christmas

you nostalgia, you lose

 

To be entirely honest, I don't think it matters what we do, we're boned anyway.

 

I beg to differ, (is that how you say it?) sure, it's going to take a lot, but if we can get rid of the idiotic things we have in the current world and instead add more support of education, removal of weapons and common sense, I think we have a chance after all.

 

We kind of have a Solution for energy problems, it's called nuclear fusion ( google iter or jet) ITER is going to put out 12 mega wats that's 3 more then needed to keep it going. It's pretty much in the pocket, problem is iter is only a testing facility and only going up in 2019, its being built already though. The nuclear fusion comity thingy suspect firstcommercial nuclear fusion plant will only go up in 2040/50, so the thing is, lets not kill ourselfs before 2040. Btw, fucking alucard is mad cause some guy went racist on his asian ass and wants to put out his frustrations on the internet now. Get over yourself alucard.

 

fusion? are you sure it's not fission?

btw do you barbaric euros still use coal? thank god for CANDU.

 

It's fusion, just google it. I have received a 3 hour prsentation about it.

 

Hollywood makes you believe its impossible, thats cause hollywood is talking bout cold fusion.

 

Fusion is more than possible, it's how stars work, and doing it for short amounts of time is fairly easy.

The difficulty lies in getting sustained terrestrial fusion to work, but that's just a matter of perfecting the technique.

It'll happen eventually.

And once it does it's a pretty much ideal fuel supply, it uses the most commonly available materials in the universe (and on earth) and produces mostly inert helium as waste. It doesn't explode, keeping it going requires constant supervision, so it's automatically safe, and it doesn't really require any hard to acquire resources, so no pollution and deaths due to finding all the oil/coal to power the thing.

Plus, it would be the ideal reason to switch over to electric cars, electric everything in fact, which is good because it standardises things, the same power generated at a fusion plant could power cars, houses, shipping, industry, whatever you want. Rather than running lots of inefficient power generators, you can centralise (or decentralise, to a degree) power production and run it wherever you like.

 

You don't need to know what causes gravity to know how fusion works. It's simply the collision of atoms to form a larger atom and maybe lose a few subatomic particles in the process. This is opposed to fission which is shooting a neutron at a large atom to form normally two smaller atoms. The thing about stars is that they're so absolutely massive that their gravitational force pulls the outside in with enough strength that it forces the atoms together and manages to contain the energy. The reason we can't do fusion on Earth is because we don't have enough of a force to keep the energy contained enough to keep the reaction going. The solution that is being vetted mainly is to use an immense electromagnetic field to contain the particles, as fusion normally involves charged ions, although there are other ways to contain the energy.

 

By all means, even "a few seconds" is a gross exaggeration of it's duration. But, as Chris said, it's simply a matter of perfecting the process. Progress in all fields should be advanced equally, unless something in one field is a definitive answer. Fusion is definitive in that we know it can be done on earth theoretically, but it should not be seen as a cure-all due to the practicals being worked out.

Suffice to say though, if it does work out, it could easily be a cure-all, considering that its sole by product is Helium and a few seconds of radioactivity, with its fuel being isotopes of Hydrogen measured on the scale of milligrams and absolutely no chance of a meltdown, unforeseen psychics not accounted for.

The issue with the sun providing us with "more energy in a second" is that much of that energy is taken up by the atmosphere itself and used to warm the Earth. Past that, it would require an incredible number of solar cells to harvest even a thousandth of the energy that does actually contact the Earth itself, due to solar cells not being the most efficient of devices.

 

It's all a balance. Water power is great, except that dams can effect fish populations, as they have in my city, or drastically affect geography, like the Three Gorges Dam.

Wind power is great, except for one major problem no one mentions: The parts of a wind turbine have EXTREMELY small tolerances. We're talking micrometers here. If you aggregated all of the parts, it takes enough metal to form over fifty failed turbines to make one turbine that works. And every time a part doesn't meet tolerances, it has to be remelted down, which uses more energy.

Solar-thermal cells are even more inefficient than photovoltaic cells, which do require the use of rare earth elements.

 

Iter will be able to sustain the plasma formed for over 10 minutes as of now, but since science advances by 2019 they suspect itll be hours of time generating enough energy for 2-4 cities. But they wont do that, its a testing facility afterall. Flaschr fusion power is perfectly possible and viable. 1 vottle of heavy water = the energy need of a human being for 11 years. And there is almost no dangerfor te workers at all if the elemtromagnetic field fails. There just isnt enough mass in the plasma to really damage anything but the hull. No major explosions or anything. Fusion is the future fullstop

 

I only type on my smartphone. Still get shit across.