Controlled Hydrogen Fusion 30 years in the future


BaalChatzaf

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Back in 1960 we were told that controlled hydrogen fusion reactors would be online 30 years in the future, 30 years down the line. In 2000 we were told controlled hydrogen fusion would be 30 years in the future. Now I read this in Science: http://goo.gl/ENrqFF

It looks like controlled hydrogen fusion will be online 30 years from now, 100 years from now.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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What is possible will eventually be in the context of enough freedom to support what superficially seems to be the inexorable advance of technological knowledge and application.

In the meantime, we'll burn cow pies!

--Brant

"Time marches on!"

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What is possible will eventually be in the context of enough freedom to support what superficially seems to be the inexorable advance of technological knowledge and application.

In the meantime, we'll burn cow pies!

--Brant

"Time marches on!"

Please note that nuclear fission is 70 years in our past.

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What is possible will eventually be in the context of enough freedom to support what superficially seems to be the inexorable advance of technological knowledge and application.

In the meantime, we'll burn cow pies!

--Brant

"Time marches on!"

Please note that nuclear fission is 70 years in our past.

Irrelevant. That's a wartime expression of science in a bomb. Bombs have marched on. Now, how do we get fission into electricity*?

Not my problem and not yours. We can consider it unsolvable because we can't grok the technology ourselves--until someone groks it for us by building something that actually works. Just words don't/won't work, neither in our minds nor in reality.

--Brant

*and do it economically for large scale application

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Here is the nitty gritty on contolled nuclear fusion (from the Wiki article)

Research into controlled fusion, with the aim of producing fusion power for the production of electricity, has been conducted for over 60 years. It has been accompanied by extreme scientific and technological difficulties, but has resulted in progress. At present, controlled fusion reactions have been unable to produce break-even (self-sustaining) controlled fusion reactions.[4]Workable designs for a reactor that theoretically will deliver ten times more fusion energy than the amount needed to heat up plasma to required temperatures are in development (see ITER). The ITER facility is expected to finish its construction phase in 2019. It will start commissioning the reactor that same year and initiate plasma experiments in 2020, but is not expected to begin full deuterium-tritium fusion until 2027.[5]

It takes considerable energy to force nuclei to fuse, even those of the lightest element, hydrogen. This is because all nuclei have a positive charge due to their protons, and as like charges repel, nuclei strongly resist being put close together. Accelerated to high speeds, they can overcome this electrostatic repulsion and be forced close enough for the attractivenuclear force to be sufficiently strong to achieve fusion. The fusion of lighter nuclei, which creates a heavier nucleus and often a free neutron or proton, generally releases more energy than it takes to force the nuclei together; this is an exothermic process that can produce self-sustaining reactions. The US National Ignition Facility, which uses laser-driven inertial confinement fusion, is thought to be capable of break-even fusion.

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Absent anything else there are enough hydrocarbon energy reserves, especially coal, to keep the lights on for hundreds of years. Throw in conventional nuclear reactor technology and there is no energy availability problem that's not political.

--Brant

so it hardly matters, this century at least, if fission fizzles; the same for hydrogen fusion (sorry for the confusion; all I just said about fission may be all wrong--I got confused--but the principle is the same [it's because you switched from hydrogen fusion to nuclear fission and my brain couldn't keep up])

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