Fusion will be cracked "within 30 years"

[clv101]

We didn't put enough effort into this technology

Perhaps because it has always been doubtful that it will ever work. The shame is that we didn't put enough effort into the technologies that we are confident will work - solar, wind, tidal, geothermal... and efficiency.

Who is confident these will work? Almost all the information I have been reading are doubfull these will provide anything like the amount of energy we need. I am sure they will make a contribution but the bulk of our power needs will have to be something else.

That isn't my reading of the literature. In fact the opposite. There is dramatically more renewable energy available than we currently use - and efficiency means we don't even really need to use as much as we currently do.

[biffvernon]

Fusion dreams delayed

ITER — a multi-billion-euro international experiment boldly aiming to prove atomic fusion as a power source — will initially be far less ambitious than physicists had hoped, Nature has learned.

Faced with ballooning costs and growing delays, ITER's seven partners are likely to build only a skeletal version of the device at first. The project's governing council said last June that the machine should turn on in 2018; the stripped-down version could allow that to happen (see Nature 453, 829; 2008). But the first experiments capable of validating fusion for power would not come until the end of 2025, five years later than the date set when the ITER agreement was signed in 2006.

the rest

[Mark]

Looks like next year could be critical (again), as Scientists prepare for one of history’s largest and most important experiments....

Science aims for first-ever controlled fusion reaction:
http://www.greenbang.com/science-aims-f ... 11262.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 080309.php

[fifthcolumn]

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

To be fair, it's been 50 years for the last while.

Personally speaking I don't like fusion.

Where does all the hydrogen come from? Water

They're going to BURN water as fuel?

Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

[fifthcolumn]

They work and are proven, particularly efficiency. Passive houses are a good example.

We just have to get society to accept that the levels of energy they produce is it.

That's exactly the right answer. Because fusion is a really bad idea.
The question is how much is the it we can get from renewables?

[fifthcolumn]

That isn't my reading of the literature. In fact the opposite. There is dramatically more renewable energy available than we currently use - and efficiency means we don't even really need to use as much as we currently do.

Wow. Totally correct.
Are you turning into a cornucopian mate?

[Grizzly Mouse]

A 1cm cube would weigh .13 tonnes i.e. 130kg

A 1mm cube would weigh 130 grammes.

I assume that it would be very hard material.

Material of that density would also be useful for:

- thermal stores
- radiation shielding
- bullets
- armour plate
- energy storage flywheels
- super strong, sharp blades

Ultra thin wires, foils and powders of this stuff would have all sorts of weird applications.

Sorry to pour on cold water I was thinking of all sorts of aplications such a dence substance myself. But after looking through several articles I finally found one wich briefly mentions some of the more nitty gritty details.

The relevant paragraph:

"There are just a slew of “buts” coming. First off is as Holmlid notes, just making the deuterium so dense in any volume is an issue and must be worked quite cold. Next, the matter of stability comes to mind, as in the paper’s graphs the time to live is short, shorter than even nanoseconds. That makes the foreseeable production essentially within a laser fusion reactor. Making the ultra dense deuterium and moving it seems out of the question for now. The time of life seems impractical for any laser ignition anytime soon. Finally, the fusion reaction would have to be rather, well, counter intuitive, yielding harmless helium and hydrogen. One would expect a wider range of new materials from the fusion including tritium, which can be nasty radioactive stuff. Lots of supposition, but experimentation is in order."

Something that lasts only picoseconds is not something with practical aplications. Probably not even stable enough to get a good target for the fusion he wants to create.

[Grizzly Mouse]

Although being so dence, if you manage to get enough in one place the explosion creating by super dence deutirium exiting this compressed state might be enough to cause fusion all by itself without any need for a helping hand by giant lasers.

[RenewableCandy]

Perhaps it will, but have they designed anything to put it in yet?