Don Quixote

a reply to: andy06shake

I have high hopes in the Wendelstein Fusion Reactor. I live not far away from a nuclear power plant, can see the water vapor clouds on good days and I keep an eye on it more than all the other power plants in the curves.

I like to see it replaced by a fusion reactor in my lifetime, time will tell if that works out.

a reply to: Oleandra88

That's the Wendelstein stellarator reactor that's a modified computer designed Tokamak?

Magnetic field strength and material science are the ticket, they will get there eventually.

After all, failure is not really an option.

a reply to: Oleandra88
Googling that doesn't give much information other than disclosing the difficulty of magnetically confining a dynamic plasma with static coils. Good food for thought but its a democratic world and if St-Greta had wanted to make a difference she would have attacked "big oil" more directly. We don't have graphite storage technology yet and lithium technology stinks like a deer ass when you charge it.

a reply to: Slichter
New lithium-iron-phosphoric battery racks do not give off fumes or gasses. No ventilation needed. Sony and VARTA build these for example. They can reach cycle depth 95%+.

About the fusion reactor it is called Wendelstein 7-X
en.wikipedia.org...

Greta Thunberg is just a tool, I saw this from the very beginning. You see, most of the discussions are about her, attacking her. That I find bad because it is a child. The parents should be the ones that get the critics.

a reply to: andy06shake

Yeah that one. It looks very un-intuitive right? The design of the chamber. Expectations are high but I do not know enough about it on technical level. I think I read they had a breakthrough lately but that was a small box in a magazine.

I subscribed to a scientific magazine that I get monthly to be up to date on alternative energies, I think it was in there.

a reply to: Oleandra88

If a child wishes to enter public life via an opinion, that opinion is bound to be attacked.

Whether it be a child or an adult, personal attacks are wrong. I don't take a moral stand on that insomuch as a logical stance....i.e., once you resort to personal attacks you have given over your position in a logical discussion.

That said, we know humans are "lowest common denominator" beings, and should expect a man, woman, or child entering the realm of public discourse to suffer any indignity that is thrown at them because of it. Expecting doesn't mean accepting....

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan
The moment one exposes her or himself to the public opinion, that is to be expected. I do not see it as a bad thing, as long as it is kept on a facts. Children are ignorant to the world and everyone needs to get a picture / feedback on what they spout around.

My parents raised me differently than my uncle and aunt. My parents would always tell me that I have to watch what I say even if it is the truth. My uncle told me that honest and directness leads to everyone knowing where they are at. I found that concept to be working better for me.

This I often regret here. It is just text and so they can not see my face when I am being direct and honest. This is why I started to add mugs to my posts to take off the hard, edgy tone that may be experienced.

Children and teenagers are opinionated. Often these opinions are shallow because they got them from somewhere or are not aware of things. Yes, personal attacks are wrong. It is not professional and does not lead to any solution. Just finger pointing and blaming.

That is why I wrote that the child should not be attacked, but the parents criticized. Not for the reason of just criticizing but what we call here like "constructive criticism". Criticism that is intended to make the criticized think about something and not felt attacked on a personal level. With that comes the respect about the decisions other make, insight about their line of reasons.

I also agree with the expecting but not accepting attacks.

a reply to: Oleandra88

We will probably see Thorium-based nuclear reactors before nuclear fusion reactors become mainstream as the Thorium fuel cycle offers several potential advantages over a Uranium fuel cycle, including a much greater abundance of the stuff on Earth.

And if they lose power/cooling they are not inclined to try and melt there way down to the mantle nether, so there is that.

I think the un-intuitive type design of the Wednesfield stellarator is down to efficiency and the refined configuration of the magnetic bubble.

a reply to: andy06shake
Oh thorium, yes I heard about this.

If not for the military needing materials to bomb ourselves into orbit as a whole, we could have these thorium reactors everywhere now. Shut of the neutron source and the energy output ebbs down, no melt down possible.

a reply to: Oleandra88

Aye, they do indeed seem a possibility, with current technology and materials.

But as you say, the boys do love their nuclear toys.

a reply to: Oleandra88

I remember being excited about fusion back when I was seven in the early 1960's.
After you calculate the temperatures and pressures needed to ignite a fusion reaction you realize it will burn all the available fuel under the magnetic confinement to exhaustion. Since there is no way to inject more fuel against the pressure of a fusion reaction, you would have to wait. That means its a "single use container". Yes I know, but you also have to continue powering the magnetic fields until the plasma remnants cool, otherwise there will be damage to the physical walls of the confinement chamber. Hot Hot its Hot!

