New Nuclear Fission reactor can fit in a corner of your base

[Ultima22689]

http://dvice.com/archives/2009/11/nuclear-fusion.php


WOOT! This is pretty cool and if it is as good and as safe as they say it is then they need to be mass producing these now.

[pckizer]

Excellent, that's some technology I've been watching for years now and was upset that the venerable Dr. Robert Bussard (of ramjet fame for the physics and sci-fi minded, reading about him as a child is one of the many things that pushed me towards science/physics) wasn't getting the funding he needed for larger-scale tests of his ideas.

If you want a very informative talk on the issue, check out his presentation at Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really)[/url]

Or here's an embedded version of the video itself:

[youtube:2tol62px]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhL5VO2NStU[/youtube:2tol62px]

[SSY]

430 gigawatts of electricity every hour.

AARRRGGHHHH, sorry, dimensional analysis OCD.

As for the rest of it, there is a long running joke among physicists that "Fusion is always 40 years away", it's like their version of Moore's law, and has held for the last 20 odd years. That reactor can't sustain it's reaction in a self sufficient manner, and is therefor, slightly useless. Reading a bit more, they are absolutely no where near, they got 1.2 million of funding, which is zip in physics.

[pckizer]

AARRRGGHHHH, sorry, dimensional analysis OCD.

Yeah, that was painful.

Reading a bit more, they are absolutely no where near, they got 1.2 million of funding, which is zip in physics.

Ah, I didn't make it that far to see their funding, thanks for getting to that bit.

You're right, that means the same complaint I had about Dr. Bussards's research applies to this one, too.  Even if it doesn't pan out we could still get a lot of good unintended answers out of research into the area, but neither real working-scale fusion nor serendipitous discoveries will ever pan out if the research isn't funded to actually happen.

*sigh*

[Ninteen45]

Fallout 3, here we come!

[joeactor]

meh... I'll believe it when it's powering my flying car...

To The FUTURE!
JoeActor

[Ultima22689]

I'd be too afraid to drive around with a small nuclear reactor as my engine although it would kill me for sure I wonder how big of an explosion would it really be if that thing went off?

[karadan]

I'd be too afraid to drive around with a small nuclear reactor as my engine although it would kill me for sure I wonder how big of an explosion would it really be if that thing went off?

It might get quite 'hot' but it isn't really the explosion you really need to worry about, rather, the fallout.

[LoneMateria]

I'd be too afraid to drive around with a small nuclear reactor as my engine although it would kill me for sure I wonder how big of an explosion would it really be if that thing went off?

It would take more then a car wreck to make it explode you know that right?  Just the materials on its own won't explode because you won't be splitting the atom.

[Renegnicat]

430 Gigawatts of electricity per hour? Oh, if only that were true. We'd have an energy surplus of 2 trillion gigawatts * number of hours they've been working...

 

[pckizer]

430 Gigawatts of electricity per hour? Oh, if only that were true. We'd have an energy surplus of 2 trillion gigawatts * number of hours they've been working...

Well, it just doesn't make much sense at all.

Regarding the "dimensional analysis OCD" mentioned previously, for those not up on terminology, that means double-checking the units associated with a number.  In this case, the article talked about what multiple have complained about as "gigawatts of electricity every hour" whereas power is actually often talked about in terms of "gigawatt hour" which is different than the "per hour".  For some details, see:

Kilowatt hour

On the other hand, power generation is usually just talked about in terms of Watts of some variant.  For those looking to learn a bit about the real order of magnitude of numbers when talking about power, here's a story from my neck of the woods this summer about generating capacity and peak usage for my region (63.2GW):

Power grid operator urges conservation today

And the region this covers is a large portion of Texas:

ERCOT Maps

That is described as:

The ERCOT Region includes Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi, Abilene and the Rio Grande Valley. It does not include the El Paso area, the Texas Panhandle, Northeast Texas ..., and Southeast Texas ...

That last site has other links that actually show more up-to-date daily generation numbers.

[Faradaympp]

Sweet, but we're a long way from these, we'll have to find a way to treat and moderate waste, educate anyone who wants to have one, and really invest in radiation shields to make these safe for home use.

[maxcreigs]

Hi Everyone,
Its really great. Technology is growing faster day by day.
What a project it is the nuclear fusion.

[Faradaympp]

I'd be too afraid to drive around with a small nuclear reactor as my engine although it would kill me for sure I wonder how big of an explosion would it really be if that thing went off?

A nuclear reactor is not designed to cause a nuclear explosion, any explosion from another  part of the car would likely crack the casing and let radiation out. Nuclear bombs are designed to maximize the damage, wheras nuclear reactors arn't.

[Heretical Rants]

Radiation/fallout isn't that much of an issue with fusion.   The fallout from a hydrogen bomb comes from the initial fission reaction that is (currently) necessary in order to cause fusion.