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Jonny 290 posted:some dorkwad just shot his loving car into space its not a materials problem i'm not sure that follows, but lol anyway
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 01:00 |
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# ? May 24, 2024 18:57 |
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:also this is not a bad thing natural gas can also be used in combined heat&power industrial setups for massive savings. fracking is real good
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 01:02 |
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yeah there's a big gulf between "get this done, cost be damned" and actually making a technology commercially practical. stuff like the apollo program, the manhattan project, the sr-71, all manner of fancy-pants aerospace poo poo whose purpose is to swing our titanically enormous murderpenis around so that everybody is absolutely fully aware that ours is the biggest, thickest and meatiest giant murderpenis on the planet, yeah we're good at doing that poo poo. making technology into a practical asset for humanity? like doing basic fusion research, curing nasty diseases? nah, not a sufficiently reliable rate of return. better hoard more loving real estate, that's the sort of "investment" we do these days. launching a luxury car into space is very much the "swinging my cock around, isn't it so big" category of technological effort.
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 02:00 |
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Sapozhnik posted:
it's also something that was already possible in like 1961
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 02:07 |
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like sure,maybe we can't create a low flow turbine that lasts more than 18 months in tidal seawater. that might just be part of the deal. hell we rebuild airplane engines every 1k hours. but maybe if we had some concrete plants to drop mad seawalls and a decent turbine fab plant on this side of the pacific, a little bit nearer where we want to install them, it might still be feasible considering _the power you'll make is loving free with no emissions_
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 02:09 |
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landing the boosters afterwards for reuse sure wasn't, and neither was the ability to mass-manufacture a bunch of rocket engines that work reliably (though a lot of that is that very high-precision CNC is readily-available, and 3D printing metal is now A Thing). that being said, ITER is still at least 2 decades away from being fully operational and is still gonna be a demonstration so it's not happening faster than we're melting the ice caps.
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 02:18 |
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Jonny 290 posted:like sure,maybe we can't create a low flow turbine that lasts more than 18 months in tidal seawater. that might just be part of the deal. hell we rebuild airplane engines every 1k hours. I think one of the issues is offshore wind is better, cheaper, and easier and we'd rather spend money there.
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 02:26 |
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tidal also has the problem that there are a limited number of places around the globe that have really good tidal surges and those places also usually have lots of shipping traffic if youre going to build spinny energy things out on the coastal shelf windmills are a much better bet. theyre a rapidly developing technology and the levelized cost goes down year after year
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 02:36 |
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my bitter bi rival posted:i had to google 'doula ' but lol x2 the natural childbirth online community is all the toxic gender essentialism of the manosphere combined with the anti-establishment stupidity of lolbertarian bitcoiners. if you take an epidural you're putting your comfort over your baby's health. need a medical intervention when giving birth? then you're a failure as a mother and therefore as a woman. oh your ob/gyn said you're a high-risk pregnancy? that's just the medical-industrial complex lying to you to line their pockets. you should trust an unregulated, untrained, unlicensed ~doula~ instead. give birth in a water-filled inflatable pool in your garage, the natural way otoh it's much funnier to laugh at a bitcoin dork getting brain damage from his overheated mining rig than it is to read about a baby getting brain damage during a home birth gone wrong
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 03:14 |
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Jimmy Carter posted:landing the boosters afterwards for reuse sure wasn't, and neither was the ability to mass-manufacture a bunch of rocket engines that work reliably (though a lot of that is that very high-precision CNC is readily-available, and 3D printing metal is now A Thing). ITER's budget is something like 6 billion a year. Goldman Sachs' annual bonus pool is something like 10x as much. The MIC loses that kind of cash down the back of the couch. Yeah neither of the two main approaches for fusion appear to be going anywhere but you don't make progress simply by staring at a blackboard for ten years.
