Re: Budget Cuts Will Mean Layoffs at Fermilab

On Dec 25, 5:03 pm, Agent Smith <agent-sm...@two-blocks-on-your-
left.com> wrote:
"hhc...@xxxxxxxxx" <hhc...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:4bb47984-638e-4351-
8ba0-597d50c39...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:





On Dec 25, 12:24 am, Eric Gisse <jowr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 24, 6:46 pm, "hhc...@xxxxxxxxx" <hhc...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

Fusion is, and always will be, the power source of the future.

Eric, I'm perhaps more optimistic about controlled fusion than you,
but would compare today's situation with that of 19th century
scientists recognizing radioactivity, while having no concept of how
to create a useful chain reaction.

It is a fact that a great amount of energy is available via fusion.
What to date is missing is a credible method that works on paper to
effectively release that energy in a controlled way and harness it.
Costly, blind experimentation will not get us there, so as far as I am
concerned, it's time to go back to the drawing boards (the theoretical
think tanks). We need a totally new paradigm before throwing still
more money at essentially blind experimentation.

This is why the money has been cut.  Secveral years ago, a maverick
within the field, Larry Lidsky. recognized that incrementl changes were
insufficient to the task, and he proposed doing exactly what you just
said.  however, he was unable to get anybody else in the fusion
community to accept his opinion.

But Washington was apparently paying attention, because that's when the
repeated fusion budget started to happen.

I'm optimistic enough to believe that somewhere during the next 50 or
100 years, such a paradigm will exist. On the other hand, if it is
discovered, I am not sure that an unlimited supply of virtually free
energy would be benificial to mankind and the earth, realizing that
all that energy would end up as heat.

Unfortunately, the supply of energy would be only as "unlimited" as the
supply of tritium fuel.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Your assumption that tritium would be the choice fuel for fusion seems
premature to me. I'd prefer to wait for the 'New Paragigm' that I I've
suggested, then see what contraints on fuel selection that it imposes.
While today's science focuses on fusion of simple atoms, such as
hydrogen and its isotopes because it IS simple to do in an
uncontrolled fusion reaction, I tend to look forward to a somewhat
more sophisticated process being ultimately discovered for a
controlled fusion reaction leading to a practical energy source --
which in itself requires something beyond just a controlled fision
reaction. You have to be able to capture the nuclear energy produced
through the reaction, and covert it to provide a practical power
source just as a fission reactor of today does. This in turn raises
some interesting questions, such as how do you (1) moderate and
control a continuous fusion reaction and (2) how do you capture the
energy liberated and covert it into a useful and practical power
source.

Here is where we again run into the unknown paradigm issue, and it is
key to the fusion reaction ever becoming a practical energy and power
source. In my mind, any useful continuous fusion process must have a
mechanism for moderation, simply to achieve the required negative
feedback and reaction stability, plus a mechanism to "scram" the
reaction if needed in emergencies. It also must provide a mechanism
for capturing the liberated energy either electrically or thermally.
Lacking either of these two mechanisms, the fusion reaction has the
potential for doing a great deal of unintentional damage; damage
consistent with turning a city the size of Chicago into a large,
radioactive crater! Of course, a paradigm for such a fusion reactor
does not even exist today, however I believe that Steve Jones in his
paper speculating on catalyzed fusion existing in the deep magma,
focused thinking in a new direction (unfortunately leading some
clueless folks into the Cold Fusion fiasco). At any rate the Jones
paper for a time focused fusion researchers in a direction quite
different from the Stellerators, Tokomaks, etc., into a new direction
of thought. Other theores no doubt will follow over the years, and I
will predict that some day a graduate student researcher at MIT,
Harvard, Chicago, or Cal Tech will be sitting in their tiny appartment
with a pad of paper (actually today the method is that you use boxes
of fan-fold computer or teletype paper) and in his or her many pages
of computations and notes will see something interesting new unveiling
itself before them...and that will be the eureka moment. That's
traditionally been the way that science makes its greatest
breakthroughs!

I still worry about what all that newly revealed source of energy, and
ultimatly heat, will do to life here on planet earth.

Harry C.

p.s., Above of course is largely my speculation as a older physicist,
so the the predicted 'New Paradigm' on fusion may never exist. Still,
since the potential energy does exist within nuclear structures, I'm
predicting that someone will eventually find a way to liberate and
apply/expoit it.









.

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