Project: Educational Materials – Can aneutronic fusion be used in bombs?
The Focus Fusion Society › Forums › Aneutronic Fusion › Project: Educational Materials – Can aneutronic fusion be used in bombs?
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delt0r.
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August 27, 2010 at 1:50 am #900
RezwanParticipantThe idea that you can’t use aneutronic fusion for nuclear weapons seems to not stick with most people. It’s like you’re telling them white is black. We can explain ’til we turn blue. Better to come up with an easily replicated meme to get the idea in circulation.
Can we get this down into a poster – like a one page comic with several panels guiding the person from one thought to the next?
Here’s where we explain the ideas on the website. Can Focus Fusion be used to make a bomb?
Wordy. We need images. A comic strip.
In the interest of full disclosure on the dark side of fusion (but not aneutronic), we might want to have a side bar about how one neutron laced fusion approach out there – NIF – can be used in nuclear weapons technology. This would help to differentiate the fusions. Make it clear that what you can do with NIF, you can’t do with DPF.
Another sidebar – what you CAN do with a DPF related to nuclear technology is test what the effect of a blast would be on electronic equipment – something that is being done these days. This highlights how the powers that be would rather study the DPF as a source of neutrons to test their electrical equipment in the event of a blast – rather than try to develop the DPF into a fusion energy machine. We’d need stats on this, of course.
August 27, 2010 at 3:56 am #7915TulseParticipantRezwan, who is the audience for these posters? It may be pessimistic of me, but I don’t believe the general public has enough background knowledge to grasp the issues at hand in the space of a poster (or, quite frankly, the interest). Is this material intended for a more specific audience, like potential investors or regulators?
August 27, 2010 at 4:09 am #7916AeronautParticipantRezwan wrote: The idea that you can’t use aneutronic fusion for nuclear weapons seems to not stick with most people. It’s like you’re telling them white is black. We can explain ’til we turn blue. Better to come up with an easily replicated meme to get the idea in circulation.
Can we get this down into a poster – like a one page comic with several panels guiding the person from one thought to the next?
Here’s where we explain the ideas on the website. Can Focus Fusion be used to make a bomb?
Wordy. We need images. A comic strip.
In the interest of full disclosure on the dark side of fusion (but not aneutronic), we might want to have a side bar about how one neutron laced fusion approach out there – NIF – can be used in nuclear weapons technology. This would help to differentiate the fusions. Make it clear that what you can do with NIF, you can’t do with DPF.
Another sidebar – what you CAN do with a DPF related to nuclear technology is test what the effect of a blast would be on electronic equipment – something that is being done these days. This highlights how the powers that be would rather study the DPF as a source of neutrons to test their electrical equipment in the event of a blast – rather than try to develop the DPF into a fusion energy machine. We’d need stats on this, of course.
How about this as a potential background?
August 27, 2010 at 7:01 pm #7929RezwanParticipantTulse wrote: Rezwan, who is the audience for these posters? It may be pessimistic of me, but I don’t believe the general public has enough background knowledge to grasp the issues at hand in the space of a poster (or, quite frankly, the interest). Is this material intended for a more specific audience, like potential investors or regulators?
That’s the point of the poster: to give the general public the basic framework to grasp the issues. And also to engage their interest.
And potential investors and regulators are likewise not aware of these concepts. It’s a general awareness tool.
We probably need more than one approach/poster, since different messages work for different people.
We already have the very simplest message – in the handy nuclear peace design. This poster with several panels is intended to get the whole story – as simple as possible.
August 31, 2010 at 5:41 pm #8025vansigParticipantyou want to pull the viewer in, emotionally, so that they’ll read the text.
but I don’t think that poster, in its current form, quite does what you want.September 6, 2010 at 8:48 pm #8182RezwanParticipantYes, that poster is a bit scary. We’ve already got a poster that does that (see attached). These posters capture the essence with just a few words. However, I always find myself explaining, over and over, a lot of the steps that lead up to this poster. I have to explain fission, then DT fusion, then aneutronic, and I have to explain why it’s the extra neutrons that cause the problems, and so forth. It’s not a LOT to explain, but it’s more than just the one image.
Perhaps “poster” is misleading. We need more explanation. A pamphlet, or a comic strip to give more facts and figures, but in an easily digested format.
Aside from education, the goal of this project is to be
…inoculating people against future dirty tricks—like lumping aneutronic fusion together with fission so it can be labeled as too dangerous to use or falsely claiming that it will contribute to nuclear proliferation, etc.
