Page 3 - Nuclear Fusion

C&C: Red Alert 2!!

and in their it works too.

and yes, most powerstations today (in the UK atleast) run on steam turbines... poor, very poor indeed.

It's like cars. We're still using fossil fuels...just finding more efficient ways of doing it. Powerplants do the same thing - it's all heating water to move turbines...but we're just doing MORE of it..not becoming more efficient.

That would hurt our egos too badly.

because he's RIGHT!!

Exactly!!!!!

Right now fusion is the only alternate, "safe" source of energy even close to being mastered. Its the only concrete solution to our energy problems.

no way is it concrete. Right now, the only concrete way for us to get further in the future is for people to stop using and start conserving, start wanting the earth to last, start looking toward the future - and for really bad parents to stop having children

but that last bit is an entirely different argument

Hey pyro I'm working on it

Yes and no. Yes, fusion powers the sun. Difference is, fusion in the sun is completely uncontrolled and unstable. On earth we will use only particular isotopes of Hydrogen, which will result in atoms which were more stable than when the process began. We will still end up with plasmoids at extremely high temperatures - but it will be controlled. Whereas a fission reaction can become a chain reaction and the result is less stable. A fusion reaction would only be able to fuse the amount of raw tritium and deuterium provided, and would simply release neutrons as energy, with helium as a by-product.

wouldnt say its that safe lol, it still hasnt been mastered, there still quite a big step away from getting near it. besides, they can do nuclear fusion, but what there trying to do is room temperature nuclear fusion, so then you dont need to put much energy into it so you overall get more out.

also, people dont realise that nuclear fusion still pollutes -
water is used to get hydrogen, this is turned into water vapour, and then pollutes the weather systems.

if the water vapor is condensed and dumped into a freshwater stream it will have a considerably smaller affect on the environment.

And come to think of it, isn't impossible to get more energy out of something then was already in it?

Why don't they use salt water and do a process of desalinization with it and then sell that fresh water to the middle east?

To sustain nuclear fusion it takes magnetic fields to hold the high temperature plasma. These fields take a lot of input power. If you are also using lasers to initiate the fusion then that takes a lot of power also. With a lot of power used just to sustain the process fusion needs to generate more power than system uses in order to be cosidered successful. The best right now is much less than a second. Engineers must make the positive flow of power from a fusion last years to be a commercial success. Then the cost per kilowatt must be competive with current costs. Nobody knows when that will happen. We have been "close" for over thirty years now. It might even happen in our lifetime.

more energy is made, the extra ammount of energy is sooo small

Bingo. People seem to want to complain about companies not switching to alternative fuels or that alternative fuels aren't offered but when it comes down to it there hasn't been a market in the past years for them because oil was so cheap. Once they become economically viable you will see people switch to them.