Fusion, Maybe

On a sunny day (Tue, 22 Feb 2022 15:03:13 -0800 (PST)) it happened Dean Hoffman snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Yes I've read that a while back. May even work. Seems we are finally leaving the math equation dictatorship and moving more and more to a neural net simulation Can go badly wrong too..

"Look how nice its working, no idea how though!" BANG oops

Well, it's been mooted for around 70 years. Hopefully it is nearer to reality:

But even there note "The latest results use about three times the amount of energy that is produced."

I wonder, though, has anyone considered the ramifications of "endless" energy?

As with AI: "In the next decade..." :>

Yes. The Krell. :>

OTOH, Athena posited the idea of "a VAX of your own" long before it was practical for every home to have one.

Taking that as a model, it seems like "endless energy" would end up being used "for entertainment purposes"!

Unsurprisingly yes.

Amusingly John Larkin adopts the economist's position, and thinks the physicist's position is wrong.

Any resource perceived as plenty will get wasted until it no longer is.

Jeroen Belleman

And look what happened to them; "Monsters from the id!" My favourite SF film; it never ages, and the special effects are years ahead for its time.

I was thinking more that if energy becomes endless, the limiting factor for production would be raw materials. Would that mean neutrality for places liked the sea bed and perhaps even the Moon would be over?

Yup. One of the first movies I purchased on laser disc. Though it is odd to see Leslie Nielsen in a non-slapstick role.

I always thought it would be wicked cool to have a Robbie "prop"...

If the universe is limitless...

I prefer, instead, to think about what *actually* would be done with (practically) unlimited energy (barring "illegalities" -- whatever THOSE might be). I suspect there is a practical limit on energy required for "needs". OTOH, entertainment/frivolity/play is probably limitless.

Fusion is Fraud

It is clear fusion is too expensive for commercial use and will never power cities. The complexity of ITER is a good illustration of this. Sure, given enough money, you will eventually make it work, but it will never be commercially practical, especially with the plummeting cost of renewable sources like solar and wind.

The solution is Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. This was demonstrated in the 1960's and ran for years with no significant problems. It was discarded since the focus at that time was pressurized water reactors for submarines, and the production of plutonium for atomic bombs. However, there is a recent resurgence in Molten Salt, which offers continuous power when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing.

Here is some more information on continuous energy sources:

1. Fusion

How close is nuclear fusion power?

Fusion Has Major Problems That No One Is Telling You About

Former fusion scientist on why we won't have fusion power by 2040

In defense of "Q-plasma" - a response to Sabine Hossenfelder

ITER: The $65BN Power Plant of the Future

ITER: The World's Biggest Nuclear Fusion Mega Project

1. Molten Salt Works and is cheaper than coal or nuclear power

1957 to 1960 Oak Ridge The Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment Thorium Lifters Could Power Civilization for BILLIONS of Years TC No. 6 - Kirk Sorensen: "Thorium - A Global Alternative" Part 2 China Is Building a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor

1. Molten Salt can burn conventional nuclear waste

Elysium Just Made A Nuclear Waste Eating Reactor

This Molten Salt Reactor EATS Nuclear Waste

1. Nuclear Waste: Fission Products, Decay Products, Transuranics
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   Among the fission products are xenon, neodymium, zirconium, and molebdenum.

- xenon is used in satellite propulsion

- neodymium is used in electric cars

- zirconium is strong, malleable, corrosion resistant, with many uses

- molebdenum is used in carbides and high-strength alloys and superalloys

- molebdenum is a trace element essential for life

1. Radioactivity

5A. Isotopes of xenon

Naturally occurring xenon (54Xe) consists of seven stable isotopes and two very long-lived isotopes. Double electron capture has been observed in 124Xe (half-life 1.8 +/- 0.5(stat) +/- 0.1(sys) x1022 years)[1] and double beta decay in 136Xe (half-life 2.165 +/-

0.016(stat) +/- 0.059(sys) x1021 years),[2] which are among the longest measured half-lives of all nuclides. The isotopes 126Xe and 134Xe are also predicted to undergo double beta decay,[4] but this has never been observed in these isotopes, so they are considered to be stable.[5][6] Beyond these stable forms, 32 artificial unstable isotopes and various isomers have been studied, the longest-lived of which is 127Xe with a half-life of 36.345 days. All other isotopes have half-lives less than 12 days, most less than 20 hours. The shortest-lived isotope, 108Xe,[7] has a half-life of 58 ?s, and is the heaviest known nuclide with equal numbers of protons and neutrons. Of known isomers, the longest-lived is 131mXe with a half-life of 11.934 days. 129Xe is produced by beta decay of 129I (half-life: 16 million years); 131mXe, 133Xe, 133mXe, and 135Xe are some of the fission products of both 235U and 239Pu, so are used as indicators of nuclear explosions.