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 03:39 |
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speaking of the MIC whatever happened to Lockheed's fusion reactor efforts? (it's telling that the proposed product isn't 'yeah here you can power a small city with one these in a power plant' but 'hey you can throw this in an airplane and power your FOB and get better logistics')
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 03:45 |
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Jimmy Carter posted:speaking of the MIC whatever happened to Lockheed's fusion reactor efforts? the former has to be economical the latter doesn't
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 03:49 |
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Jonny 290 posted:some dorkwad just shot his loving car into space its not a materials problem, its a funding problem this generation's "we can put a man on the moon but we can't..." is going to be "some dorkwad sent his car to the asteroid belt but we can't..." ugh gently caress
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 04:09 |
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ate all the Oreos posted:this generation's "we can put a man on the moon but we can't..." is going to be "some dorkwad sent his car to the asteroid belt but we can't..." ugh gently caress same argument aimed at hypercapitalists instead of the coldwar industrial complex also elon musk is a poo poo eating fuckbag
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 04:26 |
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Jimmy Carter posted:that being said, ITER is still at least 2 decades away from being fully operational and is still gonna be a demonstration so it's not happening faster than we're melting the ice caps. the wendelstein 7-x stellarator is up to multiple seconds of hydrogen plasma containment, and is on track to hit their goal of 30 minutes containment at 80 megawatts in the next two years the stellarator concept imo is much more elegant than the tokamak, and also it looks more like a starship fusion reactor should, so that's where i'm placing my bets
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 04:35 |
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as far as "cool looking" goes everyone knows the best fusion reactor is the farnsworth fusor you'll never, ever get useable power out of it but otoh it's simple enough that you can make your own at home!
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 05:08 |
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the main problem with the stellarator was being able to accurately model the effects of the geometry on the plasma. decades of research and leaps in computer processing has made it a much more feasible design. tokamaks on the other hand have a natural flaw in their geometry. the donut shape creates a natural gradient between the outer and inner walls (the magnetic coil bunches up/is denser on the inner wall). it's hard to have a realistic outlook on fusion. maybe one day it will be great, i don't follow it closely enough to be able to predict whether it will be commonplace in my lifetime. i think it is as worthy as any other large scientific project, but the public really needs to stop talking about it as if it's an energy technology and instead treat it like a big scientific instrument similar to a telescope or particle accelerator. i think you can still sell the public on the coolness factor of it being a big vessel to store a piece of the sun.
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 05:24 |
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Thorium fission is a more realistic energy production method in the near future than fusion. Lol at that ever getting worked on in the current us political climate though. (But I hear the PRC is making good progress? Still about a decade away though) Heck, good old fashioned uranium fission is a more realistic energy production method (at least in countries where it wouldn't be seen as a proliferation risk), and that's literally going backwards in the us these days.
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 05:40 |
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Jabor posted:Thorium fission is a more realistic energy production method in the near future than fusion. Lol at that ever getting worked on in the current us political climate though. (But I hear the PRC is making good progress? Still about a decade away though) the thorium fuel cycle requires quite a lot of industrial retooling and infrastructure to actually become viable so i'd say more than a decade away
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 05:45 |
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Jonny 290 posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B053'54.0%22N+84%C2%B031'08.0%22W/@35.9092448,-84.5162922,3444m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d35.898333!4d-84.518889?hl=en so did they just cover it with dirt dust their hand off and say 'fixed forever'?
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 05:48 |
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ate all the Oreos posted:the thorium fuel cycle requires quite a lot of industrial retooling and infrastructure to actually become viable so i'd say more than a decade away everything is a decade away.
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 05:53 |
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Tokamak posted:everything is a decade away. not fully autonomous cars, those will be here this summer
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 05:54 |
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Sagebrush posted:the wendelstein 7-x stellarator is up to multiple seconds of hydrogen plasma containment, and is on track to hit their goal of 30 minutes containment at 80 megawatts in the next two years 30 minutes at 80 mw thermal power ...with 0W of actual power output ...on a reactor that requires tens of MW input power
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:03 |
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Jimmy Carter posted:that being said, ITER is still at least 2 decades away from being fully operational and is still gonna be a demonstration so it's not happening faster than we're melting the ice caps. ITER's definition of "fully functional" doomed the project from the beginning under ideal circumstances it is still a purposeless boondoggle edit: just to start from the beginning, ITER is supposed to run on a d-t mix that would annually consume more than 2x the total world output of tritium as of 2017 -- for a demo reactor that only sustains plasma containment 15m at a time, with no output power, and a firm requirement of a total teardown and replacement after a few operating hours due to tritium infiltration/contamination Notorious b.s.d. fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Feb 16, 2018 |
# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:03 |
