And it’ll be powered by..
This is good news.
Wonderful irony: the fusion reactor will draw its energy from a national grid that generates huge proportions of its power through… nuclear fission.
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June 29th, 2005 at 11:44 am
It’ll be great if it works. (Assuming there isn’t too much potential for Chernobyl-style Bad Things.) Cheap (i.e. low environmental as well as fiscal cost) energy can lead to lots of good stuff.
June 29th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
Don’t agree it’s good news.
We don’t have a clue what part heavy water plays in our environment, what we can be fairly sure of is as it’s readily available some part of nature is already making use of it. If we start taking lots of it away to make more energy something else is likely going to suffer.
And global warming is about increasing the energy level in a (relatively) closed system, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is just one part of the equation, albeit an important part.
There’s no shortage of energy, there’s just about always some wind, sun or water going down. It’s just in the wrong place at the wrong time for some of mankind’s purposes. What we should be doing is moving energy around not introducing more in to the environment. Storage of energy is a bit of a problem but there are environmentally neutral solutions already, like the hollow mountain or biomass.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22hollow+mountain%22+hydro
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/4593449.stm
We already have workable, cost effective solutions to energy supply.
June 29th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Oh, come on! Heavy water is a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen in water. It doesn’t play *any* role; it just is. No part of nature is making any particular use of it. It’s generated naturally by radioactivity, and probably cosmic rays too.
Global warming is sort of about the energy level, but it’s principally about increasing the amount of energy trapped in the atmosphere and in the sea. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere increases the amount of heat that’s unable to re-radiate to space (because it also encourages water evaporation, and water vapour is a greenhouse gas too). It’s that simple.
Hydroelectric and biomass can’t generate enough electricity in the right places to meet energy needs. Fusion would mean that you could generate electricity including enough power to run the reactor itself; it would be self-sustaining. Fusion reactors have already run at self-sustaining outputs, but it’s very unstable. Hence ITER, to try to make it stable.
June 30th, 2005 at 10:12 am
Not sure what you mean by ‘environment’, i.e. what energy isn’t in the environment?
June 30th, 2005 at 10:14 am
.. in fact if we extract lots and lots of heavy water from the seas, then we’ll actually make them safer: see why is heavy water poisonous?.
(Yes yes all right tritium gas and other mildly radioactive exhausts. Even so, I’ll take fusion over wind farms any day. In fact, the ID cards budget would pay for the fusion reactor construction. Just think of that one.
Plus, fusion reactors aren’t terrorist targets, because crashing a plane into them just stops them working; no nasty fallout. Though it would interrupt your evening’s viewing of Big Brother or G4’s gala concert…
June 30th, 2005 at 11:35 am
Oooh yes, ID cards. Cost: £3bn - £10bn. Benefits? Actual benefits? Anyone?
July 1st, 2005 at 1:34 am
Oh, come on! Heavy water is a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen in water. It doesn’t play *any* role; it just is. No part of nature is making any particular use of it. It’s generated naturally by radioactivity, and probably cosmic rays too.
No part of nature just is, it is all part of the whole. You can not say it doesn’t play any role just because we haven’t discovered what the role is yet. One of the lessons of life is that life adapts and uses the resources around it, because we haven’t developed a meter to measure the effect yet doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Global warming is sort of about the energy level, but it’s principally about increasing the amount of energy trapped in the atmosphere and in the sea. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere increases the amount of heat that’s unable to re-radiate to space (because it also encourages water evaporation, and water vapour is a greenhouse gas too). It’s that simple.
Global warming is about planet earth getting warmer, now that’s simple. Getting warmer can be effected by burning more fuel or by adding insulation, or both.
It’s wrong to assume that all extra energy we add to the system will radiate out to space. By ‘add to the system’ I mean all that comes from sources other than our regular supply from the sun.
Hydroelectric and biomass can’t generate enough electricity in the right places to meet energy needs. Fusion would mean that you could generate electricity including enough power to run the reactor itself; it would be self-sustaining. Fusion reactors have already run at self-sustaining outputs, but it’s very unstable. Hence ITER, to try to make it stable.
If the MOD weren’t so against wind power in the coastal waters turbines wouldn’t be spoiling the landscape (they claim turbines interfering with radar is too great a problem to overcome so planning consent gets refused). Denmark produces 20% of it’s power from wind already, we have lots more wind (and coastline) than they.
Agreed it seems that fusion works already, and on a small scale in which case it could be local, as could small turbines on houses, solar panels on roofs etc - even hydro generators on rainwater downpipes. These would be really cheap because scales of mass production come in to effect (think mini turbines at the same cost as fans). But no, science (for the most part), business and especially politics wants to be BIG.
What we should be doing is moving energy around not introducing more in to the environment.
Not sure what you mean by ‘environment’, i.e. what energy isn’t in the environment?
