But as with manned space exploration and stem cells, the lesson for conservatives should be clear by now: let's not sit on our butts waiting for the government to do it! Advanced research is tricky and dangerous, and for these reasons - not because it's expensive - the federosaurus is not going to go adventuring on our behalf. Enterprises like this belong in the private sector, responsible to nothing and no one, engaged in by people who are willing to risk their lives.
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bull hockey. some of the best money the feds spend is on research. most modern technologies have received seed money from fed agencies like DARPA.
It would, indeed, be a shame to not move forward on the development of a fusion reactor. Having written a term paper on fusion versus fission, energy of the future, back in my college days (circa 1973), I have followed the fusion debate with great interest.
Great strides have been made since that time. Back then, the biggest obstacle was containing the reaction long enough to reach the break even point, energy expended versus energy created, which entailed containing the reaction within a magnetic bottle long enough to harvest the energy. They have since then, exceeded and overcome that obstacle, the hurdle now is to build a big enough reactor to create the huge potential a fusion reactor provides for energy.
It is the amount of energy that a fusion reactor will create that makes it's location, other than for geopolitical reasons, irrelevant. I do not understand the choices of France or Japan, as the reactor should be located in a sparsely populated area. One, because of the large size this reactor will have to be, and two, safety, should an unlikely breach occur. While there is no radiation involved, as with fission (nuclear) reactors, there is incredible heat (50 million degrees), basically, the temperature of the sun being confined within that fusion reactor. As there are no materials on earth that can contain that heat, thus inertial or magnetic fields are the chosen methods of containment. Laser fusion appears to be the most promising method for creating a sustainable fusion reaction.
Why is fusion the energy source of the future ? Because the fuel used for it is plentiful, renewable and inexpensive. What is this fuel ? It is water, specifically heavy water, also called deuterium (exists naturally) and tritium (created, does not exist naturally)). Below is an explanation and description of these fuels, their availability, and their energy output.
Deuterium: One gallon of water contains 1/8 gram of deuterium. If fully burned in fusion reactions, the energy output would be equivalent to 300 gallons of gasoline.
In other words, the available energy supply of fusion fuel is equivalent to filling the Atlantic and Pacific oceans 300 times with gasoline. If fusion can be successfully harnessed, it could satisfy the entire world's electrical energy needs for millions of years. Fusion can also produce hydrogen which may be useful for transportation.
Tritium: This nucleus has a half-life of 14 years. Thus tritium does not exist naturally. To make the tritium component of the fuel, one combines a fast neutron with a lithium nucleus: lithium 6 + neutron => tritium + helium
http://other.nrl.navy.mil/LaserFusionEnergy/fusionfuels.html
The above site will provide you with you valuable information on fusion technology that will bring about the end of dependence on fossil fuels.
Why fusion over all the other choices for energy creation ?
Compared to coal, gas and oil:
- Fusion has no carbon emissions and no risk of global warming
Compared to fission:
- Fusion can't blow up; can't melt down
- Fusion has (ideally) very low radioactivity; waste can be shallow buried
- Fusion has a low risk of nuclear materials proliferation
Compared to solar and wind:
- Fusion is a concentrated energy source
- Fusion is always available, without storage
- Fusion is an abundant fuel, available to all nations:
- Coal will last a few hundred years; natural gas about a hundred years; fission thousands of years; fusion million of years
The hydrogen powered engine is an off shoot of this fusion technology. The benefits to the environment and making the world energy independent is immeasureable. Fusion energy is completely clean, no pollutants, and the amount of energy it creates would leave no shortages anywhere that was connected into the grid.
Certainly, but not in areas that involve personal risktaking, or in areas that tread on some crackpot's sensitive little toesies. This is why NASA has brought us pretty good unmanned probles, while manned programs have languished. This is why, after having come up with the basic idea underlying the Internet, actual implementation of an idea that threatened government control verr information was left to the commercial sector.
There is one "loophole". If you can sell a new technology to the military and have it developed as a black program, hazardous research can be jammed ahead away from public scrutiny.