[Transmute]

Glenn Millam wrote: I agree with everything you’ve said, Brian.

Oh, about EEStor: Google EEStor and Lockheed. Big news!

I know. This means that they have actually done it, and its now a matter of getting the processes for full-scale production finished. I am currently researching how to start a Zenn dealership. Its gonna be big!

I don’t think that actually proves anything, EEStor product could perform a full fold less then what is claimed and it would still be a marketable product, not world changing but good for a variety of tasks. EEStor will have “actually done it” when 3rd party testing announce that they have.

[Transmute]

Matt M wrote: But let’s remember the crazies who will be opposing anything nuclear.
They will always take the worst possible scenario.

Example – That swimming pool contains enough liquid water to
drown over 100,000 people!

You know the FF reactors are to be cooled with Dihydrogen Monoxide? I think their is a point were even to the layman that fear mongering becomes moronic and not worth listening too.

[Transmute]

maihem wrote:

A small scuba tank of this stuff that can power it for years does not seem like a problem, but people often have very wacko threat-assessment and any technology that has “nuclear” anywhere near it will get some peoples heart rates going.

MRI scanners (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) would have been called NMR imagers but they had to drop the “nuclear” from the front (not many people wanted to lay in a humming tube for half an hour if it had the word “nuclear” printed on the side 🙂

Point known, and well stated, hence why we call this “Fusion” not “Nuclear Fusion”.

[Transmute]

I don’t think Decaborane at a pressure of a few Pascels or less will work as a coolant (med-high vacuum) your going to need electrons being cooled with an inner cloolant pipe or ablative electrodes made of a non-fusionable material (or some kind of boron alloy) in which the electrodes can be automatically feed in or adjusted as they wear away.

[Transmute]

A small scuba tank of this stuff that can power it for years does not seem like a problem, but people often have very wacko threat-assessment and any technology that has “nuclear” anywhere near it will get some peoples heart rates going.

[Transmute]

I love you, your like a odds calculator. 30% is not bad as helium conservation is no hard (how much helium goes into balloons?) But the desalination projections need to go up several fold as world demand for fresh water is not going to go down, and much of asia is already strained, how bad will it be in 2025?

[Transmute]

Well all right! now imagine a world in which FF replaces 70% of Oil energy usage and 95% of non-electric natural gas usage, oh and powers massive amounts of desalination, lets say that 4 times todays levels of desalination (48 billion gallons a day) calculate that please.

[Transmute]

I’m not talking about the alpha beam, I’m talking about the very high energy neutrons produced by T+D fusion (or the moderately high energy neutrons produced in D+D fusion) the “alpha beam” or beam of non-neutron (charged) nuclei produced by the DPF would in a Fusion Driven Sub-critical Reactor (as opposed to an ADSR) would best be spent hitting a splatation target making more neutrons. Destroy nuclear waste in such a manner would produce huge amounts of heat, in an economy where cheap B11+P DPF reactor have not yet taken over adding steam turbines to the nuclear waste destroyer would add profit to a previously unprofitable task.

look up subcritical reactors.

[Transmute]

I think I may have stated this in another thread: the neutron flux could be used to destroy nuclear waste (as opposed to shoving it in a mountain and hoping it stays there for a million years) so a DPF reactor fusing D+D or D+T could be used to clean up the waste of the nuclear age while producing energy (the induced fission of the waste acts as an energy multiplier) as well as the waste/fuel could be reprocessed to extract plutonium, although the plutonium produced from this process would consist of unwanted isotopes that would make it less then ideal for making bombs it could go backing into fueling existing nuclear reactors (less need for new power plants, reactor powered on what was waste and with their waste recycled don’t make new waste (say that ten times fast))

[Transmute]

Well all those x-rays will turn to heat if they are not converted. This thread is a little old has I have now seen basic diagrams which show a vacuumed shell arrangement of metal foil which gives me a basic idea of how it works (electrons get knocked off, absorbed by a positive plate, circuit between the negative plate and positive plate) but I would still like a explanation at detail of how 80% efficiency is expected.

[Transmute]

You know there is predictions that helium researves will run dry in a few decades (when oil and gas reserves are gone there will be no helium side products being produced). How much helium could a Boron fusion economy produce and how much helium does the world use?

[Transmute]

aah algea counts as biomass. Building algea farms is not easy they need fully enclosed systems with controlled temperatures, Waste biomass on the other is waste that a profit can be made from just by picking it up, biofuels made for energy crops other then algae require far less maintenance and initial investment. I don’t see biofuels replacing all of petroleum, fusion or not electrics should replace most auto-transport, that takes out ~50 of oil use in the USA, biofuels will be best at replacing jet fuel and industrial feedstokes for plastics and asphalt.

[Transmute]

Lerner wrote: Replacing cars is not so difficult–people repalce cars all the time. If there are about 600 million cars in the world, as you say, the replacement time is about nine years, since current auto productions is 66 million per year. Of course the auto industry will have to be retooled, and that is why the auto industry is totally opposed to electric cars. But the chasis and body would not change. As to the engine, electric motors are enormously simpler than gasoline engines. The elcetric motor industry is already large and mature. The only new industry is in the energy storage device, either batteries or super-capacitors or other.

As to food prices, they are soaring world-wide not just in PR. Food production is well below consumption and reserves are falling rapidly, which drives up prices (helped along by speculation). There are a number of factors invovled, since per-capita grain production has actually been falling globally since 1984, long before biofuels were a factor. But they certainly are not helping.

World food production could be increased greatly if government subsidies were aimed at food production for people and not mainly for animal feed or biofuels. The US government has long subsidized corn and soy rather than wheat, for example. Eliminating subsidies for biofuels, which would make them non-competitive, would certainly be a good, small step, to lifting food production.

I agree EV are highly viable alternatives with the best energy efficiencies of any alternative, and less industrial reworking requirements then hydrogen, but EVs need lighter aluminum and composite chassis to try to add range and EVs won’t be able to power long range uses. Biofuels or fuels made from biomass require the least infrastructure changes and can be energy positive and carbon neutral. Making Biofuels from biomass is now of highest priority in the biofuels research community because we all admit the food crops can only replace a tiny fraction of oil usage while biomass could replace as much as 30% with moderate estimates and higher. Cheap fusion would likely increase biofuels production dramatically by powering hydrogenated pyrolysis of biomass and CO2 into hydrocarbons.

[Transmute]

Actually desalination will be needed in massive amount with or without hydrogen. World populations are already overtaxing fresh water. Cheap fusion could provide waste heat for tradition distillation desalination plants, but reverse osmosis plants are all the rage these days with there ever increasing efficiency. If cheap fusion does not come around at lest desalination is a good place for mass solar power as water production does not need to be continues day and night.

[Transmute]

Zara wrote: Environmental Awareness is being surpressed by the current administration. Thus we have to either fight this or bear with it and many of us have found our ways of fighting it. There are many people in the current administration that are not at all interested in environmental awareness and therefore have done everything they could to hide these things. There is a lot of big money involved in the process of making the environment better though youd think that they would care about their children and grandchildren. Heck they might even care about their great great Grandchildren you’d hope. This doesn’t seem to totally be the case though and that is a serious problem facing the world today. Our Governemnt over the past 7 yrs. has literally broken the world. This can be repaired, but not without serious responsibility taken by those who know they are responsible.

Many of us are not in the USA but we probably agree that Bush and his cronies should be put up against the wall. Still doing so may make us feel better but it won’t do anything for solving the problems of energy shortage and environmental damage.

[Author]

Posts