So, to launch a pre-emptive strike against those who would use nuclear fears to squelch aneutronic fusion, we need to get these concepts down to their most distilled, yet still easy to understand, form.
It will take several panels. A sequence.
I’m standing by for your artistic genius!
September 7, 2010 at 1:01 am #8187tcgParticipantThe DPF is a wholly new concept, and it will require new images and descriptions to frame it. We should be staying away from images and words which have a negative connotation and creating fresh ones in our favor. F’rinstance: “nuclear” should never be used (bombs, radioactivity, etc). “Fusion” should be used sparingly (danger, ridicule). “It can fuse Boron and Hydrogen to produce energy” is more like it. Images of bombs frighten people and should not be used, even with the “not” symbol over it. The peace symbol with the pB11 reaction on it is good but it is not an eye catcher and would need to be explained to be effective.
The representation of the plasma focus used in the animation on the website I think is a winner. It is unusual looking but not threatening. The blue arc of the plasma folding inward to form the plasmoid has great color and draws the eye. The term “Plasma Focus” has a good sound to it and a positive connotation can be established by how it is used. “Is the Plasma Focus the power generator of the future?” “Boron can do it!” and so forth. Explaining “aneutronic” would come later when people start asking questions.
If I were trying to sell a DPF generator, I would want an actual device to show, and I think this would be the best image we could use. It would start out visually neutral but intriguing, and we could describe it any way we wanted. . . .”Not your grandfather’s reactor”. Well, maybe, but you get the idea.
September 7, 2010 at 2:19 am #8189RezwanParticipantI think by downplaying it, it makes you look like you’re covering something up. And in this day and age, nothing can be covered up for long. It’s simply a matter of education – getting the facts out. The facts aren’t out there. Nobody even knows the difference. It’s all one thing. And, as noted, any opponents of the DPF will play it up and point out the “coverup” as proof that this is not a good thing.
Differentiation on the nuclear issue is important. Can’t skip this step. And I don’t think it hurts the cause as much as you think. People can handle it. My point is just that it takes a while to explain. But once explained – it’s pretty simple. Like learning a few phrases in a new language. It takes a bit of repetition, but then – voila! You sound like a native.
Also, we’ll be using these materials to educate about fusion in general, and to open up the aneutronic avenue of inquiry in particular. In the event the DPF doesn’t work – we’d still want people to pursue aneutronic fusion with other interesting ideas that emerge out there. So everything we do has to work for both the DPF, and for longer term contingency plans.
September 7, 2010 at 2:35 am #8190RezwanParticipanttcg wrote: The DPF is a wholly new concept, and it will require new images and descriptions to frame it.
Yes, this post is about aneutronic fusion, not just the dpf. Which makes me realize, other than the dpf, how do proposed pB11 machines plan to generate energy? Do they all purport to produce electricity directly? Yikes, we need some aneutronic approach differentiation. That’s the topic of another post.
For this post, let’s stick to the graphic novel (not going to say “comic” anymore) depiction of how aneutronic fusion is the fairest of them all.
September 7, 2010 at 3:24 am #8192AeronautParticipantYes, the CBFR and PolyWell also use direct energy conversion devices based on the same principles as ours.
September 7, 2010 at 5:29 am #8194LernerParticipantSome basic points:
1)Aneutronic fusion will make fission reactors obsolete. Uranium will not be needed for generation and its production can be extremely tightly controlled or banned altogether, making the production of new nuclear weapons impossible.
2)Aneutronic fusion can’t help turn uranium into plutonium, because for that you need neutrons.What else do people think it can do that it can’t?
What’s wrong with the logo we have? Everyone recognizes the peace symbol–we just need a bit more wording.
Eric
November 19, 2010 at 11:20 pm #9023delt0rParticipantUnfortunately anything that’s going to burn B11 and H can also burn plain old DD. Now i have a high intensity neutron generator. Any high neutron generator is a proliferation risk, since both Th and U can be converted to usable bomb materials, and in a way that make separation “easy” .
November 19, 2010 at 11:58 pm #9024jamesrParticipantdelt0r wrote: Unfortunately anything that’s going to burn B11 and H can also burn plain old DD.
I don’t think its quite that simple. If the size of the device is optimised for pB11 it won’t necessarily be able to reach breakeven for DD
November 20, 2010 at 12:53 am #9025DerekShannonParticipantBreakeven is not a requirement to act as a D-D neutron source, but I’ll hope Eric is right with his point #1.
November 20, 2010 at 4:33 am #9032 -
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