Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: The Scientist on 19/12/2010 10:49:55
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I've heard about a country in Europe having create fusion 100 metres underground. Is this true?
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Can't be true, to have fusion you need temperatures which are impossible to achieve on Earth.
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C4M you can create fusion in your garage with equipment you can buy for much less than a family car however the trick is in getting more energy out than you are putting in.
I imagine that the question is about the work on the Joint Euopean Torus. If I remember correctly it has achieved some positive power but is not close to anything economic. Optimistically an experimental fusion reactor is about 20 years away and probably 50 years to any real production facility. If you google ITER France you will see a huge development going on and I guess most of it is 100m underground.
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Can't be true, to have fusion you need temperatures which are impossible to achieve on Earth.
How could you possibly have come to that conclusion?
It has clearly been done in a fairly well publicised manner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design#Two-stage_thermonuclear_weapons
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To be clear about this, temperature of a gas (or plasma) relates to the velocities of atoms or ions randomly hurtling about. To create fusion you have to have a suitable collision between two ions (say tritium nuclei) at a sufficiently high velocity. It is in the nature of the random distribution of such velocities that, even at relatively low temperatures, some will have such a sufficient velocity but just not very many. If you get the temperature high enough and yet manage to contain this very hot plasma, you can induce many more such high energy collisions. The usual by-product of the collisions that are planned to be used to extract energy are neutrons and, basically, it is just the thermal energy of these high speed neutrons that is garnered to ultimately drive a turbine to produce electricity. The cheap home-made fusion reactor will produce detectable neutrons though not very many. Nonetheless you are creating fusion. In fact there will be some natural fusion going on all the time by random high speed impacts of appropriate nuclei but the effects are completely negligible.
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Oh wow, it seems I am behind on the old nuclear weapons front, thanks for pointing it out [:-\]
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BTW, ITER is running into some budget problems, so the project might see some delays.
I really do hope we will be able to harness local fusion as a source of energy in the near future, but I have a bad feeling we will have to content ourselves with remote fusion (from our Sun) for longer than we might like.
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well, if this is true, then there will be a problem coming on our way , because whenever we change something in the earth then it lead us to in dooms day , that day is not far if the humans will not stop what they are doing.
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I'm not sure how we jumped to Lead.
But... I think the future will bring harnessing Nuclear Fusion for civilian power generation.
Hopefully ITER will be more than a big money-pit. Even if not fully functional, it will likely provide us some invaluable information and insight into future experimental directions.
Keep in mind that most of the fusion experiments are being done with relatively rare elements such as Tritium (3H) & Helium-3 (3He). So, we aren't using the "infinite" supplies of water that one might expect.
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well, if this is true, then there will be a problem coming on our way , because whenever we change something in the earth then it lead us to in dooms day , that day is not far if the humans will not stop what they are doing.
http://www.answers.com/topic/lead-10
Oddly, every step towards doomsday so far has brought longer live, more material goods, lower prices, better healthcare and so on.
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I've heard about a country in Europe having create fusion 100 metres underground. Is this true?
Fusion of what with what? Suppose I allow two mercury drops to fuse, in a mine 100m below the ground. That would be easy. I guess you have something else in mind. Do you mean "fusion of atomic nuclei," as in a hydrogen bomb? If so then I can answer; I am a nuclear physicist.
Ludwik Kowalski
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I think the general assumption is that the questioner was referring to nuclear fusion. And he may be referring to the ITER program which I think would make it a Deuterium-Tritium fusion.