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Imagine a single thermonuclear explosion: one big enough to destroy a large city. The bomb doesn't weigh that much compared to the amount of energy released.
by jcdreads 17y ago
Imagine a single thermonuclear explosion: one big enough to destroy a large city. The bomb doesn't weigh that much compared to the amount of energy released. A gigantic amount of energy comes from a small amount of mass. The c2 in Einstein's formula is the speed of light squared; it's a really huge number.
As for the wisdom of the NIF as public policy, that's something on which reasonable people can (and do) disagree. I'd only point out that the first government to master the goal of break-even fusion (getting more energy out of the reaction than is put in to trigger the reaction) will gain a _ridiculous_ economic advantage over the rest of the world, to say nothing of the non-economic benefits of energy independence. It's the kind of big bet that rich nations can (and in my opinion should) take.
- jackfoxy 17y agoThat is a decent rational, except that whichever rich nation makes the breakthrough (assuming it occurs) will not have a monopoly on the technology (unless it involves mining He-3 from the moon), in which case the rich nation that invested in lunar mining technology will have quite a jump. It's pretty hard to keep big engineering secrets. As soon as the feasibility is proven, the fast followers will jump on the bandwagon.
- delackner 17y agoWould their advantage really be all that big? Modern nuclear fission reactors can produce tons of energy and you can reprocess the fuel, providing what seems to me like energy independence available today.