Posted on 10/16/2014 10:01:24 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In case you were too consumed with Ebola news yesterday to notice this, here’s a belated FYI that America’s going to put the Middle East’s oil barons out of business before your grandkids are out of college. Assuming the Ebola doesn’t get us first, I mean.
Lockheed has a webpage dedicated to its new breakthrough in compact fusion reactors but this write-up in Aviation Week is the most thorough explanation I’ve seen of how it would actually work. If I understand it correctly, which I probably don’t, the problem with current fusion reactors is that they’re too darned big and inefficient to be useful as power suppliers. To produce fusion, you inject a certain type of gas into the reactor, which heats it up. When the gas gets hot, the ions and electrons from the isotopes split apart and form a plasma; when it gets really hot, the ions recombine — fusion — releasing kinetic energy in the form of neutrons that collide with the reactor’s walls. The heat generated by those collisions is converted into electricity, and voila, you’ve got power. The trick is containing the plasma as it reaches fusion temperature so that it doesn’t touch the reactor’s walls, which would do damage. The containment is done by generating strong magnetic fields, but it takes biggggg magnets and lots of power to achieve that — so much power, in fact, that you end up putting in about as much as the reactor puts out, defeating the whole purpose. The traditional design of the fusion reactor, in which the plasma is encased in a big tube, is also sufficiently unstable that engineers typically use relatively small amounts of plasma compared to the huge magnetic field being generated. Also inefficient....
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
If true, it will simply replace the existing technology. It will be priced in such a manner than you will never see a change in your bill up or down.
And Lockheed will be a new Saudi Arabia.
I wonder if they have perfected a way to use controllable static magnetic fields generated in superconductive coils to contain the reaction and keep it away from the containment wall?
Seems very cranky since it takes so much liquified gas to maintain the extremely low temps required for the coils. And just how could you manage to carefully manipulate the static fields created? Of course room temp superconductors would greatly simplify this (Unobtainium - see “Avatar”)
The only thing I can think of off hand is to somehow electronically switch the fields by shifting the current flowing in the superconducting coils from one coil to another.... makes me think of a perpetual motion machine for some reason.
Will help Lockheed stock. But I will not cut my wires from the electric utility.
The real losers from an invention like this would be the makers of solar panels and windmills.
I can’t wait to see how the enviro-NAZI groups disparage this. After all they think that anything that increases human prosperity is evil. We haven’t suffered enough to ever be happy
You are wise to see the environuts actual agenda.
They would be horrified at the idea of limitless, cheap, clean power.
It’s the electrical power that they really hate. They hate it because it gives the evil humans control of things and the ability to make themselves happy and prosperous.
Anything that makes people happy is evil in the eyes of these very sick minded creatures.
And natural gas and coal.
Some people would still prefer cooking on natural gas than electricity but that would be a relatively small market compared to what natural gas used for today.
Convert the Western car fleet to electric and Russia,Iran,Suadi Arabia, and Venezuela will go right in the toilet where they belong.
Oh I hope so. It is not the makers that bother me, it is the snotty little green pricks that are in love with solar, wind mills and hybrid cars.
BTW: Am I the only one who hates getting caught behind a Prius and does what is required (yet safe) to get in front of them?
bttt
Don’t these guys watch Star Trek Movies?
When the Warp Core is breached, it’s game over.
Electricity is a regulated utility.
If cost are down then prices would go down.
They simply would not be allowed to make ExxonMobile at $120/barrel type profits.
I am not a big fan of hybrid cars. In fact I just bought a new CX-5 and part of the attraction is it is not a hybrid
Primarily because I think they are intermediate step toward something else when no intermediate step is needed. Fuel cells or form of synthetic oil are, in my mind the wave of the future.
Even with a cold fusion electrical plant battery power autos would still be problematic in terms of range, and the disposal of the batteries. However, having a cold fusion plant would allow for economical conversion of coal to gasoline (Which burns a lot cleaner than coal)
The worst mistake the West has made in a long time is paying the Muslims for their oil. We should have gone in and taken it.
Absolutely.
Or subcontracted the job to Saddam, with the understanding that WMD are verboten, but Wahhabis thru the wood chipper are the right idea.
I was thinking a little farther back. Maybe even before WWII.
The result of being “just” and “fair”—i.e., paying the Muslims for the oil that just happened to be under their feet—is that we turned a bunch of neolithic savages into trillionaires. We are paying the price.
These neolithic savages have flooded our government, academia, the think tanks, etc., etc., with untold billions of dollars. Hardly a single member of Congress hasn’t been purchased outright. And of course Obola is a paid, groomed agent of the Saudis.
I could never understand why the U.S. did and does not stand by its private companies. ARAMCO, a big conglomerate of oil companies, explored, found, drilled, extracted and shipped the oil to the U.S. Why they decided to pay a bunch of camel drivers, with no country at all, for this oil is beyond my understanding.
And when Iran nationalized the oil industry, why did the U.S. stand idly by? Our State Department has failed us miserably over the decades since WWII. Why can't a President go clean house at that Department, cut the budget by 90 percent, and let them take care of Americans overseas? Now we have that absolute joke Hillary and and that homo icon Kerry at the head... Is this the culmination of a long march to the bottom? When I grew up, looking back, an average fifth grader could have done better. I wish... Oh well, the wheels of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small. He could grind our State Department small and it would be a job well done.
You are both right. We enabled the savages. Now we reap what we sow. From a man on the moon to rump rangers in sheets cutting of heads. Every four or five hundred years those inbred savages leave their lands and have to be beaten back. I weep for what we could have done.
How long until government seizes it and/or taxes it out of existence?
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