Tri-Alpha Rumor

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

kurt9 wrote: ... It seems to me that a fusion/fission hybrid process makes sense for any DT fusion process. You're making lots of neutrons. Why not use them for something? I would think that such a hybrid plant would produce 2-3 times the energy of the fusion-only plant. The capital costs of such a hybrid plant would be higher, but the energy output should make it more economical on a per Watt output basis.
Might be especially good with a molten salt reactor which has a tough time staying critical and could use the neutrons. It might also make the salt easier to obtain. Currently they need to use only one of the two main isotopes of Lithium in order to prevent the generation of Tritium. However, if the Tritium is just going to be burned as fuel in a DT reaction, the salt may not need to be isotopically pure, and thus may be much cheaper.

deane
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Post by deane »

MSimon wrote:Yes. Blacks like to kill each other.
White Swedish males live more than three years longer than white American males. Following your logic that must be because American males like to kill each other. Doesn't that make you wonder the least little bit about what is wrong with America that it should produce such widespread psychotic behaviour among its people?
MSimon wrote:Prohibition.
There, at least, is a subject we can agree on.

deane
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Post by deane »

MSimon wrote:Of course if you pick the right demographic I'm sure you could find some doing better.

But take blacks as a whole (as I did in my statement) and I think you will find some validity to my statement.
Sure, but I thought that your point was that even the most disadvantaged in America were better off than the average Swede. By most measures Hispanics in America are worse off (economically) than blacks, represent a larger proportion of the population, and are most certainly not doing as well as the average Swede.

If your position is that the top 75% or so of Americans are better off than the average Swede, you'll get no argument from me. But there are still a lot of boats that your rising tide has submerged.
MSimon wrote:And of course young blacks are handicapped by not wanting to "act white" i.e. get an education.
What source purports to show that blacks in the US don't "want" an education?

BenTC
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Post by BenTC »

Skipjack wrote:Now the question is how much better that Nanomaterial is (if it says it somewhere in that article, I cant read it anymore...grrrr).
That link you provided works for me - and I don't have a subscription. Interesting stuff. Here are some related links:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13545
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... icity.html
http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/in ... 25606.html
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/direct ... -into.html
http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec_subscribe. ... ion=detail
http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/doc.asp?CID=24490&DID=263646 (search of LAVM or Popa-Simil)
http://www.nsti.org/Nanotech2008/showab ... ?absno=794

Key points:
+ twenty times more effective than thermoelectric materials.
+ power density increase from the actual average of 0.2 kw/cm^3 to about 1 kw/cm^3 driving to miniaturization of nuclear power sources and reductions of the shield weight. ie few thousands horse power per liter
+ self-repairing and self-organizing structure to compensate the radiation damage and improve the lifetime.
+ advantage over the current heat flow based thermal stabilization system allowing a power density up to 1000 times higher.
+ 5 MeV alpha particles and 5 MeV gold ions incident to a gold-silica-aluminum sandwich
+ first layer from the source has high electronic density generating a shower of knock-on electrons leaving the layer through a thin dielectric leaving it polarized positively. The electro shower is stopped in a second low electronic density conductor nano-layer that polarizes negatively and separated by a low emmitance dielectric from the next structure.
+ fast backup utility power supply due to low inertia from lack of large heat exchanging systems, offering a direct correlation between the nuclear reactivity and electric power that may be varied in seconds to follow the demand.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

