in waste heat?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 25 2019, @08:32PM (7 children)
With unlimited energy, you can heat pump it to the stars: sink one side of your heat pump into the ocean - extract heat from there, then connect the other side to a massive IR emitter pointed straight up through cloudless skies (make it strong enough and it should send the clouds away...)
Is SETI looking for massive IR signatures on exoplanets? Could be a sign.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @08:49PM
When we run out of energy and all we have is a cold and dense planet, it's not going to be me running to the supermarket to buy some more energy and light elements for Earth. Intergalactic-salemen are an unpleasant bunch to do business with.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday March 25 2019, @08:58PM (5 children)
You'll kill all your birds that way. All your birds, killed. The eagles and the everything else. You know, the environmentalists never talk about that. We need all forms of energy. But we must protect our magnificent birds.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @09:13PM
Clean coal never killed any birds, unlike wind turbines.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 25 2019, @09:20PM (3 children)
Could also pump it into the mantle to help keep the magma flowing... wouldn't want the volcanoes to stop altogether.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday March 25 2019, @09:31PM (1 child)
That's actually a much better idea. It would be less efficient, as you're pumping against a stronger gradient, but you could do it from several locations. Of course, it means you need to use something hotter than molten rock as your working fluid.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:57AM
I don't think the working fluid is going to be as challenging as the conduits to carry it, particularly under pressure.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @10:03PM
Could also pump it into the mantle to help keep the magma flowing
That would be a cool trick!
If we dig a hole deep enough, do you think the earth will pop like a balloon? That would definitely suck..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @10:58PM
We'll have unlimited energy. We can just use some of that to free energy to cool down the oceans. Problem solved.
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Tuesday March 26 2019, @02:13AM
Some curious points...
- The (by a replier's post) "phenomenally faithful" graph of energy usage in all forms shows that energy usage has tapered off in recent years, and in fact _damn_near_ flatlined. Huh. Almost as though we're becoming much more efficient in what we're doing.
- All of this depends on the "Technology of Todaaayyyy!" I was thinking, when I was younger, that we really, really shouldn't burn up all our oil. Imagine a world without plastic!! That would kind of be terrible. A couple (eight?) years ago I came across articles about creating synthetic plastics without starting with fossil oils. What we need, we create.
- The other day, I came across an article about "Second Sound" on Arstechnica. It says that the source of heat can be cooled to _less_ than the surroundings. That the heat is shunted away _immediately_ and takes some extra with it. Huh. Wow. So, if that's a research subject now, consider the shaft of a space elevator with an IR-tuned dish at the top to beam the heat back toward the sun. shrug. Just, hey, things that we don't know about right now. Are we going to invent them in the next 200 years? (How much technological progress have we made in the last 50 years?..) It's like that "Microwave Energy!" in SimCity, except in reverse. Use fusion-based energy to cool the globe, and blow the excess heat (and the fusion-excess heat powering the blower) off into.. wherever. Can you say it's not going to happen? I've got a lot of evidence showing us doing very much similar.
- Suppose that chart really is tapering off, and that 2.3% growth is actually 0.25% growth (buys us a thousand years), then in 100 years it's 0.1% growth (buys us another 5 000 years). What will be created in that time? Will all of this be in use on _Earth_ or will all of this be in use somewhere... off earth? It's awfully cold on those outter planets. Perhaps we can direct that IR-beam toward those planets (huh, sounds like something I heard in the movie _Chronicles of Riddick_, actually) for warmth and energy.
Truthfully, I'm mostly concerned about the perception that renewables are "free energy". To me, you're absorbing energy that would otherwise have bounced back off into space. Instead, we're keeping all that energy around. We're causing the planet to get hotter, by whatever degree. It will continue so, with no end in sight -- renewable or not. May technology save my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandkids. (Actually, remove two or three of those "greats" -- Millenials are having kids a lot later these days, I think.)
