5 ms·
Why not just fuse hydrogen nuclei together? The energy produced as a byproduct could be very useful as well
by anArbitraryOne 3y ago
Why not just fuse hydrogen nuclei together? The energy produced as a byproduct could be very useful as well
- defrost 3y agoAny day now, it's been five years away for half a century now. Addendum: Seems many disagree with cold fact.
- shiroiuma 3y agoWe've been successfully fusing hydrogen into helium since Philo Farnswith invented his Fusor.
- anArbitraryOne 3y agoJazz fusion has been around about as long and has been far more commercially viable
- shermantanktop 3y agoLike Weather Report? Sure, they sold some records. Not so much anymore.
- fulladder 3y agoIt was ten years away for most of the last 50 years, but recently it has become 5 years away. So, in a strange way, we do seem to be making progress.
- anArbitraryOne 3y agoRe: addendum. Isn't cold fusion even farther away?
- thfuran 3y agoUS annual helium production is something like ten kilotons. Fusing 1 ton of deuterium yields about 1e21 J. Total global annual energy usage is something like half of that. Frankly, it'd be kind of inconvenient to generate and then get rid of all the extra energy required to meaningfully augment helium supply (assuming we even had an easy way to do the fusion).
- anArbitraryOne 3y agoA few ideas for the excess energy 1)power third world countries 2)split beryllium atoms in half 3)space lasers
- marcosdumay 3y agoOk, then what you do with the other 99.999% of it?
- anArbitraryOne 3y agoWell, splitting beryllium atoms to make helium would mean a lot less is needed to begin with
- foota 3y agoI'm not sure if this is a joke or not, but without a self sustaining reaction you're going to be putting in more energy to cause the reactions than you're getting out of it.