Post ATEBnLUmZL9IBh182S by funranium@redwombat.social
(DIR) More posts by funranium@redwombat.social
(DIR) Post #ATEBnLUmZL9IBh182S by funranium@redwombat.social
2023-03-03T04:47:51Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
No, I don’t have any positive fusion takes for you. I will just reiterate what I’ve said many, many times before:You have gotten so far excited about a nuclear reaction that you never bother to think about what a reactor, much less a power station, will be like from a radiological point of view. I yelled at NIF researchers this week for “I told you 18 fucking years ago this would happen. I trained your employees for it!”
(DIR) Post #ATEBnM0Kg2NzlXmKDQ by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2023-03-03T04:51:49Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@funranium A friend of mine, who grew up at Los Alamos, tells me that one of the researchers there told her in the late '70s that the idea of ICF for power was totally absurd and nobody believed in it. He said, what they were trying to achieve was a highly controllable source of energetic neutrons, because it would make all kinds of research easier, and open the way to large-scale transmutation that even the HFIR at Oak Ridge could not achieve.Fusion is an engineering nightmare.
(DIR) Post #ATECAsH4rc6AVgpHjk by funranium@redwombat.social
2023-03-03T04:56:03Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@publius At least some NIF people have gotten their dick slammed in the door enough times to stop referring to it as fusion power research. It’s stockpile stewardship and neutronics experiments. That’s it.
(DIR) Post #ATEEP8JGF3B4Clm4ES by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2023-03-03T05:21:03Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@funranium I mean, I think it's worthwhile from the standpoint of pure science, but reading 1970s descriptions of notional ICF powerplants with porous ceramic reaction-chamber walls weeping liquid lithium, and elaborate scavenging systems to recover the 95+% of unburned reactants per cycle, has always filled me with a kind of horror.I'll accept that the thing could be designed, if you found someone ambitious enough, and even built, but operated? maintained?See attached image.
(DIR) Post #ATElpyT6Ej0PzMmb3o by dr_barnowl@topspicy.social
2023-03-03T11:35:38Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@publius @funranium I always liken it to making a practical reactor containing the world's most accurate and reliable machine gun, firing the world's most expensive gold-metal-jacket-uranium with tritium core bullets, at ten rounds a second, to be shot by the worlds most powerful laser array ... and somehow the huge heat exchanger you need fails to get in the way of all the laser beams.
(DIR) Post #ATFAy2niVfWkb3N4dc by Lilysea@aus.social
2023-03-03T04:52:20Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@funranium I really don't understand why people keep obsessing about fusion when solar panels and wind turbines are getting cheaper and cheaper, and more and more efficient, all the time!
(DIR) Post #ATFAy3Rm6jZObI744m by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2023-03-03T16:17:15Z
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@Lilysea @funranium PV panels and wind turbines can't reasonably meet a large fraction of the energy demands of a complex high-technology civilization. But we don't need them to.Fission with the regenerative fuel cycle is a reality. The uranium already above ground, used in suitable reactors, will yield up as much energy as all the fossil fuels which could ever be extracted, with much smaller environmental impacts than either fossils or "renewables" ― which have a huge land-use footprint.
(DIR) Post #ATFBETji8GnKliKlMm by funranium@redwombat.social
2023-03-03T04:54:52Z
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@Lilysea because the dream is much higher intensity in a smaller footprint. Doesn’t matter if it’s real or not, or ever will be real, it’s still a dream.
(DIR) Post #ATFBEUVDHenB92YhPM by sofawolfone@redwombat.social
2023-03-03T14:59:08Z
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@funranium @Lilysea Solar and Wind are somewhat democratized power generation sources. Once you pay for the installation and maintenance, no one important stands to make a large ongoing profit off of the energy made from them.Fission, Fusion, Hydrogen Fuel and the like all accomplish one very important thing: keeping the process and the resulting energy in the hands of the very few, so that they can make the most profit off of the energy produced.
(DIR) Post #ATFBEV6R3GZB0TyQQS by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2023-03-03T16:20:13Z
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@sofawolfone @funranium @Lilysea I beg to differ.Institutions such as Ontario Hydro or the British CEGB have very clearly shown that democratically-controlled centralized energy can provide everyone with economical service.Wind and solar are ideal for a society in which only the wealthy have reliable access to energy and the social goods it provides, and can grant or withhold those as they please. If you want to see what that looks like, mediaeval Europe is one of the less awful examples.
(DIR) Post #ATJdpsvXAt505bWqfI by BibbleCo@infosec.exchange
2023-03-05T18:48:09Z
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@publius @Lilysea @funranium o rly?https://www.icaew.com/insights/viewpoints-on-the-news/2020/nov-2020/chart-of-the-week-uk-electricity-projections
(DIR) Post #ATJjuagB2uWQfTyNM0 by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2023-03-05T21:07:39Z
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@BibbleCo @Lilysea @funranium Yes, REALLY.To make just one point : where do you think the energy it takes to make the PV panels you buy in China comes from? COAL. For many reasons, one of them being that semiconductor processing lines need huge amounts of energy, continuously : a single device can take literal months in fabrication (although PV cells, because simpler, take less time than microprocessors).
(DIR) Post #ATJuT6L0qTWCF8ATHU by BibbleCo@infosec.exchange
2023-03-05T21:33:38Z
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@publius @Lilysea @funranium *eyeroll