[Tikib]

MSR may not be simple to develop in practice though.

Personally I couldn't care if the method involved burning fairy dust as long as it produced cheap co2 free power.
We should progress with both MSR and Fission-Fusion in tandem so that we can develop a solution quickly.

There is no more time to piss about choosing the power source we most fancy.

[Tikib]

Seriously this forum is moronic, all you do is whine all day about oil is running out and that we are all going to die because of it.

And I show you a possible solution and all you do is whine that its too much like a hydrogen bomb and therefore doesn't suit your sensibilities.

What the hell is wrong with you people?

[radon1]

The problem with that kind of designs has been their inability to provide a continuous baseload power supply. They generate tons of energy within microseconds, but then nothing at all afterwards. The challenge is to even out the energy burst over a reasonably long period of time.

[StarvingLion]

If you can't use your physics to build a better battery, why would anyone give you a lot more money to play around with nuclear reactors or mini-H bombs?

ITER, NIF, and other fantasy fusion projects have military relevance. Your fantasy projects do not.

Any new nuclear reactor design requires 40 years of operational testing and billions of dollars in investment.

This is what 40 years of digital computers has produced: a bunch of dreamers who think industrial projects are easy. Its like that Eric Drexler idiot and his nano fantasy book 'Nanosystems' which is nothing more than a book of cad drawings. There is no physics there and there is no physics in this thread either.

[StarvingLion]

The problem with that kind of designs has been their inability to provide a continuous baseload power supply. They generate tons of energy within microseconds, but then nothing at all afterwards. The challenge is to even out the energy burst over a reasonably long period of time.

Actually the problem is the naive belief that unlimited energy actually matters.

Unless this "energy money tree" can spit out the elements in the periodic table in large quantities, how does it solve the "mining problem" in general?

Thats whats so funny about the word 'renewable' or the emphasis on crude oil. You can't solve the problem of high grade ores disappearing over time.

[Tikib]

if have a high enough source of energy (like fusion) you can literally sieve rock for the elements you need.

Quantities of elements tend to be in a pyramid with the best grade stuff at the top. The lower down the pyramid you can mine productively the longer it will last. If you developed technologies to mine the bottom of the pyramid elements you needed would literally last forever.

[Tikib]

The problem with that kind of designs has been their inability to provide a continuous baseload power supply. They generate tons of energy within microseconds, but then nothing at all afterwards. The challenge is to even out the energy burst over a reasonably long period of time.

Molten salt. You put flowing molten salt around the reactor and it stores the energy as heat for days if necessary.

[Tikib]

Seriously all the theoretical problems with the design were solved like 10 years ago. As for the thermodynamics question. Yes its true the value of fusion will gradually decrease over time theres nothing you can do about that.

[Tikib]

If you can't use your physics to build a better battery, why would anyone give you a lot more money to play around with nuclear reactors or mini-H bombs?

ITER, NIF, and other fantasy fusion projects have military relevance. Your fantasy projects do not.

Any new nuclear reactor design requires 40 years of operational testing and billions of dollars in investment.

This is what 40 years of digital computers has produced: a bunch of dreamers who think industrial projects are easy. Its like that Eric Drexler idiot and his nano fantasy book 'Nanosystems' which is nothing more than a book of cad drawings. There is no physics there and there is no physics in this thread either.

Actually the computers you talk about have made industrial designs much easier. Using computers to do simulations we can predict how physical system will react. And fusion bombs already have 50 years of field testing. Thats the whole point of the design, make energy from something we know works.

[radon1]

ITER, NIF, and other fantasy fusion projects have military relevance. Your fantasy projects do not.

ITER is not a fusion project. Fusion is purely their PR face. They actually use ITER to validate or falsify various wierd theories that are so removed from the normal conditions that it is incredibly difficult to validate or falsify them. The practical relevance of these theories may be close to zero.

[Quinny]

Justify my criticism?

Here's the evidence:


I mean I've been known to knock up designs for LAN's or patios or even garden sheds on the back of an envelope, but I think the containment system for a Nuclear explosion needs just a little more thought!

You don't need computers to make industrial design easier - just a brain and a decent pencil!

Nothing like a bit of advanced science /engineering to save the world! ...... and this is nothing like a bit of advanced science /engineering!

Just to clarify this. The design its not really mine. I am sure LLNL have had designs like this on the drawing board for the last 10-20 years.

The genius is in its simplicity. You design something incredibly complicated like a Tokamak and it will be incredibly costly to run.

You design something simple but effective like this and it will give you a huge energy payback just like hydrogen bombs do.

Fusion researchers tried to make the perfect fusion system, when they should have based there system off of a design that achieved gain 50 years ago. Ivy Mike.

[Tikib]

Its a terrible drawing but again its more like a circuit diagram than a work of art.

The concepts simple a larger fission explosion (because fission has a higher critical radius) supplies xrays to a smaller D-T cryopellet, which explodes, the resulting plasma is then concentrated into a tube where deuterium is introduced.

All in a size smaller than a nuclear warhead. The difference being that the walls of this device would be strong enough to survive the explosion. this device could then be submerged in molten salt to carry the heat away to a generator.

[ralfy]

Seriously this forum is moronic, all you do is whine all day about oil is running out and that we are all going to die because of it.

And I show you a possible solution and all you do is whine that its too much like a hydrogen bomb and therefore doesn't suit your sensibilities.

What the hell is wrong with you people?

FWIW, Hubbert gave similar solutions in his 1956 paper.

[Keith_McClary]

Fusion Idea Mentioning It Again
by Kylon » 2014-06-02, 22:05:16

I mentioned this idea a long time ago(like 2005), but I think it's a good idea, and I got a lot of positive feedback over it.

