[Suggestion] Control the power of the sun, or: Fusion reactors!

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>> "Its not a perpetual mobile. It basically converts mass to energy. So you are right it has to come from somewhere and it does come from somewhere."

Converting mass to energy requires energy, and trying to get more energy out of a system that was put into it is over -unity and more mythological as world peace.

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>> "D + T => n (14.1 MeV) + He(3.5 MeV) This means 1 kg of this fuel gives out 100 GWh.
No perpetual motion there.
Your turn."

I'm not understanding your formula, but I'm assuming you got it off this wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

I'm gladd you can read, so here's some more material for you:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hy…oduction/natural_gas.html

That's the method used for about 95% of the US. Not saying it's the best, but let's look at electrolysis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water

quote: "Water electrolysis does not convert 100% of the electrical energy into the chemical energy of hydrogen"

It's actually closer to 60-85% effeciency when not including the burning-to-energy conversion (and using methods by many DIY people on youtube), simply the process of creating the H2 from water (the previous mentioned method of production is a bit above this one).

Now that we got the hydrogen from water, we can just smash it all together to form a sun right? No, Lawson criterion wants to dope it to make deuterium (quickly burns up in the sun, but hey, that's Lawson criterion for you) and tritium (which is itself fissile and I question that the energy got out of this system is merely this decaying)...are these methods free to make, or are we just ignoring all the steps of energy required in the system? Even then, you get neutron radiation as the byproduct, yay...and how exactly will that help, or did some magical box get created that suddenly absorbs neutrons and produces electricity? Oh, and don't forget the energy used in the electromagnetic torus and the air conditioning units.

Or you can do what I originally stated in my earlier post, simply get a massive amount of hydrogen (1e30 grams of it) and voila. Just having that much mass in one general location would cause the atoms to ball from gravity until the center begins to fuse from its own pressure and bam, herpes...I mean sun.

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>> "Oh and guess why almost every nuke today uses a fusion booster"

Now you know something about nukes do you? When you decide to light your bbq grill with lighter fluid as opposed to lighter fluid plus gunpowder...obviously the latter will have more effect. We all know hydrogen burns, you throw a bunch of it compressed on the back of a nuke, obviously it will be bigger. That doesn't mean the energy produced is more than was required to make the thing.

Lol converting mass to energy gives tons of energy. You prolly never saw E=mc2....

oh and fusion IS NOT BURNING!!!

Quote from Sabriath

>> "before posting meaningless BS, pls take a second to get acquainted with actual research. and take a look at the iter project. thx"

I have and I know about it...but just because someone is getting grants to do research on something, doesn't make it any more possible or proven efficient. Look at all the companies/idiots trying to create perpetual motion for example. There was a device created years ago (similar to the design of Iter) that injected hydrogen on small scales in a magnetic centrifuge but the power output was less than that of straight burning it in comparison (and burning is 80% efficient).

So before posting a comment as if I know nothing, you might want to say to yourself "this guy might know wtf he's talking about, maybe he has degrees in the field," or at the very least, rub a couple of your neurons together to remember that you can't create more energy than you put into a system....ever! Even our own sun has limited power, it will eventually die, that's called entropy (although it's more of the expanding universe theory and the cooling effect, but we won't get into quantum mechanics and other proofs when you can't even handle basic Einstein energy law).

I have a degree in the field. You are wrong. Gorni and Rick have already explained why, so I won't repeat.

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Ehm right... and you are sure you understand the difference between burning hydrogen with air ( 2 H2 + O2 => 2 H2O) and fusing 2 Cores into a new one ( Deuterium + Tritium => Neutron + Helium)?

Yes, and the point of the analogy was to get to the last part of that paragraph, not to correlate burning with fusion (that last part stated "That doesn't mean the energy produced is more than was required to make the thing").

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Lol converting mass to energy gives tons of energy. You prolly never saw E=mc2....

oh and fusion IS NOT BURNING!!!

1. Maybe you've heard of "activation cost" when it comes to chemical reaction, well it applies to other areas as well. In order to get the "E" part out of mass, you need to perform some actions of conversion (smashing atoms or fracturing them costs energy). Humans do not have the ability to turn mass into energy at a 100% efficiency...in fact, we can't even turn any mass into energy (the HC comes close, but the energy produced from smashing 2 protons is miniscule to detect, we only see the aftershock from magnetic detectors). A nuclear reactor only yields maybe 0.1% efficiency of the possible energy the uranium could provide, and even that's over-exaggerating. Yes, I am comparing fission energy to atomic deconstruction because it's the closest to entropy we have.

