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Comments: 251 +- Hardware: Thermonuclear Reactor To Use Coconut Shells on Thursday October 29, @10:04AM
Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday October 29, @10:04AM
from the Gilligan-approved dept.
from the Gilligan-approved dept.
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destinyland writes "A key component of a $10 billion nuclear fusion plant is vintage 2002 Indonesian coconut-shell charcoal. After a 20-year search, German researchers discovered that the coconut-shell charcoal is the best medium for 'adsorbing' waste byproducts sucked out of the thermonuclear reactor's vacuum chamber. In what will be the first fusion power facility that's commercially viable, magnetic fields will heat hydrogen isotopes to over 150 million degrees Centigrade. (Essentially, the super-hot plasma creates artificial stars.) As the article points out, 'It's not quite a Starship warp drive, but it does harness the power of the sun.'"
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In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
The head of the project, a former professor, was heard mumbling "Gilligan won't mess it up this time."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wasn't that the same movie where The Professor was bringing out all of his various inventions he thought of while on the island...
and every one of them was something that had already been invented?
I think that was the same episode where Ginger was trying to get back into movies, but the kept getting offered adult movie roles. if I remember correctly, she was about to accept one because she thought that was the only kind of movies left, when Gilligan convinced her not to because he had just seen Star Wars.
D
Yeah, I saw this episode (Score:5, Funny)
I remember this one. The professor made the Thermonuclear reactor with a bunch of coconuts, financed, of course, by the Howell's... but then Gilligan saw Ginger...got all flustered and tripped over the whole thing causing a meltdown and the Skipper's hair to glow... yeah, that's a classic episode indeed
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
She said, "That guy's a genius" / I shook my head and laughed / I said, "If he's so fly, they tell me why / He couldn't build a lousy raft"
Re:Yeah, I saw this episode (Score:5, Funny)
They once interviewed Russell Johnson, and he had quite the succinct answer : "If you were trapped on a desert island with Ginger and Mary Ann, and your male competition was Gilligan and the Skipper, would you want to get rescued?"
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Re:Yeah, I saw this episode (Score:5, Funny)
It was Maryann that always made my coconuts radioactive. Those shorts!!!!
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Power of the sun? Artificial stars? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a fusion reaction. Just say that. No stars here, no power from the sun. Nuclear fusion.
Re:Power of the sun? Artificial stars? (Score:5, Funny)
Fusion reactor? You've got two empty halves of a coconut and you're bangin' em together!
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Re:Power of the sun? Artificial stars? (Score:5, Informative)
How do you think stars are formed? Do giant space storks bring them?
Here's the executive summary -- Without fusion stars are just really big clouds of hydrogen gas. Gravitational collapse of gas clouds leads to internal heating and eventually drives the temperature at the core of the new star up high enough to start hydrogen fusion. Even before stellar ignition occurs these gravitationally powered stars can glow as brightly as their older, hydrogen burning main sequence cousins.
So unless your god damn heart is glowing like a blackbody at two thousand kelvin, with strong absorption in the Lyman Alpha line, then stars without fusion are certainly not any blacker than it.
To learn more about stellar evolution, T-Tauri stars, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, nuclear fusion and spectroscopy, why not go to your local library or take an astrophysicist out to a karaoke bar? Either way you'll hear a lot that you may not be able to understand.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you have to use magnetic containment to keep the reaction going, it's not a star [yourdictionary.com]. "Star" is not a synonym for "nuclear fusion reaction" - except in breathless news reports written at a primary school reading level.
Yea so? (Score:3, Interesting)
Coconut shell charcoal is one of the best available for making filters. Charcoal filters are nothing new folks most fish tanks use them as do most water purifiers and even gas masks. And this "May" be a practical fusion reactor but they have been saying that since the 1950s but I am staying hopeful.
Yet another light and fluffy pop science story with a funny little twist because it has coconuts in it... Yawn.....
Nuclear Waste? (Score:2)
My understanding is that this doesn't produce any nuclear waste at all, is that right?
