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[Virex]

It fals under neutron radiation

[Sowelu]

So, soon we're going to have fusion reactors.  These are supposed to create tremendous amounts of energy.  Additionally, the methods for that would eventually allow junk that can't be recycled to be used for energy (some foams, plastics, etc)."

Hm, my understanding here is that fusion smelters didn't get energy out of this stuff, but they DO reduce it to its component atoms and separate them very efficiently, meaning you can just chuck piles of electronics waste into a fusion smelter, and get out some buckets of carbon, buckets of silicon, very small buckets of gold, buckets of lead, etc., that is otherwise hard to practically smelt out.  It's good in a very resource-limited and energy-rich environment.

Personally, I'm much more in favor of improving our fission tech.  We can reuse our nuclear waste as nuclear fuel for about 10,000x as long as we've been doing it already.  Yes we're short on uranium, but the waste can be just as good if we just developed the tech a little lot more.  And then you don't have the problem of dumping it, or of it falling into the wrong hands, because it's still very valuable as fuel!

[Twiggie]

some guy said they'd use tritium and deuterium to make he4... thatd make he5 iirc

also, fission really doesnt make the uranium split up into individual neutrons and protons. the uranium splits into two radioactive elements with slightly less total mass than the uranium, which is where the energy comes from.

also, FUSION FTW! just imagine, the fully-automatic plasma cannon, all powered by fusion!

also, what is this about neutrinos being dangerous? they're really not.

not my fault if im wrong/somebody dies because of what ive said here.

[qwertyuiopas]

They already know how to improve their fission tech, but for some reason aren't...

[LegoLord]

some guy said they'd use tritium and deuterium to make he4... thatd make he5 iirc

Not every neutron from the components winds up in the product.  One of the neutrons from the hydrogen atoms just splits off, leaving He-4.

[Grek]

They already know how to improve their fission tech, but for some reason aren't...

For the US at least, it;s A] not legal and B] requires a ridiculous amount of government red tape to get a reactor approved.

[qwertyuiopas]

That is THE dumbest reason to prevent the construction of a power plant that solves most current power issues(if any) AND can replace less enviromentally friendly ones.

From now on, global warming is the governments' fault if they won't take the current solution because "In 5 years they will have something better". Swap out some for newer, and when the better tech comes out, swap out the parts that you HAVEN'T. It will cost a BIT more in the long run, but getting the benefits right NOW...

[Il Palazzo]

Yanlin's link(pic?) is broken, so I'm not sure how to react, but I suspect that something along the lines of "Yes, I'm a pedantic nerd" would be in order.
Continuing:

some guy said they'd use tritium and deuterium to make he4... thatd make he5 iirc

also, fission really doesnt make the uranium split up into individual neutrons and protons. the uranium splits into two radioactive elements with slightly less total mass than the uranium, which is where the energy comes from.

(...)

also, what is this about neutrinos being dangerous? they're really not.

LegoLord already corrected the he5 "question", so:
Fission does result in free neutrons(uranium decay results in 2.5 neutrons on average) as well as two, often radioactive, elements and a gamma ray photon. Each of those carries away some energy
Neutrinos aren't dangerous, true. However, we've been talking about neutrons, which can be quite deadly.

How would one go about building a window that would let alpha radiation through? I sense a contradiction there...

Sure it's a contradiction. It was meant to show that even though it's incorrect to say that alpha radiation isn't dangerous, containing it in fusion reactor is not a problem at all.
(there are still those neutrons though, which are slightly more annoying)

Personally, I'm much more in favor of improving our fission tech.  We can reuse our nuclear waste as nuclear fuel for about 10,000x as long as we've been doing it already.  Yes we're short on uranium, but the waste can be just as good if we just developed the tech a little lot more.  And then you don't have the problem of dumping it, or of it falling into the wrong hands, because it's still very valuable as fuel!

Hey, Sowelu, I think we might've already discussed this in some other thread, but where do you get those fugures from? You can't reuse all of the nuclear waste, you know. All you can do is remove those nuclear poisons that accumulated over time.

[Yanlin]

Yanlin's link(pic?) is broken, so I'm not sure how to react, but I suspect that something along the lines of "Yes, I'm a pedantic nerd" would be in order.
Continuing:

some guy said they'd use tritium and deuterium to make he4... thatd make he5 iirc

also, fission really doesnt make the uranium split up into individual neutrons and protons. the uranium splits into two radioactive elements with slightly less total mass than the uranium, which is where the energy comes from.

