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Salient points, but for the international collaboration and billions ( well! ) spent on fusion research and decades of promises thats its 10-20 years away. It's

by jpitz 16y ago

Salient points, but for the international collaboration and billions ( well! ) spent on fusion research and decades of promises thats its 10-20 years away. It's a tougher nut to crack than fission. Come on - you can get a pile to start a chain reaction pretty much accidentally. Fusion is fundamentally harder. Kinda hard to replicate a star.

blahblahblah 16y ago
I'd bet that if you were to ask a group of the scientists who are currently working on fusion technology what activity consumes most of their time and effort, the #1 answer would be "pursuing grant money". Ask an academic in any field that question and that is the answer you'll usually get. Eliminate that problem by getting all of those brains together in a well-funded lab and I think you'd be surprised at how much more productive they could be.
TheAmazingIdiot 16y ago
It's not replicating a star. As a quote from wikipedia: The power production by fusion in the core varies with distance from the solar center. At the center of the Sun, theoretical models estimate it to be approximately 276.5 watts/m3,[41] a power production density that more nearly approximates reptile metabolism than a thermonuclear bomb.[note 2] Peak power production in the Sun has been compared to the volumetric heats generated in an active compost heap. The tremendous power output of the Sun is not due to its high power per volume, but instead due to its large size. Fusion generators seek to harness this power where temperatures exceed millions of K. And then we use magnetic "bottles" to hold fusion in. The main problem is how to insert more material without breaking containment. As far as I can tell, it's always going to be 50 years away. I'd say that micro-singularity reactors are 'closer' than fusion.
- jpitz 16y ago
  I apologize for over-generalizing. I realize it isn't replicating a star. The nifty thing about being a star is that you have this massive gravitational force available as your containment. No matter how we do fusion, we'll likely need containment, and it's a vastly harder problem than "put enough fissile atoms close enough together to sustain a chain reaction." Let's face it - the big reason that fission reactors are dangerous is that stopping a reaction is as difficult or often more difficult than starting it.

by jpitz 16y ago

blahblahblah 16y ago

I'd bet that if you were to ask a group of the scientists who are currently working on fusion technology what activity consumes most of their time and effort, the #1 answer would be "pursuing grant money". Ask an academic in any field that question and that is the answer you'll usually get. Eliminate that problem by getting all of those brains together in a well-funded lab and I think you'd be surprised at how much more productive they could be.

TheAmazingIdiot 16y ago

It's not replicating a star. As a quote from wikipedia: The power production by fusion in the core varies with distance from the solar center. At the center of the Sun, theoretical models estimate it to be approximately 276.5 watts/m3,[41] a power production density that more nearly approximates reptile metabolism than a thermonuclear bomb.[note 2] Peak power production in the Sun has been compared to the volumetric heats generated in an active compost heap. The tremendous power output of the Sun is not due to its high power per volume, but instead due to its large size. Fusion generators seek to harness this power where temperatures exceed millions of K. And then we use magnetic "bottles" to hold fusion in. The main problem is how to insert more material without breaking containment. As far as I can tell, it's always going to be 50 years away. I'd say that micro-singularity reactors are 'closer' than fusion.

jpitz 16y ago
I apologize for over-generalizing. I realize it isn't replicating a star. The nifty thing about being a star is that you have this massive gravitational force available as your containment. No matter how we do fusion, we'll likely need containment, and it's a vastly harder problem than "put enough fissile atoms close enough together to sustain a chain reaction." Let's face it - the big reason that fission reactors are dangerous is that stopping a reaction is as difficult or often more difficult than starting it.