Posted on 12/04/2023 7:32:09 AM PST by Alas Babylon!
It could usher an era of limitless clean, safe and affordable energy to meet the world's demand.
Now, the 'holy grail' of power production – nuclear fusion, which makes the sun and the stars shine – has come a step closer.
Scientists have switched on JT-60SA, a £500 million fusion device measuring around 40 feet in diameter, located in Naka north of Tokyo, Japan.
JT-60SA contains swirling plasma heated up 200 million degrees Celsius (360 million degrees Fahrenheit).
This is the threshold where hydrogen atoms can begin to fuse into helium, releasing sustainable energy in the process that could put an end to fossil fuels.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
£500 million to boil water, neat!
Better than the perpetual motion machine?
So energy out exceeds energy in?
Seems too good to be true.
Poverty in third world countries is caused by brutal dictators and assorted leftists.
If they went away that would solve 95% of the issues.
Well, we’ll never get anywhere with this. FReepers have weighed and declared it unfeasible or not real.
I wonder what they would have said over the ages about other technologies? Water power? Steam? Electricity? Internal combustion? Nuclear fission?
I’d bet they’d declare all of that unfeasible because , yada, yada, yada.
Oh for goodness sakes!
This has NOTHING to do with Ukraine or Russia.
Even conservatives hail the day we have fusion. It’s not a Leftist dream.
Not Daily Mail:
Its still a long way to go.
1) They need to sustain 200M constantly and contained in a magnetic field.
2) The primary radiation from fusion power is neutrons and they need to somehow be converted into usable energy.
3) They are still very far away from generating enough power to run the plant.
Right now they don’t have enough energy to light a Chrismas tree.
WE MUST BAN DIHYDROGEN-MONOXIDE VAPOR OR THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT WILL END IN 7.23 YEARS!
I was thinking the same thing
Hope nothing fails
I think it’s great that people turned out for a Michelle Obama event.
If you look closely, you can see the Chef paddle boarding at midnight. Without a life vest 🦺🦺🦺.
Not to ask a couple of remedial questions - but if you have a 10 gallon “volume” of 200 million degrees “material” what on earth could “contain” that temperature of material and secondly, what’s the safe distance from such a temperature for humans?
LOL, so true. I have seen a lot of these. But then again, it isn’t as if they haven’t been saying “Fusion will be here in 20 years...!” for the last fifty years, and every single day during that time interval. I don’t blame people for being cynical.
I believe it is something we should spend money pursuing. But then I also believe we should spend money on all manner of fission reactors, pebble bed reactors, Thorium reactors, you name it.
I think wind and solar might have a place too, if they can ever conquer the storage issue. And even eventually, Electric Vehicles.
But it is insanity to mandate those things like wind, solar, and Electric Vehicles before there is any movement on the unanswered questions.
Leftists just believe “If you build it they will come”. That’s great for imaginary baseball fields, not so good for the basic infrastructure of industrial societies.
Peg Bundy: My mother is coming to visit!
Al Bundy: Did anybody warn Tokyo???
And Brazil is poised to become a world economic powerhouse
And we’re getting flying cars
And the power will be too cheap to meter
And male pattern baldness will be a thing of the past
I’ve been hearing all this for years. I do hope they’re right this time.
“releasing sustainable energy in the process that could put an end to fossil fuels.”
I don’t think I could get a 40 ft. reactor in my pickup.
In this case, I don't think it is a Left versus Right issue, as the Left will probably be opposed to it.
The key difference is that this reactor IS going online. They've defined its purpose and technology. It's not a theoretic paper but real concrete and steel. The Japanese have/are spent/spending billions of Yen on it now. Will it work?
We'll see, but it is not that same talk; now we're getting something...
What are we going to do with all the excess helium though?
Ummm, 200+ million degrees is not “safe”. Perhaps not radioactive ... but not safe.
As an engineer, I have to point out that:
1. Everything is a form or welfare for engineers. Think about this.
2. The fuel for fusion is H2 gas. It is cheap and when it reacts in a nuclear manner it generates very large amounts of energy. Thus, it does not matter how much energy it takes to run the reaction, magnets, pumps, etc. The fuel can be adjusted up until it has enough energy left to generate the “clean” electricity that we all would like to see.
3. Lastly, if the engineers understand their job, the fusion plant will be designed to be safe and to withstand whatever environments are present, (I understand that engineers do not always get to do this, mainly because program managers who manage the budgets sometimes do not understand the risks and make bad decisions, — I know this happens all the time, because it is human nature — but engineers are not the ones who should be blamed.)
I’m beginning to think that fusion energy is just a form of welfare for engineers and physicists.
I agree...I was just saying, I don’t think people are unjustified in their skepticism!
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