[KeithPickering]

rashidas wrote: Any comments about this post on Fukushima radiation effects?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/15-1

FUD on a massive scale. After the accident, they screened the thyroids of every child they could find in Fukushima Prefecture and found a lot of benign cysts. But since nobody had ever screened children’s thyroids before, they had no idea whether that was unusual or not.

When they later screen kids in areas far from Fukushima, they found an even greater percentage of cysts than in the Fukushima kids.

Equating benign cysts with cancer is not just false, it’s a damned lie.

For a complete overview, including links, see The Hiroshima Syndrome’s coverage:
http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-child-thyroid-issue.html

[KeithPickering]

Completely nuts, off the rails, astrology-cum-numerology on pot. None of it has any validity.

[KeithPickering]

No dark matter is also consistent with BB, a theory which preceded DM and is not dependent upon it.

[KeithPickering]

Because the field lines are closer together the smaller the plasmoid. Imagine the gravitational field around a planet. If you took the same planet (same mass) and shrunk it down, the surface gravity would be greater, because you’d be standing closer to the center of mass.

[KeithPickering]

Francisl wrote: The title is a teaser.

The title’s a tease, but the results are stupendous. The lack of detectable WIMPs with a detector this sensitive puts MOND in the driver’s seat: there is no dark matter, in spite of the article’s claim that “its existence is a near certainty among physicists.”

Not among some.

[KeithPickering]

In the first place, your link doesn’t discuss Fukushima cleanup at all, which is a separate issue from nuclear waste. In the second place, there are a number of reactor designs than can use spent fuel for fossil-free energy.

It’s only “waste” if we don’t use it.

[KeithPickering]

jamesr wrote: If the simulations now match that indicates they mostly understand the processes involved.

Or it might just mean they have a set of perfectly compensating errors. 😉

[KeithPickering]

Theoretically, arcing should be a function of voltage, but not of current. Since FF scales up by current, that leaves me (in my uninformed opinion) optimistic that the problem can be solved.

[KeithPickering]

opensource wrote: So much confusion generated in that thread! Shouldn’t it be reasonably easy to tell from our neutrino data whether or not their production on the sun correlate with sunspot cycles?!

Well … not necessarily. TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) varies by only about 0.1% peak-to-trough during a solar cycle. I doubt current neutrino detection technology could reliably detect such a difference outside of experimental error.

[KeithPickering]

A quick search of Google Scholar shows nothing published by Chase or McGuire on fusion in the recent past. Apparently they’re playing it very close to the vest. That’s okay, I suppose, but it leaves me thinking that so far this is nothing but vaporware. Building a reasonably leakproof magnetic bottle for plasma isn’t that hard: Dyson did years ago with the polywell. Still waiting for that one to work. So they’re going to need a lot more than a new bottle.

Lawson criteron number, anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

[KeithPickering]

andrewmdodson wrote: A spallation source uses protons to knock neutrons out of heavy metal atoms. Liquid mercury is used as it doesnt suffer damage to a solid structure, although I am curious as to what the mercury is gradually converted into.

If you knock a neutron out of a mercury nucleus, you get mercury.

[KeithPickering]

sy wrote: The two parts have axial symmetry right?

Have you considered Friction welding the two parts together?

Offhand I’d say that probably won’t work for W, the melting point is too high.

[KeithPickering]

Quoting Hargraves p. 237:

Although most Li-6 was previously removed from the fuel salt, more is continuously generated by n + Li-7 -> Li-6 + n + n. Tritium also comes from n + Li-7 -> He-4 + H-3 + n. A 100 MW LFTR would generate 25 mg of tritium per day, responsible for 240 curies of radiation. The US legal emissions limit is 10 curies per day (although 5200 curies per day is allowed in Canada), so the tritium should be removed and sequestered where it can decay harmlessly with a 12-year half life.

[KeithPickering]

Robert Hargraves is fairly down on LiF as a salt for LFTRs in his recent book Thorium: Energy cheaper than coal because the Li produces radioactive tritium inside a LFTR, in quantities higher than can be legally released into the air (in the US, anyway). That means you need a chemical process to capture and sequester the tritium, hence more expense. Instead, Hargraves suggests another fluoride salt be subsituted for LiF, such as NaF for example. Not as good a neutron moderator, but that can be finessed by putting graphite into the core.

[KeithPickering]

BSFusion wrote:
Does this make sense, or am I confused?

Considering that the coefficient for the highest power of T is negative, this is almost certainly a case of statistical overfitting. (Extrapolate the derived curve out far beyond your data, and you’ll see what I mean.) Do you have a [em]scientific[/em] reason for suspecting that fusion rate is a function of T^8?

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