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Tokamak posted:it's hard to have a realistic outlook on fusion. maybe one day it will be great, i don't follow it closely enough to be able to predict whether it will be commonplace in my lifetime. i think it is as worthy as any other large scientific project, but the public really needs to stop talking about it as if it's an energy technology and instead treat it like a big scientific instrument similar to a telescope or particle accelerator. i think you can still sell the public on the coolness factor of it being a big vessel to store a piece of the sun. i don't think fusion will ever be a source of electric power, period. not in my lifetime, not in your lifetime, probably not in the lifetime of our species iter and the stellarator are fascinating exercises in high energy physics but i have no idea how either one is meant to lead to electric power generation
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:05 |
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Jabor posted:Thorium fission is a more realistic energy production method in the near future than fusion. Lol at that ever getting worked on in the current us political climate though. (But I hear the PRC is making good progress? Still about a decade away though) you accidentally hit the nail on the head the reason that thorium fission is not a critical program for the u.s, u.k, or france is that their nuclear deterrents are all based on light-water reactors driving nuclear submarines civil nuclear engineering is part of a virtuous cycle:
until we see molten salt or thorium cycle reactors miniaturized for submarine use, there won't be critical national defense reasons to subsidize them on land
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:17 |
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:you accidentally hit the nail on the head well and you can't make nukes out of thorium reactors nearly as easily so nobody cared to research them at all for decades
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:36 |
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:30 minutes at 80 mw thermal power well yeah, i didn't say the 7x is a commercial power plant or anything. 30 minutes of steady-state operation (containment) is like two orders of magnitude better than any other fusion experiment on the planet though. they're already hitting like 90Mk which is hot enough to self-sustain in a d-t mix
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:40 |
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:iter and the stellarator are fascinating exercises in high energy physics but i have no idea how either one is meant to lead to electric power generation it's supposed to lead to a supply of nuke scientists that are worth a drat who are more amenable to gettin' those clearances, without actually making the nukes
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:42 |
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Sagebrush posted:well yeah, i didn't say the 7x is a commercial power plant or anything. 30 minutes of steady-state operation (containment) is like two orders of magnitude better than any other fusion experiment on the planet though. they're already hitting like 90Mk which is hot enough to self-sustain in a d-t mix anything that ends with "in a d-t mix" is laughable bullshit 1. the only source of the "t" is CANDU fission reactors, and total world production is like 500g a year 2. tritium is radioactive and seeps through everything. imagine hydrogen embrittlement, except, also, anything it embrittles is also radioactive
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:42 |
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bob dobbs is dead posted:it's supposed to lead to a supply of nuke scientists that are worth a drat who are more amenable to gettin' those clearances, without actually making the nukes ok this is cool and good i guess
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:43 |
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it's just beta radiation, yawn incidentally i have a bunch of tritium lights i got recently, they're about as bright as day-old glowsticks and i like them a lot. this has been my tritium light story thanks for listening
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:44 |
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:anything that ends with "in a d-t mix" is laughable bullshit i don't really see what your point is here, since the system is still (on track to start) demonstrating high power continuous containment at temperatures where self-sustaining fusion can occur. they aren't locked into tritium as a fuel. d-d fusion, for instance, requires about twice the temperature to initiate as d-t (should be attainable) and significantly longer containment (only matters for pulsed operation, which this is not) so it's a mostly evolutionary step after demonstrating positive Q on d-t.
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 06:51 |
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Sagebrush posted:d-d fusion, for instance, requires about twice the temperature to initiate as d-t (should be attainable) lol
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 07:01 |
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my favorite fusion related pastime is to look up what's happening to polywell to see if it's dead yet still seems to be chugging along i guess
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 07:59 |
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do feel free to take a break in positing possible future energy sources to enjoy the fact that solar with storage is in fact looking set to take over a large section of the market did not expect to feel this optimistic about the energy future just a few short years ago
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 09:15 |
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Just got my first ever shares and set them to sell at market opening. Gonna pay off a credit card and the coinsurance for my titties.
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 09:39 |
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:do feel free to take a break in positing possible future energy sources to enjoy the fact that solar with storage is in fact looking set to take over a large section of the market dont worry the world will go to poo poo anyway
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 09:41 |
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:do feel free to take a break in positing possible future energy sources to enjoy the fact that solar with storage is in fact looking set to take over a large section of the market yeah this is about the only good news story in the world re climate change at the moment so gently caress it i'll take it, even if it is ol musky building lithium battery plants.
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 09:48 |
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# ? May 24, 2024 18:57 |
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President Beep posted:wonder if they’re feasible in freshwater tidal bodies. maybe we could put one in your mom's bathtub boom roasted
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# ? Feb 16, 2018 12:58 |