Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Cold fusion - explain please

madzone

madzone

Physically unfavourable
I watched that documentary with the cute scientist but have to admit I'm non the wiser about cold fusion and what it actually is. He seemed to be suggesitng that it was the solution to our energy needs. Is it? If so why are people still sticking fucking turbines up in really beautiful countryside?
 
nuclear fusion is what the sun does. it's very very hard to do, it involves temperatures of millions of degrees, the way they're currently trying to do it.
Cold fusion was a technique some guys 20 years ago thought they had for doing it at 'room temperature' with desktop equipment. it turned out to be bollocks.

If any sort of nuclear fusion can be made to work with a sensible cost, then it is the end of our energy problems, you can run them on (processed) seawater.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
 
Thanks :) I remember now that they were talking about making a star. In the programme (did you see it) they were giving projected dates of only 25 odd yrs in the future for having cracked it.

Why aren't the greenies backing this? I mentioned it to my neighbour (who's doing an MA at CAT) and he'd never heard of it.
 
We say that we will put the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The
problem is, we don’t know how to make the box.

​
S´ebastien Balibar, Director of Research, CNRS
 
They're always 25 years away. They were 25 years away 25 years ago. The hard truth, IMO, is that they've picker the very very hard way of doing it, and they may be able to make it work, but it'll cost billions and billions for each generator and they'll be hideously complicated. The greenies don't back it because a)it has the word nuclear in it and b)it's massive, centralised, expensive and not proven yet. And for b) they're right. If we want to solve today's problem's today, we have to use today's solutions.

If you want to bend your mind further, then have a google for a thing called a Polywell, which is a bit of a dark horse research project which might a chieve useful fusion for a fraction of the cost/difficulty.
 
I first heard of it in a science fiction book- a small spacecraft was powered by a Tokomak Reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak

which is one of the real world ideas for a cold fusion reactor. Don't know how far they are with that one. There are other ideas as well (crispy will know more about those I'm sure- my memory is a sieve sometimes)
 
They said they think it's possible that in another 25yrs though that they will have been able to 'make the box'

Why aren't the govt making more of this?
 
madzone said:
Thanks :) I remember now that they were talking about making a star. In the programme (did you see it) they were giving projected dates of only 25 odd yrs in the future for having cracked it.

Why aren't the greenies backing this? I mentioned it to my neighbour (who's doing an MA at CAT) and he'd never heard of it.
Click to expand...

I guess it's hard to back something that doesn't exist. I don't think everyone's convinced it's possible to do at all (at sensible cost, at least) let alone in 25 yrs time.
 
spacemonkey said:
He'd never heard of Nuclear Fusion? :eek:
Click to expand...
He'd never heard of 'Cold Fusion' - I think anything with the word 'nuclear' in it means greenies switch off :D He's at this very moment erecting a monstrous wind turbine which is going to change the landscape round here for good :(
 
teuchter said:
I guess it's hard to back something that doesn't exist. I don't think everyone's convinced it's possible to do at all (at sensible cost, at least) let alone in 25 yrs time.
Click to expand...
But that scientist is very handsome so he must be right
 
madzone said:
They said they think it's possible that in another 25yrs though that they will have been able to 'make the box'

Why aren't the govt making more of this?
Click to expand...
International governments are - they're spending billions on a prototype reactor called ITER. It'll be built in France. My bet is that they'll make it work, but it'll be horribly complicated. Like launching the space shuttle. We can't rely on such expensive, complicated technology to save us. We have energy problems now, so we need to fix them now, not hang our wishes on a technology that hasn't been proved and has been 25 years ahead of our grasp ever since it was first thought of.
 
madzone said:
He'd never heard of 'Cold Fusion' - I think anything with the word 'nuclear' in it means greenies switch off :D He's at this very moment erecting a monstrous wind turbine which is going to change the landscape round here for good :(
Click to expand...

Quite frankly, fuck the landscape. If it's a choice between coal or wind, choose wind - it lasts longer.
 
Crispy said:
They're always 25 years away. They were 25 years away 25 years ago. The hard truth, IMO, is that they've picker the very very hard way of doing it, and they may be able to make it work, but it'll cost billions and billions for each generator and they'll be hideously complicated. The greenies don't back it because a)it has the word nuclear in it and b)it's massive, centralised, expensive and not proven yet. And for b) they're right. If we want to solve today's problem's today, we have to use today's solutions.

If you want to bend your mind further, then have a google for a thing called a Polywell, which is a bit of a dark horse research project which might a chieve useful fusion for a fraction of the cost/difficulty.
Click to expand...

