Thunderbolts Forum v3.0

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. senators from both parties introduce legislation on Thursday to accelerate development of power plants run by nuclear fusion reactions, an emerging technology that one day could help fight climate change.

What are the fastest routes to fusion energy?

In recent years, the effort to develop practical fusion energy has rapidly evolved from a focus on only tokamak and laser inertial devices to include a wide array of approaches. We survey this increasingly diverse set of routes to fusion to assess what approaches are likely to lead to practical fusion with the least outlay of resources and thus are potentially the fastest routes. While a conclusive answer can only be determined once some approach actually succeeds in producing a practical fusion-energy generator, and the speed of advance depends on the allocation of resources, it is possible to arrive at tentative conclusions now. We find that basic, long-standing obstacles make the path to practical fusion more difficult, and more resource-intensive, for all approaches using deuterium fuels (DT, DHe3) as well as for approaches with low-density plasma.

Fusion research long emphasized deuterium–tritium (DT) fuel, as this fuel achieved significant fusion reaction rates at lower ion temperatures (Ti) than any other fuel. However, the DT reaction releases most of its energy in the form of a 14 MeV neutron. Since the early days of fusion energy work, researchers have been aware that this situation generates barriers to rapid deployment of any DT-based fusion generators and, conversely, puts a floor on the capital cost of such generators.

This is because there is no known way to convert neutron kinetic energy into electricity except by a conventional thermal generation system, as has been used in electric systems for well over a century. In existing fossil fuel generation plants, the energy conversion system, such as a steam turbine and generator, constitutes 80% or more of the capital cost. The conversion technology is by now extremely mature, and capital costs for these systems alone are in the area of $1–1.5/W of installed capacity.

These two considerations mean that it is practically impossible for any DT system to have capital costs less than existing fossil fuel plants. This, of course, does not mean that the delivered cost of electricity, which includes the fuel price, could not be less for DT fusion plants. However, it sets a floor on the minimum capital cost of a transition from fossil fuels to DT fusion generation.

Since about 50% of all energy use is for heating and would not necessarily require conversion to electricity, a complete conversion to DT fusion would require, at 2023 levels of energy consumption of 20 TW, a minimum of $10 trillion for energy conversion equipment alone. In itself, this is not a prohibitive amount over a 15-year transition period, as compared with fossil fuel costs in the area of $75 trillion over the same period at present prices.

Last September, researchers at Commonwealth Fusion Systems slowly charged a 10-ton D-shaped magnet, pushing up the field strength until it surpassed 20 tesla—a record for a magnet of its kind. The company’s founders say the feat addressed the major engineering challenge required to develop a compact, inexpensive fusion reactor.

Fusion power has been a dream of physicists for decades. At temperatures well above 100 million degrees, as in the sun, atomic nuclei mash together, releasing a massive amount of energy in the process. If researchers can bring about these reactions in a controlled and sustained way here on Earth, it could provide a crucial source of cheap, always-on, carbon-free electricity, using nearly limitless fuel sources. 

David Harding, the founder of two investment management firms who has holdings worth an estimated £27 million, is one of Tokamak Energy’s key backers. He said that he had long been attracted to the idea of “cheap unlimited energy through scientific wizardry” but that now the “whole impetus of global warming makes it seem even more of a no-brainer.”

the approaches that combine hydrogen–boron (pB11) fuel with high-density plasma have an easier, less resource-intensive path. At present, only a few private companies have joined the government projects in actually publishing fusion yield results. However, so far these results reflect the basic advantages of high-plasma-density approaches.

pB11-fueled generator would produce energy almost entirely in the form of either charged particle kinetic energy or x-rays. In both cases, several direct conversion schemes have been proposed or developed for other applications. These include photoelectric conversion for x-rays and both electrostatic and electromagnetic deceleration for charged particle beams. In the case of many of these technologies, no secure cost estimates can be obtained. However, an idea of the cost advantage over thermal conversion can be obtained by looking at one-of-a-kind or low-unit costs of direct energy conversion technologies such as gyrotrons, which convert electron beam energy into microwaves. One-of-a-kind or small numbers, <20, of 1 MW gyrotrons typically have prices of around $1/W. With reasonable scaling for mass production in thousands or millions of units that would be needed for a full transition to fusion, cost reductions to the area of $0.1/W are to be expected, reducing the minimum energy conversion costs for such a transition to the region of $1 trillion.

