Thorium power, how is it going in the US?

[Foxpup]

Waiwaiwait... WE HAVE FUSION REACTORS ALREADY?

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.  I want a Mr. Fusion for my black Trans Am, NOW!!!  I won't be able to go to the future with it, but I would most definitely achieve Super Pursuit forrealz.

Settle down, the current state of fusion research is nowhere near as advanced as you hope.

Yes, fusion reactors exist, and you can even build one for only a few thousand dollars if you know what you're doing. But there are a couple of problems. First of all, most fusion reactions (including all of the most practical ones) produce a huge amount of neutron radiation, which (unlike most other forms of radiation) causes anything exposed to it to become radioactive. When the reactor components wear out and need replacing, they will be highly radioactive and need to be disposed of as such. Anyone claiming that fusion reactors produce no radioactive waste is lying.

The second problem is even more serious. To get nuclear fusion, you need to produce and confine an extremely high temperature plasma, and no current designs* have been able to achieve this without consuming more energy than the fusion reaction produces. (Note that a loss of plasma confinement is not particularly dangerous, as although the plasma is at a very high temperature and pressure, the density is so low that it's virtually a vacuum, with a correspondingly low heat content. Instead of the reactor heating up and melting, the plasma cools. Cool plasma is no good for fusion though, so confinement is still extremely important, but losing confinement isn't the catastrophe that one might imagine it to be.) No currently operating fusion reactors are capable of producing net power, and all are used either for research purposes or as a controllable source of neutron radiation.

*Nitpickers will be quick to point out that fission bombs are capable of producing high temperature plasma and confining it just long enough to get a good fusion reaction out of it without consuming much energy, but this has an obvious drawback.

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[ElectricMucus]

Except for the once-a decade cold fusion hoaxes. Can't go without mentioning them  

But look on the bright side, if the trend holds you can buy thorium reactors from China by 2022.

[mcgravier]

Except for the once-a decade cold fusion hoaxes. Can't go without mentioning them  

But look on the bright side, if the trend holds you can buy thorium reactors from China by 2022.

I'm sure there are lots of hoaxes, but that's only noise to bury the real findings that scientists have made during the same period. Anomalous energy from hydrogen somehow reacting with nickel to produce copper is a fact. The main questions are: how does it happen? And how can a reactor based on it be designed so the energy is actually usable and not minuscule?

Hydrogen-nickel fusion without big accelerator? Bullshit. I won't belive it until I'll se a working power plant with my own eyes.

[ElectricMucus]

The question is how far do you go to call something a 'fact'. A blackbox demonstration done in a obscure lab by some company taking money from investors?
For me definitely not.

I think without some serious scientific breakthrough remains in the realm of sci-fi.

[mcgravier]

Hydrogen-nickel fusion without big accelerator? Bullshit. I won't belive it until I'll se a working power plant with my own eyes.

Excellent! The subject has been conditioned to respond with precisely the right amount of scepticism!

Try googling 'e-cat', Rossi, LENR, etc. Do some research.

Edit: and it's not just some Italian entrepreneur, NASA and Los Alamos have also been researching LENR.

I think without some serious scientific breakthrough remains in the realm of sci-fi.

In this case, any scientific discovery is always going to be a direct threat to the Petro-Dollar. A 'break-through' is never going to get published.

If you insist:
Stright from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer

"theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel and nuclear physicist Peter Thieberger argue that the claims for the E-Cat are incompatible with the fundamentals of nuclear physics.[31] In particular, the Coulomb barrier for the claimed fusion reaction is so high that it is unsurpassable anywhere in the known universe, including the interior of stars. The reaction also would create gamma radiation that would penetrate the few inches of shielding apparently provided by the E-Cat, leading to acute radiation syndrome in persons involved in the demonstrations.[31] Given numerous other scientific inconsistencies – such as the ratio of isotopes in the supposed copper "fusion product" being identical to that in natural copper[32] – the authors argue that it is now time "for the e-Cat's proponents to provide the provable, testable, reproducible science that can answer these straightforward physics objections."


A little lesson of physics:
When comes to shooting proton into nuclei problem is that protons repell eachother. When you reduce distance by half, repelling force gets 4 times stronger. It obviously doesent scale to infinity, but at some point the forces between protons inside nuclei and one that you are trying to infuse are getting EXTREME.

