[JimmyT]

I stand corrected Brian. I was probably going on some old information. I learned most of this stuff in the 80’s when I think there was a move towards aluminum.

[JimmyT]

I believe that long distance transmission lines are made of aluminum, not copper. They also often contain several strands of steel wire to strengthen then. While copper is a better conductor, it’s weight/conductivity ratio is higher than that of copper. Copper is used in the step-up and step-down transformers at either end. But the bulk of materials used is aluminum.

Not meaning to second guess ya’ Brian. Just trying to maintain accuracy in order to maintain credibility.

[JimmyT]

How much security do they have at your local water purifacation plant? Big chlorine tanks. Under pressure. Previously used as a chemical warfare agent. I bet that they don’t have anywhere near the security being proposed for this relatively trivial ammount of material.

[JimmyT]

I think you are wrong about the detectability of a focus fusion device. These things will have a HUGE electromagnetic signature. Focus fusion reactors must have a pulsed gigagauss magnetic field in order to operate. I don’t think you can build a Faraday Cage which would be an adequate shield.

Put me in an Orion and I’ll nail that sucka in a heartbeat.

[JimmyT]

Lerner wrote: Ther are two issues here. One is the safety of focus fusion reactors. The second is the economies of distributed vs. centralized power supply.

On economics, there are fairly big savings from distributed energy. If we are talking about expanding energy production, the cost of distribution is significant and would be greatly reduced with distributed production, as would the costs of large-scale outages. Will that counter-balance travel time for skilled labor? You would have to look at some realistic numbers. But distribution from remote centralized GW generators is not free.

I think that It’s quite possible that the savings from distributed energy will actually be greater then the other (considerable) savings from focus fusion.
I know that where I live we pay about a dime/kwh and I believe only about 2 cents of that is generation costs. Now, I know that the other 8 cents is not all distribution costs. And even if it was, all of it can’t be eliminated. But it does give us a pretty big piece of the pie to work with.

In fact, if (as has been suggested elsewhere) this does enable power distributors to eliminate power lines: Do they own the swaths of land those pass over? Or is it just a right of way thing? If they do own it, they could sell it. Lots of land in the aggreate. Maybe enough land to finance the purchase and instalation of the fusion units?

Rematog? Do you know the answer to the land ownership question?

Oh, and how are all the UFO’s going to “gas up” if we eliminate all those power lines? Maybe some intergalactic agreements are needed.

[JimmyT]

Yes, this is truly a

[JimmyT]

Well, if you will accept a Wikipedia reference.

Look up “biosphere 2”

Under the section labeled “first mission” about paragraph 6

Of course they word it a little bit differently then I do. But I do believe it would have worked out O.K. if it hadn’t been for the CO2 absorbtion. The plants would have produced plenty of oxygen if they had had enough CO2.

Sorry, I knew that “greenhouse earth” wasn’t quite the right name, but I was too lazy to look it up at the time.

[JimmyT]

Brian
Hey! Another space elevator fan. Another worthy project, albiet much less advanced and more complex, but also complimentary to this one.

[JimmyT]

Concerning cement manufacturing and CO2 production:

It’s true that you have to burn fuel to produce calcium oxide from calcium carbonate and both the burning of the fuel and the lime itself does produce CO2.

But…. The CO2 driven from the lime is reabsorbed when the cement sets. So you are left with only the fuel burning component as a net positive CO2 event. This was a big problem with that Bio-dome thingy; where several individuals tried to live in a sealed environment for a protracted period of time. Turns out that the cement used in the dome construction had not fully cured, and was still absorbing CO2. Plants couldn’t live without the CO2 -> plants couldn’t produce oxygen -> humans couldn’t breathe. They ultimately had to open the windows for this reason.

Sort of ironic, don’t you think? That the first “greenhouse earth” experiment failed due to an inadequate ammount of CO2 in the air.

[JimmyT]

Brian,
You’re right about the carbon in the steel. But, I thought the general thrust of the thread was all that nasty CO2 (aka plant food) produced during the reduction process. Reduction using hydrogen would avoid that. And that carbon within the steel wouldn’t end up as CO2. At least until all the steel rusts. Fluxing is always done using limestone which probably introduces enough carbon for the hardening process.

And by the way, you and I do agree about the fallacy of the CO2/Global warming thing and about the primacy of the importance of focus fusion.

As an aside; I wonder if ultra pure Fe might be produced using hydrogen reduction. Coal inevitability introduces so many impurities. It would be interesting to explore ultra pure iron’s properties. Probably already been done.

[JimmyT]

I’m sure you would never get them to admit it, but I am throughly convinced that the inventors of the transister were in fact trying to achieve perpetual motion. By causing a self perpetuating electropotential across a dopped semiconductor junction they thought (wrongly) that they might be able to achieve this.

Fortunately, when this failed; they were open to other uses for what they observed.

[JimmyT]

Sure it was. But I’m serious about him winning the prize.

[JimmyT]

Exposure to electromagnetic radiation does not make things radioactive. Only exposure to particulate radiation (mostly neutrons) will do that. Otherwise when we “nuke” popcorn in the microwave oven we would have real problems.
Seriously though, this is true regardless of the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation, from radio-waves all the way up to gamma rays. (Yeah, I know about Hafnium. There is always an exception isn’t there?)

Concerning waste heat: Don’t forget the conversion efficiency of the input pulse to the plasmoid. I think Uber Lerner is using an efficiency for this step of 50%. This is a figure he has garnered from other research groups which have achieved this comparatively high efficiency; and not merely a number he pulled out of his, er.. I mean …. the air. Thus far though LPP has only achieved 0.01% efficiency in this step, (this in his Texas experiment). Lets hope for conversion efficiencys of 70% plus in this step as well; once our complete bag of tricks is applied.

[JimmyT]

There are a couple of other errors in what people said or were led to believe. The x-ray emissions which are proportional to the square of the nuclear charge are related to the formation and compression of the plasmoid. There are also x-rays produced by the reaction. These x-rays are reaction specific and do not necessarily follow this formula.

[JimmyT]

In my humble opinion here’s why I think the question of man made global warming is important:

Whether it is a fact or not many of our responses should be the same. Development of DPF power is on the top of my list. There are all kinds of reasons to do this. Other environmental reasons not related to global warming; economic reasons; global security reasons; standard of living reasons; etc. etc.

Other responses probably would share this trait. We should probably continue to pursue solar and wind and geothermal and tidal power and fission options Just in case DPF doesn’t work. (I’ll let someone else fund those.)

But some responses are not the same. If man made global warming is not a fact, then we should be aggressively pursuing all the petroleum and other fossil fuels that we can. We should drill in ANWAR. We should drill off the continental shelf. We should continue research into methane hydrate deposits. All this to get us by until, hopefully, DPF comes on line. Because we really don’t know how long this is going to take. Even assuming it is going to work.

But if CO2 produced by human activities is contributing significantly to global warming. And we decide that this is undesirable. And we decide it’s impact is going to be significant enough in the near enough future to be worth the cost of avoiding its production. Then maybe we shouldn’t be pursuing the production of fossil fuels. At least maybe we should be pursuing some of the other options more aggressively.

The costs of this avoidance are very large. These high costs imply a high human toll. I don’t think the “just in case” argument works due to this factor. And there are some who take this “just in case ” position.

[Author]

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