[Rezwan]

OK, I added the “action blurb” (design note: we need to make those more visually distinctive and build the theme through the website. Lots of actions to coordinate).

Also, a while back I set up a wiki – and mentioned it in a post, but nothing seemed to come of it. Here is that link again, perhaps this is a place to use for working on educational documents. https://focusfusion.org/index.php/wiki

FYI, we are in the middle of coming up with a grant proposal on making an educational module for focus fusion, in which we put it in context with other approaches – a hyperlinked knowledge map, with room to grow. Using our approach to FF as a model that other fusion alternatives can use. The outline we’re developing is pretty useful. I’ll put that up and then we can work to fill in the content and expand the themes.

[Rezwan]

Yes, exactly. That’s what we need to anchor our “Contenders” section in. I had set up a forum topic to do just that – https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/784 – but it didn’t take off.

I should merge these two threads.

I know – I will also put a sidebar in the article that says “action required: Help map out the rest of the fusion parameters as well”.

[Rezwan]

You say above that China has “initiated a research and development project in Thorium…” That tends to mean that it doesn’t actually work yet.

How does their R&D schedule and issues compare to the Bill Gates proposal noted in the TED talk?

Bill also enthused about the way Terrapower uses spent uranium and turns a problem into a solution, but then asks “Why haven’t we heard of this before” and answers himself with:

Innovation really stopped in this industry quite some time ago. The idea that there are some good ideas laying around is not all that surprising.

People had talked about it for a long time, but they could never simulate properly whether it would work or not, and so it’s through the advent of modern supercomputers that now you can simulate and see that yes, with the right materials approach, this looks like it would work.”

Scale of Investment:

Scale of investment: To do the software, supercomputer, hire great scientists – only tens of millions. Even once we test our materials out in a Russian reactor to make sure that the materials work properly, then you’ll only be Hundreds of millions. The tough thing is building a pilot reactor, Several billion, regulator, location. Once you get the first one built, and it works as advertised, then it’s plain as day – the economics, energy density are so different than nuclear as we know it.

Time of investment:

Time scale: 20 years to invent, 20 to deploy. [Fission in 40 years! Where have I heard that before – oh- fusion.] Terrapower, if things go well, which is wishing for a lot, could easily meet that.

“If things go well.” Is there a similar uncertainty factor with the MSR’s?

Bill seems to think that there is enough uncertainty in fission all around to warrant HUNDREDS of similar R&D projects launched. Perhaps Thorium MSR was one such. He says:

There are, fortunately now, dozens of companies, we need it to be hundreds, who likewise, if their science goes well, if the funding for their pilot plants goes well, that they can compete for this. And it’s best if multiples succeed, because then you could use a mix of these things. We certainly need one to succeed.

So, again, is Bill foolishly overlooking the already functional thorium reactor? Can he just drop the terrapower and go snap up a Thorium reactor today? I feel some information is missing here.

[Rezwan]

Background, from Wikipedia:

Keep Calm and Carry On was a poster produced by the British government in 1939 during the beginning of World War II, intended to raise the morale of the British public under the threat of impending invasion. It was little known and never used. The poster was rediscovered in 2000 and has been re-issued by a number of private sector companies, and used as the decorative theme for a range of other products. There are only two known surviving examples of the poster outside of government archives

I found it entertaining. It is an easily modified meme, and it’s in the public domain:

Parodies of the poster, with similar type but changing the phrase or the logo (for example, an upside-down crown with “Now Panic and Freak Out”), have also been sold.[8] The poster’s popularity has been attributed to a “nostalgia for a certain British character, an outlook” according to Bagehot, a reporter for The Economist, that it “taps directly into the country’s mythic image of itself: unshowily brave and just a little stiff, brewing tea as the bombs fall.”[9] Its message has also been felt relevant to the late-2000s recession and has been adopted as an unofficial motto by British nurses, the poster appearing in staff rooms on hospital wards with increasing frequency throughout the 2000s.[6] Merchandise with the image has been ordered in bulk by American financial firms, advertising agencies, and by Germans.[8]

Here are some variations.

[Rezwan]

:blank: Still just you.

[Rezwan]

>:-(

Working fine.

[Rezwan]

Thanks! Great job! Links go to LPP site, though, not here. https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/lpp_2011_new_years_summary/ Which is OK, except you don’t have the forums/context for newbies etc. on that site.

[Rezwan]

Indeedy! 🙂

[Rezwan]

That is great news! Also, I’m going to move this post to contenders.

Yes, this is what Bill Gates was referring to in his TED talk.

Although in that talk, he put the development of this technology at 20 years, and commercialization at 40. NIF’s latest estimate is 10 years to prototype, 20 to commercialization.

It’s true that fusion has a difficult time growing in the shadow of Thorium or oil. If you talk to fusion scientists, quite a few put the development of fusion energy at 100 years and beyond – not because of the science, but because of the economic competition from first oil, then fission. Many of them figure fission will solve the immediate energy crisis problems, and then, in the usual trickling start/stop way it’s been going, fusion will eventually get developed without much fanfare.

This is too bad, because for me, it’s always been about a lot more than the energy problem. It’s the ego thing. The cosmic dimension of trying to understand and control plasma – reaching into the heart of a star. The mythic, primal, questing, epic thing.

I wonder how we can leverage this Thorium shadow to encourage fusion alternatives. As you point out, ITER is just too non-competitive. Fusion will need to present more appealing ideas. They have to play the “pleasant physics surprise” card. Start exploring those smaller, more nimble fusion ideas.

[Rezwan]

Breakable wrote:

I used the word fiction in that case to mean that which has not yet been proven. Predicting surface conditions of a gas giant is science fiction.

