By Steven Goddard
A favorite excuse to push the AGW agenda is that “energy is limited, so we have to preserve it for future generations.” But nothing could be further from the truth. As that clever fellow Albert Einstein figured out ( E = Mc² ) – energy is available right here on earth in vast supplies beyond our comprehension. In fact, a primary concern of mankind over the last 65 years has been to figure out how to keep mankind from releasing some of this energy too quickly, in a catastrophic fashion.
Einstein’s equation tells us that one kilogram of matter can be converted into 90,000,000,000,000,000 (ninety million billion) joules of energy. That is roughly equivalent to saying that one liter of water contains as much potential energy as 10 million gallons of gasoline. Those who saw the movie “Angels and Demons” are familiar with the concept of combining matter and anti-matter to achieve a highly efficient matter to energy conversion. Mankind probably won’t have access to that sort of technology for some time into the future, but we already have hundreds of fission reactors generating a significant percentage of the world’s energy.
Scientists and engineers are also actively pursuing control of thermonuclear fusion, which powers the sun, stars and hydrogen bombs – and offers nearly unlimited energy potential using readily available fuel. All of our current energy sources (coal, oil, wind, gas, nuclear, solar, etc.) are ultimately by-products of fusion. Controlled fusion uses as fuel primarily the hydrogen isotope deuterium, which is abundant in seawater.
In the south of France, there is a large international fusion effort underway named ITER (Latin for “the way.”) The project was originally agreed to by Francois Mitterrand, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in 1985, and was officially launched in October 2007.
It is now being built in the south of France as part of an international collaboration between France, the US, Russia, the UK, the EU, India, China, Korea and Japan. In 2010, the first concrete will be poured.
The deuterium will be heated to 150 million degrees centigrade, forming plasma (decomposed hydrogen atoms) which will be contained by electrical and magnetic fields inside the Tokomak pictured above. (Note the size on the person at the bottom right in the picture above.) The plasma particles combine in a fusion reaction to form helium, and release vast amounts of energy in the process – which is captured as heat and used to generate electricity.
From Wikipedia : (D = Deuterium T = Tritium n = neutron)
The easiest (according to the Lawson criterion) and most immediately promising nuclear reaction to be used for fusion power is:
D + T → 4He + n
Deuterium is a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen and as such is universally available. The large mass ratio of the hydrogen isotopes makes the separation rather easy compared to the difficult uranium enrichment process. Tritium is also an isotope of hydrogen, but it occurs naturally in only negligible amounts due to its radioactive half-life of 12.32 years. Consequently, the deuterium-tritium fuel cycle requires the breeding of tritium from lithium using one of the following reactions:
n + 6Li → T + 4He
n + 7Li → T + 4He + n
Below is the timeline for ITER over the next decade.
It is anticipated that some fusion energy will be in the power grid in as little as 30 years, and be the primary source of electrical energy in perhaps 80 years.
– Hopefully the construction of ITER is not being powered by frequently motionless windmills.
Some AGW types want us to think small, when in fact the key to meeting future needs is to think large. You can’t feed 10 billion people by fantasizing about the “good old days” – which never actually existed.
“A favorite excuse to push the AGW agenda is that “energy is limited, so we have to preserve it for future generations.””
First of all, what is the “AGW agenda”? And second, I have never heard anyone say anything of this kind. Who do you have in mind?
bill (04:53:28) :
If it’s safe, If it’s controllable it will be good. If it ever happens – it has been a long time coming. But will it arrive in time?
It is safer than your car engine, and if it were not for the stringiness of the governments involved it would have been here already.
IMO there are two things wrong with ITER.
1)The aforementioned stinginess. You cannot make omelet without breaking eggs
2)The organization’s framework that comes because of 1).
Instead choosing a world team of the best scientists and fund them to hire and oversee the best engineers and scientists, parsimony has created an organization with much less than necessary personnel for such an ambitious project, the rest being supplied by the laboratories and universities of the involved countries on a volunteer basis. This means that not the best people are at the crucial and non crucial jobs. Thus things take longer by a factor of pi, as we used to say.
ITER could have already been ready with better funding.