That link you provided works for me - and I don't have a subscription. Interesting stuff.
It had a monthly limit of views, then a page comes up that informs me about me having surpassed it and the need to subscribe in order to read more.
+ twenty times more effective than thermoelectric materials.
Oi, I am somewhat confused and/ or impressed. I thought that old thermoelectric materials already had about 1/10th of the efficiency of a standard steam cycle plant.
If they are 20 times as effcient, that would be quite an amazing showing there. I mean, it would render steam turbines unusable.
Something like this, if it indeed works should revolutionize nuclear reactor- design, no?
I mean this is a very high efficiency and even if it only came very close to a "normal" steam cycle it would already be much preferable.
Why are we not seeing this used yet?
I always thought that the steam cycle was one of the big weaknesses of current reactor designs. After all you need primary cooling, then secondary cooling to avoid contamination, then you have to cool the cooling water. Lots of piping with potential leaks. Lots of pumps that require expensive mentainance (in a potentially hazardous environmnet). Pipes can leak, causing contamination and the release of radioactive materials into the environment (happened before). The turbine itself also needs mentainance, probably some kind of lubricant (machine oil), etc.
So all this means lots of overhead for savety and mentainance of complex machinery with lots of moving parts. It also means that reactors below a certain size do not make sense, since you will always have the steam cycle machinery, no matter what.
So IMHO material like this would be revolutionary.
Why havent we heard more about it yet?
I mean, especially companies like Hyperion should be waiting in line...
I guess there are still some unsresolved issues with these materials?
What are the problems that have to be solved? What are the downsides?
All these presentations, such as on New Scientist and NextBigFuture (no offense mate, you know I love your page!) are spilling out the positive parts but are rather quiet on the negatives.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Interesting, but I'll believe it when I see it in industrial applications. It may have massive cost disadvantages.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Doesn't that make you wonder the least little bit about what is wrong with America that it should produce such widespread psychotic behaviour among its people?
Most of the violence is between ethnic street gangs. Sweden generally doesn't have those. If you compare Sweden to, say, North Dakota...
In PPP terms Sweden's per capita GDP is about 80% that of the US, which puts the average Swede's income at about 51% of US per capita GDP, making them about 3.6 times as well off as Latino women in the US.
Many Hispanic-Americans are recent immigrants, often illegal. The proper comparison would be to the immigrant population in Sweden.

choff
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Post by choff »

I've heard of some studies that indicate when you remove the top 10% wage earners from the studies and compare the bottom 90% from country to country the U.S. doesn't do as well, plutonamy. One reason for the different murder rates; Americans are culturally conditioned never to back down from a challenge, the one that blinks is a loser(Skipjack take note!).
CHoff

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

Many Hispanic-Americans are recent immigrants, often illegal.
If they are illegal they wont make it into the statistics, right?
Americans are culturally conditioned never to back down from a challenge, the one that blinks is a loser(Skipjack take note!).
Until the Endsieg, hu? ;)
I dont quite get the reference to me in this context.
Last edited by Skipjack on Sun Dec 27, 2009 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

To get back on topic, yes that is what I am wondering too Talldave. E.g. how expensive is it to produce? Does it decay quickly during the bombardement with radiation?
All these things might affect it. Still I really, really like the general idea a lot. I think that if we got this work well, it would have merrit.

deane
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Joined: Sun Jun 14, 2009 11:27 am

Post by deane »

TallDave wrote:
Doesn't that make you wonder the least little bit about what is wrong with America that it should produce such widespread psychotic behaviour among its people?
Most of the violence is between ethnic street gangs. Sweden generally doesn't have those. If you compare Sweden to, say, North Dakota...
Swedes live, on average, more than two and half years longer than North Dakotans.

In any case, my comment was meant tongue in cheek. I no more believe that lower life expectancy among whites in the US is due to their joy in killing each other than I do MSimon's thesis that the lower life expectancy of blacks in the US is because "they like to kill each other". The life expectancy of poor blacks living in those areas of the US with the highest homicide risk is virtually identical to that of poor blacks living in areas with low homicide risk. Which is what you would expect given the minute contribution (0.8%) that homicide makes to overall mortality numbers, even in the US. More than twice as many people die of liver disease each year as get murdered, it just doesn't make for as interesting headlines.

Inadequate access to proper nutrition and health care are the biggest factors, combined with all of the exacerbating effects of poverty in general.
TallDave wrote:Many Hispanic-Americans are recent immigrants, often illegal. The proper comparison would be to the immigrant population in Sweden.
I agree. But the statement to which I was responding was an assertion that the poorest Americans are better off than the average Swede. They're not. You have to make the bottom 25% of Americans disappear before the assertion comes close to being true.