5B. Isotopes of neodymium From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Naturally occurring neodymium (60Nd) is composed of 5 stable isotopes, 142Nd, 143Nd, 145Nd, 146Nd and 148Nd, with 142Nd being the most abundant (27.2% natural abundance), and 2 long-lived radioisotopes, 144Nd and 150Nd. In all, 33 radioisotopes of neodymium have been characterized up to now, with the most stable being naturally occurring isotopes 144Nd (alpha decay, a half-life (t1/2) of 2.29x1015 years) and 150Nd (double beta decay, t1/2 of

7x1018 years).

All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives that are less than 12 days, and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than 70 seconds; the most stable artificial isotope is

147Nd with a half-life of 10.98 days. This element also has 13 known meta states with the most stable being 139mNd (t1/2 5.5 hours), 135mNd (t1/2 5.5 minutes) and 133m1Nd (t1/2 ~70 seconds).

The primary decay modes before the most abundant stable isotope,

142Nd, are electron capture and positron decay, and the primary mode after is beta decay. The primary decay products before 142Nd are element Pr (praseodymium) isotopes and the primary products after are element Pm (promethium) isotopes.

5C. Isotopes of molybdenum

Molybdenum (42Mo) has 33 known isotopes, ranging in atomic mass from

83 to 115, as well as four metastable nuclear isomers. Seven isotopes occur naturally, with atomic masses of 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, and 100. All unstable isotopes of molybdenum decay into isotopes of zirconium, niobium, technetium, and ruthenium.[2]

Molybdenum-100 is the only naturally occurring isotope that is not stable. Molybdenum-100 has a half-life of approximately 1x1019 y and undergoes double beta decay into ruthenium-100. Molybdenum-98 is the most common isotope, comprising 24.14% of all molybdenum on Earth. Molybdenum isotopes with mass numbers 111 and up all have half-lives of approximately .15 s.[2]

5D. Isotopes of zirconium

Naturally occurring zirconium (40Zr) is composed of four stable isotopes (of which one may in the future be found radioactive), and one very long-lived radioisotope (96Zr), a primordial nuclide that decays via double beta decay with an observed half-life of 2.0x1019 years;[3] it can also undergo single beta decay, which is not yet observed, but the theoretically predicted value of t1/2 is 2.4x1020 years.[4] The second most stable radioisotope is 93Zr, which has a half-life of 1.53 million years. Thirty other radioisotopes have been observed. All have half-lives less than a day except for 95Zr (64.02 days), 88Zr (83.4 days), and 89Zr (78.41 hours). The primary decay mode is electron capture for isotopes lighter than 92Zr, and the primary mode for heavier isotopes is beta decay.

The physicist is not correct. Notice that the opening posit is "economic growth cannot continue indefinitely", and gets immediately replaced by the "energy scale expanding into the future". These are not the same things at all.

I knew an economist who actually posited the physicist's position. Seems that was a common belief among economists in the 80s and 90s. What it fails to take into account is the ability to do more with less. Computers are a perfect example. They have allowed us to replace relatively inefficient humans with machines, boosting productivity in ways we could only imagine before. We find new technology that allows better products using less material and energy. We discover new means of medical diagnosis and treatment extending and improving life.

None of this automatically implies greater energy consumption. The entire argument is specious.

It has to be scaled up to start actually generating power.

You've got to dissipate the waste heat after you've used to do whatever you want to. Anybody who has ever worked with power electronics should be conscious of that particular limit.

Twaddle. The sun has been working fine for the past few billion years. Getting a scheme that can produce less energy, in a smaller space, with better control, is taking a while, but nobody has been promising that it can be made to work overnight. There's no fraud involved . You might prefer that the investment was directed to what you imagine might be more promising projects, but that's a personal opinion.

Why ?

The complexity of ITER is a good illustration of this. Sure, given enough money, you will eventually make it work, but it will never be commercially practical, especially with the plummeting cost of renewable sources like solar and wind.

Having physicists design the equipment isn't a way to get something cheap or simple. ITER is a proof of principle machine, and it has to be flexible enough to cover a range of operating conditions. Once you have got something that works you can start refining the design to make it work well at whatever the optimal operating conditions turn out to be, and leave out most of the bells an whistles that tell you exactly what's going on and all the knobs that graduate students love to twiddle.

