Fusion: The quest to recreate the Sun’s power on Earth

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120810-the-quest-to-recreate-the-sun

30 57 14 years ago

"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com."

What kind of logic is that?

alexhawdon2• 14 years ago

Massive 'WTF'.

So, if you live in the UK and directly (through license fee) or indirectly (through taxes) fund the BBC then you don't get access to the content they give away to the rest of the world for free? Okaaaaaay

martswite2• 14 years ago

Apart from the fact that BBC Worldwide isn't funded by our license fee or tax payers money. Still don't understand why we can't view it. Is it a subscription service to the rest of the world?

flog• 14 years ago

Let me clarify, as a former employee.

BBC World Wide makes it's money on BBC.com with advertising. For instance, Rolex watches in banner adverts.

If UK citizens were to see a BBC property with advertising on it there would be a shit storm of epic proportions, since we pay the license fee. So, if there isn't a separately maintained version without adverts then we don't get to see it.

simba-hiiipower2• 14 years ago

that's pretty ridiculous; had no idea access to BBC Future is blocked in the UK!?

and, ok, so it's a part of BBC Worldwide which is run as a commercial property to fund standard BBC programming, but does anyone have any insights as to why allowing access to such content in the UK would prevent or hinder this goal in any way?

Tycho• 14 years ago

The phrase 'adding insult to injury' springs to mind.

__alexs• 14 years ago

http://www.bbc.com.nyud.net/future/story/20120810-the-quest-...

Coral Cache to the rescue :-/

kator2• 14 years ago

Reminds me of a really old short story about a planet that built a black-hole drive. The story leads right up to the point where they hit the power button. And then it breaks to an "astronomical observer XY-1134" and his report on "yet another soloar system destroyed by attempts to travel faster then light".

I'm paraphrasing but does anyone wonder what happens if the fusion leaks out of the container and lights the planet on fire?

It makes me laugh that everyone is so focused on all sorts of dooms day scenarios and the reality is most likely someone will drop a vial of something horrible accidentally in a lab somewhere and half the human population of earth will be wiped out in 30 days.

Or most we'll just keep worrying about all this stuff and most of us will be dead, gone and dust before anything really interesting happens.

coffeeaddicted• 14 years ago

I'm absolutely no expert at all in this area, but isn't fusion just happening because of extreme high pressure (caused by gravity in the sun)? In that case the moment it leaks out it simply means the pressure to keep fusion reactions going on is gone. Which is likely the whole difficulty of getting fusion running at all - keeping the pressure up high enough.

Although I guess it would cause some big explosion.

simba-hiiipower2• 14 years ago

not an expert here either, but that seems to be the case from what i've read. unlike fission, you need constant input of material (and in the case of sustaining a reaction on earth, energy to keep the reactor stable).

from the article:

Once the reaction is initiated by a laser shot, the heat produced by the atomic fusion will help to keep the core hot. But unlike a fission reaction that takes place in nuclear power stations and atomic bombs, the fusion reaction is not self perpetuating. It requires a constant input of material or else it quickly fizzles out, making the reaction far safer. And unlike what you might have seen in a recent Batman movie, the chamber cannot be transformed into a nuclear bomb.

johnchristopher• 14 years ago

> I'm paraphrasing but does anyone wonder what happens if the fusion leaks out of the container and lights the planet on fire?

I don't much about fusion 101 but I read that the exact same question was asked when humans started using fission.

Any additionnal information on the short story you mention ? I'd be interested in reading it.

alexhawdon2• 14 years ago

Yes, I remember hearing an anecdote that the scientists working on the Manhattan project weren't entirely sure the reaction would stop or just keep going when they tested the first atomic bomb. I have no idea if this is correct - can anyone enlighten us?

indiecore• 14 years ago

To be fair running experiments like these in our only biosphere isn't exactly the sanest thing. I'd rather be doing stuff like this (and biological research) on the moon or something. There's a good short story about this somewhere I'll see if I can dig it up.

stephengillie• 14 years ago

Maybe we can convince our Mars Rovers to do some of the crazier experiments. ;)

beobab• 14 years ago

Azimov did a short story a while back: http://thevirtualcommunity.yuku.com/topic/1222/SILLY-ASSES-b...

davidmerrique• 14 years ago

Please, if you can remember the name of the story, I'd love to read it.

kator2• 14 years ago

It was a really old story.. I think I read it in a magazine in the early '80s and it was old then..