You could call it speculation, but i think fiction is something different.
For example while we could speculate that life forms exist inside suns photosphere,
thinking they could be of the same biology as ours would be completely fictional.

How about “simulation”? From Intuitor.com:

Movies and physics have a lot in common: neither are completely realistic, both are simulations of reality.

Physics not completely realistic? Shocking! But consider a simple classroom example: measuring the depth of a well by dropping in a pebble and timing how long it takes to hit the water. For the calculation we would typically write a simple equation that says the Earth is flat and has no atmosphere. (in other words, the gravity field is constant and there is no air resistance.) Furthermore, we’d assume that the speed of the sound produced by the pebble hitting water is infinitely high and ignore all sorts of effects like the gravitational attraction force of Jupiter.

Why would we digress so far from reality? If all possible influences were somehow miraculously accounted for, we’d be unable to measure the difference. Hence, the physics model used for measuring depth, while not absolutely realistic, is operationally realistic. It accounts for the major effect and yields predictions well within our measurement accuracy.

There’s a big difference between operationally correct movie physics and the ridiculously spectacular marketing-driven special effects designed to boost box-office take.

[Rezwan]

Thanks MTd2,

I’ve started this new thread for Crossfire. What do you know about them?

[Rezwan]

Hi folks, great discussion. I just changed the title to reflect the topic a bit more.

[Rezwan]

Thanks Ivy Matt! I’ve posted this on the website. By the way, I desperately need to flesh out the rest of the “Aneutronic Contenders” section, so other aneutronic endeavors are welcome – collect links, some analysis. Start a new thread for each.

Thanks again!

[Rezwan]

Aside from being unethical, I don’t think it’s necessary. You can be up front about the uncertainty and yet gain support for fusion – See post on Tyson and the need to make stuff up to advance research.

Meanwhile the Discover article shows how easily fusion scientists turn off any potential funders. Glen Wurden, the guy with the “Dark Horse” concludes with:

If someone tells you we’ll have fusion energy in three years, that is not going to happen. Even if you want to solve the energy problem in the next 30 years, fusion is not the answer, and I say that as a fusion scientist. If you want to solve it in the 50-100 year time scale, yeah, I think it is the answer. I like to ask other physicists, ‘How many miracles do you need for your concept to work?’ There isn’t a single concept that doesn’t need an engineering miracle or two or three. Not one. But if you can count the number of miracles on one hand, you might say your concept is viable – you only need one handful of miracles. That’s where fusion research is: How many miracles do you need?

I’ve talked to Glen about this. He’s not saying that fusion won’t work – but that it’s not the solution to the energy crisis, because that’s a short term problem. Energy crisis is happening NOW, and fission is ready now. Fusion’s going to take some time. They may get LIFE and ITER to work in some decades – but it will be very expensive. And he’s not sure if his own MTF will ultimately work. But he’s dedicating his life to getting it to work.

By and large, this is what fusion scientists are like. They are committed to solving this issue, but pretty humble about it.

In contrast, the public, Congress, everybody else, just wants their reactor, now. And they’d like someone else to pay for the research, and they don’t want to bother with speculative ideas. All have a vague idea that it’s really expensive, so they don’t see the merit of small donations and small projects.

We just have to keep working at building a fusion-funding culture. Build a respect for the problem, and help people see themselves as explorers supporting exploration rather than consumers of the finished energy product. Also break down the larger fusion endeavor into smaller, affordable projects.

Footnote on Wurden’s predictions. Last year I called and spoke with him about that paragraph. He was pretty firm on the idea that the energy crisis is a short term problem and he recommended fission. For fusion you need long term commitment. Then he critiqued NIF and explained what they were up against to extract useful energy. At the FPA conference, after listening to Michael Dunnes’ presentation on LIFE, it seemed that a lot of Wurden’s criticisms were answered. And indeed, I caught up to Wurden and Dunne talking about it afterwards and Wurden was acknowledging that the LIFE team may actually be on to something. But he left it at: “Send me those papers. Show me the data”. Or words to that effect. This was thrilling to me because it suggests that LIFE may actually have a commercial reactor in 20 years.

And that could raise confidence in the possibility of fusion. Confidence, let’s face it, has been lacking. With confidence should come more interest in trying other approaches. If it’s doable one way, it may be doable, cheaper, others. A win in any fusion effort will lead to more exploration – to an improved fund and investment-raising environment.

But even the NIF guys are careful to say, “Either it will work, or we’ll discover some interesting physics.” Something that the public, Congress, investors, just don’t like to hear.

[Rezwan]

Thanks Arvid! Now we’re getting somewhere.

I don’t know about the public being fixated on the Bohr model. I think this is more the problem that rises with the concepts of “positive”, “negative” and “particles”. I suppose a question behind this is: why isn’t everything a neutron? No one is questioning the observed factness of these things, or the precise measurements and descriptive equations. It’s more of the “why” of things, and a need for a better way to visualize the relationships at work with these things we call protons, electrons, neutrons. The “wave” and “cloud” concepts help a lot.

The “positive” and “negative” concepts make it difficult to understand. We’re told that protons, if they were to obey their electrical charge urges, would fly apart, but a “strong force” can bind them together. It’s natural to think then that if electrons and protons were to obey the electrical urges, they would bind into a neutron, so some force must be keeping them apart. Of course there’s an equation somewhere that shows how much energy is required for a neutron to become an electron and proton and vice versa. But now your cloud concept shows that the electron is right on top of the proton – so that makes it neutron-esque at certain moments.

So the meta question is, “what is charge”?

[Author]

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