Cool new energy tech (1 Viewer)

[128shot]

http://english.people.com.cn/200601/21/eng20060121_237208.html



Cool stuff.

 

[paulmarkj]

http://english.people.com.cn/200601/21/eng20060121_237208.html



Cool stuff.

Like all such stories, I shall wait and see. Probably never hear about it again.

If it is true, then I would expect shares in existing energiy companoe to plummet.

 

[teacher]

100 million degrees Celsius. Hey, your link said it, not me 128shot. Let's get a handle on the temps before you go all danahrea on us.

Now say some stupid shi*t before I come back with some temps off the top of my head. 100 million degrees Celsius. That would like, give God a real nasty sunburn if I'm not mistaken.

100 million degrees Celsius. Classic. The people that actually post here...damn.

 

[Engimo]

100 million degrees Celsius. Hey, your link said it, not me 128shot. Let's get a handle on the temps before you go all danahrea on us.

Now say some stupid shi*t before I come back with some temps off the top of my head. 100 million degrees Celsius. That would like, give God a real nasty sunburn if I'm not mistaken.

100 million degrees Celsius. Classic. The people that actually post here...damn.

That doesn't seem right to me. The core temperature of our sun is only 15,000,000?.

 

[128shot]

100 million degrees Celsius. Hey, your link said it, not me 128shot. Let's get a handle on the temps before you go all danahrea on us.

Now say some stupid shi*t before I come back with some temps off the top of my head. 100 million degrees Celsius. That would like, give God a real nasty sunburn if I'm not mistaken.

100 million degrees Celsius. Classic. The people that actually post here...damn.

What? geeze. I just have hopes for the future. Maybe they messed up on their temp or something. I know this project is joint though.

 

[ashurbanipal]

That figure is probably not too far from accurate (100 million degrees), it's just that you have to understand what it means. It doesn't mean that the entire reactor heats up that high, or even anything that could be seen with the naked eye. That's likely an estimate of the temperature that will be available over a very small surface area as the reaction unfolds; you'd expect only a few molecules to give off that kind of energy at any one given time.

And that's really the point--it's not that the energy measured by the temperature is incorrect, it's that a metric for temperature is not the metric a physicist would use.

All that said, I won't be holding my breath for this to do much good.

 

[ngdawg]

I'm just wondering what the safety implications would be. A true 'China Syndrome' only 100fold?
With all that's available to us now but not being utilized to its fullest potential (ex.windpower) why on earth would something like this even be attempted?

 

[tecoyah]

If we can manage the science....Fusion will revolutionize this planet, as energy will become relatively clean and significantly less expersive. The temperatures required are far higher in the environment on earth, than needed in the core of our sun:

"Question - The core temperature in the sun is 12 million Kelvin
which is enough for a successful fusion reaction to orrour. Yet on earth
to creat a fusion reaction we have to get to temperatures of 100 million
Kelvin.
Why can we not creat a controlled thermo fusion reaction at 12 million Kelvin?
-----------------------------
We cannot create the density that exists at the center of a star and also
get to
12 million Kelvins. For efficient fusion, you need to get the product of the
density and the pressure up very high for a short time. So far, we are better
at temperature than at density."

Eventually, we will likely manage this feat....though I doubt it will be for some time.

"In order to harness fusion energy, scientists and engineers are learning how to control very high temperature plasmas. The use of much lower temperature plasmas are now widely used in industry, especially for semi-conductor manufacture. However, the control of high temperature fusion plasmas presents several major science and engineering challenges - how to heat a plasma to in excess of 100 million Kelvin and how to confine such a plasma, sustaining it so that the fusion reaction can become established.
Next "

http://www.jet.efda.org/pages/content/fusion1.html

 

[stsburns]

http://english.people.com.cn/200601/21/eng20060121_237208.html



Cool stuff.

Um its still in developement and still hasn't been proven to work?

Experiments with the advanced new device will start in July or August. If the experiments prove successful, China will become the first country in the world to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed "artificial sun", experts here said.

But no doubt it would be cool. OR HOT :rofl off the chain. lol :mrgreen:

 

[-Demosthenes-]

A full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy...