Other inherent aspects of DT devices also will increase cost and slow rollout. Neutron damage to structures, not present with pB11, will shorten generator lifetime and produce radioactive materials that will need to be disposed of. The essential tritium-breeding blanket is an additional cost not needed in pB11 devices. Thus, exclusive of the actual design of the fusion generators, a transition to DT fusion energy will require considerably more resources than one to pB11 fusion, or equivalently will take longer for a given level of investment.

little or no government funding has been provided for approaches using this fuel.

‘Follow the Science’ Leads to Ruin

Two giant US telescopes threatened by funding cap

US astronomers might have only one huge ground-based telescope in their future, rather than the two that many had hoped for.

They have been planning for years to build the Giant Magellan Telescope on a mountaintop in Chile, and the Thirty Meter Telescope on the Hawaiian mountain Maunakea. … snip … Both projects are backed by international groups of funders, but neither has the estimated US$3 billion needed to fully fund its telescope.

Many astronomers had hoped that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) would contribute money to cover the funding shortfall. But last week the National Science Board, which oversees the NSF, recommended that the agency cap its giant-telescope contributions at $1.6 billion. The board also signalled that it was reluctant for the NSF to spend even that much, citing the need to build other facilities “across a wide range of science and engineering fields”.

Falling behind

Looming over both telescope projects is the fact that the European Southern Observatory is ahead of them, quickly building the 39-metre-wide Extremely Large Telescope in Chile.

To some US researchers, the idea of losing access to one of the two planned telescopes could represent a major blow to US leadership in astronomy. “Great vision should drive great budgets, not vice versa,” says John O’Meara, chief scientist at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Kamuela, Hawaii.

BeAChooser wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2024 12:04 am
[...]

To which I respond ... WHY?

And particularly, WHY NOW?

What purpose would knowing those things serve us right now?

Doesn't the human race face many other far more immediate and civilization threatening problems?

How will this project help solve any of those problems … or might it potential just exacerbate them?

Surely there is something better we could do with the tens of billions of dollars they want to take from us to pay for this toy?

Scientists are designing a supercollider so powerful it could push the boundaries of modern physics

"With this new machine, we will reproduce 11 years of physics data taken on the old machine in about 2 minutes," said CERN accelerator physicist Michael Benedikt, leader of the FCC feasibility study.

They won't just reproduce data. With FCC, physicists hope to tackle some of the most mind-boggling questions in their field.

What happened in the first instant after the Big Bang? What is the true nature of dark matter? Where did all the antimatter go?

"There are various important questions that we have no clue how to answer," said Christophe Grojean, a theoretical particle physicist at DESY also working on the FCC. "We need to find an explanation."

Scientists may soon be able to detect the most mysterious entity in the universe using a fleet of next-generation satellites, a new theoretical study suggests.

… snip …

To address this problem, Hyungjin Kim a theoretical physicist at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) accelerator center, proposed searching for dark matter particles using gravitational wave detectors — instruments designed to measure subtle ripples in the fabric of space-time that were first predicted by Albert Einstein.

… snip ..

To see if modern gravitational wave detectors could theoretically detect the influence of ultralight dark matter, Kim calculated how dark matter particles of varying sizes might perturb space-time. Kim had to explore a wide range of masses — from about 16 to 28 orders of magnitude smaller than the mass of an electron.

His theoretical analysis showed that for all these masses, existing detectors such as the  Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which helped prove the existence of gravitational waves in 2015, would not be able to detect dark matter fluctuations because their sensitivity is too low.

… snip …

"What I found is that the dark matter fluctuations bombardment could leave a distinctive signal in gravitational wave detectors, and potentially future space-borne detectors might be able to test the hypothesis of ultralight dark matter," Kim said. "My proposal utilizes future space-borne gravitational wave detectors, such as Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA)."

