A Star in a Bottle • Hacker News Board

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#21

Post by ck2 » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:24 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #13

jackgavigan wrote: post #9

As a child, I read Friday by Robert A Heinlein, which portrayed a future in which energy needs are addressed by energy storage devices called "Shipstones", which are described as a way to pack more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker."…

There isn't very much fuel in the reactor at a given time, and the reaction only happens in the very center. If the containment fails, the material will just continue in a straight line instead of being redirected to the center, and it will spread out and cool off very quickly. A bigger worry might be that too much fuel is added at once, but heating and ionizing all that fuel is already very difficult for the reactor…

I found this to make some sense to me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Reactor_overview

I had fears that fusion could become fission but seems like that is not possible.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#22

Post by mikeash » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:25 PM UTC

jackgavigan wrote: post #9

As a child, I read Friday by Robert A Heinlein, which portrayed a future in which energy needs are addressed by energy storage devices called "Shipstones", which are described as a way to pack more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker."…

I think you're mostly right and energy storage advances are much more exciting. However, they can substitute for each other to an extent.

For example, moving transportation off of messy and expensive fossil fuels is almost all about storage. If there was a $5, 2kg battery that could hold enough charge for a car to go 3000 miles, the world would switch to electric cars almost instantaneously.

We are also using fossil fuels to generate energy for lots of fixed usage where transmission is already in place. Take all of the coal power plants in the country and replace them with magical clean energy generation plants and you've made a vast improvement without any change in storage technology.

If storage was magically solved, then you could use wind and solar and whatever much more easily, and replace fossil fuels that way. But storage seems to be a much tougher game.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#23

Post by tomphoolery » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

jackgavigan wrote: post #9

As a child, I read Friday by Robert A Heinlein, which portrayed a future in which energy needs are addressed by energy storage devices called "Shipstones", which are described as a way to pack more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker."…

I'm pretty sure if this failed, the Earth would catastrophically jettison its atmosphere.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#24

Post by lifeformed » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

antimagic wrote: post #14

tfgg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I do think that alternative fusion paths should be better funded, cranks aside, I don't think that it's the fault of ITER that it's the most promising and best developed and so the best funded one. The entire field is ridiculously underfunded for what it can offer and we shouldn't be having to risk it all on one or two projects.

Exactly. This article just makes me mad - they are penny-pinching on quite simply the most important piece of technology that humanity has ever tried to develop. If commercial reactors are switched on by 2040, the planet's CO2 output will have dropped drastically by 2060 - way more than all but the most optimistic estimations linked to climate change. $10b is nothing compared to what was destroyed in the GFC. It's no…

It's a little bit over the cost of a single aircraft carrier.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#25

Post by ajcarpy2005 » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #19

a cryogenics plant, which will produce liquid helium Wait, they are manufacturing helium? Thought that wasn't possible? Or just converting gas to liquid?

Transmutation from one or more elements to one or more new elements is indeed possible, if difficult.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#26

Post by sp332 » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #21

sp332 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't very much fuel in the reactor at a given time, and the reaction only happens in the very center. If the containment fails, the material will just continue in a straight line instead of being redirected to the center, and it will spread out and cool off very quickly. A bigger worry might be that too much fuel is added at once, but heating and ionizing all that fuel is already very difficult for the reactor…

I found this to make some sense to me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Reactor_overview I had fears that fusion could become fission but seems like that is not possible.

The elements involved are some of the lightest that exist. It's nearly impossible to get them to fission in the best of cases.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#27

Post by marktangotango » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:28 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #3

ITER is a money hole. It was setup to suck R&D money away from real fusion research.

I believe he's referring to assertions made by Robert Bussard in this talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6z1vP4Eo8. Bussards comments on the DOE and funding tokomaks is toward the end iirc. Bussard is by no means a crank, he IS from a different era for sure.

Edit; for those just discovering polywell fusion; Bremelstrung radiation is the primary reason why it may or may not be practicable.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#28

Post by ck2 » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:29 PM UTC

Check this out, Japan is going their own way instead of this experiment

According to researchers at a demonstration reactor in Japan, a fusion generator should be feasible in the 2030s and no later than the 2050s. Japan is pursuing its own research program with several operational facilities that are exploring several fusion paths.

http://iopscience.iop.org/0029-5515/45/2/004

Also, they are already planning the successor to ITER, a commercial plant called DEMO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#29

Post by adamtj » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:29 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #19

a cryogenics plant, which will produce liquid helium Wait, they are manufacturing helium? Thought that wasn't possible? Or just converting gas to liquid?

It converts gas to liquid. The gas comes from radioactive decay of elements in the earth's crust. It's a non-renewable resource. When helium escapes into the atmosphere, it's so light that it eventually escapes out into space and is gone for good.

A fusion reactor such as this will make helium from hydrogen, and would be the only way we have to do so. It probably won't do it in industrially interesting quantities though.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#30

Post by DanBC » Mon, Feb 24, 2014, 4:31 PM UTC

antimagic wrote: post #14

tfgg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I do think that alternative fusion paths should be better funded, cranks aside, I don't think that it's the fault of ITER that it's the most promising and best developed and so the best funded one. The entire field is ridiculously underfunded for what it can offer and we shouldn't be having to risk it all on one or two projects.

Exactly. This article just makes me mad - they are penny-pinching on quite simply the most important piece of technology that humanity has ever tried to develop. If commercial reactors are switched on by 2040, the planet's CO2 output will have dropped drastically by 2060 - way more than all but the most optimistic estimations linked to climate change. $10b is nothing compared to what was destroyed in the GFC. It's no…

> Politicians honestly seem to think

I am not making an anti-American point here. UK politics has equally daft politicians. But politics is full of people like this:

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=87390

> "Wind is God's way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it's hotter to areas where it's cooler. That's what wind is. Wouldn't it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can't transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It's just something to think about."

http://imgur.com/gallery/JPoWLEx