Re: [asa] $4 gas is here to stay

On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 9:25 PM, Glenn Morton <glennmorton@entouch.net> wrote:
> This is for Burgy, Iain and George
> Iain wrote:
>
>>>>> Concerning Tritium, do the figures you quote take into account the fact
> that tokamak fusion reactors are designed to breed tritium by having lithium
> blankets in the reactor wall? The neutrons from the fusion reactions
> interact with lithium to breed more tritium . Lithium is one of the most
> abundant elements.
>
> Iain<<<<
>
> No, but show me a commercial fusion reactor running right now. New
> technologies need about 50 years to be brought into use. Fusion isn't a new
> technology---it is a non-existent technology.
>
>

Glenn,

Please note that I wasn't saying that there is a commercial fusion
reactor running right now. I was simply questioning the credibility
of the quotation you gave. After some Google searching on Michael
Dittmar (and having found at least one blog "In praise of Michael
Dittmar" from someone evidently in the anti-nuclear lobby), I found
the PDF of his ASPO talk. Concerning the point about Lithium
breeding, I found the following points made in the PDF:

. A 1000 MW reactor "burns" 56 Kg of Tritium per year.
. Only a few Kg per year can be supplied from fission reactors! (
Exclamation mark his)
. Real fusion reactor must achieve tritium sufficiency!

(Yes, we knew that already; that's why scientists, including former
colleagues of mine have been researching and developing the technology
for years, and expect it to be tested in the ITER reactor).

Dittmar:

. More tritium must be made and extracted than burned!
. Proposed tritium breeding reaction (every neutron must be used!)
[Comment and exclamation mark are Dittmar's]:

n + lithium => tritium + neutron + 4.8 MEV

.. then in the next slide (highlighted in red):

. The impossible self-sustained tritium breeding chain!

Now on the face of it this is cast-iron; the arithmetic shows that the
DT fusion reaction is D+T => 4He + n, and hence it would see that to
regenerate a T needs to use every neutron, and since 100% efficiency
is unachievable this implies self-sustained breeding is impossible.

However, what Dittmar has omitted to tell you (and since he is a
nuclear physicist who works on CERN, I can only assume that he has
deliberately omitted this vital bit of information) is that Beryllium
is also used in the breeding blanket and acts as a neutron multiplier
via intermediate nuclear reactions. Hence breeding ratios > 1 are
indeed possible.

Given the superficial nature of Dittmar's argument here, one is also
bound to question what he says about fission.

His main point here is that the world's supply of Uranium will run out
in short order. This is largely due to the fact that only 0.7% of
naturally occurring Uranium is U235 and fissile whereas 99.35 is U238
and non-fissile. However, the U238 can be converted into Pu 239, which
is also fissile. It happens in conventional reactors faster than it
happens in "fast" breeder reactors. (The "fast" refers to the energy
of the neutrons, not the rate of breeding, so the anti-nuclear lobby's
chant "the only safe fast breeder is a rabbit" is based on ignorance).

However, Dittmar doesn't seem to mention that there exist huge
stockpiles of Plutonium as a legacy of the existing nuclear industry,
and that it is possible to burn this fuel in conventional reactors
(not fast reactors). In fact it is expedient to do so, because of the
vulnerability of these stockpiles to terrorist action, because much of
it is weapons grade.

Again, this appears to be an important fact that his talk omits to
mention, perhaps because it doesn't suit his case.

You started off by being extremely dismissive of Nuclear saying "Don't
look at nuclear". Unfortunately your chief witness seems to me to be
somewhat selective in the evidence he chooses to present. It seems
it's not only YEC's that get up to this kind of trick.

Iain

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Received on Sat Jun 7 08:14:12 2008