It might be a solution, but it has most of the problems of U-235 based reactors, which do seem to be hideously expensive

And much the same sort of radioactive waste as regular U-235 based reactors. It's not the same waste - the U-238 in regular reactors isn't there to make it's contribution - but it's bad enough to need the same kind of care for a couple of hundred thousand years.

<snipped - life's to short to spend it sorting through propaganda>

There's validity to that objection, but historically the energy - wealth relationship has tracked reasonably well.

The problem with exponential growth is that even if you posit that we become 16* more energy efficient by some "magic" (Arthur C. Clarke!) means, that only delays the conclusion by

4 doubling generations. And that's not enough to invalidate the basic observations.

What a bizarre claim; I said no such thing and I routinely mock economists. Somehow just my common name makes people obsessive and dishonest. Coder thinking. It's amusing, so I'm not complaining.

The conversation in your link was obiously fabricated to show the author's superiority and to make article filler. "The conversation recreated here..." One sees a lot of that.

The guy is missing some crucial points that make his fictitious debate moot. He's not thinking ahead.

"wasted until it no longer is" implies a nonlinear, absolute collapse mechanism. How would perceived cheap or free energy kill all production of energy?

Why can't you see the very obvious fallacy in that argument? The energy *estimate* grew exponentially for a few centuries not because we used more energy per individual, but because the human population grew exponentially. In the last couple of hundred years technology has extended life span, improved farm productivity and otherwise enabled faster population growth... until more recently where the more affluent countries have reduced their population growth.

At the same time, the per capita energy use has increased... until the last 50 years when it also has leveled off in the more affluent parts of the globe.

So the combination of leveling off of population and the leveling off of per capita energy use means we will continue to improve the quality of life as well as economic growth into the foreseeable future.

I wonder if you read the article in detail? (It was quite long.) All your points are covered there.

Yes, population has increased - but energy usage has increased at a higher rate. (And yes, that has levelled off somewhat in the past few decades, in developed countries.)

Yes, efficiency - what we can do with the same amount of energy - has improved. But in many use-cases, we are relatively near the limit. All the big leaps have already been made in some areas. The efficiency of, say, driving an electric motor, or a petrol motor, or lighting houses, is all within spitting distance of optimal. Being generous and saying efficiency could be doubled, and that still won't last long against exponential increase.

Efficiency is limited. Energy production is limited. Therefore, productive work is limited, and economic growth cannot continue unbounded. That is the gist of the argument, and it is inescapable.

However, there is no physical law hindering slower growth that tails off

- with a growth rate that slows. Exponential economic growth cannot continue indefinitely, but we could have an S-shaped curve rather than expecting the J-shaped curve to continue. Then economic growth can continue into the foreseeable future - but we would not expect to see "x% annual growth".

You have poo-poohed the physics in that article several times in the past, in particular the thermodynamics of the earth being a reasonable approximation to a black body radiator. "Assume a spherical cow..." and all that.

Of course it is a fabricated conversation, a classic gedankenexperimenten. From the introductory first paragraph...

"Shortly after pleasantries, I said to him, “economic growth cannot continue indefinitely,” just to see where things would go. It was a lively and informative conversation. I was somewhat alarmed by the disconnect between economic theory and physical constraints—not for the first time, but here it was up-close and personal."

Of course, there are /many/ presumptions there; it isn't a prediction!

Beat me to it!

I suspect the introductory paragraph was speed-read...

"Shortly after pleasantries, I said to him, “economic growth cannot continue indefinitely,” just to see where things would go. It was a lively and informative conversation. I was somewhat alarmed by the disconnect between economic theory and physical constraints—not for the first time, but here it was up-close and personal."

Even if you radically reduced the inefficiency of the physical processes, that would only delay the conclusion by a few years. That's the "wonder" of exponential growth!

More outright lies. In quotes yet. Cite.

You're a coder, a typist, right? I deal with heat transfer constantly; not just theory, but theory and design and experiment and products that work.

How much power do you suppose I can dissipate on one of these boards, each about 4" x 14"?

Yup. Fabrication. Straw man to mock.

Fuzzy thinking on his part. Mindless insults on yours.

Jeff Layman snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid wrote in news:sv50d2$bh4$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

So was Robbie.

IIRC it was also the first stereo soundtrack as well, but I do not think it had that name yet.