It says the fuel is deutrium and tritium, how hazardous are those?
And it seems like there is basically zero risk of a "meltdown" as the reaction would presumably stop as soon as the power is cut off.
So worst-case scenario appears to be that they damage the reactor and everything shuts down.
Right?
Re:Nuclear Waste? (Score:4, Funny)
Since the by-product is helium, a reactor leak would only mean that any nearby residents would talk like Mickey Mouse for a little while. Which is better than radiation sickness.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Since the by-product is helium, a reactor leak would only mean that any nearby residents would talk like Mickey Mouse for a little while. Which is better than radiation sickness.
Until you get sued by Disney for trademark infringement...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It says the fuel is deuterium and tritium, how hazardous are those?
Oh, EXTREMELY hazardous. Both substances have similar properties to a highly volatile chemical that has in past resulted in some spectacular explosions. OH THE HUMANITY! ;)
Re:Nuclear Waste? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Nuclear Waste? (Score:5, Funny)
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Right and wrong (Score:3, Informative)
The solution of the Sun and other stars - spray the crap all over the Universe - is perhaps not the most environmentally friendly, but it's why we're here at all. We're bas
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Deuterium isn't much of a hazard at all. In the form of heavy water it starts to be a problem only if 25% of your total water is replaced by it and isn't lethal until around 50%. Essentially you'd have to drink only heavy water for about a week. The toxicity is due to deuterium inhibiting cell division. In it's gaseous form, it will simply dissipate harmlessly.
It might or might not make a good diluent for breathing gas for deep diving except that it's way too expensive for that so has never been tried.
Even
Harnessing the power of the sun. (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks for finding me a tech website to ignore (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thanks for finding me a tech website to ignore (Score:4, Insightful)
Behold the power of the web; no need for a sidebar!
BTW, I thought they quoted the word as an alternate form of [sic] [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because adsorb is proper spelling?
Re:Thanks for finding me a tech website to ignore (Score:5, Informative)
Because adsorption and absorption aren't the same thing. They said what they meant; suggesting that they use the wrong word is not good advice.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What (Score:2, Interesting)
We have commercially viable fusion reactors now, yet the "news" is that it involves coconuts?
In what will be the first fusion power facility that's commercially viable...
Oh. I see. 3-5 years out then, just like LHC, battery breakthroughs, etc.
I just want to say... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, now back to mind-numbingly boring and disappointing reality...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's so freaking cool that there's going to be something man-made that will reach temperatures similar to the core of the sun. It's just... too cool.
Oh, the irony.
commercially viable ? (Score:3, Informative)
without knowing anything else, highly sceptical - thought commercially viable fusion years away
PS: all you guys jerking off over how "safe" fusion is - what do you know about the neutron flux, and radioactive embrittlement of the containment shell ?
Re:commercially viable ? (Score:5, Informative)
The 'containment shell' you are speaking of is called the thermal shield, and it is 10 inches of solid carbon steel (usually A36). First, the inside few inches may undergo embrittlement over the course of decades. There is still plenty of ductile material left to hold things together. Second, there will be literally no mechanical stresses in the thermal shield other than gravity... seems like 10 inches of steel ought to be able to hold itself up. It will see thermal stresses, but it is designed with expansion joints so that these to not convert into mechanical stresses. Finally, if these reactors follow any sort of conventional fission reactor design (they will), there will then be 6 feet of steel reinforced high density concrete surrounding the entire reaction chamber, called the 'bioshield'.
There is a lot of information on reactor design out there if you just look and educate yourself instead of reading an editorial and jumping to conclusions. the DOE's websites have a lot of non-classified documents out for public use.
Parent
It's Just Activated Carbon... (Score:3, Funny)
Boooooooring!
So they found the best activated carbon for their particular use comes from coconut shells. Why is this news?
