RE: [cdn-nucl-l] " Teen creates fusion in his Oakland Township home "

["Adam McLean" <adam.mclean@utoronto.ca>]

Good grief, Jaro.  The sun fuses atoms to produce energy.  Fusion reactions
involving D and T fuse atoms to produce energy.  Taking it any further than
that is expecting far more than one would ever realistically hope from the
media.  

Do articles on fission mention that only ˝ the energy produced by CANDUs
comes from fission of U, and the rest from Pu?  No.  Nor would you ever
expect them to be that accurate.

Re. cost, sure, $1,000 for 1.0E+06 neutrons/sec is cheap.  The DIII-D fusion
reactor costs $500,000,000 and regularly makes 1.0E16 n/s.  ITER will
produce ~1.0E20 n/s for $5,000,000,000 (note, the $12.8 billion figure is a
full lifecycle cost including construction, operation for 20 years, and
decommissioning.)

The primary goals of ITER are to produce 400 MWth on 40 MW of input power,
Q=10 for steady periods of up to 500 seconds, and Q=5 for >1,000 seconds.
These are described in detail here:
www.iter.org/reports.htm

The 'Fusor', while an outstanding science project, and terrific as a neutron
source and platform for basic plasma science, will never, ever be useful for
power production.

I believe ITER will reach its goals.  I believe that enough to offer a bet
of $1 to anyone that doubts that they'll be met within ITER's operating
lifetime.  Takers?  Jaro? :)

Adam


________________________________________
From: cdn-nucl-l-admin@mailman1.cis.McMaster.CA
[mailto:cdn-nucl-l-admin@mailman1.cis.McMaster.CA] On Behalf Of Franta,
Jaroslav
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 6:03 AM
To: Multiple (E-mail)
Subject: [cdn-nucl-l] " Teen creates fusion in his Oakland Township home "

At least the kid's project cost was a bit more reasonable than the 12.8
billion dollar ITER reactor at Cadarache in southern France.

And, mercifully, the article avoids making the endlessly repeated phony
claim that its the "energy source of the sun." 

If that were the case, they wouldn't need hundred-million-degree
temperatures, and they wouldn't need deuterium or tritium.

Of course admitting that its really the energy source of hydrogen bombs,
doesn't sound nearly as attractive to politicians, the media, and the
public....

With this kind of hyperbole, we could also claim that, because fission
reactions are *nuclear*, its also " the power of the Sun and the stars."

Guess we just lack the requisite PR finesse :O) 

 Jaro