Hot fusion certainly does. I am disappointed that we seem to have zeroed out our efforts for controlled fusion. We seem to be putting all our eggs in the "clean coal" technology. As far as I am concerned, clean coal is an oxymoron.
Confinement by magnetic fields is the way it's been tried up till now...
That'd be Tokomak, Bob. And it'd still use the same methodology.
Why do you imagine there would be a need to do so?
AFAIK, the space shuttle doesn't use magnetic confinement.
There is no "scam." Any viable line of scientific investigation stands on its own merits.
HTH, Pete.
The same argument would invalidate hot fusion because there are no working devices that produce more energy than get consumed after decades of research.
I'd say on a par, hot and hold are both equal now with cold being the poor cousin in terms of funding because of some fraud comitted by MIT researchers. The researchers then felt the world owed them a living and so they lied to get their hot fusion funding. And now it turns out MIT disses their own past crimes. But in the process 20 years has been laid to waste by those dumb MIT researchers. A lot of animosity has been synthesised as well just to keep the cold fusion guys off of the funding.
None of that is relevant any more because the call is now to engage in debate and decide what positive things need happen next.
Cold fusion is now verifiable and reproducible on demand with the patterson cell. The Fleichman Pons cell also work - but their reproducibility is 1:10 when it was demonstrated first, although thats now climbed up to better than 2:3.
What is also clear is no one understands the theory well enough to make verifiable predictions.
The only things that distinguish hot and cold fusion (on the assumption that it is fusion and not something else) is that both involve fusing nuclei.
With hot fusion, the fusion environment is hot and allows the nucleous to loose energy in hot processes (like emission of gamma rays and energetic particles). In cold fusion the environment is cold and some kind of nuclear tunnelling process allows nuclei to jump across from within one atom into the next and fuse and the heat of fusion is conducted away rapidly so that the nucleous does not get the chance to emit gamma rays or particles. Both cells require electric current to operate so it could be that electrons facilitate the tunneling and the carrying away of the heat. All we are left with is trying to understand the tunnelling process and heat conduction process. Then we can make the system more generic and then predict other atomic mixes that perform the same functions.
Prove it!
It most certainly has not been achieved. No hot fusion machine has produced meaningfule lasting excess energy yet. No one has managed the pressure and temperature together long enough to get sustained nuclear fusion.
However a patterson cell demonstrates it on demand. And the Fleishmann Pons cell was demonstrating it with
1:10 success rate when it was first demonstrated and now 20 years later it has been pushed up to 2:3 success rate. So on paper at least the cold fusion experts are winning with working devices and statistically significant verifiability while the hot fusion experts have nothing to show.Don't you just hate it when that happens!
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That's not what I'm asking. We know how to extract usable energy from hot fusion if it ever gets to self-sustaining: heat a working fluid and drive a turbine (or possibly use something more exotic like a MHD generator). My question for you is, how do you produce electricity from a cold fusion system (assuming it works)?
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-- /~\ The ASCII \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML / \ Email! Remove the ns_ from if replying by e-mail (but keep posts in the newsgroups if possible).
And that's not even halfway decent English, but thank you SO much for playing.
Bob M.
The patterson cell - its flowing water - input water gets hotter as it exits the cell.
Similarly the Fleichmann Pons cells.
If you want to keep the input and output coolants separate, a heat exchanger will do the function.
Could you kindly provide a reference to documentation regarding any independent testing of these cells and verification of their claims?
Bob M.
You do realize this is a stooopid thing to ask, right? If you'd been born a couple hundred years ago you'd be piously demanding that until someone produces a real electric motor with enough torque to replace a horse, you are never going to accept that electricity is real! Well, is it real?
David, how about you and Schultz grow up and start understanding how research works. First of all, NO we DO NOT know how to extract energy from "hot fusion". Since "cold fusion" is basically over unity heat production, it's obvious as hell how to extract energy from hot "water". Get a freshman physics book and turn to the chapter on "thermodynamics". As for "extracting" energy from some "supposedly contained" ultra-hot plasma or energy released in a vacuum by a laser beam on tiny beads, well you tell me how obvious it is to grab some of that.
And comparing "cold fusion" with "Hot fusion" is just more "debunking" techniques designed to confuse. First off anyone who says that "cold fusion" "cannot" work because the laws of "hot fusion" are clearly violated is an obvious idiot. There is NO certainty that "cold fusion" involves ANY of the principles of "hot fusion". First off "hot fusion" is primitive in the extreme. Although Schultz has no idea what an "atom smasher" is and what it does (He thinks maybe it's something to do with "critical mass") it's basically hitting walnuts with a sledgehammer and then looking at the pieces trying to figure out what a walnut tree looks like! In so-called "cold fusion" the mechanisms are NOT clear. It's why they need to be STUDIED MORE, DUH! As already pointed out, to say that ball lightning doesn't follow the laws of normal lightning thus is can't exist, and there is no value in studying it is the analogy. Of course what is NOT analogous is that working ball lightning is not a political powder keg ready to upset the economic status-quo.