CERN was successfully launched back in the 1950s on the excellence principle: the directors were financed by a fixed amount from each country and results were expected. Laboratories and universities contributed by doing experiments, not by building the machine as is happening at ITER and even now at CERN, on the ubiquitous parsimony principle. A false economy on such projects. I have not read this anywhere, but I am sure that the recent ( last autumn) accident and consequent delay in the LHC construction at CERN was due to this Parsimony Principle.
Not only is unlimited energy available via nuclear reaction, the earth is literally awash in hydrocarbons that can be converted into suitable liquid fuels.
One company woking on a successful conversion processes has estimated that the amount of hydrocarbons in US sewage sludge, if converted into liquid fuels, could totally eliminate oil imports.
On the quantity of methane hydrates, the USGS states: “The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth.”
(google “usgs methane hydrate”, look for USGS Fact Sheet)
There is fission fuel enough for at least hundreds of thousands of years with fast breeding and reprocessing, as my papers at this site show.
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/author.cfm?at_id=283
http://www.energycentral.com/reference/whitepapers/102136/The-Nuclear-Reactor-Closed-Cycle
http://www.energycentral.com/reference/whitepapers/102137/Nuclear-Reactor-Overview-and-Nuclear-Cycles
It may take much longer than we think to get to commercial fusion power.
The “green” of our planet has a black root, aka; fossil fuel. Homo Sap is only one of many enablers in the conversion process. The life span of our species does not mesh well with the cycle span of the conversion process.
We humans do not create anything but, merely manipulate that which exists. It is heartening to know that we (humans) are finally attempting to manipulate that which is truly of survival value.
Thank you Steven Goddard for the good news.
Oh boy – the old Fusion thing coming to our rescue! I have wished before that this blog could stay within the realms of climate science – where it is absolutely brilliant, and steer away from energy policy and political commentary – where it most commentators are downright naive and reactionary.
In 1978 I set up a small independent research group in Oxford – and we focussed out efforts mostly on the huge environmental problems created by nuclear waste from the fission programmes around the world – Britain, the US, the USSR and France were the chief culprits with all manner of problems – with a great deal of secrecy. We were also mindful of our responsibility as critics to provide some non-nuclear solutions. We were joined by a doctorate mathematician (Balliol, Oxford) who left the Fusion programme at Culham to focus on alternatives. Fusion is not clean. It is hugely expensive, requires the same level of elite social control and centralised grids and is irrelevant as a power source for 2/3rd of humanity. Our expert – Dr Gordon Thompson eventually was poached by Princeton, and there-after he set up the independent Institute for Resource and Security Studies (IRSS). I recall his reason for leaving Culham and the Fusion programme – he said it had become a cult, a solar-worshipping religious and technological sect capable of gaining huge funds and support but would never be able to deliver anything relevant to the mass of humanity. That was 30 years ago, and little has changed.
Please, oh please, all you commentators with technical fixes, reflect on the elements of beauty, grace, community and spirit that really mark out humanity as special – and then on what sustainability really means – because if we don’t sustain those elements of our humanity, what is survival really worth. Life in the ‘developed’ world is not beautiful nor sustainable for at least one-third of its members, and two-thirds of the ‘developing world’ will never benefit from the current ‘development’ model and simply see their own community and beauty destroyed in the process.
The answers are not simply technical. And much of the technology proposed perpetuates elitist survivalism.
I currently have few allies among the environmentalists I have worked with for over three decades – because they have bought into the ‘global warming’ bollocks – but they did so because, at first, they genuinely believed humanity was imperilled. Later, a kind of corporate-creep took over, and they lost their critical faculties and have been taken over by zealots who – as one commentator rightly observed, have little real contact with the living world and its incredible diversity – nor do they represent communities and the aspirations of those who have little material wealth.
But is does not serve anyone’s cause to belittle, to name call, to impugn integrity, and do indulge in naive descriptions of social sectors such as ‘lefties’ and green ‘nazis’ any more than when the AGW lobby denigrates ‘deniers’ and ‘sceptics’.
Fusion research has produced one clear success, they have found a constant.
In Excel:
today() + constant = Date of Commercial Fusion
Where constant = 30y.