ZoFreX• 14 years ago

Fusion isn't like fission, if it leaks out of the containment field then it'll just stop. Even if all the energy did get released in one go, we have detonated literally thousands of fusion bombs within our atmosphere and so far have not set the planet on fire.

lectrick• 14 years ago

Massive drop in pressure would also mean massive drop in temperature.

Oh, and probably an impressive explosion.

But that's it.

mikeash3• 14 years ago

> I'm paraphrasing but does anyone wonder what happens if the fusion leaks out of the container and lights the planet on fire?

There have been literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fusion devices exploded in the atmosphere, and we're still here.

sp3323• 14 years ago

We've also detonated quite a few underground. Not to mention, there are many earthquakes and volcanoes that release hundreds of times more energy than a fusion bomb, and while they are dangerous, you can see that the planet as a whole is still pretty safe.

webreac• 14 years ago

In fact, before very high energy experiments, they compute the risk of creating a black hole using all the different models, even the fancier.

ten_fingers5• 14 years ago

The fusion reaction itself is easy to cause just in a simple desktop experiment. So, the fuel is deuterium, that is, heavy hydrogen, that is, hydrogen with an extra neutron in the nucleus. So, use deuterium instead of hydrogen to make water and get heavy water. Then have a target with some deuterium and an accelerator and shoot some deuterium at the target. Presto: A fusion reaction as described in the article.

Easy? Yes. Practical? No! The reaction rate is tiny. Likely nearly all of the deuterium shot at the target causes no reaction and, thus, has the energy used to accelerate the deuterium wasted.

New? No. This has been understood for decades.

Generate a chain reaction? Nope.

Destroy the planet? Not a chance!

Retric• 14 years ago

Self sustaining fusion is hard, which directly relates to why you can't 'ignite' the atmosphere. The same concerns where raised when people started building A-Bomb's but even a 50MT bomb results in minuscule amounts of atmospheric fusion.

As far as wiping out people goes, it's a lot harder than you might think. I have seen estimates where a 'full scale' nuclear exchange between US and Russia would have done far less damage than most people assumed. It's hard to comprehend just how large the US is, or the fact that people have already detonated thousands of bombs which did little to increase the level of background radiation. Granted most of them where sub 10MT, but carpet bombing is more cost effective than a Tsar Bomba bomb.

chubbard• 14 years ago

I hope they are successful, but I think the work Robert Bussard's work sounds more promising. The reason Fusion hasn't work to produce net energy is inherent to the tokamak design. You spend too much energy charging up the magnets to keep the plasma from colliding into the wall. Which is why more material is constantly added to the mix. Bussard currently holds the record for most fused particles/second (I think that's the metric) beating Farnsworth's record set in the 60s. Neither of them used Tokamaks to set their respective records.

He has made significantly more progress towards the goal of net energy production from Fusion over 40 years and billions spent on Tokamak research. I think his ideas have lots of promise, but oddly enough society hasn't trained people in this type of science in decades.

Problem is Bussard passed away not long ago so progress on Polywell is slow since there are very few people out there with the technical know how to pick up where he left off. But, still he has left quite a lot of documents and details about what he has done. I hope research continues.

http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2012/...

kabdib• 14 years ago

Counter-intuitive number: The net energy production in the sun's core is about the same as what a mammal produces per cubic meter. So we're already there, we just need more mammals. :-)

While fusion is indeed what powers the sun, we're trying to do something with fusion that's on a completely different scale.

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

Obligatory semi-XKCD: http://what-if.xkcd.com/4/

a-priori• 14 years ago

Not according to my calculations.

The sun's energy production is 3.846x10^26 W, nearly all of which is produced in its core which has a volume of 2.207x10^25 m^3. This gives the sun's core a power density of 17.43 W/m^3.

The average human male has a basal metabolism rate of about 81.3W, with a volume of 0.0664 m^3. This gives an energy density of 1224W/m^3.

So by volume, a human produces over 70 times the energy of the sun's core.

(Source: Various queries to Wolfram Alpha.)

laserDinosaur• 14 years ago

Wow, that's surprising.

gte910h3• 14 years ago

That's amazing, so the matrix was not that silly after all.

drucken2• 14 years ago

Tokamaks have always seemed to me such a massive distraction in practical energy production, other than ancillary benefits due to the funding, upfront energies involved, and sheer scale.

