The greatest scientific breakthrough of the century could spell the end of all life on Earth

If it can be scaled up it’ll be the end of the petrochemical hold some of the worst nations on the planet have on everyone. That alone is enough to hope this works.

On an unrelated note for all you Atomic Enthusists out there...

originally posted by: underwerks
If it can be scaled up it’ll be the end of the petrochemical hold some of the worst nations on the planet have on everyone. That alone is enough to hope this works.

Bureaucracies never do something purely altruistic. For example, we could feed the world right now, eh? No starving children stalked by buzzards. Will that happen? Nope. Not any time soon anyways.

originally posted by: The GUT

originally posted by: underwerks
If it can be scaled up it’ll be the end of the petrochemical hold some of the worst nations on the planet have on everyone. That alone is enough to hope this works.

Bureaucracies never do something purely altruistic. For example, we could feed the world right now, eh? No starving children stalked by buzzards. Will that happen? Nope. Not any time soon anyways.

Buzzards gotta eat too. 🤠

a reply to: The GUT

And here I am homeless and broke! I guess if I am not of the solution then I am part of the problem??!!

According to the Man!!

I am just “an eater” and “disposable”… even with two college degrees and decades of work experience!

But if some fat a…

No. We are talking “fusion and end of life” which I am pretty certain that Lockheed Martin has a fusion generator, functional, and in use.

How else do those black triangles “float” around??

Not the “end of life on earth” (unless you consider the alternative of…) the actual start of life *off* earth!!

If we shrink fusion down to size for a rocket ship then we “slip the surly bounda” of this galaxy and travel to the stars!!

And if it is D-T fusion, then, the Asimov idea of putting “fuel pellets” along the path you will follow becomes a very likely idea! We normally have remote vehicles before “manned” (sic) missions and a “fuel dropping drone” that is also fusion powered proves proof of concept prior to a manned (sic) mission.

And lasers should be lighter than magnetic confined reactors.., (just to get any materials off the surface of earth).

originally posted by: ADAMandEVIL
a reply to: beyondknowledge

Castle Bravo was the first to utilize fusion reaction
Still used fission, and releasing gamma radiation
The implication here is PURE fusion bombs.

Look up pure fusion weapons. The internet says they're fictional
Look into their potential power, it's potentially immense
Tsar Bomb looks like a firecracker in comparison

In a Hydrogen bomb (a fusion bomb), only about 0.712 % of the mass is converted to energy. There are more powerful possibilities like an Antimatter or Baryonic bomb which would come closer to total mass to energy conversion.

originally posted by: Brotherman

originally posted by: The GUT

originally posted by: underwerks
If it can be scaled up it’ll be the end of the petrochemical hold some of the worst nations on the planet have on everyone. That alone is enough to hope this works.

Bureaucracies never do something purely altruistic. For example, we could feed the world right now, eh? No starving children stalked by buzzards. Will that happen? Nope. Not any time soon anyways.

Buzzards gotta eat too. 🤠

And waiting (generally) until you're dead to air, gnaw, and stretch ones viscera is actually quite polite when you think about it.

a reply to: PiratesCut

Unless, “they” already have it…..ahem, ahem.

As if already they didn't have those holographics.

Fusion Reactions are safe... with no, as far as i know, hazards like Radiation or waste that things like Nuclear reactors have.

The reaction, if anything goes wrong, basically instantly stops meaning no explosive melt downs, no sudden run away catastrophes outside of instantly loosing power generation. Compared to every other form of energy generation at Human disposal Fusion is potentially not only the best, but the safest, and not to mention the costs once running will as mentioned put other forms of energy like Petrol into a deep dark grave.

And I look forward to that day with glee.

We need Fusion reactors as a species, even a handful would be monumental in human progress and towards clean endless energy on a scale Solar and Water could never reach (even though both are good and efficiency in those forms are like Fusion research doubling at a rapid pace these days).