Leastways when I completed my NE BS and MS degrees 17y ago it was 30y away.
The idea of fusion as a reliable, infinite energy source is grand, but it is just a dream. The reality is that two difficulties must be overcome: first, a magnetic bottle cannot be continuously fed raw material, nor have products removed; second, materials of construction disintegrate or melt at fusion temperatures.
“There seem to be insurmountable difficulties in finding materials of construction that will not melt or evaporate at the very high temperatures obtained in a fusion reaction. Magnetic pinch bottles were used [in the 1980’s], and perhaps still are, to squeeze plasma until it begins the fusion process. Even if that fusion process is someday sustainable (they were thrilled at achieving fusion temperature for a fraction of a second), melt-down is a very real problem.
There were two fundamental problems to overcome, the first being how to sustain the fusion reaction, the second how to keep the thing from melting. Sustaining the fusion reaction required a magnetic bottle with an inlet for fresh fuel, and an outlet for the reaction products. The nature of a magnetic bottle does not allow for inlets or outlets, at least at that time. There may have been advances since then, I do not know.
Then, finding a way to do something useful with the heat without melting the reactor is a bit of a problem. The materials science professors and researchers were having quite a bit of difficulty with that one. It had something to do with the energy of inter-atomic bonding, under which everything they tried disintegrated at those temperatures.
It is a very good thing that the sun is so very far away from Earth.
Therefore, unless some amazing breakthroughs in magnetic bottles and heat-resistant materials have occurred, or will occur, fusion is off the list of energy providers.” — Roger E. Sowell, May 18, 2009
So, does anyone have answers to those fundamental problems? Have materials scientists invented Indestructium? How does one add material and take away products from a magnetic bottle while fusion occurs?
In addition to hot fusion, cold fusion refuses to go away. (People are trying to call it LENR, Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, since researchers generally don’t chill the experiments.) In a rather disappointing article from Science News, http://sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/41220/title/Cold_Panacea , the many commenters make up for it and include people actively involved with current research, and some have been involved since Pons & Fleischmann days.
If that article require login, the major links in it are to http://lenr-canr.org/ and http://newenergytimes.com/
If hot fusion continues to promise commercialization in the next 30 years (they’ve been saying that for 40 years now), cold fusion certainly deserves as much attention!
BTW, the most bizarre suggestion in the LENR arena is one that suggests muons from cosmic rays may help trigger fusion reactions. So perhaps cold fusion works best during a cooling climate. 🙂
Note to moderators – I just posted something on cold fusion, but don’t see it in the “pending” state. If that means the spam filter gobbled it, please rescue it for me, thanks. (It was a short post with three URLs, spam fodder, if I understand correctly.)
Steven Kopits (04:35:31) :
I read the Econobrowser regularly. Dr Hamilton is what they call an “old-school” professor and the reading on Econobrowser is highly intelligent and interesting – no hype, no bull and no agenda (at least from James). James always places caveats around any assumptions or projections. Finding ‘old-school’ professors is hard these days. Econobrowser is to Economics what WUWT is to climate science. Lots of science and theory but dished out with a healthy dose of humility – that is with out the pretense or certainty of having resolved all the answers to everything.
anna v (06:07:56) :
Some good points, but I have a personal quibble.
The metaphor “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs” was published in the New York Times newspaper (byline: Walter Duranty) in the 1930s. It was used to justify the killing of an estimated 10 million people as necessary for the creation of a Socialist Utopia in the Fatherland of the Proletariat (i.e. the Soviet Union.).
It carries negative connotations, especially to Ukrainians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
http://newsbusters.org/node/2886/print
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
Does that mean in the future we will starve countless plant species out of much needed CO2 driving them to extinction?
The unprecedented drop in CO2, maintained in the past by burning fossil fuels, in the atmosphere will bring on the next ice age much sooner than expected.
The negative feedback of the cooling oceans absorbing any remaining CO2 will turn earth into an ice ball much like Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Scarcity is the mother’s milk of panic.If there is no want there is no panic.Freedom scares the daylights out of Bureaucrats. I heard a critic of the new “Star Trek” film say it
was -“too abashedly pro-development.” and,”too optimistic”.
