Fusion Will Never Work

[Shubedobedubopbopbedo]

Other than IEC polywell, which concepts do not operate in thermodynamic equilibrium?

Any steady-state IEC polywell would also operate in thermodynamic equilibrium. The fusion products would immediately thermalize the plasma.

A pulsed system is probably the only one with a chance of working. Probably why the H-bomb worked so well. Actually, a fusion reactor that uses H-bombs would work. One helluva engineering project that would be.

[kurt9]

Other than IEC polywell, which concepts do not operate in thermodynamic equilibrium?

Any steady-state IEC polywell would also operate in thermodynamic equilibrium. The fusion products would immediately thermalize the plasma.

A pulsed system is probably the only one with a chance of working. Probably why the H-bomb worked so well. Actually, a fusion reactor that uses H-bombs would work. One helluva engineering project that would be.

OK, but other than polywell. What about the various FRC schemes? Either Rostakor's or Slough's?

[kurt9]

Guys,

Dittmar is generally supportive of Thorium fission concepts such as MSR and LFTR in that he believes these are the only long term solutions with regards to fission power.

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2009/1 ... clear.html

I believe these fission concepts are the way forward if no possible solution to fusion power can be developed.

However, I think Dittmar is not considering the fact that countries like Japan are already using the complete Plutonium fuel cycle in that they already have commercial FBRs.

If the D-T fuel cycle is not sustainble due to the inability to cost effectively breed Tritium, it seems to me that the options are D-D and B11-H (assuming that the latter is even possible). In other words, fusion will only be possible with a non-equilibrium plasma (polywell, FRC concepts). I would be interested in hearing what Art has to say about this.

[nextbigfuture]

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/11/uraniu ... pdate.html

He trashes the Redbook projections but does not look at the actual uranium companies and mines and exploration.

I did that simple due diligence.

the First 9 months show large gains.
Several delays are because of the low prices.
There is a lot of uranium with Russia (which Dittmar talks about) but he does not talk about the 75000+ tons of excess with the DOE and US military sources.
Also, depleted uranium can be enriched.

Niger only spent $5 million/yr for exploration for a few years and has found several big deposits and is opening new mines.
Namibia, Jordan are also finding more and opening mines and expanding old ones.

2009 should have 50,000+ tons of production

2010 should have 56,000+ tons of production
another 3000 tons from Kazakhstan, Valencia in Namibia, Full year of Malawi production


Dittmar bets that the 2009 and 2010 numbers will not be higher than 45,000 tons and 47,000 tons, respectively.

Uranium fuel shortage is the basis for Dittmar thesis of nuclear fission will not be able to expand.

No uranium shortage.

[Skipjack]

Please excuse the silly question:
But, since we do not have any working fusion reactors yet, where do we get our tritium from right now?
I would suspect fission reactions. So if that works now, why would that be a problem for future fusion reactors?

PS: Nextbigfuture rocks! Glad to see you posting here!

[chrismb]

why would that be a problem for future fusion reactors

Quantity. It's taken years and millions to get the few scant kg of tritium together for ITER, and by the time it starts up most of it will have decayed!

Now imagine scaling up the number of fusion reactors if it works. It's a fat lot of use if we 'crack' the problem, then find we can only build two of them!

[TheRadicalModerate]

Please excuse the silly question:
But, since we do not have any working fusion reactors yet, where do we get our tritium from right now?
I would suspect fission reactions. So if that works now, why would that be a problem for future fusion reactors?

Heavy-water fission reactors. There are a couple in Canada and one at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. There's also a TVA reactor that produces T from lithium control rods, which are then shipped to SRS for extraction.

AFAIK, the biggest non-military sources are the Canadian facilities, which manage to produce about 2.5 kg per year.

[Skipjack]

I see, thanks for the clarification.

[TheRadicalModerate]

Uranium fuel shortage is the basis for Dittmar thesis of nuclear fission will not be able to expand.

No uranium shortage.

