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Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

bbc.co.uk

401–410 of 827 posts

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#401

> It's not a massive energy output - only enough to boil about 60 kettles' worth of water. This made me laugh. How much more British can you get?

You'd probably be surprised to learn that the UK is not at the top of the list of countries with the highest tea consumption.

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

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#402

In extension to this news and the press conference, one thing I am super excited about, is the private SPARC project and the MIT-spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). If you don't know about it already, I would highly recommend checking it out (e.g. by searching YouTube for "MIT Sparc Fusion Reactor" for some fairly accessible videos on the theory behind why they should achieve fusion way faster than the current…

There are certainly some exciting projects happening in the fusion world coming up. It seems likely we will start seeing much higher energy outputs, I think for SPARC they are predicting >10x the energy produced as what it will consume (Q > 10).

My biggest question is with the crazy temperatures involved will we ever see one of these things able to run for hours at a time? With SPARC they are shooting for 10 second bursts, so that would double this breakthrough for the JET reactor. Even with the magnetic containment there are components in there exposed to millions of degrees Celsius right? That leaves us with some significant material science problems to solve.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#404
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From other comment > I mean, start with why his wife is divorcing him (Jeffery Epstein) and why he's no longer on the board at Microsoft(inappropriate relationships with staffers), then go into how he's screwed up public schooling in the US, then Microsoft under him. That's the easy stuff that you can see publicly.

The guy's work has directly prevented the deaths of enormous numbers of poor people worldwide. That trumps everything else in my book. Also, don't fall for his wife's PR team. You have no idea why she's divorcing him. Claiming that the issue was Epstein is what any smart legal / publicity team would do in this circumstance.

>The guy's work has directly...

The guy's money has funded people who work to do these things.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's enough energy to boil those kettles dry, if my calculations are correct. To bring them to the boil, 59MJ would run about 600 kettles.

Water has a specific heat capacity of 4184J/kg/C. Lets say to get to the boil you need to go from 20C to 100C and that a kettle holds 1.75L. 59MJ / (80C * 4184J/kg/C) = 176kg ~= 176L ~= 100 kettles. Water has a latent heat of vaporization of 2260 kJ/kg. So to boil it dry: 59MJ / (80C * 4184J/kg/C + 2260 kJ/kg) = 22kg ~= 22L ~= 12 kettles. I have no idea what the journalist calculated.

Did you factor in the inefficiencies of the power distribution grid and the heating element of the kettle? I'd say the journalists are just repeating what they've been told by the scientists, and the scientists factored inefficiency in on a calculation similar to your first.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy's work has directly prevented the deaths of enormous numbers of poor people worldwide. That trumps everything else in my book. Also, don't fall for his wife's PR team. You have no idea why she's divorcing him. Claiming that the issue was Epstein is what any smart legal / publicity team would do in this circumstance.

>The guy's work has directly... The guy's money has funded people who work to do these things.

That, and there is no way to know that the people who he stole it from through anti-competitive practices wouldn't have funded even better things with it.

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy's work has directly prevented the deaths of enormous numbers of poor people worldwide. That trumps everything else in my book. Also, don't fall for his wife's PR team. You have no idea why she's divorcing him. Claiming that the issue was Epstein is what any smart legal / publicity team would do in this circumstance.

> Claiming that the issue was Epstein is what any smart legal / publicity team would do in this circumstance. If a PR team was going to pick a fake reason to hide a blasé real reason, why would they pick the biggest scandal possible? I thought rich people tried to keep their personal lives out of the news. Saying that they had drifted apart naturally while the real reason was Epstein is something like what a PR couns…

> If a PR team was going to

I think you need a PR team if you're going to start writing replies like this...

Re: Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

#410
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From other comment > I mean, start with why his wife is divorcing him (Jeffery Epstein) and why he's no longer on the board at Microsoft(inappropriate relationships with staffers), then go into how he's screwed up public schooling in the US, then Microsoft under him. That's the easy stuff that you can see publicly.

True, we should discount all his contributions and hold him a accountable for his past actions right? Man I'm glad the rest of us never make mistakes and have all contributed so much more then him..

Wow, it's like you're suggesting statutes of limitation on bad reputation? That's like depending on a populace have the memory of a goldfish for that to work. Oh, wait. Damnn, you're genius /s
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