I say: “Engage!” or, simply ,from another era:”Light the candle!”…
Abitbol (04:28:00) :
I hope we are buildind the future of mankind in south of France…
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A wine powered reactor, yeah!!! I always new the future was based on wine.
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I drove past the place last Christmas, nice complex.
Windmills beginning to fall by the spears of WUWT Don Antonio Quixote!
There is another portable source of energy:This patented generator is a solid-state generator which uses the nuclear resonant ferromagnetic effect in a cylindrical rod of iron(56). This effect has been named by the inventors the “isotopic mutation effect”.
http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/mmcgen.htm
O’boy would I like to fit one of those beasts under the hood of my ute.
Another technique for generating energy via nuclear fusion is Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (LIFE). LIFE uses powerful lasers to compress the fusion fuel, composed of isotopes of hydrogen to produce fusion. LIFE is not only about fusion, it’s a hybrid reactor combining fission and fusion. The neutrons given off during the fusion process are used to drive sub-critical nuclear fission of low grade fission material lining the interior wall of the reactor. Nearly all of the fission fuel is burned up in a LIFE reactor. There is tremendous amount of fuel stored as spent nuclear waste at conventional fission reactor through-out the world.
Read more here:
https://lasers.llnl.gov/missions/energy_for_the_future/life/
Stephen Parrish
“Leastways when I completed my NE BS and MS degrees 17y ago it was 30y away.”
Think there’s been some backsliding here . . . .
When I completed my BS in Physics 42 years ago, it was 25y away.
R. Nebel has said that we’ll know within 1.5-2 years whether Polywell fusion is a bust or boon. Beyond that, 6 or so years to having a demonstration reactor. It’s might be a long shot, but still one can hope.
http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php
http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1283
anna v (04:49:14) : and with easier access to port than Spain
Well, I like Spanish Port more than French, but there is something to be said for easier access, Hic! 😎
Forgive me for again being a skeptic(!), but, since this is a government-run project, it’s likely the timeline projections and cost will both at least double before this becomes reality, if it does.
Speaking of that same constant, I met a phsycist some -constant- years ago who was working on the mathematical equations for the magnetic field to hold the plasma. The problem, as he stated it, was that at fusion temps, the magnetic fields would break down, and the reaction was ended as the plasma fell from fusion temperature (i.e. – containment was lost).
Did ITER solve this yet?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. — Arthur C. Clarke
Unfortunately for most people this includes all present technology.
Stephen Parrish (07:07:51) : Where constant = 30y.
Leastways when I completed my NE BS and MS degrees 17y ago it was 30y away.
Well, at least they have improved the precision if not the accuracy (a common trend these days)… In the mid ’70s (about 40 years ago) it was 30-50 years away …
While I have great hope for fusion “Hope is not a strategy”. Some issues:
1) It’s always 30 years and a few hundred $Billion of R&D away.
2) Those pesky “n” particles. How can it be lacking in radiation and ‘clean’ with all those energetic neutrons whacking the vessel walls?
3) How to get the net energy out of the plasma in enough excess to overcome the losses in the REST of the system to make net e- in the wires?
4) Lithium is not exactly an abundant resource. Not particularly unavailable, but you start burning it as fuel and, well, the price is going to go up. Way up. A lot. (It comes from old dry desert lake beds in places like Chile and Nevada.) This will change your profit projections. A lot. I know of all of two producers: FMC and SQM (I own SQM) They are trying to figure out how to deal with the e-car demand for batteries…
So count me with the folks who expect us to be using fission for the next 100+ years to actually make electricity.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-fusion. It ought to be funded full tilt so that as Anna V. put it they could employ “the best engineers and scientists” (I’d even go so far as asserting they ought to do that and fund some of the less center stage folks with slightly more odd ideas too… )
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/mr-fusion/
It’s just that being much closer to the end of my life than the beginning and having had the fusion carrot “just 30 years away” for all of the time that the fusion concept has existed – well, lets just say this particular donkey is not interested in trying to reach that carrot on a stick quite so much any more … Some other mule gets to it, well, then I’ll mosey over and share lunch… Until then, this fission hay pile is just fine…