2. I know fusion is not burning, when did I say that? Again, caught up in analogies, I won't use them I guess, it confuses you guys.

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I have a degree in the field. You are wrong. Gorni and Rick have already explained why, so I won't repeat.

A man in the field would not state another one is wrong in such a trolling fashion. Plus, if they were right, then there would be fusion reactors all over the planet and we'd be harnassing the power of a thousand suns....we're not, and all the tests of the "Iter" like devices have all shown far below expected values.

They are still developing fusion reactors that will actualy make enough energy but in theory it is possible. Just getting to that heat and maintaining the magnetic field isnt very efficient AT THE MOMENT (there is a very good possibility there will be a commercial fusion in our lives).

Lets assume IC2 is a bit more advanced than present day ok?

oh and if you think converting mass to energy yields only miniscule amounts of energy i suggest going to youtube and search for nuclear explosions. They arent that miniscule.

I will elaborate however.

Fission and Fusion are reactions that alter the very structure of mater; they are not mere re-arrangements like relationships on a soap opera, but entirely new things such as trading in two bicycles for a motorcycle.

Fusion (hydrogen) is something most recently Hollywood physics bent to make Iron Man's arc reactors; the (SPOILER movie #2) adding what is effectively a reaction catalyst/medium. The giant doughnut reactor you see in the first movie is a good 'inner' view of what one of these may actually look like if built in a working way.

Fission is the easier and more realistic matter splitting type.

In both cases the general idea is that shifting the configuration of mater results in a few different pieces of mater, some 'leftover parts' that go on to further the reaction (alpha, beta, gamma; radiation) and a /lot/ of heat which can be used in more conventional energy production methods, such as steam turbines.

The Fission reactions all tend to be 'messy' because they leave a bunch of unstable leftovers laying about that can take quite a long time to stabilize. This is /partly/ due to the fact that fuel reprocessing to concentrate it back to reactor grade material is banned in the US due to a retarded fear that all such activity /could/ lead to weapons proliferation (as if dirty bombs aren't nearly as bad). Were that material reprocessed and the full energy extracted the waste products would largely fall in to two categories: things with very short half-lives (go away in a few days to weeks at most) and things with -very- long halflives (a slow trickle of radiation; extremely useful in medical applications and nuclear based batteries; possible applications in electronics).

Fusion reactions, meanwhile, are notorious for having issues actually producing a net gain of energy. I hope we'll be able to build such systems eventually, but within the short term gen III/IV fission reactors and reprocessing are the options I'd love to see in use. Remember, it wasn't the earthquake it's self that ravaged the older, poorly run and management crippled reactors in Fukushima; it was poor management and failure to account for tsunami flooding with properly laid out equipment that produced that result. Newer plants would doubtlessly be built even more idiot proof (with automated systems to do what was necessary in the first place) and with more extreme murphy's law scenario writers listened to.

Sab, you need to go tell the US and the EU that fusion power can't work. They're wasting $150 billion a year on it as we speak.

Can everyone without some understanding of E=mc2 pls leave this topic now? We dont have time to convince you mass can be converted to energy and that it already happened.

Quote from Kuudere

Sab, you need to go tell the US and the EU that fusion power can't work. They're wasting $150 billion a year on it as we speak.

Actually we probably /are/ wasting 150B a year instead of /investing/ 300 billion a year. A lot of times we try to accomplish things on budgets instead of building a more modular system that can be modified to fit a whole generation of tests instead of just one. Penny wise, pound foolish.

Quote from MJEvans

Actually we probably /are/ wasting 150B a year instead of /investing/ 300 billion a year. A lot of times we try to accomplish things on budgets instead of building a more modular system that can be modified to fit a whole generation of tests instead of just one. Penny wise, pound foolish.

Scientific progress can't easily be rushed. The original Tokamak design is a prime example; the US was pouring rivers of money into anything with "nuclear" in its name, including nuclear fusion power, and failed miserably, while equally deperate but heavily underfunded soviet scientists stumbled on a design that to this day works better than any model predicts. Laser confinement looks more promising at the moment, but commercial viability will likely use another method altogether. We can only hope it builds on current research.

Point is they will find i way eventualy its not impossible.