juliar wrote on Apr 10^th, 2019 at 7:39am:


how about all the poisons and pollution that coal and fossil fuels produce when burnt Jules 

how about the new cases in Australia of Black lung, would you like to mine coal ?

I thought you like the idea of Hydrogen ?

juliar wrote on Apr 11^th, 2019 at 9:20am:

and what did that rant have to do with Nuk power the USA jules…… old crazy uncle jules is getting worse

What's our current progress on nuclear fusion power and what problems remain ?
Robert Steinhaus Updated Jan 9

Why is nuclear fusion still not working?

Mankind currently is in possession of a practical working fusion technology.


(A laser irradiates and implodes a D-T filled beryllium micro-sphere on the left, which initiates a D-T fusion burst which in turn launches a shock detonation wave down a cylinder of pressurized liquid deuterium)

It is widely perceived that commercial forms of nuclear fusion are currently ~50 years away (and always will be) - but the reality is that such widespread and excessive pessimism about fusion is not justified.

Mankind came into possession of a practical way of generating energy from fusion over 50 years ago with the Ivy-Mike nuclear test of 1952 that produced fusion energy from pure Deuterium via DD fusion while using nuclear fission to reliably bring Deuterium fusion plasma to fusion conditions.

There is an existing practical fusion technology that efficiently produces large industrially significant amounts of fusion energy on demand - we just do not choose to develop it and commercially use it.

The energy needed to ignite an inertially confined thermonuclear fusion reaction in liquid (or solid) deuterium-tritium (DT) is not that large; it is on the order of not more than 20 MJ or about the same amount of chemical energy stored in about 2.5 cups of automotive gasoline.

The problem is that this energy must be compressed in space (focused down to an area less than a 2 mm) and in time (to less than 3 nanoseconds).

“So why aren’t ICF power plants being built?”

Pure Inertial Confinement Fusion that does not use nuclear fission to produce the conditions for fusion is today driver limited.

It is still not experimentally possible to build a laser (or ion particle accelerator) large enough to produce DT fusion ignition. Still, many people, including Congress, would like to know for certain if inertial confinement fusion will ultimately work and actually produce net energy from fusion. To answer this question, in the final few years of underground nuclear testing, both LANL and LLNL designed a series of test shots called Halite-Centurion. Halite-Centurion series shots were fusion related add on shots piggy-backed onto shots already on the schedule. These shots were designed to utilize a small portion of the X-rays produced from the primary of an experimental device through a line of sight to a remote fusion experiment housed some distance away in the underground experimental test canister. Lasers and Ion-beam fusion drivers such as were available at that time (1984 - 1988) could not provide the driver energy required to produce fusion ignition - but X-rays from a remotely ignited fission device could provide the driver energy needed (>20 MJ energy delivered into a spot of about 2 mm in a time of less than 3 nanoseconds) .

Halite-Centurion fusion experiments in the Nevada desert worked reliably and repeatedly and produced full fusion ignition of small sub-gram samples of DT fuel (in small filled spheres). These experiments were once classified but DOE allowed senior scientist Dr. John Lindl to declassify and reveal about half of the fusion related project information.

Inertial confinement fusion is the only form of fusion that has to date been proven to work in actual field experiments (not just theoretically predicted in computer simulations).

Once classified Halite-Centurion test shots experimentally proved that small DT filled spheres could be ignited and brought to full fusion ignition using an intense beam of X-rays.

ICF fusion is different from Magnetic Confinement Fusion and other forms of fusion as ICF fusion has been PROVEN experimentally to work.

If fusion drivers are designed that sufficiently resemble the characteristics and performance of X-ray driver used in Halite-Centurion experiments, there is no question that full fusion ignition with fusion energy gain will be practically achieved. Practical fusion is not a matter of guesswork or conjecture but has already been PROVEN in actual field experiments by both LANL and LLNL National Labs in the last years of underground nuclear testing at the Nevada Nuclear Security Site.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy

The first Ivy shot, Mike, was the first successful full-scale test of a multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon ("hydrogen bomb") using the Teller-Ulam design. Unlike later thermonuclear weapons, Mike used deuterium as its fusion fuel, maintained as a liquid by an expensive and cumbersome cryogenic system. It was detonated on Elugelab Island yielding 10.4 megatons, almost 500 times the yield of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Eight megatons of the yield was from fast fission of the uranium tamper, creating massive amounts of radioactive fallout. The detonation left an underwater crater 6,240 ft (1.9 km) wide and 164 ft (50 m) deep where Elugelab Island had been.

