From: Iain Strachan (iain.strachan.asa@ntlworld.com)
Date: Tue Jul 22 2003 - 15:46:18 EDT
Jay,
> Or, is "cold fusion" a "dead duck" because of a lack of encouragement
(read
> "funding") of innovative creativity in the scientific community? Perhaps
> this is the price of preferring to focus on concepts already discovered
yet
> enormously expensive to develop.
>
I was working at UKAEA Culham (the centre for Fusion research) at the time
of the "Cold Fusion" indicent. I can tell you there was no lack of
encouragement. Cold fusion was the one topic of discussion at lunch.
Scientists all round the world attempted to reproduce Pons and Fleischmann's
results, including some people I know well at the neighbouring lab at
Harwell. They even lost important business opportunities because they were
required by Harwell senior management to try and replicate the Cold Fusion
results. As far as I'm aware, not a single lab round the world managed to
get a sustained fusion reaction, despite the most strenuous attempts and the
highest professional care being taken. There was a total absence of any
success, and eventually some of the theoretical physicists I shared lunch
with were becoming increasingly skeptical of the whole idea, as the nuclear
reaction being proposed was a "disallowed" transition that had a very low
probability & there was only some hand-waving explanation of how the
"disallowed" transition could take place in the Palladium lattice.
Eventually, IIRC, Linus Pauling effectively debunked the whole idea by
explaining away the excess heat that P&F had generated in terms of chemical
interactions with the Palladium (I think it was Palladium?) lattice.
> We can hope that like so many discoveries, a new theory of controlled
fusion
> will be discovered when someone is looking at an altogether different
> problem.
>
>
We can, of course, hope that something like this will turn up; but in the
meantime, as I have said before, the Tokamak is the nearest to delivering
the goods & it's still a long way off. IMHO, if we are to fill in the
energy gap before fusion becomes realistic, then we are going to have to
bite the bullet and go for much more conventional nuclear power (fission).
This is not going to be popular, but if the alternative is to slump to a
third world type economy, we'd better start doing that pretty quickly; I
understand it takes around 15 years to build a fission power station ...
Iain.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Iain Strachan" <iain.strachan.asa@ntlworld.com>
> To: "Jay Willingham" <jaywillingham@cfl.rr.com>; "Darryl Maddox"
> <dpmaddox@arn.net>; "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 2:33 AM
> Subject: Re: the hydrogen economy
>
>
> > 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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