It's an idea on how to achieve fusion, in a way we know has high EROEI.

Basically the government could build giant holes in the ground, use coat the walls with a water and heat resistant metal, and cap the top of the device with a large metal structure that would use the pressure and steam generated as a power source.

In this pool of water small nuclear devices could be detonated, with a very small quantity of uranium or plutonium, but an extraordinarily large amount of deuterium. The higher the deuterium to uranium/plutonium concentration, the more cost effective it would be. Of course you need a minimal amount of uranium/plutonium to reach critical mass for such an explosion.

Project PACER
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Project PACER, carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the mid-1970s, explored the possibility of a fusion power system that would involve exploding small hydrogen bombs (fusion bombs)—or, as stated in a later proposal, fission bombs—inside an underground cavity. As an energy source, the system is the only fusion power system that could be demonstrated to work using existing technology. However it would also require a large, continuous supply of nuclear bombs.

[Tikib]

Like I said before its not a new idea. Typically pacer involves detonating hydrogen bomb's in a chamber. This design makes the chamber into a repeating hydrogen bomb to improve efficiency.

I don't make any claims to this design however this design is close to the optimum PACER(fission-fusion) design. The design is good because it gets rid of unnecessary material that makes up the fusion devices and its also good because it prevents the fission and fusion reactions from mixing. Thus its much easier to maintain.

The fission chamber would probably not need to be designed with a long lifespan. As once ignition with lasers is perfected you could literally just dispose of the fission chamber and and replace it with a laser.

And it could all be done in an area less than that of a nuclear warhead.

But no its not original. But it would work which is all I care about.

[SeaGypsy]

Usually attempts to contain high explosives only serve to intensify the resulting damage, create a bigger explosion. Having worked a lot with high temperature crucibles, they are anything but tough, especially in the protracted warm up & phase change, which is part of all extreme temperature containment vessel materials. How do you slow cook a hydrogen bomb to plasma temps, slowly enough to not fracture the vessel, then how to set off a bomb in a ceramic vessel even at plasma temps, without destroying it? There are no metal vessels capable of containing thousands of degrees centigrade & lazer & EMF manipulation is pie in the sky stuff when it comes to containment, else someone in the smelting of something somewhere would have done it, furnace maintenance is a pain in the ass.

The requirement for an endless supply of nuclear bombs might not be a theoretical problem, as long as you are happy living forever in the theoretical world.

[Subjectivist]

Usually attempts to contain high explosives only serve to intensify the resulting damage, create a bigger explosion. Having worked a lot with high temperature crucibles, they are anything but tough, especially in the protracted warm up & phase change, which is part of all extreme temperature containment vessel materials. How do you slow cook a hydrogen bomb to plasma temps, slowly enough to not fracture the vessel, then how to set off a bomb in a ceramic vessel even at plasma temps, without destroying it? There are no metal vessels capable of containing thousands of degrees centigrade & lazer & EMF manipulation is pie in the sky stuff when it comes to containment, else someone in the smelting of something somewhere would have done it, furnace maintenance is a pain in the ass.

The requirement for an endless supply of nuclear bombs might not be a theoretical problem, as long as you are happy living forever in the theoretical world.

Theoretically if you make the volume of water large enough and the explosion small enough you will put in the perfect amount of thermal energy to create super critical water that can be vented through a turbine to generate power. I have not done the math, but I am confident the volume of water is very large and the explosion size is pretty small.
http://youtu.be/EV5q_mlhaiM

[Tikib]

Usually attempts to contain high explosives only serve to intensify the resulting damage, create a bigger explosion. Having worked a lot with high temperature crucibles, they are anything but tough, especially in the protracted warm up & phase change, which is part of all extreme temperature containment vessel materials. How do you slow cook a hydrogen bomb to plasma temps, slowly enough to not fracture the vessel, then how to set off a bomb in a ceramic vessel even at plasma temps, without destroying it? There are no metal vessels capable of containing thousands of degrees centigrade & lazer & EMF manipulation is pie in the sky stuff when it comes to containment, else someone in the smelting of something somewhere would have done it, furnace maintenance is a pain in the ass.

The requirement for an endless supply of nuclear bombs might not be a theoretical problem, as long as you are happy living forever in the theoretical world.

Its not slow cooked its all done at hydrogen bomb speed.

if you use the minimum possible fission pellet and the maximum possible radius to act as a fusion driver, its possible to contain the force using a mixture between an internal vacuum and walls made from thick reinforced steel. You can add droplets of molten salt droplets to cool the internal surface too. But I am pretty sure if the walls were thick enough it wouldn't be neccessary.

As for the fuel question, the vast majority of the energy is created from dueterium. You could use that energy to literally sieve soil for uranium if you wanted to.

Like I said the theory is 100% solid.

[Tikib]

Actually the inner layer of the fission shell will get very hot so you will need to spray molton salt on the inner surface, Or the Heat will build up and evntually cause collapse. But this would have almost have no effect on the energy ouput of the design since the molten salt would be used for energy recovery anyway.

The Inner surface of the fusion shell will not get as hot because theres an output for the pressure.

[Tikib]

So just to clarify my position on this:

The pressure exerted by both explosions (fission and fusion), is not a big issue as you can make walls thick enough to deal with any amount of pressure.

The temperature is not a big issue in the fusion explosion because most of the energy is forced out into the D-D cylinder.

The temperature is an issue in the fission sphere because there is no outlet for the energy. This issue can either be solved with an advanced cooling system like molton salt to recover the energy or by passing more of the energy onto the fusion stage, or a mixture between the two.