Additionally there is another problem - the atoms nuclei is so small, that hitting it even without repelling force is extremally unlikely. When comes to neutrons there is no repelling, and low hit probability is solved by breeding huge amounts of them - thanks to this nuclear powerplants can work.

As I said: Show me working commercial E-cat, or it didnt happen.

[ElectricMucus]

I think without some serious scientific breakthrough remains in the realm of sci-fi.

In this case, any scientific discovery is always going to be a direct threat to the Petro-Dollar. A 'break-through' is never going to get published.

It's not just that, but the whole academic establishment is locked into some belief about physics which ultimately stops any real innovation.
On the other the fringe is full of people who engage in the same kind of thought process.

Both rely on long abandoned mathematical concepts. Quaternions have been around for over a century but still they use tensors and even build a sum in a way it is not permitted outside "special" relativity.
Of course you cannot come to those false conclusions with Quaternions but since the establishment religiously believes in them it is not permitted to use them at all.

[notme]

Except for the once-a decade cold fusion hoaxes. Can't go without mentioning them  

But look on the bright side, if the trend holds you can buy thorium reactors from China by 2022.

I'm sure there are lots of hoaxes, but that's only noise to bury the real findings that scientists have made during the same period. Anomalous energy from hydrogen somehow reacting with nickel to produce copper is a fact. The main questions are: how does it happen? And how can a reactor based on it be designed so the energy is actually usable and not minuscule?

Hydrogen-nickel fusion without big accelerator? Bullshit. I won't belive it until I'll se a working power plant with my own eyes.

If everyone had that kind of attitude (I won't believe it's possible until it is fully commercialized) we would still be riding horses to work.

[justusranvier]

If everyone had that kind of attitude (I won't believe it's possible until it is fully commercialized) we would still be riding horses to work.

The inability distinguish between magic and science displayed in your comment is why we haven't seen as much technological advancement as we otherwise could have.

[notme]

If everyone had that kind of attitude (I won't believe it's possible until it is fully commercialized) we would still be riding horses to work.

The inability distinguish between magic and science displayed in your comment is why we haven't seen as much technological advancement as we otherwise could have.

Um, wtf are you talking about.  I made no such comment as far as I can see.

[punningclan]

The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project is an open source replication effort whose leads are currently attempting to replicate the Francesco Celani excess heat experiment while making their research and apparatus public and building kits to farm out to scientists who want to try it out.

http://www.quantumheat.org/

[Richy_T]

Except for the once-a decade cold fusion hoaxes. Can't go without mentioning them  

But look on the bright side, if the trend holds you can buy thorium reactors from China by 2022.

Yeah, but the paint on them will contain lead.

[ElectricMucus]

Except for the once-a decade cold fusion hoaxes. Can't go without mentioning them  

But look on the bright side, if the trend holds you can buy thorium reactors from China by 2022.

Yeah, but the paint on them will contain lead.

I lold. 

[Rudd-O]

Except for the once-a decade cold fusion hoaxes. Can't go without mentioning them  

But look on the bright side, if the trend holds you can buy thorium reactors from China by 2022.

Yeah, but the paint on them will contain lead.

'ts okay, what's a little melamine on the milk among friends, rite?  :-)

[Miles Bennett Dyson]

Related: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aftenposten.no%2Fokonomi%2FGigantisk-energikilde-i-Telemark-7055485.html

[alan2here]

Thanks for the article.

I thought Thorium was a common material.

[myrkul]

Thanks for the article.

I thought Thorium was a common material.

That's the best part. It is, relative to other nuclear fuels.

[ElectricMucus]

From what I've heard it's not the commonness that counts but it's efficiency you can basically fission almost all of it. If thorium were as rare as uranium we would be fine too, in terms of ppm it's almost as rare as uranium except in the case of uranium there is only a rare isotope suitable.

[myrkul]

From what I've heard it's not the commonness that counts but it's efficiency you can basically fission almost all of it. If thorium were as rare as uranium we would be fine too, in terms of ppm it's almost as rare as uranium except in the case of uranium there is only a rare isotope suitable.

Yup, common as dirt, completely "burn"able, even allows us to use old "waste" as fuel (providing some very interesting byproducts in the process).

Screwed, because you can't make a bomb out of it.

[justusranvier]

Thorium is almost three times more abundant than uranium, approximately as common as lead.

[Rudd-O]

Thorium is almost three times more abundant than uranium, approximately as common as lead.

That's actually a lot of thorium.