Scientists Accidentally Discovered Quark Fusion, Could It Be the Future of Energy?

Tell that to the people in Fukushima and Chernobyl.

https://www.wired.com/story/fukushimas-other-big-problem-a-million-tons-of-radioactive-water/

 

Seriously? **** off? what was that about intelligent conversations?

At least your posts are a classic reminder of Luntz's prime thesis.
Seems Entrenched confirmation bias supported by some serious dunning kruger effect is an impenetrable barrier to any kind of meaning full exchange.

Your back is your best feature.

 

Once transparent panels replace window in sky scrapers the game changes and buildings become power plants.

 

Bla bla bla Fukishima. Do you have the internet? Have you EVER looked at the pollution from producing solar panels? Have you? That is the difference between you and me, I am intellectually curious and actually research the pros and cons of every position I hold. You don't. You have never looked at the pollution caused by the solar industry otherwise you wouldn't be so supportive of it and dismissive of nuclear. Solar and wind will NEVER power the world. NEVER! I cannot stress it enough there isn't a serious engineer or physicist who believes that.

https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/02/chinas-solar-panel-production-comes-at-a-dirty-cost/

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/soci...panels-are-going-be-big-environmental-problem

http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-headed-for-a-solar-waste-crisis

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So while you *********king solar advocates run around destroying lives and literally KILLING ****ING PEOPLE by poisoning them, serious intelligent people who have actually taken physics, chemistry and engineering classes are trying to REALLY save the world by promoting nuclear.

 

You literally claimed that if we stopped using petroleum for fuel that we would stop using plastic. I can't argue with that. Its impossible you are in an entirely different reality. You are the environmental equivalent of a creationist, no matter how many facts or studies I throw at you you will NEVER admit that you were wrong about solar and nuclear. Nuclear is the ONLY safe and clean form of power that can provide a stable baseline for the grid.

 

The cost is going down because over 90% of the solar panels are being produced in China now. Read my previous posts on how awful that is for the environment. Its literally killing people by poisoning their waterways and villages and causing massive amounts of birth defects etc. But solar advocates don't give a **** about them because its on the other side of the world. That crap runs off from the rivers into the ocean. Have you gone shopping lately? Noticed all the warnings on the fish, its because of the massive pollution coming from Asia which affects the entire world.

 

Better no naked roof tops
than plating the landscape with solar panels or mirrors.

It ain't really Green if it kills wildlife.​

 

So it's back to the drawing board for the scientists then?

 

Why would the free market laugh at fusion (assuming it can be made sustainable and profitable)?

Having your energy production infrastructure be a single facility instead of acre upon acre of windmills and solar cells is advantageous to the side with less infrastructure to maintain.

 

Cold Fusion is an unproven hypothesis that has failed every real world test.

 

It does exist on White Dwarf Stars, but it can not be replicated in any laboratory on Earth.

 

How is a white dwarf star in any way “cold”?

 

At about 10,000 Kelvin it is cold by nuclear standards. The fusion occurs only due to pressure -- not temperature.

 

And a white dwarf has the mass of a star.

 

The point is that it most likely can't be made profitable, even if it can be made sustainable. The free market laughs at fission nuclear power now because it can't be made profitable, though it's definitely sustainable.

Decentralized infrastructure is less vulnerable to attack or natural disaster. A distribution grid is a big fat target that's impossible to guard.

 

Nuclear fission power can't be made profitable because of the threat of meltdown driving NIMBY and also the degree of cost added by the safety features to prevent meltdown.

There is no meltdown risk with a fusion reactor and it doesn't give off radiation.

 

Depends on how you define it. The fusion reaction gives off lots of gamma radiation, which would not make other materials radioactive. It would also give off some neutron radiation, which would make surrounding materials radioactive, but not nearly as much as a fission plant. And the spent fuel itself would not be radioactive.

However, it's not the safety that's the problem. It's the sheer size of the facility required, far bigger than any conventional power plant, and far more costly. When the same amount of money can get ten times the power in wind and solar, nobody will be investing in fusion. And miracle batteries, which would aid wind and solar, are a more likely prospect than a miracle which would make fusion cheap.

 

Significantly larger than any conventional power plant only if an efficient fuel can't be found for it. The Earth doesn't have a significant amount of Helium-3 (which is an efficient fuel). Other bodies in the solar system (including the Moon) do.

 

What is the energy cost vs the energy yield of retrieving He-3 from the moon?

[assuming we had a fusion reactor]

 

I was there when Pons and Fleischmann presented their paper. The got ripped apart by the folks at Cal Tech.