Infinite sun-like fusion device? Impossible. In the kind of fusion in the sun the elements are fusing together, always making larger, heavier elements, once their heavy enough (probably iron) they cannot fuse anymore. It can no be infinite.


Hydrogen fuses till it's gone, Helium fuses till it's gone ect. ect. ... It all fuses into Iron and it cannot fuse anymore.

 

[Engimo]

Infinite sun-like fusion device? Impossible. In the kind of fusion in the sun the elements are fusing together, always making larger, heavier elements, once their heavy enough (probably iron) they cannot fuse anymore. It can no be infinite.


Hydrogen fuses till it's gone, Helium fuses till it's gone ect. ect. ... It all fuses into Iron and it cannot fuse anymore.

Obviously you cannot have an infinite amount of energy, it would violate the law of conservation of mass-energy, but when you're talking about the power generated by something like the sun compared to what we use as a civilization, it is (for all intents and purposes) infinite.

 

[UtahBill]

Fusion is being pushed by 2 different types of people, engineers/scientists who want to continue their high paying research/development jobs, and people who know so little about physics that they think it is possible in less than 100 years.
In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for it to replace fission. Money should be spent mostly on what we know we can do now, and fusion isn't even close to becoming viable even after more than 30 years of trying.

 

[Engimo]

Fusion is being pushed by 2 different types of people, engineers/scientists who want to continue their high paying research/development jobs, and people who know so little about physics that they think it is possible in less than 100 years.
In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for it to replace fission. Money should be spent mostly on what we know we can do now, and fusion isn't even close to becoming viable even after more than 30 years of trying.

This is not true. While right now, fission is the best power source that we've got, but the science behind fusion as an energy source is solid. ITER is ready for construction and could potentially be producing energy by 2015.

 

[UtahBill]

This is not true. While right now, fission is the best power source that we've got, but the science behind fusion as an energy source is solid. ITER is ready for construction and could potentially be producing energy by 2015.

You are an undergrad, I am a 59 year old former Navy Nuke, operator and I&C technician, with 3 years of Navy Schools, and 3 years of college after that. My interests in energy and conservation spans 40 years. Everything that you are talking about now has been discussed many time before. The concept is not new, and "cool" is not exactly a scientific way to describe what is going to be extremely hard to accomplish, and even then not economically viable for many more years in the future.
I was reading about fusion in Popular Science magazine at least 30 years ago. One of my college night classes that I took about 20 years ago was about existing and potential alternate energy technologies, and the problems discussed concerning fusion are probably no closer to being solved now than they were then.
Progress in this kind of thing is exceedingly slow. Some day we may solve the "containment" and structural issues, but don't hold your breath. It could even be that we discover something better that pre-empts the fusion concept altogether. The few things that we, as a nation, could be doing now, we aren't. The one thing that is most important to do now is to find ways to use less of it, and many industries are moving in that direction.
The automotive industry has been at it since the mid 70's, and has done well, but the housing industry has barely tried to conserve energy by building our homes better, and about a third of our energy consumption involves our buildings. I think it is foolish to pin our hopes on "pie in the sky" alternate energy sources without first doing what we can to use less of it.

 

[nkgupta80]

You are an undergrad, I am a 59 year old former Navy Nuke, operator and I&C technician, with 3 years of Navy Schools, and 3 years of college after that. My interests in energy and conservation spans 40 years. Everything that you are talking about now has been discussed many time before. The concept is not new, and "cool" is not exactly a scientific way to describe what is going to be extremely hard to accomplish, and even then not economically viable for many more years in the future.
I was reading about fusion in Popular Science magazine at least 30 years ago. One of my college night classes that I took about 20 years ago was about existing and potential alternate energy technologies, and the problems discussed concerning fusion are probably no closer to being solved now than they were then.
Progress in this kind of thing is exceedingly slow. Some day we may solve the "containment" and structural issues, but don't hold your breath. It could even be that we discover something better that pre-empts the fusion concept altogether. The few things that we, as a nation, could be doing now, we aren't. The one thing that is most important to do now is to find ways to use less of it, and many industries are moving in that direction.
The automotive industry has been at it since the mid 70's, and has done well, but the housing industry has barely tried to conserve energy by building our homes better, and about a third of our energy consumption involves our buildings. I think it is foolish to pin our hopes on "pie in the sky" alternate energy sources without first doing what we can to use less of it.