So the facts are clear.
Ah. So now (in your humble opinion, natch) you are saying that Chemistry doesn't actually exist! Well, I could probably go along with that one before I'd start saying over-unity heat production (whatever the mechanism) doesn't exit.
If you search youtube.com you will come across a lot of pointers for names and sources. Of particular note is some documentary of April 2009 and follow ups from that date. Further sources originate from wikipedia.
I used to be sceptic, mainly because of MIT dissing cold fusion. But now it turns out MIT is dissing their own stuff after 20 wasted years because they lied to get hot fusion funding. I presume those researchers thought they were owed a living at the expense of honest decent and hard working cold fusion scientists.
To date, it is the cold fusion scients that have working devices. The call now goes out to engage in debate and whatever tiny steps you can take to get to the next level of quantification and verification, then discuss it, get funding and take the opportunity to move forward.
In other words, don't engage in the obious like talking about laptops that will go on forever, everyone knows about that, instead talk about which calorimetor you will use and what control duplicates you will use, the formulations and preparation methods, meticulous note keeping because of reprodicibility problems, and peer review of your experimets,...etc.
Tested and reproducible science.
Also get some electron micrographs of the surface of materials. They show tiny bullet holes on the surface when the phenomena occurs. More pieces of the puzzle. No one knows what they are just yet.
ed
Remember that 2 MEV neutron coming out? Where the heck is it going? It could care less about your super magnets. It's going to hit something with a lot of energy and knock it out of its lattice. The neutron flux coming out of any practical power reactor would be prohibitive.
I think I read that it's predicted that the average atom in the wall of a commercial power Tokamak would be displaced once every 4 minutes. So the skin is going to become very brittle and very radioactive real fast. What do you do then?
on
Part of the problem is semantics. CO2 is currently not regulated so is technically not a pollutant. So coal can be "clean" by that definition. Yet CO2 is undesirable as a greenhouse gas. Combustion of coal by definition produces CO2 even if you get rid of everything else by technology. So as much as you "clean up" coal combustion you are still left with copious amounts of CO2. I agree you can eliminate particulates, get rid of sulphur oxides, and nitrous oxides.
Now, I am aware of ideas for sequestration. However, even if there is a suitable reservoir immediately at hand, capturing the entire exhaust to remove CO2 is a daunting task without creating backpressure. If you want to pump it to a reservoir tens of miles away, that pipeline will also create LOTs of pressure drop. How much energy does it take to pump large volumes of CO2? Are we left with any to use?
That is why we need to fund development work. If fusion did not work we would not have H-bombs. The idea is to control it and produce energy at a lower rate. If we had already accomplished that task we wouldn't need government funded R&D.
It may be that we cannot accomplish practical controlled fusion, but the payoff is so high it is worth spending far more than we are spending right now. I believe the chances are good enough that I would like to see much of the money now going towards cheaper solar cell tech reprogrammed either towards a US fusion effort, or else returning to funding the international effort.
But wait. The EPA has just declared CO2 a pollutant and AGW real and caused by CO2! So I guess that settles the issue. Coal can never be "clean" unless you get rid of the CO2.
aHow about the idea of using large rain forests for CO2 "sequestration" and conversion? Oh that's right, there's too much money to be made plundering the planet and too much political control of various countries to be had. It's the same with AGW. Who needs the energy in coal when "Cap and Trade" can allow a few to live like kings while the rest of us serfs get by with ox carts. You obviously have bought into all these scams. You are gonna love the new middle ages.
It's like most things. One can be reasonable and solve a problem or political and seek as much advantage as you can get for yourself before the next guy does likewise. Right now it looks like politics is winning. They certainly won you over.
Prove it DOES exist.
The claimed energy excess ( by those who 'believe' ) is so small that it would disappear in losses anyway so no cigar. A totally pointless dead-end even if it were true.
Graham
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You don't understand science.
Go to University, get a degree and come back when you have half a clue.
Graham
Depends on the quality of the coal and the extent of flue treatment / scrubbers. Plus fluidised bed technology burns more cleanly AIUI.
However in terms of flue output, you're right. Nothing beats nuclear fusion. The plants just emits water vapour and used fuel that can be effectively cold air stored. Ideally glassified in the long term.
Pebble bed and thorium reactors look especially promising.
Graham
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How about YOU 'prove' something. You're a boring windbag with NO scientific knowledge.
Graham
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