The experiment you are quoting Jules was a big bomb that totally destroyed a island..... how is this safe fusion ?? Maybe research a bit before you show us how a safe fusion was produced in the 50's 

Now some FACTS which the Greeny types ABHOR. They much prefer their impractical fictional fantasies while they hum KumBaYa sitting lotus fashion on the toadstools.


Fusion vs fission: clean, green nuclear energy technologies explained
ABC Science By Stuart Gary Posted 8 February 2016 at 12:52 pm


A picture of the inside of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory nuclear fusion reactor
New developments in laser technology could see nuclear fusion as a viable power source within 15 years. (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

Clean, cheap nuclear energy is often touted as a means to battle climate change. But how close are we to having nuclear plants that fit the clean, green bill? What are the different technologies and what do they offer?

More than 10 per cent of the world's electricity currently comes from nuclear power plants. These existing plants all rely on nuclear fission — a chain reaction where uranium atoms are split to release extraordinary amounts of energy and, unfortunately, high levels of radioactive waste.

But a different type of nuclear reaction — nuclear fusion — has been the focus of research to develop nuclear power without the radioactive waste problem.

Nuclear fusion is the reaction that powers the Sun. It involves smashing hydrogen atoms together under extraordinary temperature and pressure, fusing them together to form helium atoms and releasing a large amount of energy and radioactive waste. But unlike fission, this radioactive waste is short-lived, quickly decaying to undetectable levels.

Nuclear fusion happens readily in stars like the Sun, because their cores reach extreme temperatures of over 15 million degrees Celsius, and pressures billions of times greater than our atmospheric pressure on Earth.

Fusion reactors would need to recreate these extreme conditions on Earth, and researchers are using two different approaches to achieve this: tokamak reactors and laser fusion.

Tokamak reactors
Separate groups of scientists in Germany and China have recently announced they have made breakthroughs in nuclear fusion using tokamak reactors.

Tokamak reactors use a doughnut-shaped ring to house heavy and super-heavy isotopes of hydrogen, known as deuterium and tritium.

Normal hydrogen — which is also known as protium — consists of a single proton in its nucleus orbited by an electron. Deuterium differs in that the nucleus also contains a neutron, and tritium has a proton and two neutrons in its nucleus.

These isotopes are heated to 100 million degrees Celsius by powerful electric currents within the ring.

At these extreme temperatures electrons are ripped off their atoms, forming a charged plasma of hydrogen ions.


An artist's impression of a cutaway view of the ITER tokamak fusion reactor in operation. (ITER)

Magnets confine the charged plasma to an extremely small area within the ring, maximising the chance that the superheated ions will fuse together and give off energy. The heat generated can be used to turn water into steam that spins turbines, producing electricity.

Over 200 experimental tokamaks have been built worldwide, but to date they have all consumed more energy than they produce.

A massive international tokamak project — the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) — aims to turn that situation around.

The ITER is designed to produce 10 times as much energy as it takes to run, becoming the first ever net energy producing fusion reactor. It is currently being built in the south of France, but with the first fusion experiments scheduled for 2027 it will be some time before we know if that goal has been reached.


In the meantime, physicists in Germany are using a variant of the tokamak, known as the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator. This uses a twisting ring design with changes in geometry and differing magnetic fields to control the plasma for longer periods of time compared to the short bursts tokamaks achieve.

Last week, physicists at the stellarator announced they had created a hydrogen plasma using two megawatts of microwave radiation to heat hydrogen gas to 80 million degrees Celsius for a quarter of a second.

At the same time, scientists in China said they had achieved temperatures of 50 million degrees Celsius (three times hotter than the core of the Sun) for 102 seconds at their experimental tokamak fusion reactor called the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST).

VIDEO: How the Wendelstein 7X stellarator works (Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics)

This factual account of nuclear fusion continues overleaf

ITER project: Australian physicists enlisted for fusion experiment to help clean energy research
ABC Radio Canberra Updated 7 May 2015, 4:03pm


PHOTO: An artist's impression of the ITER 'tokamak', which holds the plasma. The plasma is represented in this image by the purple donut segment. (Supplied: ITER, Design Integration Section)

A multi-million-dollar fusion energy experiment in France has brought Australian experts onboard as part of research that could one day help supply the world with clean, carbon-free energy.

The ITER project, currently under construction in France, promises carbon-free clean power, by fusing hydrogen nuclei to form helium in high-temperature plasmas like the sun.

