The money squandered on the search for fusion energy could have been used to make a lot of things that actually work, like a lot of fission reactors. Or to improve fission reactors. Or burn coal cleanly.
Instead we have to spend the money on a proven failure and confessed deception, fusion. Like the money spent on wind, solar and carbon capture, it is a profligate waste.
Has anyone researched hat has been done with 70 years of failed fusion devices? A pictoral history of building what has been in effect a bunch of sci-fi movie props wo I ld be fascinating.
I just had a thought: attempts at fusion so far involve attempting to hold gaseous (or plasma) H2 in place through ongoing fusion reactions. But U is arranged in a matrix of solids as UO2, using fluids (H2O or Na) to attenuate neutrons and remove heat. Why not embed H2 in something solid? Can fusion occur without intense heat? I suppose not. Out of the box doesn’t always work.
Above my payscale, but so far, I’ve only heard of fusion and plasma at incredibly high temps, like hotter than the sun. Makes me wonder what kind of a can of fusion I could carry around in the trunk for spare energy…
Right after posting this, I read Gary Taubes new substack "Uncertainty Principles" on the unreliability of science reporting.
"Back in 1991, in his book Reliable Knowledge, the physicist-turned-philosopher-of-science John Ziman aptly captured this problem by describing the front lines of science, as “the place where controversy, conjecture, contradiction, and confusion are rife... Ziman quantified this thinking with an estimate that may or may not be hyperbolic: The physics in undergraduate textbooks, he said, is 90 percent true; the physics-related claims in the research journals are 90 percent false. The chaff-to-wheat-sifting job of the scientific process is establishing which 10 percent in the journals (the news) is both reproducible and important—i.e., right, and meaningfully so."
The money squandered on the search for fusion energy could have been used to make a lot of things that actually work, like a lot of fission reactors. Or to improve fission reactors. Or burn coal cleanly.
Instead we have to spend the money on a proven failure and confessed deception, fusion. Like the money spent on wind, solar and carbon capture, it is a profligate waste.
Has anyone researched hat has been done with 70 years of failed fusion devices? A pictoral history of building what has been in effect a bunch of sci-fi movie props wo I ld be fascinating.
I just had a thought: attempts at fusion so far involve attempting to hold gaseous (or plasma) H2 in place through ongoing fusion reactions. But U is arranged in a matrix of solids as UO2, using fluids (H2O or Na) to attenuate neutrons and remove heat. Why not embed H2 in something solid? Can fusion occur without intense heat? I suppose not. Out of the box doesn’t always work.
Above my payscale, but so far, I’ve only heard of fusion and plasma at incredibly high temps, like hotter than the sun. Makes me wonder what kind of a can of fusion I could carry around in the trunk for spare energy…
Right after posting this, I read Gary Taubes new substack "Uncertainty Principles" on the unreliability of science reporting.
"Back in 1991, in his book Reliable Knowledge, the physicist-turned-philosopher-of-science John Ziman aptly captured this problem by describing the front lines of science, as “the place where controversy, conjecture, contradiction, and confusion are rife... Ziman quantified this thinking with an estimate that may or may not be hyperbolic: The physics in undergraduate textbooks, he said, is 90 percent true; the physics-related claims in the research journals are 90 percent false. The chaff-to-wheat-sifting job of the scientific process is establishing which 10 percent in the journals (the news) is both reproducible and important—i.e., right, and meaningfully so."