Fusion scientific advancement has been more than doubling every decade for half a century, where break throughs and efficiency/sustaining reactions have been going up every 10 years or more its now down to a few years between significant improvements and that gap is getting smaller VERY rapidly. Id say we'll see the first true working Fusion reactors in the next decade and when that happens...

Its good times and prosperity for Humanity. But hey there's always the doom and gloomers who see anything new as 'end of the world' and they usually are the types who actually know jack all about the subject, or have agendas/paymasters.

a reply to: BigfootNZ

All fusion reactions generate radiation, though the type and energy varies depending on the specific reaction taking place. The most commonly performed reactions, the deuterium-deuterium reaction used by amateur fusors, and the deuterium-tritium reaction used by the large fusion power experiments, both emit a mixture of gamma rays, X-rays, and neutrons that can activate the reactor wall material into radioisotopes. While there are reactions that don't emit neutrons (the most famous being the proton-boron-11 reaction), a reactor running these will still emit a flood of X-rays and gamma rays that will require heavy shielding.

As for the "waste" produced by existing nuclear reactors, the vast majority of it is unused fuel that we're currently just throwing away without trying to reuse it. The remaining fraction consists of plutonium and other potentially valuable actinides that could be used for power generation, and lightweight fission products that decay to several very useful elements such as ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, or some of the rare earth elements.

Edit: I almost forgot, but there is a pure fusion bomb design in existence already, though it has never been built or tested. It essentially used a high explosive charge to compress an explosively-pumped flux generator to ignite a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction. It would have weighed about 3 tons and exploded with a force roughly equal to 3 tons of TNT. It would have also killed anything in the area with the gamma ray and neutron burst.

*shrugs* remember when Hadron collider was going to end everything?

It might end everything, china or russia or the senile dotard in the oval office might engage thermonuclear war tomorrow morning.

Asteroid that we couldnt see because of starlink could wipe us, out.

Killer bacteria or virus could escape the south pole, or siberian tundra and wipe us out.

You might slip getting into your bath crack your head open and drown.

Crack head could shoot me as I go out to my car in the morning.

Lotta things will kill you, nobody gets out of life alive, worry about what you can control.

originally posted by: Proterozoic
a reply to: BigfootNZ

All fusion reactions generate radiation, though the type and energy varies depending on the specific reaction taking place. The most commonly performed reactions, the deuterium-deuterium reaction used by amateur fusors, and the deuterium-tritium reaction used by the large fusion power experiments, both emit a mixture of gamma rays, X-rays, and neutrons that can activate the reactor wall material into radioisotopes. While there are reactions that don't emit neutrons (the most famous being the proton-boron-11 reaction), a reactor running these will still emit a flood of X-rays and gamma rays that will require heavy shielding.

As for the "waste" produced by existing nuclear reactors, the vast majority of it is unused fuel that we're currently just throwing away without trying to reuse it. The remaining fraction consists of plutonium and other potentially valuable actinides that could be used for power generation, and lightweight fission products that decay to several very useful elements such as ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, or some of the rare earth elements.

Ill take that over what we have now easily... heavy shielding required sure, but your not getting a Fukushima or Chernobyl like event from a Fusion reactor, unless im missing something in my limited understanding of the process. Not to mention the amount of harmful material it might create is still nowhere near the level a Nuclear reactor can (and from what I gather the direct radioactive material it does produce has a very short half-life in comparison and none of the process can be used to make weapons which is a big plus).

Hopefully by the time we have proper Reactors we'll have sorted alot of the remaining issues out for long term containment shield. But for me, the fact they finally hit this milestone and im alive to see it makes me a very happy guy, its not often I feel excitement about things in the world but this has... Only way is up from here.

I just found the title of the thread really triggering lol...

One thing to keep in mind is that modern reactors are designed to safely shut down if anything disturbs them like a power failure or an earthquake (or in one case, because the water intake clogged up with jellyfish), and most future fission designs are meant to passively cool themselves without power, making another Fukushima-like event very unlikely at worst, and outright impossible at best. Also, one should not discount the fact that the best fusion fuel combination (deuterium-tritium) is not only extremely radioactive, it likes to diffuse into solid materials (this is also the cause of hydrogen embrittlement, though that usually doesn't involve tritium).