Astronomers from around the world met last week to review the latest crop of research proposals for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). They sifted through 1,931 submissions — the most ever received for any telescope in history — and ranked them. By the time the reviewers begin releasing their decisions in late February, only one in every nine proposals will have been allotted time to collect data with JWST.

We’re not sure where the technology—the sensitive detectors, powerful particle accelerators, data processors, and other things that make experiments run—will eventually be useful. People are already dreaming up interesting applications for neutrinos and neutrino research. Because neutrinos are so small, wily, and hard to detect, there are many practical hurdles between the current state and implementation. Perhaps the closest to reality is using neutrino detectors to monitor nuclear proliferation for national security. It could also potentially be used to assess Earth’s crust for mineral deposits or provide a new kind of communication. We’re still very much at the beginning of our neutrino journey; what we do with this technology and information remains for the physicists of the future.

Huge atom-smasher bid to find missing 95% of Universe

Researchers at the world's biggest particle accelerator in Switzerland have submitted proposals for a new, much larger, supercollider.

… snip …

If approved, it will be three times larger than the current giant machine.

But its £17bn price tag has raised some eyebrows, with one critic describing the expenditure as "reckless".

The new machine is called the Future Circular Collider (FCC). Cern's director general, Prof Fabiola Gianotti, told BBC News that, if approved, it will be a "beautiful machine".

So why do they need an even larger hadron collider?

It is because the LHC, which cost £3.75 billion to build (liars), and started operating in 2008, has not yet been able to find particles that will help to explain 95% of the cosmos.

"We are missing something big,'' Prof Gianotti tells us.

More than 20 years ago many researchers at Cern predicted that the LHC would find these mysterious particles. It didn't.

Why are people climate change deniers? Study reveals unexpected results

Do climate change deniers bend the facts to avoid having to modify their environmentally harmful behavior? Researchers … snip … ran an online experiment involving 4,000 US adults, and found no evidence to support this idea. The authors of the study were themselves surprised by the results.

A surprisingly large number of people still downplay the impact of climate change or deny that it is primarily a product of human activity. But why? One hypothesis is that these misconceptions are rooted in a specific form of self-deception, namely that people simply find it easier to live with their own climate failings if they do not believe that things will actually get all that bad.

"We call this thought process 'motivated reasoning,'" says Professor Florian Zimmermann, an economist … snip … Motivated reasoning helps us to justify our behavior. For instance, someone who flies off on holiday several times a year can give themselves the excuse that the plane would still be taking off without them, or that just one flight will not make any difference, or—more to the point—that nobody has proven the existence of human-made climate change anyway. All these patterns of argument are examples of motivated reasoning. Bending the facts until it allows us to maintain a positive image of ourselves while maintaining our harmful behavior.

"In other words, our study didn't give us any indications that the widespread misconceptions regarding climate change are due to this kind of self-deception," says Zimmermann, summing up his work. On the face of it, this is good news for policymakers, because the results could mean that it is indeed possible to correct climate change misconceptions, simply by providing comprehensive information.

Now here’s an interesting proposal for a study I suggest the good professor run. Study the correlation between belief in AGWalarmism and belief in dark matter. I will bet that the correlation is super super high … that 95-100% percent of all AGWalarmists also believe in the existence of dark matter, which after decades and decades has also not been proven. That finding might tell the professor and the folks at phys.org something important. Hold it! Who am I kidding.

LIGO goes to space: ESA to proceed with LISA gravitational wave detector
A gravitational wave detector in space will be sensitive to unexplored phenomena.

Existing gravitational wave detectors rely on bouncing lasers back and forth between distant mirrors before recombining them to produce an interference pattern. Anything that alters the position of the mirrors—from the rumble of a large truck to the passing of gravitational waves—will change the interference pattern.

The detectors we've built on Earth have successfully picked up gravitational waves generated by the mergers of compact objects like neutron stars and black holes. But their relatively compact size means that they can only capture high-frequency gravitational waves, which are only produced in the last few seconds before a merger takes place.

To capture more of the process, we need to detect low-frequency gravitational waves. And that means a much larger distance between the interferometer's mirrors and an escape from the seismic noise of Earth. It means going to space.