Again, not to say that climate change isn't happening (I actually _like_ not having bone-chilling weather, though, and stronger rain storms are welcome by me in New England!) but seriously... Things advocating a future based on todays technology are folly. Work toward efficiency, but don't scream that the sky is falling because today we don't know what to do. Stop using things that we know are bad (coal) when we have better, slightly more expensive alternatives. Stop holding onto the past (50 year old nuclear reactors) when we have new technology. At least the United States has become so seated in fear (see also: today's article about lacing a school with police monitoring) that it can't move _at_all_, such as by advancing nuclear tech to breeder reactors, etc. It would be a decent stop-gap to the next technological evolution.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by progo on Monday March 25 2019, @10:06PM (3 children)
What? I got a headache halfway through reading that.
Everyone should read Strunk and White's Elements of Style [washington.edu] before they try to write on the Internet.
(Score: 3, Funny) by fyngyrz on Monday March 25 2019, @10:31PM
They're is a good, idea.
--
I despise spelling errors. You mix up two
letters, and your whole sentence is urined.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @11:38PM
There. FTFY.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:50AM
I prefer "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" by Joseph Williams. Instead of endless talking about making your writing "forcible" it teaches how to make it _clear_.
The teaching part includes worked-out examples of refactoring terrible prose into something that communicates well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @10:59PM (2 children)
We would fuck ourselves up so completely and totally nobody would believe it. It's not like we're using any of the existing technologies for reasonable purposes and wielding UNLIMITED ENERGY is prone to give people some even more funky ideas...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 26 2019, @12:43AM (1 child)
Fusion was "invented" decades ago.
[citation needed]
Maybe, but you still won't get Iron Man (you'll just melt). Maybe 8-meter tall mechs.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:36AM
A workable form of human-initiated hydrogen fusion was invented decades ago*. It wasn't discovered as there was a worked example hanging around in the heavens for all of mankind's existence. Once the theory was understood, the rest was engineering. Actual nuclear fusion was demonstrated somewhat earlier, sometime between 1921 and 1925.
*It's not when you think. Many people think the first demonstration of hydrogen fusion was the Ivy Mike test [wikipedia.org] on 1st November 1952, but the Teller-Ulam design [wikipedia.org] fuses Deuterium and Tritium, which, while being isotopes of hydrogen, are not the primary fusion reaction that takes place in the Sun [wikipedia.org]. Actually, hydrogen fusion (if you count the isotopes) was first demonstrated in laboratory by Mark Oliphant [wikipedia.org] in 1933, working with Ernest Rutherford in the Cavendish laboratory - and atomic fusion of any kind was first performed by humans, again in the Cavendish laboratory, this time by Patrick Blackett [wikipedia.org], sometime between 1921 and 1925, converting nitrogen into oxygen by absorption of a deuteron. I'm not sure when the first hydrogen-hydrogen fusion was demonstrated.
(Score: 1, Troll) by legont on Tuesday March 26 2019, @12:56AM
Chinese say they will do it this year. https://www.sciencealert.com/chinese-researchers-design-an-artificial-sun-that-mimics-nuclear-fusion [sciencealert.com]
Yet another Sputnik Moment coming? https://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/sputnik+moment.html [usingenglish.com]
We already lost 5G, it seems. https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d414f7a416a4e33457a6333566d54/index.html [cgtn.com]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by Only_Mortal on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:52PM
What ever happended to their skunk-works reactor on a semi-trailer project?
I'd offer that if those brains can't get it really working there's either not the political will or our physics/engineering isn't as good as we'd hope.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @06:17PM
compacting tokamacs is probably just a scam to get engineers to think how best
to remove the heat from inside to the outside to make steam and drive a windmill in a box.
once they got a compact design they'll throw away the fusion part and throw the new and improved
heat removel device into the next best coal burner or atom splitter.
why a modern generator is self exciting whilst a fusion reactor still has at least two seperate parts
is beyond me: part one uses electricity to make magnetic fields and then another part, AFTER heat has been removed drives a turbine that drives a old-skool self exciting generator.
tokamacs sound could and all but the solution is probably as simple as modifying a squirrel
cage generator with some hot hot HOT gas...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @09:00PM
Which one will be practical first?:
1. Flying cars
2. Fusion
3. Robots that do the laundry and dishes unattended
4. Lunar vacations