“I’m Godzilla. Remember how I got started?”
The nuclear discussion continues as Aeswiren responds to Faux Smoke's worries about a nuclear power plant going “BOOM!” Plus the crucial difference between fission (generally bad) and fusion (perhaps potentially okay.)
“Fusion reactors cannot go boom. With Fusion you have to make an enormous electro-magnetic effort to create and contain a superhot plasma within the reaction vessel. If anything turns down the power, or breaks the vessel the plasma cools and the reaction stops either instantaneously or within a second or two. The material in the reaction vessel at any one time weighs a few grams, okay? It's not like an atomic pile of uranium fuel rods that can go critical and melt down. A couple of grams of superhot plasma is not a threat, especially since it won't stay superhot if anything goes wrong.”
All of a sudden, people forget about 3mile island, Chernobyl?
“It's a good thing to understand exactly how and why those disasters occurred. Chernobyl was caused by a bunch of scientists running a dangerous experiment from their base in Moscow on a device they were not completely familiar with, situated a thousand miles away. I'm not arguing for the construction of a lot of old style PWR Fission reactors. But I'm aware that China is putting 562 more coal fired power plants on line. That Europe is adding 50. That the US is dependant on coal for most of its electricity. Global warming is happening, the ice will melt, our civilization will have to move uphill away from the coasts and to do that we will need a new source of high density energy. Renewables, especially solar, could be one solution, but will require pretty large solar farms in places like Spain, Algeria, Australia and Arizona. Coupled with the new wave of efficient fuel cells, that might be enough. But our cities are so wasteful, and so power hungry, as is our industry, that it might not be enough and that would keep energy costs high. I think we might be better served by developing nuclear fusion as fast as possible. Then, we're safe, in a sense. With abundant electric power, fuel cells, electric cars, rail, etc. we have a chance of making it through the great crisis that the rising sea levels are going to bring us somewhere in the next century.”
The secret word is Containment
Jody Reynolds – RIP
The best solution is to merge fission & fusion to have a nice little fuck-ion.
ReplyDeleteConcerning those China riders on the coal can: Be aware!
In a few years they will start with a mass tourism, so imagine just a few hundred million (for them it's nothing!) of coal can riding tourists visiting - let's say your country - and once there, wanting to stay put and apply for visa. And?
If you start to feed them it's a hunger, let's say, in 15 days, 6 hours, 43 minutes.
You don't have enough cops
to control the fucked-up situation... no cruise ships to bring them back.
You slowly become the second Tibet (or buddhists with batons, which is good!)
Me think the best thing to do then is to give them spades (again) to make another railroad but this time not Pacific-Atlantic but the Great Verticala, from Alaska to Terra Del Fuego. In that case they can start with Palin...
But be careful with their poppies, this time it would be mixed with melanin.
Melanin??
ReplyDeleteSurely you mean Melamine comrade...
Right! M is near N and my fingers double size...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, easy with milk... it's full of melamin or it has a new gene of Trabant inside... herr anonimous.
So I skimmed over the wikipedia page on fusion power & I can definitely start to understand why this process isn't supposed to be as dangerous as I'd have presumed it to be. However, I still have my doubts & troubles with this specific project.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me the most is that it is believed that no failsafe is needed because of how unlikely failure is, as well as the conditions & requirements for the process to work in the first place... meanwhile, murphy's law [ i think ] says that everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
For me, it isn't what expect or understand that's the problem, it is the uncertain potential for disaster... here we have people, as clumsy & mistake prone as they are, fucking around with the sort of chemical processes a star naturally produces. If things do go bad, or go in a direction we don't understand, there's a hell of a lot more potential for danger of grand proportions than say, if I'm tinkering around with making a vehicle run off of compressed air.
Granted, I still know next to nothing about this, wikipedia isn't exactly the most reliable source... still though, I worry that if things don't go smoothly, they might just end up being far worse than many of us had imagined
Godzilla, don't know about your beginnings but sure looks like you ended up as instant black pudding.
ReplyDelete