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rewsi
Junior Member
USA
146 Posts |
 Posted - 11/20/2009 : 08:51:28 AM
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i thought this was interesting article i found, this could very well be our future power, but what is the cost of a new power plant like this and how safe could it be
Could This Lump Power the Planet?
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab are betting $3.5 billion in taxpayer money on a tiny pellet that could produce an endless supply of safe, clean energy. For some, that's hard to swallow.
It doesn't look like much from the outside—just a drab, 10-story building on the campus of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about an hour's drive east of San Francisco. But as I'm walking across the parking lot on a sunny day in October I can't help thinking that someday I might be telling my grandchildren about the time I came to this lab and met Edward Moses and saw the technology that was about to change the world.
Maybe this means I'm an optimist. Or even a sucker; a fool. All I know is that when I meet Moses, the 60-year-old scientist who runs this place, and he shows me a tiny pellet, about the size of the multivitamin I take every morning, and swears it will provide an endless supply of safe, clean energy, I want to believe him. It seems so ridiculously simple, so utterly doable. The pellet Moses holds is a model, but the real version will contain a few milligrams of deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen that can be extracted from water. If you blast the pellet with a powerful laser, you can create a reaction like the one that takes place at the center of the sun. Harness that reaction, and you've created a star on earth, and with the heat from that star you can generate electricity without creating any pollution. Forget about nuke plants, coal, oil, or wind and solar. "This is the real solar power," says Moses.
What Moses is talking about is controlled nuclear fusion—fusing nuclei rather than splitting a nucleus, as happens in ordinary nuclear-fission power plants. In a fission reaction, the nucleus of a uranium atom is split into two smaller atoms, releasing energy in the form of heat. The heat is used to make steam, which drives a turbine and generates electricity. In fusion energy, the second half of this process (heat makes steam makes electricity) remains the same. But instead of splitting the nucleus of an atom, you're trying to force a deuterium nucleus to merge, or fuse, with a tritium nucleus. When that happens,you produce helium and throw off energy
Scientists have been trying to produce energy with fusion for decades. So far, they keep failing. It's not that fusion itself can't be achieved. Fusion takes place in every hydrogen-bomb explosion. The trick is controlling fusion so that instead of a one-time blast you get a series of tiny, controllable explosions. The joke is that fusion energy is only 40 years away, and will always be only 40 years away.
Moses believes, however, that his lab, which is called the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, has cracked the problem. The big challenge fusion has faced is lack of power. Even the biggest lasers in the world could not generate enough energy to smash nuclei together and make them stick. But the reason the building we're in is so huge—it covers the area of three football fields—is that it contains an enormous laser, or actually a system that combines 192 identical lasers and zaps them into a round chamber, about 30 feet in diameter, where the tiny pellet of fuel awaits the blast. NIF's laser, which took a decade to build and was completed earlier this year, can produce 60 times more energy than any other laser ever built. Right now it's still being tested. But next year Moses and his scientists will fire it up with a full load of deuterium-tritium fuel, and Moses feels confident it will achieve "ignition," meaning a controlled burn in which you get out more energy than you put in. Moses, an award-winning laser scientist with a wry sense of humor, explains the whole thing as he leads me on a tour through the NIF facility. It's a vast, beautiful, awe-inspiring machine, mind-blowing in its complexity, with miles of metal tubes—all part of a system that starts with a tiny pulse of light, channels that light through machines that amplify its intensity and rocket the beam along using specially grown crystals and thousands of lenses and mirrors, and finally focuses these beams down to hit a target that is the size of a peppercorn—all in one millionth of a second.
I DON'T PRESS 1 FOR ENGLISH |
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Chizum
Junior Member
236 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2009 : 09:16:39 AM
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Theres nothing new here. Fusion reactors... thats what the French mainly use for their nuke power plants!
^^Theres those that can, and those that can't, and then those that btch about both!^^
"give him a break. He was probably one of those kids that pissed the bed and had no friends." - Elvis Girl |
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Merlin
Advanced Member
USA
3857 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2009 : 09:42:48 AM
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quote:
[i]Originally posted by Chizum[/i]
[br]Theres nothing new here. Fusion reactors... thats what the French mainly use for their nuke power plants!
^^Theres those that can, and those that can't, and then those that btch about both!^^
"give him a break. He was probably one of those kids that pissed the bed and had no friends." - Elvis Girl
Wow Chizum is a genius, these guys spent billions for nothing all they had to do was ask Chizum and he would have told the dumb azz's to go to France and buy their powerplant.
If you must burn the flag, please wrap yourself in it first!!! |
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Chizum
Junior Member
236 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2009 : 10:15:00 AM
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Merlin.. It's Friday.. you don't have to be a jackass everyday!
And incase you didn't know - as I understand you have a hard time pulling your head out of your ass- the US has had thier own fusion reactors for decades... theres 1 in CA and 1 in idaho and 1 in NM.
These guys aren't even on the cutting edge.
Theres sienctists right now trying to turn the by product of the fusion reactors into non-radioactive glass.
^^Theres those that can, and those that can't, and then those that btch about both!^^
"give him a break. He was probably one of those kids that pissed the bed and had no friends." - Elvis Girl |
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Merlin
Advanced Member
USA
3857 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2009 : 11:01:09 AM
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I can't believe with your superior brain they haven't come begging you to join their team, perhaps they could crack cold fusion with you in their corner.
If you must burn the flag, please wrap yourself in it first!!! |
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TattooLost
Average Member
USA
580 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2009 : 1:32:58 PM
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Bzzzzt, wrong Chizum. There's plenty of FISSION reactors online... but no one has perfected fusion power. Hence, this article. 
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"...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong." --Richard Dawkins |
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Merlin
Advanced Member
USA
3857 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2009 : 3:42:47 PM
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Hey tatoo, how is your friday?
If you must burn the flag, please wrap yourself in it first!!! |
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TattooLost
Average Member
USA
580 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2009 : 4:32:27 PM
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Ugh, long story, but it looks like we may have to move soon. Probate crap. But other than that, it's been okay. Vegging out on the computer, window shopping for new snakes. lol All in all I can't complain. Yourself?
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"...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong." --Richard Dawkins |
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Merlin
Advanced Member
USA
3857 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2009 : 5:25:13 PM
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Not to bad, kickin back messing with the kids and dog, look at the computer once in awhile. Can't complain at all.
If you must burn the flag, please wrap yourself in it first!!! |
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Merlin
Advanced Member
USA
3857 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2009 : 5:26:44 PM
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I'm glad I don't have to move, we bought this house 1 1/2 years ago and decided never to move again.
If you must burn the flag, please wrap yourself in it first!!! |
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Could This Lump Power the Planet