(...)

also, what is this about neutrinos being dangerous? they're really not.

LegoLord already corrected the he5 "question", so:
Fission does result in free neutrons(uranium decay results in 2.5 neutrons on average) as well as two, often radioactive, elements and a gamma ray photon. Each of those carries away some energy
Neutrinos aren't dangerous, true. However, we've been talking about neutrons, which can be quite deadly.

How would one go about building a window that would let alpha radiation through? I sense a contradiction there...

Sure it's a contradiction. It was meant to show that even though it's incorrect to say that alpha radiation isn't dangerous, containing it in fusion reactor is not a problem at all.
(there are still those neutrons though, which are slightly more annoying)

Personally, I'm much more in favor of improving our fission tech.  We can reuse our nuclear waste as nuclear fuel for about 10,000x as long as we've been doing it already.  Yes we're short on uranium, but the waste can be just as good if we just developed the tech a little lot more.  And then you don't have the problem of dumping it, or of it falling into the wrong hands, because it's still very valuable as fuel!

Hey, Sowelu, I think we might've already discussed this in some other thread, but where do you get those fugures from? You can't reuse all of the nuclear waste, you know. All you can do is remove those nuclear poisons that accumulated over time.

It's something along the lines of:



Or hell I'll just try another link.

[sneakey pete]

Albedo.

The Earth gets about 1% of the sun's total radiance. More than 50% of that is reflected by the atmosphere. As a result, you actually get waaaay more power if you have a sattelite up in orbit to collect solar energy and beam it down.

When that 1% is actually less than the power we need then we should go into space (well, slightly before that on low scale to learn how to do it), but for now, why the hell make something that costs 10 times as much, gives twice the gain and can't actually be done yet instead of doing something that's so simple and cheap that average joe can have one on his roof?

Its like a public transport company deciding to replace their bus fleet wtih A380's because "they're bigger and quicker!"

[Duke 2.0]

Albedo.

The Earth gets about 1% of the sun's total radiance. More than 50% of that is reflected by the atmosphere. As a result, you actually get waaaay more power if you have a sattelite up in orbit to collect solar energy and beam it down.

When that 1% is actually less than the power we need then we should go into space (well, slightly before that on low scale to learn how to do it), but for now, why the hell make something that costs 10 times as much, gives twice the gain and can't actually be done yet instead of doing something that's so simple and cheap that average joe can have one on his roof?

Its like a public transport company deciding to replace their bus fleet wtih A380's because "they're bigger and quicker!"

You are underestimating the impact, expense and impracticality of solar panels.
 Unless you are suggesting roof-mounted nuclear generators. Then please, go on ahead.

[Areyar]

to continue my previous post about photonic speed inside a pressurised plasma:

Somehow plasma nuclei must be able to absorb massive amounts of energy and emit it at wavelengths typical for the exitationstates for the atom, otherwise stellar spectroscopy would not be able to extrapolate the composition of a star.

Maybe in pressurised plasma nuclei temporarily adopt electrons from the surrounding medium...
I just cannot recall how.

neutrinos. yeah. in the earlier bowlingpins analogy (or was that in the fission thread?) a neutrino would be a pea launched at the pins by a peashooter. even though these pass through normal matter virtually unimpeded, they are thought to be slowed in the solar plasma.

@ anti-solar sat: It MUST be done! Lunar sunfarms and powsats in orbit or lagrange are only the first step towards the creation of a dyson sphere.
Most of OUR solar energy is leaking away to outerspace where it does no good at all.

OK, so harvesting even a fraction of the sun's power output and piping it to Earth would instantly boil off the oceans, but nobody claimed such power should be used on the planet. Importing such amounts of power would also require massive heatsink/cooling systems. Thus finding ways to minimise wasteheat/maximise efficiency should be a priority always.

[Yanlin]

So. Let's just completely encase the entire space between the sun and the earth in solar panels. INFINITE ENERGY! Well, almost.

[qwertyuiopas]

Isn't that generally what a dyson sphere is?

[bjlong]

IIRC, it's not that the atoms are absorbing the the photons, but rather that the photons are bouncing off of the very densely packed atoms (The atoms are actually entirely ionized here). This is only inside the star, though.

This is the main reason that stars obey the blackbody radiation curve.

Solar energy is also in the development phases, sort of. We can use it now, but on most of earth it's impractical, and beaming energy from space is still research material.