PowerSwitch

Despite the complexity and high research and development costs, scientists are convinced they can unlock the massive power of nuclear fusion within a generation.

Useless f**kwits ensuring that they will be featherbedded (sp?) for even more decades.

They've only being trying since 1954 after all.

At this rate they & their families will sail straight through Peak Oil and The Great Dieoff. The worst they will experience is the occasional whiff of burning corpses drifting across the razor wire into their secure compounds.

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/front/Fusi ... 9000&ty=st

I saw that very article and, for some reason Vortex, I thought of you...

All I can say to console you is, it's peanuts compared with what they're using to bail the *ankers out with

Really, they should have all these guys out there on the hills planting trees.

Vortex wrote:

Despite the complexity and high research and development costs, scientists are convinced they can unlock the massive power of nuclear fusion within a generation.

Useless f**kwits ensuring that they will be featherbedded (sp?) for even more decades.

They've only being trying since 1954 after all.

And they've been saying "Give us 30 years" since then too

But won't our society and economy also be "cracked" by then too?

Ah! Now there's an idea! No, not fusion - they always say they will have it "cracked" in 30 years....... even if it were true, it is too long given our current predicament.

No I meant getting the *ankers out of their biuldings onto the fields to do something useful, like plant trees, or dig potatoes, or pull carrots. Then they would actual play a useful part in life!

(I will look down upon the *ankers for the rest of my living days.......)

They've always said it would be cracked in the next 50 years.... now that they're saying 30 I would consider that some progress. After all, they currently *can* do a controlled fusion reaction, just not in an energy positive and commerically constructed way.

Risk Vs Reward ratio suggests to me that this is a worthwhile project. A few billion on this is peanuts compared to the amount of money in the system, and the continual bank bailouts across the globe.

At least its keeping those horrible marauding gangs of high energy physicists off the streets

Andy_K wrote:They've always said it would be cracked in the next 50 years.... now that they're saying 30 I would consider that some progress. After all, they currently *can* do a controlled fusion reaction, just not in an energy positive and commerically constructed way.

Risk Vs Reward ratio suggests to me that this is a worthwhile project. A few billion on this is peanuts compared to the amount of money in the system, and the continual bank bailouts across the globe.

Of course you're correct.

We need this technology.

My gripe is that sadly the current crowd are the wrong people to do it.

We need to throw stacks of money, IQ, Feynman-type scientists, top engineers and Silicon Valley start-up personalities at the problem ... not a load of wimps and 3rd rate managers.

There's a public lecture on fusion at the Institute of Physics on Wednesday 29 October

17.00: Plenary public lecture (open to all)
Fusion power - the era of burning plasmas
Professor Steven Cowley (Director of Culham Laboratory, UK, from September
2008)

http://www.iop.org/Conferences/Forthcom ... 27992.html

which I may or may not attend. Maybe some PowerSwitchers would like to heckle him.

Great thread title. Had me chuckling. It went down to thirty years in 1984, didn't it?

Maybe some PowerSwitchers would like to heckle him.

More like Heckler & Koch him ...

Vortex wrote:

Maybe some PowerSwitchers would like to heckle him.

More like Heckler & Koch him ...

Uh oh. I hope you're not like the loonies who shout "kill him" when McCain mentions Obamas name at his rallies.

dudley wrote:

Vortex wrote:

Maybe some PowerSwitchers would like to heckle him.

More like Heckler & Koch him ...

Uh oh. I hope you're not like the loonies who shout "kill him" when McCain mentions Obamas name at his rallies.

My eclectic approach to humour is not to everyone's taste.

29.5 years and counting......

New material could enable clean, safe nuclear power:
http://www.greenbang.com/new-material-c ... ear-power/

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden are producing a material that’s 100,000 times heavier than water and more dense than the core of the Sun, and say the material could provide a cleaner and more sustainable source of energy than the nuclear power used today.

Produced from heavy hydrogen, also known as deuterium, the material is known as “ultra-dense deuterium.” It’s so heavy that a cube with sides of length of 10 centimetres weights 130 tonnes.

continues.....

Vortex wrote:

Andy_K wrote:They've always said it would be cracked in the next 50 years.... now that they're saying 30 I would consider that some progress. After all, they currently *can* do a controlled fusion reaction, just not in an energy positive and commerically constructed way.

Risk Vs Reward ratio suggests to me that this is a worthwhile project. A few billion on this is peanuts compared to the amount of money in the system, and the continual bank bailouts across the globe.

Of course you're correct.

We need this technology.

My gripe is that sadly the current crowd are the wrong people to do it.

We need to throw stacks of money, IQ, Feynman-type scientists, top engineers and Silicon Valley start-up personalities at the problem ... not a load of wimps and 3rd rate managers.

Totally agree, as this is the one technology that could pull us out of our environmental\energy situation you'd think that the PTB would be throwing absolutely everything at it. If they did we could have it up and running way, way quicker than 30 years.

Then again, looking at the calibre of the scientific illiterates in charge I'm not pinning my hopes on it.