If we dig it up from under the ground, ie coal, oil, gas, we are introducing it in to the environment.
the environment:
the air, water and land in or on which people, animals and plants live
( http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=25957&dict=CALD )
I’d say roughly from a few feet below the ground to ten miles above the ground. Of course it’s not that simple as the sun (energy) and moon (gravity) are both important parts of our environment too.
.. in fact if we extract lots and lots of heavy water from the seas, then we’ll actually make them safer: see why is heavy water poisonous?.
That’s a spurious argument, eating too many carrots kills you too (or eating Big Macs for much more than a month). The student took a substance usually only found in concentrations of a few parts per million and increased it to 20% or 80% and the changes were catastrophic, why would anyone expect otherwise?
(Yes yes all right tritium gas and other mildly radioactive exhausts. Even so, I’ll take fusion over wind farms any day. In fact, the ID cards budget would pay for the fusion reactor construction. Just think of that one.
Plus, fusion reactors aren’t terrorist targets, because crashing a plane into them just stops them working; no nasty fallout. Though it would interrupt your evening’s viewing of Big Brother or G4’s gala concert…
All big things are terrorist targets, especially energy supplies, agreed fusion is not as dangerous as fission so I’d say less of a target rather than none. Even pylons and pipelines are terrorist targets, eg http://www.iags.org/iraqpipelinewatch.htm
The point I make is not anti-fusion, my main point is about the scale. I never said I was anti-fusion, I said I didn’t agree (with the large scale experiment and it’s costs) and pointed out there are alternative energy sources.
I am against big power stations for exactly the same reason as I am against ID cards, too much power in one place is dangerous and can be abused with catastrophic effects.
I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that heavy water arrives on this planet from ice meteors melting in the atmosphere :-)
July 1st, 2005 at 10:05 am
What a wonderful stream-of-conscious pile of piffle. Here’s just one delightfully batty bit:
“Global warming is about planet earth getting warmer, now that’s simple. Getting warmer can be effected by burning more fuel or by adding insulation, or both.”
Where on earth does “adding insulation” come into the picture? That’s not what happens. As to burning more fuel, how does that make the planet warmer? If it is, for example, nuclear fuel, it doesn’t.
That bit alone is so devoid of any understanding of the greenhouse effect, that you wonder if the writer is trying to be ironic. It is the sort of science that would make sense to a five-year old, before they have their first science lesson.
July 1st, 2005 at 12:16 pm
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is insulation, insulating the planet, it stops the heat escaping to space.
Nuclear fuel is releasing energy, which is mostly heat. Just about all energy ends up as heat, energy used for motion results in heat through friction (braking, wind resistance, vibration etc).
July 1st, 2005 at 12:21 pm
In early, 1989, Jack Herer and Maria Farrow put this question to Steve Rawlings, the highest ranking officer in the U.S. Department of Agruculture (who was in charge of reversing the Greenhouse Effect), at the USDA world research facility in Beltsville, Maryland.
First, we introduced ourselves and told him we were writing for Green political party newspapers. Then we asked Rawlings, “If you could have any choice, what would be the ideal way to stop or reverse the Greenhouse Effect?”
He said, “Stop cutting down trees and stop using fossil fuels.”
“Well, why don’t we?”
“There’s no viable substitute for wood for paper, or for fossil fuels.”
“Why don’t we use an annual plant for paper and for fossil fuels?”
“Well, that would be ideal,” he agreed. “Unfortunately, there is nothing you can use that could produce enough materials.”
“Well, what would you say if there was such a plant that could substitute for all wood pulp paper, all fossil fuels, would make kmost of our fibers naturally, make everything from dynamite to plastic, grows in all 50 states and that one acre of it would replace 4.1 acres of trees, and that if you used about 6 percent of the U.S. land to raise it as an energy crop - even on our marginal lands, this plant would produce all 75 quadrillion billion BTUs needed to run America each year? Would that help save the planet?”
“That would be ideal. But there is no such plant.”
“We think there is.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Hemp.”
“Hemp!” he mused for a moment. “I never would have thought of it. . . You know, I think you’re right. Hemp could be the plant that could do it. Wow! That’s a great idea!”
We were excited as we outlined this information and delineated the potential of hemp for paper, fiber, fuel, food, paint, etc., and how it could be applied to balance the world’s ecosystems and restore the atomosphere’s oxygen balance with almost no disruption of the standard of living to which most Americans have become accustomed.
In essence, Rawlings agreed that our information was probably correct and could very well work.
He said, “It’s a wonderful idea, and I think it might work. But, of course, you can’t use it.”
“You’re kidding!” we responded. “Why not?”
“Well, Mr. Herer, did you know that hemp is also marijuana?”
“Yes, of course I know, I’ve been writing about it for about 40 hours a week for the past 17 years.”
“Well, you know marijuana’s illegal, don’t you? You can’t use it.”
“Not even to save the world?”
“No. It’s illegal”, he sternly informed me. “You cannot use something illegal.”
http://www.jackherer.com/chapter02.html