Let me poke at this a bit, just to play Devil's Advocate: Dittmar doesn't claim that the current production shortfall is the long-term problem. Instead, he claims that the inferred (unproven) reserve numbers are wildly unreliable, so we really don't know what we've got available after about 20 years. He further argues that the quality of the reserves may be so low that the energy cost to extract and enrich new LEU may approach the actual energy produced by the finished product.

The advantage that fission reactors have over the wind/water/solar crowd has always been that we know how to deploy nukes for baseload power, at scale, and geographically close to demand concentrations, using off-the-shelf technology. But that's only true if we can deploy open-fuel-cycle systems for, say, the next fifty years or so, while gen IV technologies and infrastructure mature.

My slam-dunk argument in favor of nukes always went like this: Imagine that we get irrefutable proof that we're all going to die in ten years unless we can reduce CO2 emissions by 50%. Of wind, water, solar, or nuclear, on which technology would we place a bet for the multi-trillion dollar species survival project? If you lose your open-cycle fuel stock, maybe the answer is still nuclear, because you can presumably accelerate short-term LEU production enough to buy the time needed to develop closed cycles based on Thorium, but the answer is a lot less of a slam-dunk than it would be otherwise.

It's pretty clear that Dittmar has an ax to grind here, but his call for detailed verification of the Red Book assumptions is not unreasonable. If this guy's wrong, he needs to be proven wrong in great detail.

[Shubedobedubopbopbedo]

a fusion reactor that uses H-bombs would work. One helluva engineering project that would be.

AFAIK none of the nuclear weapons in the world currently are fusion-based. They are all fission-based and relatively low-yield, though each still powerful enough to wipe out a small city. As such, there would be no point in using the current stockpile of nukes for energy production in the aforementioned context, except insofar as they might be modified for use in conventional nuclear reactors, or as 1st stage fuzes of future fusion bombs.

In all the years of the cold war the US produced something like 15500 fusion-based weapons (now all retired). The sum of their yields was approx 2.4 x 10^20 Joules.

This is calorifically equivalent to 5,714,285,714 tonnes of oil. That's only 6.46-times the US oil comsumption, or 2.5-times the US total primary energy consumption, in 2008 (source: BP).

Modern powerplants can convert this to electricity with avg. 37.7% efficiency, but perhaps up to 60% efficiency with the most advanced turbine designs.

Assuming controlled fusion reactors are impossible, then the only alternative would be a subterranean (or equivalent) containment vessel used to extract thermal energy from fusion bomb detonations, with up to 37.7% efficiency using modern power generation systems. Note however that it took decades to produce this many fusion weapons.

I don't see the point actually.

The future forecast is for low-energy consumption, though probably not lower than what we can scrape together with wind, hydro, and solar thermal turbines. There may be some biofuel in the mix too.

Basically there are too many people to spread the wealth sustainably, so population control is inevitable.

AGW fanatics want carbon emission quotas... why not childbirth quotas. The world population could be reduced hugely without jumping any technological hurdles AND DOING NO HARM in less than 3 generations - just in time for when energy shortages start becoming a real problem. Energy consumption is a "per capita" phenomenon, it rises inexorably with population. When it cannot rise any further, it results in poverty, deprivation & suffering.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Canada also has large uranium reserves. Between the uranium and the Alberta oil sands, north America has enough domestic energy reserves to sustain itself for quite a long time. Extracting oil from the sands is expensive, but uranium mining seems competitive:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf49.html

It's more a question of political will to do the extraction: there are a lot of anti-nuke people, and oil sands extraction is environmentally dirty - but if push comes to shove, the reserves are there. If energy costs go up after the current recession, Canadian oil and uranium operations will also become more competitive.

[Shubedobedubopbopbedo]

If you have the political will you could have population control.

And it wouldn't harm the environment.

[MSimon]

Shubedobedubopbopbedo,

Better turbines will not help much. What is needed is higher temperatures.

[MSimon]

If you have the political will you could have population control.

And it wouldn't harm the environment.

In America we favor the voluntary approach. You first.

[chrismb]

Seems like the dialogue (diatribe?) is about to go full circle - I got the impression the H-bomb was for exactly the purpose of population control, albeit the enemy's population!