Instead military complexes are quietly focussing on other nuclear research such as Polywell devices or forgoing the difficulties of fusion entirely and focussing on Generation IV fission reactor types such as Molten-Salt Reactors (MSR).

I'm willing to bet that the world's energy problems will be greatly ameliorated or even solved long before ITER ever produces more energy than it consumes. Even if it ever worked, the likelihood is that the extreme dependence on scale of any installation would make it impractical in a future we are heading to where everything is greatly distributed, including energy generation.

demallien• 14 years ago

I'll take that bet. ITER won't just break even, it will have sustained (15min) runs where it produces 10 times as much energy as was input. This is not wishful thinking, this is the expected output of the reactor, which will be attained unless something really unexpected goes on in the reaction chamber.

It should be completed in less than 10 years, so I'm curious as to what you think will solve/ameliorate the world's energy problems in such a short timeframe.

ten_fingers5• 14 years ago

How about the part

> Global energy demand is expected to double by 2050, while the share coming from fossil fuels – currently 85% – needs to drop dramatically if we are to reduce carbon emissions and limit global warming.

That is a highly controversial statement. But it is just dropped in there. Just dropped in.

Question: Where does that statement get its legs? That is, what forces, influences, or whatever are causing it to be just dropped in, just sprinkled on like salt on food?

To me dropping in that statement makes the BBC and the author look really silly; I can't believe that dropping in that statement helps their credibility or reputation. So, why are they just dropping in that statement?

Here's one reason: Just keep pushing that story. Everyday, every way, just push it. So, keep the story going. Get others in the media, e.g., the NYT, to do the same.

Then, for the payoff, about once a week, use some anecdotal data as an excuse to write a full story about 'global warming'. That story is really easy to write -- just pull up the framework story, fill in some blanks, and, presto, get a new story with new ad revenue. Maybe that's the answer.

enko• 14 years ago

> That is a highly controversial statement. But it is just dropped in there. Just dropped in.

It's a pretty uncontroversial statement to me. In fact half of it seems self-evident, the other merely the overwhelming consensus.

And so maybe that's why it was dropped in. Just dropped in. Just dropped in, like a drop-bear dropping into a salt-sprinkling-party. Just dropped in!

ten_fingers5• 14 years ago

Part I

Okay, I'll bite. I'll type quickly, so there will be some rough edges. But the basics are really simple and will be clear enough.

Here I bring good news: Warm up the barbie, feel no guilt, and enjoy the picnic.

I can bite because there is, within what can be said with any seriousness, a very easy and, for what can be said, relatively good answer.

No, the answer is as science really bad, but so far likely and apparently there's nothing better. So, it's what we are stuck with. Sorry 'bout that.

First off, the NASA site is total, cooked-up, Saint Laureate Al Guru, please send more money, the sky is falling, crack-pot, rip-off, flim-flam, fraud, scam, dirty politics BS, and I will so explain.

But first the simple answer. There are just two parts.

The first part is from the PDF

Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, National Research Council, 'Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years', ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196 pages, National Academies Press, 2006,

long and still available at

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html

There we go to the graph on page 2. It's a crude graph, but it's likely and apparently about the best data available.

So, here's what we see: As of year 2006, the date of the study, as far as we can tell, the temperature of the Earth in year 2006 was exactly the same as in year 1000, and the increase in temperature over the last 100 years is exactly the same as the increase from year 900 to year 1000. As far as we can tell. The list of authors includes some of the most respected scientists on the planet, e.g., in time series, Brillinger at Berkeley.

And we don't believe that CO2 from humans or anything else was responsible for the temperature from year 900 to year 1000.

And, since year 1000, we fell into The Little Ice Age, for whatever reasons, solar activity, the orbit of the earth, volcanoes, whatever, and since then have been pulling out of The Little Ice Age. As we have pulled out of The Little Ice Age, the planet has warmed. Semi-, pseudo-, quasi-amazing.

We don't want to go back to The Little Ice Age.

So, as far as we can tell, the increase in CO2 from the industrial revolution has had exactly zip, zilch, zero effect on the temperature of the earth.

Here's a short Q&A:

Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Sure, that's Physics 101. But CO2 is not a very effective greenhouse gas since it absorbs only in three quite narrow frequency bands in the infrared, one band for each of bending, twisting, and stretching of the molecule.

