Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire A bit of good news - nuclear Fusion

Where's the Flux Capacitor???

Fusion power will always be fifteen years away.

That's true. Even a false rumor of one going bang would serve the purposes of those groups.

Ed

Yep. Haven't been able to talk Americans into a clean, cheap, energy source for their electrical power over the last four decades. Cheap Energy on a Silver Platter.They damn sure aren't gonna go for something sensible in their vehicles either.

I would think it would not be kept secret. After all, if the world had access to cheap, clean, abundant power, then the standard of living could rise everywhere, not just those countries with abundant natural resources.
That's the theory, of course. The reality would be the "Golden Rules", i.e., "Who ever has the gold makes the rules".

Ed

The Left will fight it tooth and nail. The last thing they want is a cheap, inexhaustible supply of clean energy. Leftist environmentalist Barry Commoner once remarked "that would be like giving a machine gun to a small child."

So, if I had a 10 megawatt reactor in the back of my Suburban, how fast would it go from 0 to 88 MPH??

The key today isn't so much keeping technology secret, because someone else will find out or come across the same technology on their own.

The key is bringing technology to market first.

BTW, I doubt this will be cheap energy. Safely controlling and containing massive quantities of energy is never cheap, and the more intense the energy source, the more expensive it is to control and contain.

windmills have far greater potential

not when the wind isn't blowing...

k, then solar

Not when the sun isn't shining.

Both wind and solar require an on command backup, such as natural gas or coal. Wind and Solar cost a lot but are not a real solution.

k, then hydro

I'd really like to read how they finally got a working model...maybe they finally got one of them UFO's at area 51 disassembled & figured out the technology???

Filter the methane from domed sports stadiums after the game. Problem solved.

Got Gas?

Hydro is expensive. When you include the cost of a new dam and the expense of buying out the owners of all the flooded land it the most expensive form of power in the United States.

k, then a guy a a stationary bike with a strap connected to a generator.

I think Lockheed manages some of the national labs like Sandia and Los Alamos so they put this stuff out there to get support for more(endless) funding for the panacea of cheap and plentiful energy. It's likely just more welfare projects for the overeducated.

How about all those able bodies that are currently collecting welfare? miles

Close. Lockeed runs Sandia national labs, los alamos is a consortium of :is a private limited liability company (LLC) formed by the University of California, Bechtel, Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services, and URS Energy and Construction

Lawrence Livermore is also run by a consortium LLC composed of I think 51% UC and Bechtel In't, and some other small players. I worked there for 34 years, retiring this spring.

The need for outside companies is a DOE/ NNSA regulation, something about sharing the wealth as one would with a patent. .GOV isn't supposed to be in the business of MAKING MONEY, and if memory serves in the Regan admin. the rules were set for collaborations with companies was started.

Surprised nobody mentioned the main competition, NIF. When I left they had abandoned LIFE which was supposed to be another use for burning Nuclear waste ( used fuel rods) and salvaging the multi-billion dollar laser system. The problems facing NIF is the Deuterium/ tritium capsules were not burning as efficiently as they need, and they were about at a standtill on how to move forward to fix the problem.


I am out of the loop, could care less about the place. When the Gov't demanded a outside contractor run Los Alamos and LLNL, the love for science left 50% of the staff, many good, intelligent people retired and left the place with "new blood".


There are good people there, still, but at LLNL about 50% will retire in 5 years, I think all technical work will move to Los Alamos and the super computer at LLNL , the one that gathers data for the " we aren't spying on US citizens" will be what is left of Livermore, sans a huge Vacuum chamber with 92 lasers.

I worked at many outside locations, 11 yrs at NTS diagnosing nuclear weapons, then the 1992 freeze, followed by many offsite, and onsite work. It was a good place to work, I got to do a lot of good science, and leave with a pension.

BTW, The lab and Los Alamos have been reducing staff, at the max legal quantity of "let go employee's per month" secretly for over a year to keep science alive. Some regulations that any more than 50 per month needs more paperwork.

I enjoyed all but the last 5 years, when UC ran the business like a campus, and allowed science to be fun.