Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
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The Strange History of Fusion
and the Science of Wishful Thinking
by Charles Seife
Posted on 06/18/2016 5:58:51 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The ITER fusion reactor will fire up for the first time in December 2025, the €18-billion project’s governing council confirmed today. The date for “first plasma” is 5 years later than under the old schedule, and to get there the council is asking the project partners—China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States—to cough up an extra €4 billion ($4.5 billion).
“It is expected, if there are no objections, that we can approve [the schedule] by November and then we can move forward,” says ITER director general Bernard Bigot.
ITER aims to show that it is feasible to fuse hydrogen nuclei together to form helium and thereby release enough excess energy to make a viable source of power. To achieve that requires heating two hydrogen isotopes—deuterium (D) and tritium (T)—to temperatures above 100 million degrees Celsius. ITER will feature an enormous vessel to contain the D-T plasma, powerful superconducting magnets to confine it, and elaborate particle accelerators and microwave generators to heat it.
The international consortium that is building the reactor has parceled out the construction work to hundreds of companies across the globe. But the sheer complexity of the effort has led to delays and cost increases as researchers sought to finalize the design, maintain standards, and get the million-plus components delivered on time to the reactor site at Cadarache, France....
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
The Sun seems to do it way easier.
4 billion dollars? What is that, one and a half F-35s?
For four decades, I’ve been hearing that fusion power is just 15 years away. I stopped believing that long ago, just like I stopped believing that democrats are misguided but mean well.
4-5 billion ain’t nothing compared to the money spent pacifying the migrant filth from islam invading the EU.
Just do it and tell the islam filth to die young.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJZYdlBwgCU&index=8&list=PL7YSGatJathvcOIBtgqKQkPN5P_ZLQ_Zy
When I was an undergraduate physics student 45 years ago (1967 to 1971), the claim was controlled nuclear fusion would provide cheap and abundant energy after some pretty high R&D and then construction costs by 1980 or about ten years into the future. I scoffed at those predictions based upon how little we really knew about how to control nuclear fusion.
Today we are again being told that controlled nuclear fusion will provide cheap and abundant energy after some even more hefty R&D and then construction costs in 2030 or about 15 years into the future. (Note that “first plasma” in 2025 is not the same as first production of useable energy.)
I scoff at these predictions because we really do not know nearly enough about how to control nuclear fusion in such a way as to produce useable energy.
This article does seem to get one thing right—this is a huge construction project which will benefit the construction trades. I doubt I will live long enough to see this facility produce the amount of energy consumed to build it.
There is a Dairy Queen commercial here in Texas where scientists ponder how to put fudge into a center of a Blizzard (one of their ice cream products). They ponder all sort of ways to do it. A Dairy Queen employee announces she just put the fudge into the ice cream machine and that put the fudge into the Blizzard. The people in the white coats all hold up a Dairy Queen cup and shout, “Science!”
Beware of people willing to shout, “Science!” for several tens of billions of dollars. Especially when those people are the same people pushing pseudo-scientific policies.
I’m building a jazz fusion reactor. I’ll call it Three Miles Davis Island.
I will guess that international R&D on fusion reactors has gone well past $100 billion.
Since I’m a lifelong supporter of basic research in physics, I’m reluctant to say we should end it.
But, man, that is a lot of money, plus 60 years of research, for no major commercial applications!
How is that E-Cat doing?
Booo!!
Fusion power research sustains thousands of scientists with excellent wages. keep the money coming....
True words
Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
The Strange History of Fusion
and the Science of Wishful Thinking
by Charles Seife
Yeah. Similar to global warming which is the perfect storm for liberals: scientists get the research money and Democrats get to control everything.
I first read about it in a old used book at my school’s library as a child. 20 years later...still expensive mostly-vaporware that hasn’t lit a lightbulb. It truly hurts to say this, especially since we’ve thrown away our space program and most ‘advances’ are merely for grown-up toys, but fusion is a pipe dream.
DRILL FOR OIL OR EAT DIRT!
Don't start with me!
100 million degrees Celsius is supernova conditions. The sun's internal temperature maxes out at 15 million Celsius. Who wants to be anywhere near a government affirmative action designed supernova?
Retro Fission Jazz. Very cool.
In January 2014 a newly formed company, Industrial Heat LLC, announced that it had acquired rights to Rossi's E-Cat technology. In April 2016, Rossi filed a lawsuit in the USA against Industrial Heat, alleging that he was not paid an $89 million licensing fee due after a one-year test period of an E-Cat unit.
Industrial Heat's comment on the lawsuit was that after three years of effort they were unable to reproduce Rossi's E-Cat test results.
Uh oh, Kevmo.
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