The experiment is a collaboration between the European Union, the United States, India, Japan, China, Korea and Russia.

However Australian experts from the Australian Plasma Fusion Research Facility at the Australian National University were asked to design a system to monitor heat that escapes from the reactor.

Asked to explain how the ITER works, ANU Professor John Howard told 666 ABC Canberra's Genevieve Jacobs the simplest example of a nuclear fusion reactor was the sun.

"The material making up the sun is called a plasma. And a plasma is the fourth state of matter," he said.

Professor Howard said the other three states of matter are solid, liquid and gas.

"So if you take ice, and add heat, you get water, add more heat you turn it into steam, add more heat again and you turn it into plasma," he said.

"Basically, the atoms of the water break up into their constituent nuclei and electrons, and they're positively and negatively charged. They hold together like a plasma because of the electrical attraction.

"In the sun, that's all held together by gravity ... we have to use big containers with giant magnetic fields, that hold these charged particles together.

"We add a lot of heat, as much heat as we can, as much heat as this plasma can tolerate until the pressure inside gets so much that we reproduce the reactions that make the sun burn."

"During unexpected turbulence the fusion plasma can inflict power fluxes onto the walls [of the reactor] comparable to those at the sun's surface.", ANU Professor John Howard

At the core of the ITER machine, temperatures will reach up to 200 million degrees Celsius.

"Because the centre is so hot, there is a lot of leakage across the magnetic field boundary. And that flows down then into the walls," Professor Howard said.

"One of the problems is to try and keep the walls sufficiently cool. In order to understand how to keep the walls cool, we also need to understand how fast the plasma - the escaped heat - is flowing into those walls."

Which is where the ANU's expertise comes in.

"At the ANU we've developed some interesting imaging technologies that are now being used on other fusion reactors around the world, for looking at the flows and the temperature of the exhaust plasma," Professor Howard said.

"In the past, this was done using fairly expensive equipment [that was] only able to make measurements at a small number of points."


'This has been a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle'


PHOTO: Construction underway at the ITER project site in France in April 2015. (Supplied: ITER)

Professor Howard said the ANU Australian Plasma Fusion Research Facility's systems enabled them to use advanced camera technology to do two-dimensional imaging.

The hope is that this technology can be used to photograph plasma temperature and flow in ITER.

"And once you can do two-dimensional imaging that opens up the possibility to do things like CT [computed tomography] scanning, in human medicine for example, where you get so much information you can work backwards to figure out exactly what's going on in detail," Professor Howard said.

"Once we can understand that, then we can understand how to control the heat."

Michael Walsh, head of diagnostics at ITER, said the project hoped to build stronger links to the ANU and its technology.


PHOTO: Australian National University (ANU) Australian Plasma Fusion Research Facility director Prof John Howard. (ABC News)

"This has been a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle for some time," he said.

The system developed by ANU focuses on the floor of the fusion reactor, known as the diverter.

"Where the [plasma] edges touch the diverter it's like a welding arc," Professor Howard said.

"During unexpected turbulence, the fusion plasma can inflict power fluxes onto the walls comparable to those at the sun's surface."

Prof Howard said figuring out how to manage this heat flow was a major problem for ITER to solve.

"No other system can meet ITER's requirements for measuring and understanding the flows in this region of the experiment," he said.

From every 50 megawatts of power put in, the ITER machine is designed to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power.

The ITER machine will test fusion reactor technologies and is a first step towards the creation of a power plant capable of capturing fusion energy for commercial use.

Prof Howard will travel to France in June to meet with the ITER team.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-07/iter-enlist-anu-physicists-for-fusion-ene...

Article continues...


Why Is Fusion Better Than Fission?
There are a couple of problems with fission reactors. First, the staring material. I think Marty McFly said it best in Back to the Future in regards to plutonium:

"Doc, you don't just walk into a store and-and buy plutonium! Did you rip that off?"

These starting materials aren't just laying around. In fact, if you went looking for some natural plutonium you wouldn't find any. The only way to get plutonium is to make it. The other problem with fission is the products. After this nuclear fission reaction, you have this left over stuff that can be both radioactive as well as chemically active. It's just nasty stuff that you have to deal with.

Nuclear fusion would solve both of these problems. It starts with simpler stuff—although deuterium isn't always so easy to find, you don't have to make it. After fusion, you get something like helium (or helium-3). Think of all the balloons you could blow up.

https://www.wired.com/2015/11/nuclear-fission-works-fine-but-not-fusion-heres-wh...