On Chernobyl, that was a situation that was allowed to get to the severity it did due a combination of political influence, the reactor operators not having all of the info they needed to run it safely, and a reactor design that was so horrible that one could almost suspicion it as having the infamous explosive failure as a design feature of it. Needless to say we don't build reactors like that anymore (and the existing RBMK reactors like the ones at Chernobyl were redesigned afterwards to fix the problems that had been known and hidden by the Soviet government) , so another Chernobyl is no longer possible.

As a final note, a good possible fusion plant could use the D-T reaction to produce high energy neutrons that then drive a fast fission reaction in a U-238 blanket, and then we capture the heat of that reaction to produce steam. This has an advantage in that it doesn't cool the plasma, so we can much more easily maintain the fusion reaction.

a reply to: ADAMandEVIL

It's not so novel, you're just catching up

wiki: german fusion reactor

i remember reading about neutron bombs way back.


some people were disgusted it only killed people and not destroyed everything.

originally posted by: sarahvital
i remember reading about neutron bombs way back.


some people were disgusted it only killed people and not destroyed everything.

I know that disappointment, I felt the same way when I learned the magnifying glass only killed the ants and I couldn't # up the side walk too. I was super bummed out that I told my middle school biology teacher that looking at bugs with a magnifying glass sucks and I don't see the point in it. Interestingly the following semester I ended up in shop class and chemistry

a reply to: sarahvital

The first time I heard about the Neutron bomb I had a horrible thought about how efficent it would be to use in a scenario where you wanted the buildings and inorganic materials but then I learned it destroys ALL ORGANICS NONDISCRIMINATELY and I quickly decided I couldn't live in that kind of sterile environment, I value Innocent Lifeforms too much.

I've come a long way since those days when I was obesessed with World Domination Scenarios and Mass Casualties for a world I percieved as being wholly wicked and beyond redemption.

It's much nicer where I am at this point, and I am happy to see people going about their day to day peacefully and enjoying all the Beauty this precious planet has to offer in all it's varied expressions and diversity.

It's rare I get so angry anymore that I have angry angry bad bad thoughts.

I'd rather see safe and efficent nuclear technolgies used in the advancements of society and planetary conservsation than them being employed in the systematic wholesale destruction of both ecosystems.

Fingers crossed, here's hoping for the best!

its taken them just over 50 years to get this far.
it will take onther 50 years for them to make a power station!

But All they are trying to make are wepons!

but I did suddenly crave a smoke (maybe to regulate chemicals or something in my bloodstream and lungs, I cannot say, not my field yet) and I was already lighting the cigarette before I had time to register and make corrective actions in response to the warning.

I experienced a flash of everything around me being ungulfed in flames and before my phusicallity had time to register the sensation of being set alight, I had "blinked" and the experience was over. My conscious mind was shifted to a safe reality in the Primary Construct before it had the chance to register pain or experience any discomfort other than the realization that I had inadvertantly destroyed a variable parallel system.

I felt bad, worried I had caused suffering to other sentient beings, and almost immediately realized that the other beings had "blinked" like I had, and weren't casualities to the effects of my unintended destructive actions. Something else was overseeing the situation, and in it's wisdom and to it's credit, did not allow innocents to suffer pointlessly for such a small thing, and not to worry because the system is self regulating in such occurances. No one around me even acted like they had noticed anything unusual happening.

Maybe You were directed to smoke in that instant..with intent..and Your surmise that You were spared from committing this atrocity is a self created 'feel better' thing..Maybe the truth is You were being used and still are...

a reply to: PiratesCut

BRICS nations band together to start trading oil in gold or their currency.

United States. Hey everyone! We got this cool new power source that will make oil a thing of the past.