If Fusion Is the Answer, We Need To Do It Quickly 305
Lasrick writes: Yale's Jason Parisi makes a compelling case for fusion power, and explains why fusion is cleaner, safer, and doesn't provide opportunities for nuclear smuggling and proliferation. The only downside will be the transition period, when there are both fission and fusion plants available and the small amount of "booster" elements (tritium and deuterium) found in fusion power could provide would-be proliferators what they need to boost the yield of fission bombs: "The period during which both fission and fusion plants coexist could be dangerous, however. Just a few grams of deuterium and tritium are needed to increase the yield of a fission bomb, in a process known as 'boosting.'" Details about current research into fusion power and an exploration of relative costs make fusion power seem like the answer to a civilization trying to get away from fossil fuels.
Big fusion reactor unnecessary for boosting (Score:5, Informative)
Fusion reactors capable of producing net power are big, or seem to be being as we haven't actually built one yet.
However, if you just want to produce tritium for a boosted fission bomb, you don't need to generate net power. A farnsworth fusor [makezine.com] will do and they are small and inconspicuous.
As for deuterium: Deuterium is produced for industrial, scientific and military purposes, by starting with ordinary water—a small fraction of which is naturally-occurring heavy water—and then separating out the heavy water by the Girdler sulfide process, distillation, or other methods. [wikipedia.org]
So, no point in securing your fusion reactor because the bad guys don't have any real motivation to break in. At least, not to steal anything.
Re:Ready in 30 years (Score:4, Informative)
" The "real" reason we don't have fusion power yet is because it requires creating a little piece of THE SUN inside a contained vessel. That's mind bogglingly difficult."
Not really. The conditions for fusion inside the Sun are actually mind-bogglingly MILD. Overall, the Sun converts ~4 million tons of matter into energy every second, yet it only has the energy density of decomposing manure. It's just that the Sun is so freaking HUGE.
The problem with getting fusion power on Earth is that we need to SURPASS by orders of magnitude the conditions at the heart of a star.
Re:Ready in 30 years (Score:5, Informative)
What a load of bull. Only in the core of the Sun does fusion actually occur. The temperature at the core is 15 million Kelvin and the central density is 160,000 kg/m^3. That is an energy density fucking orders of magnitude about decomposing manure. The numbers you get are by averaging over the entire Sun, which is irrelevant, because only a tiny central region of the Sun is hot enough for fusion.
10+ years on Slashdot and in the past few years it has really been taken over by amateurs. Every hard physics / astronomy article is filled with nonsense patently FALSE comments modded up to +4. Our collective intelligence has been decreasing, friends.
Please know what you are doing before you mod up an incorrect article... a simple Wikipedia peek will fix it for you folks.