Then the 'greenhouse' effect is sunlight hitting the surface, warming the surface, the surface radiating in the infrared as a Planck black (or 'gray') body, CO2 absorbing the radiation and warming. But the amount of such radiation is limited by what comes from the sun and in the context essentially fixed so that once absorb that amount, more CO2 won't absorb more. Moreover, even if CO2 doesn't absorb some of that radiation now, water vapor, methane, etc. may. So, the warming effect of more CO2 is not so clear.

Has the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increased due to human activity? Sure.

Is CO2 the main greenhouse gas? Likely not. No doubt the main greenhouse gas is water vapor, but due to clouds, atmospheric circulations, thunderstorms, little things like the oceans, etc., the effect of water vapor is complicated beyond belief. Methane may also compete.

But that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is crucial? Not necessarily. A simple diffusion model can as good science show a significant warming effect from CO2, but that model is laughably simple compared with the real planet.

Does CO2 warm the planet? Likely yes, and so does lighting a match. The issue is, is the warming significant? So far the answer is, in the present context, not on Venus, apparently not.

But climate science has shown ...? For CO2 from humans causing significant warming of the planet, there's no 'science' in 'climate science'. In particular, the 'radiative forcing' of the IPCC and Ramaswamy is just catchy terminology for some simplistic model building and essentially just nonsense for serious science for the main issue of CO2 from humans causing significant warming.

Maybe there would, could, and should be a real climate science able to address this issue of 'warming', but for now the issue is far too difficult for solid science. Sorry 'bout that.

But just because the real issue is too difficult for solid science does not mean that we should shoot ourselves in the gut from crack pot 'science'.

The second part is from

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020364600457721...

In simple terms, the recent predictions of warming just didn't happen, didn't come even close to happening, were way, way off, were a really bad joke.

Lesson: We can't take the predictions from the 'climate science' community of significant and harmful global warming seriously.

Where does that leave us? The planet is doing fine, and there's no good reason to worry for now. As I said, warm up the barbie.

adsr• 14 years ago

Here is one example: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Daniel_Newby• 14 years ago

Those are separate issues. Even if there is a political global warming conspiracy in the short term, we cannot just keep doubling CO2 output indefinitely with no consequences. The second issue does need to be addressed, and ITER is a one of the ways we are addressing it.

quotemstr• 14 years ago

Comments like yours make me wish Hacker News followed LWN's example and provided killfiles. At this point, anyone who is a climate skeptic is so detached from object reality that nothing he writes is worth reading.

gte910h3• 14 years ago

Global Warming is a Theory that's of very high consensus in the scientific community. We're not talking Theory of Evolution levels of crazy acceptance, but far higher levels of acceptance than many things you act on every day.

Both are proven to a far higher level than many semiconductor models used to build chips you are probably using to make that post.

The news media however, does not report the consensus (on either of those), I am sorry they have mislead you.

[1] Source http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/boykoff04-gec...

ten_fingers5• 14 years ago

Following your reference, I see:

> During this time, top climate change scientists from around the globe—comprising the United Nations-sponsored Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)— improved understanding of global warming, and produced three major reports and many related documents.

Tilt! They "improved" nothing! Total, reeking garbage. We're talking Ramaswamy's 'radiative forcing' which is clever terminology but simplistic nonsense.

The IPCC is mostly just a political organization. Its 'science' is just junk, deliberately so.

The "consensus" of the 'climate science' community is inevitable, given the funding and review processes, and meaningless.

Moreover, for the main issue of CO2 from human activity causing significant global warming, 'climate science' has no significant science -- the issue is too difficult.

See my posts Part I and Part II in this thread.

Sorry you've been taken in by the IPCC rip-off, flim-flam, fraud scam.

misterfusion• 14 years ago

The Sun is not doughnut-shaped. The ITER fusion machine is conceptually flawed; the drawbacks are numerous: confinement time, plasma temperature, energy consumption, tritium breed, and there on. It is a lame that mainstream scientists think they are so smarter, but are unable to understand that electrostatic fusion machines are conceptually much better, much more energy-efficient and can be developed with much less money and in less time. http://youtu.be/ro5-QYqqxzM

Fusion: The quest to recreate the Sun’s power on Earth

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