Researchers Report Bubble Fusion Results Replicated

Spacedaily ^ | 3/4/04 | Troy

[Brett66]

Peer review, replication and measurements of Tritium. This sounds like the real deal........

[marvlus]

Are we talking about a potential for clean, cheap, and safe energy? I need a layman's interpretation of this article.

[Paradox]

Are we talking about a potential for clean, cheap, and safe energy? I need a layman's interpretation of this article.

Potentially, yes, however this is just the first rudimentary step. It remains to be seen how this process can be used to yield a large amount of usable energy.

Still, it is a pretty big step..

[AntiGuv]

OK, I more or less understand this and why it's so exciting, but here's my question: Is the energy output of this fusion process greater than the energy input?

[BikePacker]

Tiny Bubbles...

[hopespringseternal]

Achieving fusions isn't all that hard. Getting useful energy out of it is.

It remains to be seen whether this will ever be more than a lab curiosity: Just how much heat can they generate with it? Note that producing enough heat to be worth talking about means producing enough neutrons that you aren't comparing it to background radiation, you are worried about shielding the thing so you don't kill yourself.

That is the other dirty little secret of fusion research: It is nowhere near as clean as the researchers claim. There is a lot of neutron radiation and the corresponding danger of creating radioactive isotopes. Once the greens figure this out, they will shut it down just as surely as fission.

[Brett66]

I don't think they're anywhere near break-even with it. The exciting thing about this is that they've done this on a cheap table-top device which suggests it will be several orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to get energy from this process than the huge tokomaks that the multi-nation ITER will ever be able to approach.

[Semper Paratus]

Europe is about to complete a humongous particle collider for fusion research.

It would be great if this is the real deal for US technology.

[AntiGuv]

OK, now I completely understand. Thanks!

[CasearianDaoist]

I wonder if ITER will ever reach breakeven. I think that we will regret our involvement with ITER - it will be the ISS debacle writ large. We should upgrade existing facilities and plan out for sprialling in sml.l.er reactors when and if we see results. ITER looks like another EU disaster to me.

[CasearianDaoist]

If you are talking about the LHC at CERN that is not a fusion project that is a HEP project. It does not have much to do with fusion, at least not directly. Or are you talking about ITER?

[Brett66]

I suspect we'll figure out several alternative energy sources before they even figure out what nation they're going to build the ITER in.

[Semper Paratus]

you talking about ITER?

Is that the one in Switzerland?

[Brett66]

Here's the latest from ITER's website:

Further discussions took place on Saturday as part of negotiations between the participants in the ITER Transitional Arrangements with a view to reaching a decision on the ITER construction site. They released the following common message:

"Delegations from China, European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States met at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna on 21st February, 2004 to advance the ITER negotiations.

The delegations recognised the intensive work done following the Ministerial Meeting for ITER that took place on 20th December 2003.

The delegations agreed to convene a meeting of experts in early March for a joint appreciation in common terms of a number of key topics, in order to bring the further technical analysis to completion.

ITER Parties will continue their discussions including further exploration of a broader project approach to fusion power.

All delegations reaffirmed their commitment to the consensual process towards joint implementation of ITER."

It's like a UN reactor, what a mess!

ITER

[CasearianDaoist]

No, you are talking about CERN. It is like our Fermilab, only the new rig will be an order of magnitude more powerful (and we pitched in half a billion to help CERN.) You can thank the Democrats for killing the superconducting collider in TX. Had that been built we would have been there awhile ago. Look for Europeans to take all of the Noble prizes in High Energy Physics for the next 12 years or so. We are likely to not be a leader in this field pretty soon.

This is not a fusion project, as far as I know.

[MainFrame65]

What they are doing here, if it actually is working and not some flaw in the experimant design, involves a rate of nuclear fusion measured in countable numbers of atoms. The energy released, while purportedly real, is below the threshold of detection, and the energy density is close to zero.

To create a practical energy source, all of these would have to be scaled up by many orders of magnitude. I don't believe that energy could be extracted from such a system as anything other than heat, which means the ability to boil water to produce large quantities of high-pressure steam, continuously.

Perhaps, but that is a long way off when we are not even completely sure that the process works at all.

[lafroste]

Europe is about to complete a humongous particle collider for fusion research.

It WOULD be somewhat humorous if, just as the EU gets their ultra high cost collider built, it becomes obsolete....

[keysguy]

The oil companies are not all that pure either. I used a gasoline additive in the 60's that nearly doubled mileage in my 64 chevy. It was bought up and taken off the market.

[Nick Danger]

[RightWhale]

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

They probably included county sales tax in their calculations.