very respectable. Like enigmo, im also just a freshman, so I won't pretend to be an authority in the subject. However, the theory behind fusion, and the developments that have arisen shouldn't be taken lightly. There is certainly a future in fusion -- the results achieved in numerous laboratories can attest to that. However, you are right in that we cannot just depend on this future technology. We need to start taking steps with existing technologies, until we can be assured that a fusion reactor is realistically possible.

 

[Scarecrow Akhbar]

I'm just wondering what the safety implications would be. A true 'China Syndrome' only 100fold?
With all that's available to us now but not being utilized to its fullest potential (ex.windpower) why on earth would something like this even be attempted?

The China Syndrome is something dreamed up by a couple of engineers in a public bar after a dozen boiler makers that was overheard by an ignorant reporter (the only kind there is). The "china syndrome" is the alleged situation during a loss of coolant accident in which the core temperatures peak and the bottle of the reactor vessel melts out. The fissioning uranium supposedly melts it's way to the ground water and that water provides the necessary moderation for the neutrons to resume fission in the core and the thing melts it's way down to China.

I won't explain the flaw in the scenario, it should be evident to any competent mind.

Nuclear fusion is even less dangerous when used in power plant design. The fusion reaction is enabled only by the high temperatures of the reacting fuel. This temperature is achieved by squeezing the fuel together in a magnetic containment or by using inertial impact of high energy lasers or massive particles to force them together.

The reaction stops as soon as the containing forces weaken. No way can a new Chinese fusion reactor create a "Brazil Syndrome".

 

[robin]

That doesn't seem right to me. The core temperature of our sun is only 15,000,000?.

There is also a Tokomac in UK.
Rates at which nuclei fuse is dependant on density as well as temperture. Could be that as they won't have the high densitys in the sun so they need higher temperatures to get significant numbers of nuclei fusing.

"Three parameters (plasma temperature, density and confinement time) need to be simultaneously achieved for sustained fusion to occur in a plasma. The product of these is called the fusion (or triple) product and, for D-T fusion to occur, this product has to exceed a certain quantity - derived from the so-called Lawson Criterion after British scientist John Lawson who formulated it in 1955. (See article of the month, December '05"
http://www.jet.efda.org/pages/content/fusion2.html

"In 1991, for the first time ever, a significant amount of energy—about 1.7 million watts—was produced from controlled nuclear fusion at the Joint European Torus (JET) Laboratory in England. In December 1993, researchers at Princeton University used the Tokamak fusion Test Reactor to produce a controlled fusion reaction that output 5.6 million watts of power. However, both the JET and the Tokamak fusion Test Reactor consumed more energy than they produced during their operation."
http://www.nukeworker.com/study/nuclear_energy/ne5-fusion.shtm

 

[Logos]

However, both the JET and the Tokamak fusion Test Reactor consumed more energy than they produced during their operation."
http://www.nukeworker.com/study/nuclear_energy/ne5-fusion.shtm

Not only that but they can't hold the reactions very long. So ya i am HOPING to see this in my lifetime and i am only in my 20's

Edit: Ya and this isn't "Cool new energy tech" it's old but new to China and it isn't even that new to the chinese.

 

[Bob]

The People's Daily in the Chinese Communist Parties official English language newspaper. I would take any information they give about China's glorious accomplishments in fusion- or anything for that matter- with a grain of salt.

 

[UtahBill]

The People's Daily in the Chinese Communist Parties official English language newspaper. I would take any information they give about China's glorious accomplishments in fusion- or anything for that matter- with a grain of salt.

IMHO, it doesn't matter who is saying it, it should be looked at with suspicion.
Fusion is one of those things that may never happen for us.

 

[Arch Enemy]

Obviously China hasn't seen Spider Man 2.

tsk tsk tsk.