From: Iain Strachan (iain.strachan.asa@ntlworld.com)
Date: Tue Jul 22 2003 - 02:33:46 EDT
Jay,
> We could sure metaphor ourselves into a topic on the nature and form of
> education of the young and not so young if our goal is creativity.
>
> Fusion seems to be an area where science has focused its research dollars
> globally.
>
> Who is watching the focus of the research itself? Are other areas of
> investigation being ignored or starved as billions go into the
> electro-magnetic method?
>
> From recent postings it would seem that the cost has halved. Will more
> money be fruitful if the rate of innovation in the process accelerates?
>
I think you're slightly missing the point here. The cost has halved at the
expense of cutting back the program and almost certainly delaying the time
when we can have useful fusion. The original concept for ITER was for it to
be an experimental reactor, that would of itself produce usable energy. The
aim now is to establish the experimental basis for the design of such a
reactor.
The main alternative to the electro-magnetic method is laser implosion
fusion. The idea is that you have tiny pellets of Deuterium-Tritium which
are symmetrically imploded by massive laser beams, and thereby caused to
explode like mini H-bombs. The method is called "inertial confinement",
because it is the inertial of the matter in the fuel pellet that causes it
to stay together long enough for usable energy to be derived. A lot of
reserach and money has gone into this method, but as far as I'm aware it's
less economically viable than the magnetic confinement method. The laser
facilities required are absolutely gigantic - the lasers are the same size
as the Jet Torus hall. One of the prime motivators for funding such
applications is the obvious military interest in developing high power
lasers. But it seems extremely unlikely, given the massive laser facilities
required, that this method would be any cheaper than the Tokamak concept.
One of the reasons for the huge cost of the experiments is that they do not
produce useful energy & require a massive input of energy to power the
magnetic coils. The JET experiment, near where I live has a whole
sub-station of Didcot Power Station to provide the power during pulses.
Even that is not enough during the 30 second shot & half the energy supplied
is from a massive flywheel generator that is spun up to 225 RPM during the 9
1/2 minute down time between pulses, and during a shot its speed goes down
to half that. Note that ITER will be producing nothing but Hydrogen plasmas
for the first 7 years, so it too will not produce usable power, and even
when it does, there will not be any attempt to recycle the power. As far as
I know, the ITER coils will not require such a huge input of power, because
it will use superconducting coils. However, one still needs to input
massive amounts of energy to heat the plasma up to the required ignition
temperature. (By input of EM energy from coils and also by injection of
high energy beams of neutral particles).
As far as I know, the "Cold Fusion" concept is a dead duck.
Iain.
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