Turbines aren't 'proved' either though are they? I fuckin' hate them :(
 
Crispy said:
Quite frankly, fuck the landscape. If it's a choice between coal or wind, choose wind - it lasts longer.
Click to expand...
Hmmm....we'll ahve to agree to disagree on 'fuck the landscape' :)

My issue with them is that they're springing up everywhere - on private land. I don't so much mind the farms but the single ones that people are putting up near their houses make my tits itch. I just think it's a bit short sighted.
 
Well they're easy enough to take back down if it turns out they're not needed. But right now, the UK's native gas supplies are in decline, our nuclear plants are coming to the end of their lives, and climate change is a real problem. In those conditions, we don't have many options and wind power is one of them.
 
Crispy said:
Yes they are. You put one up, the wind blows, electricity comes up. Very easy to do, no billion dollar research needed.
Click to expand...
But how efficient are they? Does their efficiency balance with the carbon used to make them? Does their efficiency justify the impact they have on the landscape (greenies seem happy to moan about pylons while erecting monstrous great big fucking turbines)

Isn't there a less obtrusive and more efficient way of harnessing the power of the wind?
 
Cold fusion is when a chef tries to serve frozen deserts from different cultures in such a way that they compliments each other.

e.g. Italian Strawberry Ice cream with Indian Vanilla Kulfi.

Happy to help.
 
madzone said:
But how efficient are they? Does their efficiency balance with the carbon used to make them?
Click to expand...
Yes. Around 6-12 months energy parback IIRC
Does their efficiency justify the impact they have on the landscape
Click to expand...
That's a value judgement with no straight answer. Personally, I'd prefer to see themm in desolate places and offshore platforms.
Isn't there a less obtrusive and more efficient way of harnessing the power of the wind?
Click to expand...
No
 
Crispy said:
International governments are - they're spending billions on a prototype reactor called ITER. It'll be built in France. My bet is that they'll make it work, but it'll be horribly complicated. Like launching the space shuttle. We can't rely on such expensive, complicated technology to save us. We have energy problems now, so we need to fix them now, not hang our wishes on a technology that hasn't been proved and has been 25 years ahead of our grasp ever since it was first thought of.
Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to achieve nuclear fusion, you either need very high temperatures or very high pressure.

The problem is we can't recreate the pressure that is present in the sun. Therefore it's the temperature that we have to work on.

We'd need about 100 million C....whereas the maximum in the sun is only a poxy 15 million.
 
That's the basics of it. But remember that 'temperature' is really just 'velocity' of the ions involved. So what if you could accelerate ions without having to heat them up? How about accelerating your +ve ions with a -ve electric field, so that when two ions collide, they fuse?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
 
Get back to the shoes and cats and crying about your boyfriend forums or whatever those places are then :mad:
 
Crispy said:
Yes. Around 6-12 months energy parback IIRC

That's a value judgement with no straight answer. Personally, I'd prefer to see themm in desolate places and offshore platforms.
No
Click to expand...

I've heard wave generators touted as the better option a few times...
 
Crispy said:
That's the basics of it. But remember that 'temperature' is really just 'velocity' of the ions involved. So what if you could accelerate ions without having to heat them up? How about accelerating your +ve ions with a -ve electric field, so that when two ions collide, they fuse?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
Click to expand...

Ahhh the Polywell.

This part makes me sex-wee -

Bussard noted that, "Thus, we have the ability to do away with oil (and other fossil fuels) but it will take 4-6 years and ca. $100-200M to build the full-scale plant and demonstrate it."

Bussard said "Somebody will build it; and when it's built, it will work; and when it works people will begin to use it, and it will begin to displace all other forms of energy."
Click to expand...

Somebody give that man $200 million. :mad:
 
DotCommunist said:
I've heard wave generators touted as the better option a few times...
Click to expand...
They work too. It's not an either-or situation with renewables though, we need to use them all. And even then we'd never hope to replace fossil fuel capacity, so serious reductions in energy use would be needed too.

If we want to have our current lifestyles and economy and cut out CO2 and avoid relying on other countries and keep every hill and beach and river free of power plants, then a technological miracle in the form of cheap easy fusioin is our only saviour. Otherwise, compromises will just have to be made. Cook the planet, use much less energy, kill 9 out of every 10 people. That sort of thing :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

A
Fusion Ignition Achieved
Replies
1
Views
186
8ball
8ball
H
Neutrino detection, directly revealing for the first time that the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) fusion-cycle is at work in our sun
Replies
1
Views
323
blossie33
blossie33
R
maths help please: linear and quadratic equation help
Replies
11
Views
395
rutabowa
R
H
How Quantum Computers Break Encryption | Shor's Algorithm Explained
Replies
4
Views
552
yield
Y
H
Explainable Artificial Intelligence
Replies
10
Views
686
Ralph Llama
Ralph Llama
Back
Top Bottom