Re: OT Why No Fusion Powerplants?

On Jan 25, 3:06 am, "b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Jan 24, 8:55 am, "Tom Kunich" <cyclintom@yahoo. com> wrote:

<b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

No.  You made this ridiculous claim, so _you_
post a citation to an article in "physics journals."
Not "and such," either.

Somehow I'm not surprised that you don't know anything about the
Superconducting Super Collider costs and the estimations that it was too
small for a power producing station.

Tombot,

I asked for a citation for claims about tokamak sizes
and you give me this nonsense?  Do you ever think for
a moment about whether you understand that which
you pontificate about?  About the only thing that particle
accelerators such as SSC (or the European LHC, which
is approaching completion) and tokamaks have in common
is that they are toroidal and use very large magnets.

Comparing these two things is like comparing a Ferrari
to a semi-truck.  You're doing the equivalent of arguing
that because Ferraris have a big engine but can't haul
much cargo, it's physically impossible to build a semi.

A particle accelerator is designed to produce a relatively
small (in macroscopic terms) jet of extremely high energy
particles - the energy per particle has to be at the level
of the internal binding energy of subatomic particles (billions
or trillions of electron volts) to knock them into pieces.
However, it isn't designed to generate any amount of
energy or be self-sustaining.

A tokamak is designed to contain a hot plasma at the
energy scale that allows atomic nuclei to overcome
their electric-charge repulsion  - a few tens of thousands
of electron volts - to allow fusion reactions to  proceed.
The energy per particle is much lower than in a collider.
The problem is containing the plasma so that the reaction
sustains itself - much as a fire becomes hot enough to
sustain the chemical reaction of burning.
That's how they hope to generate energy.

Technically, the reason a circular collider like the SSC
or LHC has to be many miles across is that the charged
particle beams undergo a centripetal acceleration to keep
going around the circle.  That acceleration causes the
particles to radiate energy by synchrotron radiation.
The energy loss is a strong power of the circle radius,
so you need to build it big, otherwise as you accelerate
the particles they keep losing energy and you can't
ever reach the desired tens of TeV energies.  For this
and other technical reasons, the next collider built
after LHC will likely be an electron-positron linear
collider, as opposed to circular.

Tokamaks don't have this issue and don't have to be
many miles across, since they operate at much lower
energies.  However the challenges of maintaining
the plasma confinement are messier than directing
the collider's particle beam (which is already pretty
damn complicated, but at least doable currently).

Now go home and read back issues of Scientific
American until you figure out that you don't know
everything.  The rest of you, I expect your term papers
on accelerator physics to be on my desk in the
morning.

Ben

Hey Ben
With the slash and burn, luddite aproach to funding basic research how
the hell is he going to dig up enough info from US journals to
matter?
Gone from JFK's and the 50s support, and optimism about science,
crowned with the Apollo program and all the spinoffs to "bubba" Billy
Proxmire and the Capitol Hill Vatican science court.
I saw an article the other day where the Vatican was still defending
it's criminalizing science because a group was trying to get
recognition of what they did to an astronomer. Wetware is faulty,
gotta get see if I can get it tuned up when Bob tunes up the TK bot.
Maybe you've seen the bit. It was in the last two weeks.
How ridiculous is it that we're growing mushrooms in a half built
project that could've helped provide fundamental answers to our energy
problems, along with better understanding of our world.
Penny wise, pound foolish, unless you have the propper corrupt
connections:

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csnews.cgi/csNews.cgi?database=Unlisted
2008.db&command=viewone&id=1

Former Head of Army's Body Armor Program Under Criminal Investigation

Retired Army Colonel John D. Norwood (West Point '80), former head of
the Army office responsible for body armor, is reported to be under
criminal investigation for alleged violations of federal law related
to his taking a post-retirement job with Armor Holdings, Inc., one of
the major providers of Interceptor Body Armor to the Army .

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,160643,00.html

Contractor Twice Paid for Same Work
Associated Press | January 24, 2008
WASHINGTON - A defense contractor hired to repair combat equipment
routinely failed to do the job right and then charged the government
millions of dollars for the extra work needed to get the gear ready
for battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a newly released
audit.

Bill C
.

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