Right. As long as you get more energy out of the process as you put in, you don't need to have a continuous reaction or a critical mass. A lot proposed fusion and fission processes are pulse fusion processes or subcritical fission processes. The French have proposed a subcritical thorium-uranium reactor that uses a neutron source to sustain the reaction.
Would there be net energy released in acoustic energy scheme? Well, that's the trick, isn't it?
I think it's a waste of time. We have plenty of energy sources. Hydro-power, frozen methane deposits in the sea or nuclear fission could easily supplant oil. The problem is people who want to get control of it by taxing it. If fusion energy were to become a reality, the radical environmentalist would find some reason that it offends the earth gods.
I think it's a waste of time. We have plenty of energy sources. Hydro-power, frozen methane deposits in the sea or nuclear fission could easily supplant oil. The problem is people who want to get control of it by taxing it. If fusion energy were to become a reality, the radical environmentalist would find some reason that it offends the earth gods.
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well what people are thinking is ...can you do fusion on the cheap. Can you set a reactor outside beside the port-a-pot? these seem to be reasonable questions.
The whole deal these days with energy is getting stuff to work and scale up at or below the cost structure of oil. Hydro is tapped out. extracting frozen methane is still too expensive--as is solar. Windmill generated electricity is coming close in terms of price but at best could do under 10% of the national needs and then a lot of land would need to be covered by the whirly birds. the left generally hates the carbon cycle. the right is saying the limits for oil expansion are coming within the next couple years--just as demand is scaling up. this means we've seen only the first spike in oil. imho its a very urgent biz to get cheap new scalable energy resources. and all avenues need to be tried.
the nuclear waste from this kind of process seems minimal