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

Back on 14 Nov, alexjrgreen wrote: A politician's job is to distribute inadequate resources in the fairest possible way.
Every time I hear statements like this I cringe. In this context, the word "fair" means within the rules of a game. Well, sorry, my life is not a game for politicians to set up rules about. To find the morally viable restatement of any statement containing the word fair in such a use, replace the word "fair" with the word "voluntary"; "fairest" with "most voluntary". The way alexjrgreen stated it, the sentance is typical socialist claptrap. If he is not a socialist, that just goes to show how insidious they have been.

Oh, and for those who huff and argue that "fair" means equitable, whoever said forcing life to be equitable was a good thing? Only those who wish to define the "game of life" to be that way. I repeat, my life is not a game for you to make up arbitrary rules about. Forget "fair", work with "voluntary". You get somewhere good with that.

MirariNefas
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Post by MirariNefas »

KitemanSA wrote:
Back on 14 Nov, alexjrgreen wrote: A politician's job is to distribute inadequate resources in the fairest possible way.
Every time I hear statements like this I cringe. In this context, the word "fair" means within the rules of a game. Well, sorry, my life is not a game for politicians to set up rules about. To find the morally viable restatement of any statement containing the word fair in such a use, replace the word "fair" with the word "voluntary"; "fairest" with "most voluntary". The way alexjrgreen stated it, the sentance is typical socialist claptrap. If he is not a socialist, that just goes to show how insidious they have been.

Oh, and for those who huff and argue that "fair" means equitable, whoever said forcing life to be equitable was a good thing? Only those who wish to define the "game of life" to be that way. I repeat, my life is not a game for you to make up arbitrary rules about. Forget "fair", work with "voluntary". You get somewhere good with that.
I've always thought of the role of government as being to facilitate the creation of value. The government isn't there to build sidewalks because it is fair, nor is it particularly important that all 300 million people voluntarily give up land and money for sidewalks. It builds them because we are all enriched by having them. It taxes us because we get the value (and more) back.

Sometimes people don't want to do what the rest of the group is doing. We let them, to a great extent, but having everyone cooperate in collective ventures increases payout, so we have circumstances where coercion is apolicy. We enforce collective defense with the draft. We enforce collective investment with taxes. I wish we'd enforce collective immunization (I'd call that a type of collective defence), but we're doing well enough without it anyway.

alexjrgreen
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Post by alexjrgreen »

KitemanSA wrote:
Back on 14 Nov, alexjrgreen wrote: A politician's job is to distribute inadequate resources in the fairest possible way.
Every time I hear statements like this I cringe. In this context, the word "fair" means within the rules of a game. Well, sorry, my life is not a game for politicians to set up rules about. To find the morally viable restatement of any statement containing the word fair in such a use, replace the word "fair" with the word "voluntary"; "fairest" with "most voluntary".
When you add together everybody's "voluntary" position, it typically consumes more resources than the community as a whole has access to. So something has to give - either by increasing resources or limiting consumption.
KitemanSA wrote:The way alexjrgreen stated it, the sentance is typical socialist claptrap. If he is not a socialist, that just goes to show how insidious they have been.
As it happens I'm not a socialist, but socialist is a modern term. You need to go back to Plato and Aristotle.
KitemanSA wrote:Oh, and for those who huff and argue that "fair" means equitable, whoever said forcing life to be equitable was a good thing? Only those who wish to define the "game of life" to be that way. I repeat, my life is not a game for you to make up arbitrary rules about. Forget "fair", work with "voluntary". You get somewhere good with that.
Individual notions of "fair" take into account the needs of the individual. If you live in a community then you need to consider the needs of the community as well.
Ars artis est celare artem.

alexjrgreen
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Post by alexjrgreen »

MirariNefas wrote:I've always thought of the role of government as being to facilitate the creation of value.
In the classic model, permission is given to hold a fair or market in a particular place. Pitch fees pay for soldiers to control disorder and courts to try malefactors. When it's successful, everybody benefits.

In most regards this process is entirely unconnected with democracy, so there is little role for politicians.
Ars artis est celare artem.

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