So at that point I had to consider the conspiracy angle of why the Russians staged a nuclear disaster.
Russia was one of the worlds largest oil exporters and most of their revenue came from big oil years ago.
Then they wanted me to go help Tracy with the Apollo program so I forgot about it.

lithium-iron-phosphoric batteries "might" help with cell phone stink but they don't have the discharge rate necessary to help with fusion technology. Since fusion research might be just a false flag to remove funding from Nuclear power plant technology its definitely on topic for a Don Quixote thread.

originally posted by: unHolyGrail
a reply to: neformore

top secret fart joke? How does this relate to Don Quixote?

Here, read this

www.phrases.org.uk...

Hope it helps

originally posted by: BoscoMoney
Yes, what we need are more dismantled old non recyclable wind turbine blades in our landfills. You are a certified GENIUS! No, really, I'm totally serious!

Hello.

I want to point you this way ~~~~~~>

Over here is reality.

Where you are at the moment is not. You are in La La Land.

You are concerned about turbine blades in landfills, but, apparently pollutants from burning fossil fuels is fine.

a reply to: Slichter

It works, in the same manner, our Sun does and she's been doing it for the past 4.603 billion years or so.

Not suggesting it's in any manner an easy feat to control accomplish or reproduce, but the principle is sound enough.

And we are indeed pumping monies and resources into the field, nevermind made significant progress in the past few decades alone.

a reply to: andy06shake

The sun uses gravitational containment not magnetic.
Both attractive forces!

originally posted by: neformore
I don't normally do mud pit threads but.....

Everything he said in that video is basically true.... those huge wind turbine factories in China are a pollution problem, it's also true if they're not placed right, you get no wind power. And they are an eye sore.. except for the orange ones : P

a reply to: Slichter

Well, gravity is a force that acts between any two objects with mass whereas magnetism can either pull the two objects together or push them apart, but there may be more of a connection there than meets the eye.

Still trying to build our own mini controllable sun in a bubble all the same and its not like we can control or understand gravity in the same manner as magnetism aS of yet.

I mean if we could we would not need to build and design fusion reactors.

a reply to: andy06shake

Maybe if we had "Q" clearances we wouldn't be trying?

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: Oleandra88

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: neformore

He's not wrong.
economics21.org...
Wind power is a fool's errand on anything beyond individual unit scale.

You can make a windmill out of wood and cloth sails. Once it is turning, it is just as efficient as anything else that can turn a generator.

If your design is reasonably good, it just generates power, which we all pay a lot for, from wind, which we don't pay for at all.

May I inject because I work in the energy sector, looking at data and figuring out the best ways so the grid is staying stable.

That is all nice and good on a individual scale, like the poster you answer to wrote. But if you do not want the grid to collapse every time the wind settles, you need stable base loads.

We are buffering this by running a stable base load on coal and nuclear power plants. Then we have gas plants that can jump in relative fast. Solar power input is a leading factor.

Wind turbines: we shut them off in the first order. They are unreliable. Then solar power is regulated down but most often and this has to do with the price of the single energy sources, it is not and a gas plant is powered down. Or we know the upcoming load.

Pump storage water power plants are on call 24/7 to feather huge grid loads, when we know they will happen beforehand. The water that is pumped up and stored is pumped up during the night or during phases where energy prices go negative.

That means we get money for pumping water around that we later use to discard it down the hill to generate power that we in turn sell to you (the customer).

"we" as in, the energy distribution sector / business

Storage has always been a problem. But tidal forces such as wind and water, alongside hydro and geothermal are all relatively perpetual.

If the intent was there we could have all sorts of energy storage that would be effective. The thing is it take a little investment and power companies would rather upfront profit. So they stay with 80 year old and relatively dirty technology because who care what the future holds.

and if you live on a small island, you may find tidal forces easy to come by. But there is this country called the United States of America, and it's kind of big. Which makes it a little different than where you live. This post has been done for informational purposes only.

a reply to: Slichter
The way you explained, I could see it in my inner vision what you mean with the fuel problem.

We have one customer that uses a huge xray machine where you could xray a car on a rotating platform. They xray all kind of things for material science. The xray is produced by electrons smashing into a special plate that gives off xrays then.

The machine that produces these xrays draws so much current on all phases simultaneously that the local power grid would collapse down, in the town they are located. For that not to happen they installed a 0.4 MWh battery system made up from lithium-iron-phosphor.

The first time I logged into the battery system, I did not know the purpose of that battery system. I saw jumps on the net output of the whole system going from 50kW up to over 280kW randomly. I thought there has to be something wrong and asked a workmate to have a look at this.

That xray is sometimes working for days in one single run.



I never thought about the fuel problem in fusion AND connected it to huge battery systems that maybe are the key to the solution. Learned something