I'd like to add one more:Make solar energy affordable
Provide energy from fusion
Develop carbon sequestration
Manage the nitrogen cycle
Provide access to clean water
Reverse engineer the brain
Prevent nuclear terror
Secure cyberspace
Enhance virtual reality
Improve urban infrastructure
Advance health informatics
Engineer better medicines
Advance personalised learning
Explore natural frontier
Hey, I'll second that notion! Happily! Where do I sign?SkirtDude wrote:I claim that my skirt wearing prevents global warming - less AC needed in the summer => less energy use.
Actually, done well, in a Deuterium/Deuterium reaction there's nothing either radioactive or toxic left over -- just Helium -- and we can use that to buoy lighter-than-air craft that'd burn a lot less hydrocarbon fuel than current fixed-wing heavier-than-air craft!I think a big part of cutting the research is that getting a "clean", controlled fusion reaction is going to be incredibly difficult.
I'd never heard of Tritium-Tritium interactions being talked about. I presume that the cross-section is too low, or we'd at least have had to take them into account.crfriend wrote: The sticking point here is that current fusion reactors cannot maintain the densities to sustain a Deuterium-Deuterium reaction, so the current batch use either Deuterium-Tritium or Tritium-Tritium which results in the release of either one or two neutrons per successful fusion to Helium.
Actually, neutrons are a problem. They damage the crystal structure of the containers, magnets, etc., thus shortening their life, and they make things radioactive. Fusion devices present a non-trivial radioactive waste disposal issue. (This is a problem with fission reactors, too.) You can put shielding up, but that goes outside the containers. If you're using magnets, they have to be as close as possible to the reaction chamber for efficiency reasons, so, again, they have to be inside any shielding.crfriend wrote:The good thing is that neutrons, at low velocity, are pretty benign things and lead is a good shield (so is water).
In my day, there wasn't a whole lot of serious thought given to how to use the energy coming from fusion -- just getting it to happen at all occupied all of our time. That said, converting electromagnetic radiation to energy is a lot easier than using the kinetic energy in neutrons.crfriend wrote:What's more problematic is the electromagnetic side of things: heat is good, because that's what we can currently make use of (to make steam -- how Victorian); the light we have to toss away because we can't really use it well at a distance; and this leaves the nasty stuff like X-rays and Gamma-rays, which require large amounts of shielding.
TFTR was a very, very long way from a pilot plant (as were its relatives in other countries.) The so-called "break-even" was calculated by only counting as "costs" the energy in the neutral gas beams that were used to heat the plasma. They did not count the energy to run the magnetic fields (and these were not static magnetic fields, so they used energy to change the field strengths.) They did not count the cost of creating the gas beams -- and these neutral gas injectors were famously inefficient, and they got more so as you increased the energy.crfriend wrote:The thing that frosted me, and Sapphire has alluded to it, is that we'd beaten the "break-even" point with Princeton's TFTR -- this means that more energy was released during the time that the reaction was running than was put into it to get it started and to contain it whilst it was on-going. That was a positively huge achievement! And we threw it all away because fossil fuels are so cheap and plentiful. I actually cried when I learned that they'd shut the machine down; it showed such promise as a research device, and would likely have pointed the way to pilots for commercial generation had it been given a chance.
I beg to differ with what you said, Charlie...Aren't there enough "MAKE men do this or that, MAKE children mind their parents, MAKE Western women dress differently than " Eastern women? MAKE people do this or that in this or that place? How about "Allow men wearing skirts to become commonplace"?Charlie wrote:Make men wearing skirts commonplace.
It's rather amazing how many of us have "previous lives"....In a previous life, I worked in Nuclear Fusion research, and was even involved in the early phases of TFTR [...]
That's from high-velocity neutrons where there is enough energy to cause problems. This is one of the reasons why the future of fusion should have been Deuterium-Deuterium not Deuterium-Tritium.Actually, neutrons are a problem. They damage the crystal structure of the containers, magnets, etc., thus shortening their life, and they make things radioactive.
Actually, it's one heck of a problem for fission devices.Fusion devices present a non-trivial radioactive waste disposal issue. (This is a problem with fission reactors, too.)
One has to start somewhere. Getting a fusion reaction up and running involves one heck of a lot more than a fission one -- which is why we've got fission power plants dotting the landscape now. It's certainly not optimal, but I suspect it's better than fossil-fuel generation.In my day, there wasn't a whole lot of serious thought given to how to use the energy coming from fusion -- just getting it to happen at all occupied all of our time. That said, converting electromagnetic radiation to energy is a lot easier than using the kinetic energy in neutrons.
TFTR was a "science experiment" -- pure and simple, but as I mentioned before, one has to start somewhere. Could it have been a prototype for a pilot plant? Probably not. Could it have shown the "path"? Possibly. It could also have shown "how not to do it". Now we're unlikely to ever know.TFTR was a very, very long way from a pilot plant (as were its relatives in other countries.) The so-called "break-even" was calculated by only counting as "costs" the energy in the neutral gas beams that were used to heat the plasma. They did not count the energy to run the magnetic fields (and these were not static magnetic fields, so they used energy to change the field strengths.) They did not count the cost of creating the gas beams -- and these neutral gas injectors were famously inefficient, and they got more so as you increased the energy.
I had a great deal of confidence that these things would eventually get worked out. Humans have an amazing ability to do that. As far as obtaining tritium, that can be manufactured rather easily. The US DOE (Department of Energy) has to do so on an ongoing basis to keep an on-hand supply for the military's thermonuclear weapons.Then there were little things like: how to convert the energy into electricity, how to recharge the machine and get the waste helium and impurities out, even how to get the tritium. Tritium is obtained as a by-product of radioactive decay -- you can't just get it from seawater like deuterium.
I never recall having been told that "we're one step away"; the challenges were fairly well understood, and were substantial. The payoff, however, in case of success was enormous, but success was understood to be a way off. Now we're unlikely to ever know. That's what frosts me the most, and I'll drop it before I cross the line into getting political.I'm not saying that it would have been impossible, or not worth the effort. But these machines were sold to Congress and the US public as "one step removed" from electricity from seawater, and they were not. Under the best of circumstances the first fusion generating plants were on the order of 50 years away.
Steve,Steve wrote:If only the energy technology of which Asimov dreamed could be developed...
A little nudge?Uncle Al wrote:Hey folks, what will it take to get back to the original position of this post?
With all due respects, I think that we're down to debating semantics in this. If men wearing skirts becomes commonplace in "western" cultures then the deed will have been done. It's possible to have the idea without the practise, however -- and ideas without execution are pretty sad things; it's when they're acted upon that they come into their own.I agree that we should not 'MAKE men wear skirts or
kilts', but MAKE the 'idea' a common conception, and
accepted by all 'western' cultures.
Here's another two cents agreeing on that matter.But the choice should still be up to the wearer, not society.
IMHO!
(My $.02 worth!)
Agreed!crfriend wrote:
With all due respects, I think that we're down to debating semantics in this. If men wearing skirts becomes commonplace in "western" cultures then the deed will have been done. It's possible to have the idea without the practise, however -- and ideas without execution are pretty sad things; it's when they're acted upon that they come into their own.
Ok-you got me!I don't see this as "society forcing men to wear skirted garments"; rather, I see it as "society accepting men in skirted garments" -- and, as most of us know from painful experience, one cannot force acceptance.
Yes it will be a challenge, but we all here are ready to take on the challenge. 