Harness the power of the Sun (Score:3, Interesting)
Giant Brita filter? (Score:3, Interesting)
The best charcoal.... (Score:3, Interesting)
...comes from cows. No, really. There are millions of cows in India, and observant Hindus consider it sacrilege to harm them. So they mostly die from old age, and there are no religious issues connected with recycling their remains. And it turns out that their bones, being extremely brittle, make excellent charcoal.
I found this out from a newspaper story a few years back. It was in the news because a British water company was using cow charcoal in its filters. Local vegetarians were not pleased.
Re:That's not a horse! (Score:5, Funny)
That's not the power of the sun, you're just bangin' two coconuts together!
Fixed that for ya
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Use Coconut Shells? (Score:4, Funny)
Heavily laden hopefully.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:"Commercially viable"? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, I don't know. To be commercially viable it also has to produce substantially more power than it consumes on an ongoing basis. A fusion reactor that can do that would actually be a pretty big deal regardless of how it were funded...
Parent
Re:"Commercially viable"? (Score:4, Informative)
That's just confusion by the writer of the story. This reactor is a scientific experiment, intended only to be the first to demonstrate getting more energy out of a fusion reactor than you have to put into it, not to be a commercially viable power plant. So it's just one step towards the long hoped-for goal of commercially viable fusion.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sure it'll be producing cheap, abundant power.... in about 20 years.
Just ignore the fact that we've been 20 years away from cheap, abundant fusion power for the last 50 years.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fusion == boom? (Score:4, Informative)
Incidentally, coconut fibre (which I suspect might be what TFA might be referring to, rather than the shell) is a truly excellent material for producing an incredibly fine and pure charcoal (i.e. carbon) powder. The particles are so fine that they readily form nearly indelible stains on anything with which they come into contact. Especially on clothing.
Parent
Re:Would this create a black hole? (Score:4, Informative)
Now, at some temperature, we could perhaps expect the kinetic energy of particles to be so high that the particles collapse into subatomic black holes. Whether this is physically realizable, and the temperature it would occur at, depend on which physics theory you subscribe to. A key element of the "holographic universe" idea is that many of the maximum and minimum possible values for quantities like distance, entropy, and temperature have constraints imposed by the observable universe being a projection from a lower dimension event horizon. By some interpretations, this might mean that the maximum possible temperature is about 10^17K, which is about 15 orders of magnitude lower than more conventional cosmology theories would predict.
This suggests that the collisions of the highest energy cosmic rays in the universe regularly produce subatomic black holes. The Large Hadron Collider, whenever it is up and running, is also expected to produce temperatures in that range, so it might in fact make a black hole. You may have heard some news about this recently. So, a science experiment in central Europe in the near future may produce black holes, but it won't be ITER.
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You know what I love about slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
The thing I love about Slashdot is that, apparently, no one actually reads the articles. TFA said that the carbon is being used as part of a PUMP to evacuate the waste helium (and some hydrogen, as well as dust created from the walls of the chamber gradually deteriorating from neutron bombardment) from the chamber and maintain vaccuum. They didn't say they were using this as shielding.
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33 Tokamaks have never produced power. (Score:3, Informative)
ITER is a Tokamak [wikipedia.org] reactor. There are 20 now in operation. Thirteen were operated before and are now shut down. None of them have ever produced more power than they used.
Overheard in Mooslevania... (Score:3, Informative)
Bullwinkle J. Moose: "Hey Rock, watch me pull net energy out of my tokamak"
Rocket J. Squirrel: "Again? That trick never works!"
Bullwinkle J. Moose: "This time for sure!"
Mentioned in the article (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a quote from the article, where they discuss this.
In a bit more detail:
They need to remove the Helium because it gets in the way of the reactants. They also need to be able to filter out whatever small amounts of waste that are generated by the plasma brushing the wall. Presumably reactions between the plasma and the walls would produce metallic hydrides, which are toxic, and in some cases potentially explosive. Not only that, but after a while, the entire inside of the reactor will be radioactive, from neutron activation. Again, this is small amounts of material, but they can't just spew it out into the air. Besides, they'll want to analyze it and see what's in it, since no one has ever run one of these for an extended period of time before.
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